Since the pandemic, people have tremendously shifted to online shopping. This is unlikely to change even in the coming years. That’s because shoppers have started loving the online shopping experience over traditional shopping. It’s crucial that e-commerce platforms take advantage of this favorable situation.
Here are 10 effective e-commerce marketing strategies to employ in 2022 and beyond.
Our e-commerce marketing strategies
Our e-commerce marketing strategies are
- Proven: Those that have worked well for many other firms will surely work for you.
- Flexible: Therefore, you can adapt them to suit your specific business needs.
- Actionable: So, you can put them to practice immediately.
- Complementary: This allows you to employ two or three e-commerce marketing strategies that best suit you in combination.
10 Effective E-Commerce Marketing Strategies
1. Prioritize your SEO
When you look to buy a product online, you mostly use a search engine for it. Only if your product page shows up on the top page of the search engine result page, you’ll gain a chance for making a sale/customer. This makes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) crucial for e-commerce businesses.
Here are the things you need to do to optimize SEO for your e-commerce website.
- Honestly assess your e-commerce website. An e-commerce audit will evaluate how your site ranks in the search pages of the search engine.
- Fix technical issues such as security issues, duplicate content, broken links, and slow load times.
- Research targeting keywords in your e-commerce niche. Think like a consumer for efficient keyword research.
- Streamline on-page SEO for page copy, meta descriptions, and images.
- Build off-page SEO.
2. Employ content marketing
Content is king in this period of extensive internet usage. With the right content, you can generate long-term customers and brand affinity. Here are some outstanding e-commerce content marketing strategies.
- Product page content: Post evocative and interesting product descriptions.
- Blogging: Consistently post relevant, useful, and interesting blog content.
- Ebooks and guides: Post useful, visually appealing, and high-quality downloadable e-books and guides.
- Video content: Video content is more effective than having mere text content. So, these rank high on search engines.
3. Optimize for mobile
Statistics say that 62.24% of the population own a mobile phone and 79% of smartphone users have bought online via their mobile devices in the past 6 months. M-commerce’s share in e-commerce is expected to increase further in the forthcoming days. So, without optimizing your e-store for mobile devices, you’ll be missing a lot of potential opportunities.
Ensure a great user experience of your site on mobile devices by making your site responsive. This way, users won’t have to zoom, resize, scroll, or pan. This is a business growth strategy that e-commerce businesses shouldn’t miss out on.
4. Convert wishlists with discounts
Often, people add items to your wishlist but never even think about it again. One excellent strategy is to propel their conversion by providing discounts. Since they’ve already expressed interest in those items, giving a discount on them will motivate them to purchase those.
So, send a wishlist reminder email. It should have a pleasing and simple design and a powerful CTA to make your discount clear. This will propel them to re-consider the purchase and can aid your platform in viral marketing.
5. Install live chat
Live chat is the most preferred support channel for e-commerce customers. Installing live chat on your e-store can render the following benefits.
- Give immediate support and service to your customers
- Provide customers a hassle-free way of fixing issues
- Simultaneously serve multiple customers
- Deliver personalized experiences based on the shopping history of customers
- Automate to save time
- Attract leads even while you’re offline
- Measure the performance of your team
6. Convert one-time purchases into subscriptions
When someone buys from your platform, take the opportunity to make repeated sales to him/her. You can do this by running a membership plan alongside one-time purchase schemes. Offer exclusive benefits to members alone so that one-time purchasers tend to become your long-term customers.
MeUndies, an underwear brand, does this excellently. It offers a significant discount to its members and displays this info on the product page so that both members and non-members can compare and see the contrast. Also, display the other benefits of membership on the product pages. Besides, ensure that the text and colors of the content talking about the subscription option stand out in your design.
7. Take efforts to retrieve abandoned carts
Whenever a shopper abandons his/her cart without buying the items in them, take efforts to retrieve them. Oftentimes, e-commerce platforms send simple reminders to cart abandoners to encourage purchases. Some brands like Birchbox take this to the next level by being innovative. It makes other similar product recommendations to motivate those shoppers who’ve left their carts due to dissatisfaction with the products.
They also use social proof such as reviews and ratings under each product. This helps make its recommendations stronger. You can also make recommendations for top-rated products.
8. User customer testimonials to drive purchases
People always look for social proof while determining the brands to purchase from. Other than ratings and reviews, customer testimonials serve as ideal social proof. Display them on your homepages, product pages, landing pages, and marketing emails. These can excellently drive e-commerce sales.
Some brands even let customer testimonials speak for themselves. So, they refrain from writing long descriptions. After all, none other than an actual user can describe a product better. There are even brands that display customer testimonials on their subject lines.
9. Send out back-in-stock notifications
Customers get frustrated when they see products they’re looking at being labeled as “sold-out”. Smart marketers, however, look at this as an opportunity to increase sales. They send out “back in stock” notifications to let interested people buy those quickly.
Some brands even know the art of converting shoppers frustrated due to “out of stock” products by suggesting relevant or top-rated products. You can automate your wishlist to show “See similar items” instead of “Proceed to buy” when the products there go out of stock.
10. Send promotional and holiday email blasts
Even though you’ve automated your e-commerce email marketing, you’d gain by sending hand-crafted, non-automated emails at times. During holiday seasons and marketing promotions, send these out to let them know of a current sale, new arrivals, discounts, offers, and more.
While sending such emails, remember two things- don’t overdo it and don’t send generalized “one-size-fits-all” emails. If you send those often, your customers won’t find much value. And if you send generalized offers, they won’t benefit from it. So, send relevant promotional emails periodically. Segmentation can help in this regard.
Wrapping up
E-commerce marketing needs some knack. We’ve discussed some of the most effective e-commerce marketing strategies that can help you beat the competition, widen your customer base, and generate more revenue. So, do put some of these to use!
FAQs
- What is e-commerce marketing?
E-commerce marketing refers to the practice of driving awareness and sales for a business that sells its products and services online.
- What is an e-commerce marketing strategy?
An e-commerce marketing strategy refers to the set of techniques an e-store plans to use to promote its brand and generate more sales and revenue.
- Are there more e-commerce marketing strategies used?
Yes. Some of these are influencer marketing, personalization, mobile marketing, omnichannel marketing, social media marketing, and micro-targeting.
E-COMMERCE MARKETING: TOP 10 EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES THAT WORK
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