Irrespective of whether you are a well-established online retailer or an e-commerce outlet that has been launched just now, marketing is important for you. For, it helps build brand awareness and credibility, generate leads, promote sales, and foster brand affinity. However, you need to use those e-commerce marketing strategies that are effective.
This blog would help you in this regard. We’ve picked out ten of the proven eCommerce marketing strategies that are worth your time, resources, and effort.
10 Proven E-commerce Marketing Strategies to Employ in 2022
1. Create original content
The importance of having authentic content on your e-commerce site can never be emphasized enough. Original and high-quality content will make your customers want to engage with you and keep buying from you. So, make a compelling statement with creative and genuine content. Here’s help on what you should write-
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Keep the content on your primary site pages (about us, homepage, policies, shipping, warranties, etc.) informative and minimum.
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Write unique descriptions for your e-store’s product content.
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For describing the category pages, describe the type of products under that category (e.g., organic foods). This can help in SEO.
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Have an FAQ section on each category page.
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Incorporate rich content like explainer videos, product demos, and product images.
2. Optimize your site’s layout
Source: InviteReferrals
Your e-commerce site’s layout including the language on your landing and product pages; the placement of elements, CTAs, and icons; the simplicity of the checkout process; and more can affect your site’s conversions.
You should take care that your customers become naturally inclined to buy your products. One way to ensure this is by testing your website’s usability soon after launching or redesigning it. You can also keep optimizing your site’s layout by A/B testing it continuously.
3. Keep improving your site
E-commerce sites need to keep improving their site. It can be in terms of layout, navigation, CTAs, product descriptions, and more. You can use A/B testing software to find out the better-performing landing page. It can track how your visitors interact with your site’s elements like forms, CTAs, and more.
It visualizes where they click, hover their mouse, and more. You can also view each user’s session just like a movie clip. All these give you vital insights into how you can improve your site’s layout and language for better conversions.
4. Optimize your site for the search engines
The key to being seen by people looking for the products you are selling is to rank high on search engines. You need to get your site displayed by Google ahead of your competitor for any search query made in your niche. Here is what you need to do to optimize your e-commerce website’s SEO.
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Assess your current search engine ranking status using a tool like SEMRush or Moz Site Audit. An e-commerce SEO audit evaluates where your site stands in ranking for the most relevant keywords in your niche.
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Identify and fix technical SEO issues such as security issues, duplicate content, broken links, and slow load times.
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Research your market to find new keywords and search terms using AHREFs or SEMrush.
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Streamline your On-Page SEO by optimizing meta-descriptions, images, and page copy.
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Build your Off-Page SEO by getting other relevant sites to link back to you. This will add credibility and authoritativeness to your e-commerce site.
5. Employ smart email marketing
Source: InviteReferrals
Studies say that 99% of a site’s first-time visitors won’t make a purchase. Email marketing can nurture your leads and get them to buy from your e-store. Here’s an outline to successful e-commerce email marketing-
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Get people who visit your e-store to opt-in to receive promotional emails from you. You can try tactics like offering a discount or downloadable content on their first purchase in exchange for their email id.
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Automate sending email campaigns to your subscribers. Using a tool like NotifyVisitors, you can set campaigns to be triggered automatically in situations such as sign-ups, purchases of specific products, during sales and seasonal offers, cart abandonment, etc.
6. Employ shopping campaigns
One of the current digital marketing trends that e-commerce businesses can highly benefit from is shopping campaigns from search engines like Google and Bing. Availing this facility will display a more detailed product listing of yours when someone searches for it on these search engines.
It will present information such as pricing, images, delivery date, shipping info, etc. Besides, when a user clicks on a product, it will take him/her directly to the product page.
This business growth strategy works well in increasing e-commerce conversions and revenue as it appeals strongly to those with immediate purchase intent.
7. Re-target visitors
Source: InviteReferrals
As mentioned earlier, most of your visitors do not convert on their first visit to their site. Though email marketing is one great way to re-target visitors, it isn’t the only strategy. Here are a few more ways to get in front of them with your brand-
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Paid ads on social media networks and other websites to get them back to your site and start from just where they left.
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Exit-intent pop-ups with offers or discounts to motivate them to make an immediate purchase.
8. Optimize for mobile devices
People today prefer making product searches and purchases through their smartphones and other mobile devices. However, not all e-stores are optimized for such devices. This way, e-stores that aren’t mobile-friendly are losing a lot of potential business opportunities. If you don’t want to be one of them, optimize your e-commerce site for mobiles.
A vital part of making your site mobile-friendly is rendering it responsive for various devices. That is, the users needn’t have to zoom, resize, scroll, or pan their screen to view and interact with items on your site. Your site will automatically rearrange and adjust the elements on it to fit the device’s screen on which it is viewed. This way, your e-commerce site will deliver a good UX.
9. Encourage User-Generated Content (UGC)
Leads and customers believe more in the experiences of other people than advertisements from a brand. So, encourage your buyers to post UGC like testimonials, product reviews, product ratings, and product images and videos. You can have an automated system in place to collect customer feedback soon after an item they purchased has been delivered to them. This can aid in the viral marketing of your brand.
Apart from this, you should also invest in generating professional reviews and influencer endorsements. Though these aren’t as impactful as real customer testimonials, reviews, and ratings, these still can serve as social proof to some extent.
10. Have a customer loyalty program in place
A loyalty program is a setup where your loyal customers are incentivized to make repeat purchases. Your e-commerce business would greatly benefit from running a customer loyalty program. Choose a loyalty program that fits your e-commerce business type. There are a few options including point-based loyalty programs, tiered loyalty programs, perk-based loyalty programs, hybrid programs, and subscription-based loyalty programs.
Find ways to engage customers outside of the buying cycle else they’ll forget all about the credits they’ve earned till they log in to buy again. Some ideas include incentivizing daily logins, conducting a brand ambassador program, collecting feedback and reviews, requesting photo uploads, and requesting participation in competitions and surveys.
Wrapping up
E-commerce businesses today face heavy competition. In this blog, we’ve listed some proven and effective e-commerce marketing strategies to beat the competition, create brand awareness, generate repeat sales, and foster customer loyalty. Do try these out!
Author Bio:
Shivani Goyal
Thank you for sharing!!!