Marketing your E-commerce store is now essential more than ever. Because if you don’t, your online shop won’t stand out from the millions of other websites. Together, these websites generate upwards of $3 trillion of sales in 2019 alone. To ensure your online store generates steady sales, you need an effective e-commerce marketing strategy. Here are the best tips for creating such a strategy:
Create an Extensive PPC Strategy
When you develop an e-commerce store, the goal is to sell through the internet. And the fastest way to sell is via PPC ads. PPC stands for Pay-per-click, and you pay for the clicks your ad receives. Almost all internet companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter are built on the PPC model. Therefore, to sell quickly and efficiently, you need a comprehensive PPC strategy in place.
PPC starts with keywords and demographics. You need to select the right keywords that accurately reflect what you sell. So if you sell computer hardware, then you can target keywords like “buy computer mouse”, “buy external keyboard”, “computer hardware store in Seattle”. The last keyword is for hardware stores located in Seattle. And that’s part of demographics targeting. A marketing agency spends most of its time gathering keywords and demographics data.
Use Google Ad Extensions
This tip is specifically for those running Google Ads. Google Ads offer the best marketing results because people are actively doing searches to solve their problems.
Ad Extensions in Google make your ads look more informative and appealing. With this feature turned on, Google will serve additional details and not just a plain “Buy here” advertisement. In other words, these maximize the performance of your ads.
And the best part is there is no additional cost for this. You can even bring down the cost because Google prefers relevancy over the highest bid, as evident by the Quality Score metric.
Always update Negative Keywords
You’ll be spending most of your time managing PPC ads. And this tip is regarding the same. When running ads for your e-commerce store, you need to work on negative keywords regularly. These are the list of keywords that do not drive results and burn a lot of money.
When you add those keywords to the negative keywords list, your ads won’t be delivered to those keywords. So, for example, if you’ve added “cheap” to your negative keyword list, then any searches for “cheap shoes”, “cheap computers” won’t trigger your ad. This will bring down the total cost of your e-commerce marketing.
Develop and Implement a Content Marketing Strategy
So far, the tips have been about PPC marketing. But the role and effectiveness of organic marketing cannot be overruled. And Content Marketing is the new form of organic marketing. You develop valuable and informative content that drives internet visitors to your e-commerce website. Not only does this give you a sales opportunity, but it also develops trust among the users.
Therefore, you need to have a content marketing strategy in place for your brand. And this should be the core of your e-commerce marketing campaign, not an isolated one. A strategy often starts with two things: what your business stands for and who you are serving. So if your business is about aromatic coffee and you’re targeting office goers, content marketing would revolve around them.
Email List is Your Biggest Asset
Many business owners think of email as an outdated marketing approach. After all, in this day and age of instant marketing and video promotions, who reads email? But as this stat suggests, email marketing has an ROI potential of 4400%. So for every dollar spent, you can expect $44 worth of revenue. Email subscribers are engaged and have willingly shown interest in whatever your e-commerce website is selling. So, they’re much more likely to buy from you again and again.
But that’s not all. Emails can help you expand your audience at little to no additional cost. Facebook allows you to upload the email list and explore a similar audience. So if you have an email list of 50 people, you can potentially find another 50 people on Facebook to sell your products.
Start building your email list as soon as possible and keep it integrated into your e-commerce marketing strategy.
Upsell and Cross-sell
Why sell a single product when you can sell multiple? Yes. When people buy from you, they’re more likely to purchase more products that can be used together. For example, if someone is buying a computer, they might be interested in a mouse pad or external keyboard too. Big e-commerce companies like Amazon always recommend you similar products at the bottom of the page. This is an excellent strategy to sell more products with the least effort.
As you start marketing your e-commerce site, always look for ways to improve. There’s still a possibility to optimize and either bring down cost or increase revenue. The right internet marketing agency can help you with both.