Revenue generation is the lifeblood of any eCommerce business.
This makes marketing indispensable for the success of the eCommerce industry.
But keeping up with the ever-changing marketing landscape can be daunting.
In the modern consumer world, conventional marketing methods can only do so much for your business.
You need to think out of the box.
If you have to keep your customers coming again and again and again, you do not just need marketing strategies. You need to growth hack your sales pipeline.
But how do you do so?
In this post, we reveal the top-performing marketing secrets that marketing gurus have been using for years now.
The best part?
Each one of them is applicable in the year 2021.
Top eCommerce Marketing Strategies That Are Going to Crush It In 2021
eCommerce consumers are different from B2B consumers. This means what ticks your audience will be completely different from a business selling software.
Start with analyzing your consumer behavior here. You can opt for online surveys.
Search Engine Marketing
No matter what is your current stage in the business cycle, a startup or an established business, having newer traffic is always one of your marketing goals.
SEM is the life-pumping system of traffic.
The online ad revenue market was worth almost $125 billion in the year 2019. And the reasons aren’t far to seek. Your prospects are actively looking to make purchases. This means losing visibility on the search engine equals losing money on the table. Moreover, SEM gives you an opportunity for a strong user experience. It gives your brand access to have frequent interactions with your target audience, ultimately driving more quality traffic.
SEO: You might be surprised that 62% of eCommerce consumers turn to search online before schooling down to any transactions.
If you have to crack deals, you cannot afford to skip organic search engine optimization. But a word of caution here. SEO is a long-term process. To yield benefits from SEO, you have to have patience. This doesn’t mean you cannot get a few sales from it. Try to rank for low competition, high volume keywords first. This will give you an edge in the long run.
Bonus tip: Search engines always look for fresh content. You can achieve that by repurposing content and creating more web pages.
Social Media Marketing
From your neighbor to your goldfish, everyone is on social media. If you are still losing such a big opportunity to interact with your audience, now is the time to rethink. But that doesn’t mean every social media channel works for you. Start with figuring out your ideal customer’s online activity. Where do they visit the most?
Once you have decided on which platforms you want to be present on, it’s time to show some madness. Simply posting content will not get you results.
You need a well thought strategic social media plan and the right kind of buyer persona.
Creating a buyer persona is easier with demographics (Instagram shows demographics free on business accounts). Also, you can check them on tools like Sprout Social. Audience profiles are fundamental to create user-generated content. Another way, a content calendar is best for posting content on time, which increases the rate of engagement.
SMO: As with SEO, social media optimization (SMO) is also responsible for driving traffic to websites, though it vastly depends on the virality of the content. SMO doesn’t require technicalities like SEO and equally easier to practice as long as you build a strong presence on social media handles. SMO is effective— only when you can convert your followers into loyal prospects.
PPC: PPC results in huge traffics. Pay-per-click advertising is helpful while you are preparing to rank your keywords organically. At the struggling stage, PPC ads are encouraged for niche-oriented industry unless it has a high amount of traffic and low competition. Unquestionably, Google Ads might be a good fit for PPC campaigns.
Giveaways: Running giveaways boost higher returns for your brand, though it should not be your daily activity. Actually, the main agenda of running giveaways is to establish a powerful brand presence. Talking about the winners, they will be happy with the gifts and can be converted into loyal customers. Of course, running giveaways on Instagram or other social media platforms at an early stage can contribute to your brand with more likes or followers.
Bonus tip: Pinterest adds a new feature called product pin (you can add multiple items in a single post), which surprisingly boosts the click-through rate by 40%.
A word of caution here, when you’re building an online presence, you need to be careful about the personal data that is traded on these platforms. According to a privacy attorney at Covington & Burling, Gabe Madoff, “determining what is and is not personal data is different for every organization.” You might want to check out Osano’s personal data guide to know more.
Content Marketing
Content is king and always will be. But to manifest the power of your content, you need a robust content marketing plan.
Like SEO, content marketing is a long-term game, and it is worth playing. Content marketing applies to various kinds of content (e.g., blog post, image, podcast, poll, etc.) Typically, content marketing helps to build trust and authority among customers, which traditional commercial advertising agencies fail to do so. To be honest, content marketing includes a keen examination of customers and figures out their problems.
Lead magnet: The lead magnet is another substantial device of content marketing. While the competition is heavy and hard to grab customers’ attention, lead magnet got work. The process becomes easier while content marketing strategies tend to offer unique value — which solves specific problems of customers.
Blogging: Blogging is such an indispensable part of content marketing that many think it to be synonymous. Powerful blogging can connect your brand with potential customers. In fact, user-generated content can increase click-through rates and rank higher on search engines. Besides, content marketing helps to create personalized, strategically created content that drives consistent sales and builds authority and trust among your customers.
Video: All viral content has one thing in common. They are all engaging and entertaining. Video is certainly one the most effective forms of content to be seen in 2021.
60% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. YouTube is encouraged to create brand awareness and connect with targeted customers. Likewise, videos are great for social media feeds— to build a strong brand presence. For Instagram, short videos have a higher engagement rate where you can instantly link your product or services.
You can further extend its power by optimizing your most successful videos for different formats. Transforming your videos to blogs is yet another successful way. There is more than one video-to-text converter available in the market.
Bonus tip: Buzzsumo is a great platform to analyze different kinds of content as per your brand needs.
Influencer Marketing
If your brand earns a place on Instagram, you are leading the right direction as it is the marketplace of mass influencers. Influencer marketing is best for creating brand awareness and also good to attract a huge number of followers.
It’s even better if you collaborate with similar niche competitors. Such collaborations are amazing as they help both parties at the same rate. At the early stage, it’ll be hard to identify the right kind of influencer, but in the end, you will get used to it.
Bonus tip: Intellifluence is a great influencing platform to cater to influencers that your brand wants!
Email Marketing
Email marketing is your best chance to develop a close relationship with your audience. But keep in mind, prompting to subscribe to your newsletter won’t help you create a list of loyal fanbases. You have to offer value in return.
Email marketing seems to be effective for your complete sales funnel. Keep your customers updated with the latest arrivals, best offers, discounts, current giveaways, and so on.
More often, the email funnel helps abandoned carts to complete the purchase. It is good for running surveys and asking for feedback, which is helpful to build a strong buyer persona for your product.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is as lucrative as influencer marketing. It contributes towards sales of your product or services. But to get this right, you need to choose which products you want to put in your affiliate program.
You would experience numerous affiliate marketers approaching to promote your products on diverse digital platforms (with the unique promo code) for the sake of commission. However, you need to settle for the ones who align with your brand.
Public Relations (PR)
PR is responsible for building a neat-and-clean image of your brand and thus also imposed to maintain a positive public image every time. It can be gained through excess media coverage. Media coverages run the company motto and allow customers to share their reviews — what they feel for your product, what if there is any lack in your product etc. For tremendous publicity, PR departments are quite praiseworthy.
Conclusion
The marketing industry is very dynamic. A lot changes over a short period of time. But the core principles remain unchanged.
If you can keep up with the fundamentals of marketing, no matter which methodology you adapt to, your campaigns will always shine through.
Remember, ‘how’ you do it can go through alterations but the ‘what’ remains the same.
Thus, always keep on reiterating your campaigns. Till the time you don’t test your strategy, you wouldn’t know what works best for your business.
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