A GUIDE TO MARKETING YOUR ONLINE STORE, SUCCESSFULLY.

Marketing is an absolutely crucial component of making any business a success – especially if you own an eCommerce store. On this note, you’re probably ready for us to answer this million-Rand question: What’s the best eCommerce marketing plan out there?

The subject of marketing is enormous and while it might seem overwhelming at first, creating a comprehensive marketing plan for your eCommerce business is an essential step toward reaching your goals and running a successful online shop.

As we lay out the ground rules you need to know on how to write your own marketing plan; we’ll wrap it up with a few eCommerce marketing strategies your business can apply to land and retain as many customers as possible and to help your online store stay on track.

Let us jump straight into the practical side of eCommerce marketing planning: channels that can drive relevant traffic to your store. There is a misunderstanding around different media platforms or channels & what each of these can and can’t do; the secret lies in understanding the importance of each channel.

Before we start discussing the channels, we would like to point out the importance of a Product Page. As obvious as this might sound, there are surprisingly few who have product pages ready for their marketing strategies that will drive the digital feet to the store.

Product Page Tips:

• Pages should be content rich and cover primary keywords relating to that product.
• All the product attributes: Colour, size, brand name, manufacturer details, product variants, features, specifications, dimensions etc.
• Correct indexing for all the pages on the site (so that search engines can crawl them and give rankings accordingly).
• Quality images and videos to give out more details about products.
• Ensuring a smooth purchase process to make sure customers don’t face any hiccups in the user experience.

The secret to growing your brand is to communicate one message or proposition across all or multiple channels at the same time for a sustained period of time. Now, there are endless channels for marketing, but we’ll focus on the three most used and extremely useful channels of eCommerce Marketing.

 1. Search Engines

Google rules the search engine market with 92.85% market orientation focused there. Search engines are one of the most significant sources of getting relevant traffic to your online store. There are two main ways to get traffic from search engines:

• Organically
• Paid visits.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the way to get relevant traffic from search engines organically. It is the process of activities that enable search engines to rank your product page as more suitable for the audience than competitors. If we see SEO as a separate industry, it has a bright future because of its enormous importance. SEO is the process every eCommerce store needs to build a brand. As a growing eCommerce store, SEO should be a priority, and you must include it in your marketing budget.

Every major search engine is offering paid services to get higher ranks where you literally pay per click. Pay Per Click (PPC) is an easy way to gain relevant traffic very quickly as your result will be displayed on top of other organic results, depending on the bid amount.

 2. Social Media

Social media can be a great instigator of relevant traffic for your online store if marketed right. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter can be beneficial to extend your reach and therefore sales. With high-quality pictures and the right use of hashtags, you can reach, engage, inspire and entice your audience.

Through creating engaging content and building brand value, you gather more followers, eventually generating leads natively.

 3. Content Planning & Creation

Content is one of the oldest ways to promote your store. Producing content in today’s day and age that stands out and resonates with someone; leading them to go online and spend their hard-earned money on your products is increasingly difficult to do. Highly intellectual & creative people have dedicated their lives to trying to perfect this art of producing fantastic content. Save yourself time, save yourself money & hire an expert to produce and educate you on the exact content suited for your business. 

Compared to other channels, content can be proven as a slow channel to generate leads; however, extremely important for brand building & brand health.

Writing content can also bring potential customers. You can also contribute your content to other platforms and promote your products. This content marketing activity will eventually increase your rank on search engines as well.

An eCommerce Marketing Plan is the sum of the eCommerce Strategies and tactics you choose to implement. The most effective plans aren't randomly thrown together – they are designed with intention, using a number of different strategies worth considering for the construction of your plan. Here is some worth exploring:

 1. Blog

Maintaining a blog is one of the better ways to attract potential customers to your site organically. By creating quality content relevant to your industry, you can project a sense of legitimacy and trustworthiness to prospects. Regardless of what you are selling, maintaining a blog for your site is a cost-effective way to prove that your business is a leader and influencer in its space.

 2. Contributing Guest Posts to Other Websites

Guest posts have the potential to expand your online visibility. Not only can it better establish you as an authority within your industry, contributing guest posts affords you more domain authority for your eCommerce site – leading search engines to believe your site is more reliable and worth ranking higher.

You can accomplish this by identifying sites with keywords relevant to your products and reaching out to the people behind them.

 3. Usage of Referral Marketing

Referral marketing combines two of the most powerful underlying assets to any eCommerce marketing strategy: word-of-mouth & incentives. A solid eCommerce referral program allows customers to relay your messaging to prospects who trust their judgement.

By offering some sort of incentive (like a discount or small gift) to your customers in exchange for their referral of new prospects, you are putting yourself in a position to retain current customers while expanding your base.

 4. Leveraging Social Media

A well-maintained social media presence is an invaluable component to a successful eCommerce marketing strategy. That being said, not all social media platforms are optimal for eCommerce.

eCommerce is an inherently visual medium and very few consumers are willing to buy a product based solely on text-based information. The success of your social media efforts often hinges your use of imagery to capture attention and generate traffic to your Product Pages.

 5. Driving User-Generated Content

Driving user-generated content is the practice & art of fostering ways for your customers to promote your business; facilitating word-of-mouth for your company and driving traffic to your eCommerce site while building an authentic following of interested customers.

User-generated content can come in many forms. One of the most effective ways to encourage it is through competitions – offering prizes to customers that promote your product in some form. You could also maintain review platforms where customers can share feedback about your product.

If your business has any sort of eCommerce presence, you stand to gain a lot by exploring and applying different eCommerce marketing strategies. Many of the available options can be as cost-effective as they are valuable.

No matter how you choose to structure your eCommerce marketing plan, make sure it is dynamic, focused, and well-maintained. Putting one of these plans in motion will take some effort, but if done correctly, the effort will pay off in spades.