Ecommerce website marketing ideas.
Great e-commerce website marketing ideas drive sales. Whatever the nature of your business, you’ll need to
tell the world about it to attract customers, boost awareness and build your presence online.
Before you begin following our e-commerce website marketing ideas…
…build an audience profile. In order to market to the right people, you’ll need to spend some time researching and trying to understand your audience. Think about their age, their interests, and their motivations. What matters to them? What solutions can you offer to problems they may not know they have? How can you stand out from the competition?
There’s a lot to think about when it comes to generating effective e-commerce marketing ideas. We’ve put together our top six tips for planning an effective marketing strategy and making a success of your e-commerce business.
Alternatively, if your business is new to online selling, we can help you design an e-commerce website.
Great e-commerce marketing ideas drive sales. Whatever the nature of your business, you’ll need to tell the world about it to attract customers, boost awareness and build your presence online.
1. Make sure your website is search engine friendly
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the art of designing and creating a website which is search engine friendly. SEO optimised sites rank highly in search engine results. When creating a list of e-commerce marketing ideas, it’s essential to include SEO strategy.
SEO strategy is about making sure your website has the right structure and right words with lots of relevant content. You can also improve your site’s ranking (set by Google) by getting other websites to link to yours. The higher ranking/authority that Google deems your site to have, the higher up in the rankings you will appear.
Search engines are continually getting smarter about understanding the tactics some people use to try to manipulate them. The best way to perform well in search rankings is simply to write authentic, useful content.
To get the most out of your SEO efforts, be sure to track how your website is performing using a tool like Google Analytics. By doing this, you’ll be able to recognise what works well and what’s missing the mark.
2. Focus on building your mailing list
If customers visit your e-commerce website without buying, you’ll want to know why. For this reason, it makes sense to capture their email address so you can follow up. However, you can only do this in compliance with GDPR law.
One of the easiest ways to capture customer data legally is to add a newsletter sign-up box. This tends to work more effectively when you include an incentive, e.g., ‘Sign up today and get 15% off your next order.’
Why not offer your customers the chance to join your mailing list as part of the checkout process?
Start building this list, and use it to promote new products, offer discounts and alert people to your blog. Send regular e-snippets to current and prospective customers with some human interest – staff news, charity events you’ve supported, a new office pet… It’s not so much about selling as raising awareness, making some noise in the marketplace and building relationships.
3. Maximise social media
Online shops often make use of platforms like Instagram and Pinterest to showcase their products. However, Facebook and Twitter are just as relevant and effective as image-led social media sites.
We include social media in our e-commerce marketing ideas because it is so prevalent. People use social media during work and in their free time – pretty much constantly! So, when you’re promoting your business, social media offers a vast and captive audience.
Remember, social media platforms should be used to do more than simply pitch for sales. Your audience will enjoy being entertained and well-informed; so, create engaging content. Be funny or share your knowledge. Why not comment on relevant trends and developments in your industry? Show you know your stuff.
This builds brand awareness, which over time becomes brand loyalty. From here, you have a great platform to sell to people who already have an interest in your company.
4. Invest in Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising
Some people have an aversion to paid advertising (as opposed to organic). However, we’ve included Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising in our e-commerce marketing ideas list. This is because we genuinely believe PPC is an effective tool – when done right.
Pay per click (PPC) advertising is essentially a form of online advertising designed to drive traffic to your website through the use of keywords. Essentially, when people enter keywords you’ve bid for into Google or any other search engine, your advert will appear in the results.
With PPC advertising, you’re more likely to show up in search results when people are looking specifically for the product or service that you’re offering. What’s more, you only pay when someone clicks the link to your page. You can also set a budget giving you more control over costs. This means it’s easy to stop spending getting out of control.
In addition, when you properly track your results, you’ll be able to see the exact ROI – clicks, impressions, rate and cost per click, the average position of your ads. So, you can see your money at work.
5. Live chat
This is the era of instant gratification and personalised experiences. Live chat allows your customers to ask questions and check details before they buy. You’ll get an insight into the most frequent issues they’re experiencing on your site. You’ll also benefit from the opportunity to get to know your customers, build a relationship pre-purchase and promote loyalty.
A Live chat survey revealed 92% of customers feel satisfied when they use the live chat feature, compared to other communication options like voice (88%), email (85%), web form (85%), and social media (Facebook 84%, Twitter 77%). Ref: Zendesk Benchmark quarterly report.
6. Remarketing
Remarketing is the technique of advertising to people who’ve already had some kind of interaction with your website. For example, you may remarket to customers who’ve put something in their shopping cart online but didn’t proceed to purchase.
This is a good group of people to target as you know they’re in the market for your product or service, and they’ve already expressed an interest.
Have you ever searched for an item and then suddenly found all your Facebook ads are showing the site you’ve just visited? That’s remarketing in action. Perhaps the advert will show you a product you didn’t see before or let you know about a sale. It might be just enough to take you back to the site.
Many companies will use remarketing as a chance to offer an additional incentive such as a discount or exclusive offer. For example, you’ll often find if you cancel a paid subscription, companies will offer you several months at a lower rate to retain you as a customer. Remarketing!
Google Remarketing is a service you can use to easily target ads at previous site visitors.
Let's put your e-commerce website marketing ideas into action
All of these tools work, but they work best when managed by someone with experience. Luckily, our team here at Ketchup are experts in digital marketing, including all aspects of e-commerce. As well as those tips listed above, we can create email marketing campaigns, optimise your branding, or create a PR buzz. And that’s not all.
Visit our services page to see all the ways we can help grow your business. Alternatively, contact us today to speak to a member of the Ketchup Crew. We’re ready and waiting to help your business thrive!