Before the world was introduced to the wonders of the internet, a business's success almost entirely depended on its location. If the company is not optimally located, transacting with potential customers would be next to impossible, and this was the reality of global markets before the internet revolution.
With the growth and development of the eCommerce industry, even the smallest retailer was suddenly given the power to market and sell its products globally. This threw open the gates to an eCommerce revolution of sorts.
Today, online shopping is so tremendously popular that it is an integral and ever-growing part of the global economy.
This rise in popularity is owed to the fact that online marketing and sales allow retailers to reach out to millions of potential customers over the internet and vastly reduce the retailer's costs who would otherwise have to set up physical stores and deal with several logistical challenges.
E-commerce thereby provides a cost-effective and flexible option for retailers worldwide, and eCommerce marketing tools become essential to help retailers achieve tremendous success.
What is e-commerce marketing?
eCommerce marketing refers to the efforts made by online retailers to draw potential customers to their websites, convert these visitors to customers who make purchases, and then try and retain such customers for the future.
Two classic examples of eCommerce marketing ideas are product promotions and pay-per-click advertisements. Promotions such as discounts, sales, and so on are an effort to achieve more significant sales and revenue, and pay-per-click advertisements seek to draw more customers to the online store.
Suppose an online retailer does not employ eCommerce marketing tools in order to further sales. In that case, it is doubtful that the business will achieve any measurable success.
eCommerce marketing ideas such as social media engagement and e-mail marketing help retailers reach out to their potential customers and encourage them to make purchases.
Customer retention is also made possible with the help of loyalty programs and other such offers that are usually given to returning customers. The benefits that eCommerce marketing brings to an online retailer are immense and varied. Cost-effectiveness, greater reach and visibility, and improved sales are just a few of these benefits.
Top 10 e-commerce marketing strategies to use in 2021
Pay-per-click or paid Ads
There are several advertising options available to online retailers in pay-per-click ad models and other paid advertising options.
Google Shopping Ads
You can make the most of Google's internet presence and clout by using its very own online marketing platform.
Google Shopping allows you to post detailed product listings with attractive pictures that appear when particular keywords are searched for in the Google Search Engine, Google services such as Home devices, and the Google Shopping mobile apps.
A pay-per-click model is offered to users where the retailer needs to pay for each customer who clicks on the advertisement, which leads to the retailer's website.
Display advertising
Display advertising methods involve using banners on social media websites, mobile applications, or other internet websites, usually along with graphical elements such as video, pictures, and audio, designed to advertise a specific product or service.
Retargeting ads
Some websites may allow redirecting ads where if the user performs a specific action such as clicking on a button, a new tab or page opens up, leading the user to the website or an online store that has paid for the advertisement. Although considered to be unnecessarily intrusive by many, it may help boost traffic and conversions.
Content marketing
An increasingly popular alternative to traditional digital marketing techniques, content marketing involves delivering consistently valuable and high-quality, user-oriented content to a well-defined user base that, in the long term, is likely to result in more significant sales and improved customer loyalty.
An excellent example of content marketing would be companies using social media to share humorous or relatable content that attracts individuals and, at the same time, promotes and grants more visibility to a product or service.
Delivery and unboxing experience
Shipping box design
While sending out your product in a plain cardboard box with an address sticker slapped on might marginally lower costs, investing money and effort into a thoughtful and creative box design might help you generate customer loyalty and improve the overall customer experience.
Reusable boxes or packaging can prove handy to customers while at the same time reminding them of your brand.
Coupon codes inside the box
A creative way of promoting your products is to throw in a coupon or discount code into the shipping box along with the product itself to ensure that your customers will be rewarded for their loyalty to your brand.
Unboxing videos
One way to encourage customers to purchase a product and learn more about the customer experience without actually making a purchase is through unboxing videos.
These clips will help customers understand what to expect and increase their trust in your brand and products.
E-mail marketing
Despite the rapid rise of social media communication, e-mail communications are still a prevalent form of networking, and e-mail marketing ideas will allow you to reach out to a large number of potential and existing customers without much effort.
With the help of e-mails, you will be able to keep in touch with customers, send out product information and promotions, keep them informed about offers and discounts, and advertise your products or services.
By choosing a reliable service provider and maintaining a frequently updated and relevant e-mail recipient list, you will be able to enjoy remarkable returns on your e-mail marketing efforts.
On-site marketing
Marketing your products and services online does not just mean advertisements on other websites and platforms but also includes practical strategies within your website.
Forms
There are several types of forms that you can add to your website that will help you gain valuable customer feedback and leads that, in turn, can be used to decide on further marketing strategies.
Contact forms can be put up to help customers get in touch with you, for example, or survey forms can be included to get feedback from visitors.
E-mail sign-ups
Building a good-quality e-mail database is essential for any business to attain success. This can be done through creative prompts and discounts on the online website that encourages visitors to share their e-mail addresses with you.
Products pages
Attractive and neat product pages with appropriate buttons, banners, and a well-designed user interface can go a long way in converting visits to sales on your online store. An unoptimized and unsmooth product page can potentially cost you in terms of loss of revenue and sales.
Selling through social media
Social media has quickly become an inseparable part of millions' lives worldwide. With this rise in usage also comes immense marketing potential.
Instagram is a viral image-sharing and social networking platform with millions of daily users worldwide.
You can set up a business account to showcase and promote your products to these users according to the filters you desire to draw more customers to your website.
Facebook has an eCommerce service called Marketplace where online retailers can list their products and services on the Marketplace platform and connect with potential customers interested in the listings.
YouTube
YouTube is the world's largest video-sharing platform with hundreds of millions of users. Online retailers can choose to either display ads on YouTube via Google Shopping ads or may strike promotion deals with popular YouTube channels or 'YouTubers' to get them to promote their products or services.
Market your business beyond geographical boundaries
One of the most outstanding qualities of the online e-commerce market is that it transcends traditional notions of physical stores and outlets.
To reap the benefits of the internet, online retailers should ideally market their products and services to a broader audience as long as these locations are logistically serviceable.
This applies especially to products with a broad scope of use and might interest many potential customers.
Highlight customer reviews
There is no better way to gain visitors' trust and encourage them to buy your products and services than showing them what other customers are saying about their experience on your website.
By highlighting customer reviews on your platform, you will convert more visitors into loyal customers and generate more revenue.
Optimize for voice search
Intelligent assistants are now finding their way into many homes and offices, and most of these devices can interact with the help of simple voice commands.
Of the many things that these devices can do, they can also help users easily add products to a cart and use their default payment methods to complete a purchase.
Therefore, you need to optimize your website to allow AI assistants to add your products to the cart and complete purchases, or you will lose out on valuable sales.
UGC and influencer marketing
A growingly popular marketing technique is user-generated content and influencer marketing. The company engages random users or fans of the product or service to create content that will help influence their peers or social groups to opt for the same product or service being offered.
Influencers may sometimes be hired full-time with the company to assist in marketing and promotion efforts and are often paid based on the number of sales and the resulting revenue they can rake in.
Top 10 eCommerce marketing tools for success
Tool #1 - Prisync
The Prisync app is a superb marketing tool for all businesses as it keeps track of competitors' prices continuously and also allows you to set up dynamic pricing rules for your products to ensure that you don't miss out on important business and revenue as the demand for your products or services fluctuates.
The app also tracks your stock availability before making or suggesting price changes.
Tool #2 - Keap
Keap is a convenient e-mail marketing and sales tool that helps businesses reach out to potential customers and at the same time handle and manage existing customer relationships to maximize sales, capture leads, and enhance customer experience through marketing automation.
Therefore, this tool makes customer management an easier and smoother process and minimizes the efforts that you need to put in to ensure happy and satisfied customers.
Tool #3 - Rejoiner
Yet another e-mail marketing suite with every tool you will ever need to reach your revenue and sales targets.
The Rejoiner tool will offer you a customized e-mail marketing strategy based on your requirements to help you reduce cart abandonments and communicate the latest pricing changes, offers, and discounts to your customers without any hassle.
Tool #4 -AdNabu for Google Shopping
An excellent e-marketing tool designed to optimize your Google Shopping Ad campaigns, AdNabu for google shopping helps you create high-quality, customized, keyword-rich Google Shopping product feeds to help you get the most out of your investment.
The tool will give you suggestions for optimization based on the product you are selling on your online store.
Tool #5 - TaggShop
A picture paints a thousand words, and to make the most of visual marketing on social media or otherwise, you can use the TaggShop marketing tool that helps you curate and create customized photos and videos featuring your brand or product to help you establish a better social media presence and gain more sales.
Be it Instagram or Twitter, or any other social media platform, TaggShop will help you create unique, eye-catching, and attractive product images to increase your reach.
Tool #6 - YoGrow
Looking to accelerate your online eCommerce business? Look no further than YoGrow, which helps companies set targets, analyze performance in the market, and find eCommerce market experts who can help them achieve their goals and max out their revenue.
If you are looking for expert guidance on how to reach greater heights with your online store, YoGrow might be your best bet.
Tool #7 - DotDigital
An all-in-one marketing automation suite, DotDigital provides you with all the tools necessary to be a successful eCommerce retailer.
From e-mail marketing and SMS follow-ups to on-site forms and campaign customization, the platform offers several unique features to help you keep track of your conversions and sales data and optimize your online marketing efforts.
Tool #8 - Promo
Making a stellar product video can help you reach customers much more effectively than simple text or picture advertisements.
With Promo, you can choose from hundreds of unique and beautiful templates to customize videos for your online marketing efforts and reach out to millions on social media or other internet platforms.
If you are looking at making the most video advertisements for your brand, this award-winning tool is a must-have.
Tool #9 - Reactful
Different visitors to your online store behave differently and leave a digital behavioral trace. This unique artificial intelligence-powered tool reads visitor behavior and customizes the entire shopping experience for individual visitors.
This way, your website will respond to a visitor's interests better and send the right message and content across at the right time, always.
The tool also understands visitor behavior over a more extended period and offers unique recommendations to optimize further and enhance your website.
Tool #10 -Triberr
Triberr is a content marketing suite specially designed for small businesses and bloggers that helps you reach a much larger number of people. At the same time, you can give more attention to content quality.
With Triberr, you can get in-depth analytics of your content's performance on the internet and connect with like-minded individuals and influencers who will catapult your business to greater heights further.
If you are looking for a useful content marketing tool that works its magic with minimal effort from your end, look no further than this handy tool.
Conclusion
There is no straightjacket eCommerce marketing tool or idea that works wonders for all businesses. The success or failure of a marketing strategy depends on several factors such as the type of product, brand, or service being marketed, the size and popularity of the brand, the price of the product, the duration and the period wherein such marketing strategies are executed, and so on.
To find the perfect marketing strategy, idea, and corresponding tools for your business, the best thing you can do is implement each of these ideas mentioned above and plan for limited periods and gauge the results.
Almost all eCommerce marketing suites offer conversion tracking. This would be an excellent way to determine which marketing strategy suits your business the best and brings you the most revenue.
Guest Post Contribution from AdNabu
AdNabu helps improve sales in Google Ads for Shopify stores. If you are running Google search, google shopping, or display campaigns in Google Ads, Their apps help to increase your sales.
