eCommerce Marketing Strategies You Need to Know
Almost any small business owner will tell you that, these days, to survive and thrive, you have to bring your business online. An online presence is essentially the new storefront for small and large companies alike.
You love your craft, but you’re not a digital marketer. So, what do you do? Where do you start?
It’s a question every new (to the web) small business owner has. We’ve created this list of eCommerce marketing strategies to implement into your business to get your foundation set up. Here’s a look at the first few steps to digital marketing.
Demographic Research & Situational Analysis
Do you know exactly who you’re selling to? Can you anticipate where someone will be when they run into your product or service? Creating a target market profile for your potential buyers is how you can begin to acquire this type of “data.”
You can probably imagine that a tech store will be targeting a different audience than a handbag boutique. Even though the tech store’s customer might end up in the handbag boutique, the environments are so different that they’ll need to be targeted differently.
Of a potential customer, ask yourself:
While it may seem silly, creating an entirely fake persona for your potential customers is a powerful way to learn precisely how to talk to them through all marketing channels.
Related: A List of the Best Online Payment Methods for Your eCommerce Store
Engage in Content Marketing
Content marketing is a broad term used to describe the process of creating and promoting content for the sole purpose of selling your products or services. Well, what qualifies as content?
Content is considered any social media post, social media ad, product/service-oriented blog articles, YouTube video scripts, etc. It’s all over every social media platform. This type of marketing falls under the scope of digital marketing.
Content marketing is a powerfully potent marketing tool. Researching the best content and mediums to produce it is a very multi-faceted process. Many choose to hire a freelance content marketer to get the most out of the content you post. After all, you’ll probably be paying for ads, so you don’t want to waste the opportunity to sell, sell, sell as best as you can!
Implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Keywords are what Google and other search engines use to find the best content for whatever a user is searching for. You can use keywords to your advantage to rank higher on Google or social media searches.
The free plan offered by Google Analytics will help you determine which keywords are hot for your specific business type. A great way to implement them is to scatter keywords throughout your website, any seller profiles you have, product descriptions, blogs, and any other content you generate.
It isn’t one or two keywords that hold the key to your success. The trick is to scatter them around in as many places as possible while providing genuinely valuable content. The results will come!
Are you ready to turn your designs into reality? Contact POND Threads today to start planning.
Increase Website Traffic Through Blogs & Newsletters
Blog posts are a stellar way to implement SEO techniques! As mentioned above, blogs can promote a product or service, but they’re also used to provide general information. A blog will attract new visitors and engage current customers. Despite popular opinion, blogs take a whole lot of work to create and keep up with. Having a regularly updated blog shows your audience that you’re engaged and serious about your craft.
Take a look at the POND Threads blog to get an idea of what you’ll be creating.
Newsletters are great tools for fostering long-term relationships. They’re vital for staying relevant. Caution, though! The right amount of communication creates sales magic, but contacting customers too often (like every day by email) has been reported to run them off.
Engage in Email Marketing
Email marketing is different from newsletters in the sense that its only goal is to sell, whereas newsletters set out to communicate, inform, and sometimes sell. Email marketing can include many things like a welcome email, abandoned cart emails, and email funnels.
Do you know how, after you sign up for something, you get several emails regarding that product or company over the next few days to weeks? That’s an email funnel. They’re strategically crafted and times, though not always well.
Try noticing which businesses you enjoy getting email sequences from and which get on your nerves. Notice their techniques. What’s their tone? What’s their timing? Once you perform these observations for a while, you’ll start to notice what works and doesn’t work. Use that information for your business!
Related: How to Start a T-Shirt Business: A Complete Guide
Utilize Social Media Influencers
It might be one of the scarier business moves to make, but having the good graces of prominent social media influencers can sometimes be better than paying for ads. Social media influencers develop their following by creating trust and confidence within their audience. Usually, whatever these people say, their followers will do.
Network with prominent social media influencers that you feel could help promote your brand. Hopefully, you choose a reputable influencer, but if this is all new to you, watch out for rude or negative influencers regardless of how helpful they may be to your sales.
Run Ads/Videos on Social Media Sites
In addition to utilizing posts on social media, it’s wise to take advantage of the ads on those platforms. Quite frankly, social media ads have some of the best targeting algorithms out there, meaning that they’ll put your ad in front of people who are most likely to have an interest in your store.
Prioritize Customer Personalization & Transparency
We all love those crazy quizzes that tell us which Spice Girl we would be, right? The same goes for the examinations posed by companies to help you “find the right product.” Personalization doesn’t always have to come in the form of a quiz, but it’s a great concept to understand to create personalization in your business operations.
Feeling like a transaction is personalized just for them makes customers feel taken care of. Find creative ways to do this throughout the whole user experience.
Related: Print On Demand: Everything You Need To Know
Closing Remarks:
eCommerce can seem like a world away from where you imagined yourself when starting a small business. The truth is that a company can’t make it today without a little digital marketing finesse, and these strategies are the way to get your shop set up and thriving online.
Don’t forget to start with the basics. Get your apparel manufactured. POND Threads will take your designs and turn them into real-life dreams. Your designs are excellent, so make sure you hire a company that excels in quality to execute your creations. Without that, all of the digital marketing magic in the world can’t save you!
Are you ready to turn your designs into reality? Contact POND Threads today to start planning.