Technology is always evolving, and that has enabled businesses to take full advantage over the last few decades.
By moving online, companies have opened up their services and products to the entire world. And so, E-commerce has now almost become the standard way of doing business. However, to enjoy the benefits of E-commerce, you need to have a great marketing strategy that is compatible with selling your goods or offering your services online.
To gain new clients and expand to increase your revenue, there is a need to have a robust e-commerce marketing plan. Your plan needs to have a marketing strategy that targets specific clients. The purpose of such an approach is to gain the right form of customers.
How to create an e-commerce marketing plan
Often, people want to learn about individual marketing plans but can’t form an overall scheme. Hence, it is a massive mistake because a comprehensive plan will permit your strategy to come together to give you results in the long term. Next, we provided you with steps to follow when developing an e-commerce marketing plan.
Write down your business goals
Before developing a marketing plan, you should write down your goals for the entire year. What do you want to achieve? Common examples of marketing goals include:
- Boost the number of regular customers
- Broaden your product chains
- Boost total revenue
- Increase the number of new clients on a monthly basis
Try to be specific with each goal – for example, have a particular number of clients in mind if getting new customers is what you want.
Know your competitors
You need to know your competitors before you can grow in any sector you find yourself in. Knowing your competition will help you understand what makes them successful. You can also exploit their weaknesses and give yourself an advantage over them.
Find out some vital aspects of their business operations. Analyse their traffic and see where most of the traffic originates. Remember that searching for your completion is a continuous one, which means you always watch what they do.
Specify price and position
Most times, consumers compare the prices of products before they decide to purchase them. Therefore, it is crucial to do some work on price determination. It would be best if you carried out some investigation about what your clients are comfortable spending on your products. Ensure that your products don’t appear overpriced to your consumers, because it will reduce your profit in the long term.
Know your target market
As soon as you know what you want to achieve with your e-commerce business, you should distinguish your target market. Recognize who your intended client or customer is – which is crucial to where and how you position your e-commerce marketing strategy.
This step will help you have essential information about your target clients and common issues they may have. For those with clients already, send a survey to know what they think about your business. A survey should include age, gender, location, marital status, job, and buying pattern.
Simple E-Commerce Marketing ideas
Since we know basic steps to follow when developing an e-commerce marketing plan, we want to provide simple marketing plan ideas that will benefit you. These ideas should be the components of your plan. Below are five ideas to help you start.
SEO
Search engine optimisation is an essential e-commerce marketing strategy component. SEO pertains to optimising websites so they can talk high in search engines. The basic thing SEO does is to ensure that your website comes first or second whenever certain information is typed on a Google search engine.
There are many elements to a sound SEO strategy. However, one essential thing about SEO requires allotting attention to the content on your website, and the inclusion of specific words or phrases that people would search for to find your site. These keywords will facilitate your website ranking high in any search engine. The use of SEO is a smart way to boost traffic to your e-commerce website.
Engage in content marketing
In the modern era, information has become indispensable. For your e-commerce business to succeed, you need to spread the word as much as possible. Content marketing entails the creation of several forms of content and sharing it on various channels.
Utilising content marketing as part of your e-commerce marketing strategy is smart to connect with clients and potential customers. It will help you broaden your customers, and also ensure old customers remain loyal to you. There are various examples of content marketing to choose from, for example blogging, product guides, and videos.
Use of social media marketing
The 21st century came with a new way of doing things, and one of those is social media. The creation of these new platforms has made it much easier to share information with a large userbase.
Statistically, over 25% of young consumers buy their products through social media. Hence, social media has become a channel to share content and turn followers into clients. Common examples of social media platforms include Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Use of influencers
Recently consumers have become bored with paid adverts. Hence, the emergence of a new trend – influencer marketing. This new method requires a partnership between you and an influencer with millions of followers on social media. Often influencers are famous musicians, top models, and celebrities in various areas of life.
Since these influencers have lots of followers, lots of people will know about your products when they say good things about your products. This will give you a larger audience.
Use of paid adverts
Although many people felt that paid advertising had lost popularity, it remains one of the most productive marketing theories. Currently, the best two methods for e-commerce business are Google Ads and Facebook ad campaigns.
Conclusion
You will need time to develop the perfect strategy for your e-commerce business, and have it in mind you may not do a good job the first few times you attempt to it. Therefore, start by testing various plans – and see what works for your business and industry. Go with the one that works best.