Internet marketing is an important element of any business and can be defined as the execution of various methods for marketing your business or website online. Internet marketing involves very techniques like search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), online promotions, blogs, search engine marketing (SEM) and content marketing to acquire traffic, convert into customers and finally engage them. It is important for ecommerce companies to focus on internet marketing because more and more people are using the internet now- a- days and in order to draw these people to your ecommerce website, you must focus on online marketing. Furthermore, among the various means of communication, the internet is the widest channel and it is available for all kind of businesses, hence internet marketing attracts a large number of customers rapidly.
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Internet marketing for ecommerce websites can be classified into two broad categories, i.e. obtaining website traffic and optimizing the user experience (UX) for conversion. The reason why these two categories are the essential factors involved in the development of an ecommerce business is because if you fail in one of the aspects, then it will undo all the efforts that you put in for your success.
In order to ensure the success of any business be it online or offline, it is essential to have a proper inflow of customers and buyers. As far as offline business is concerned, this is achieved by bringing customers into the store. However, in case of an ecommerce store, you need to get potential customers to your ecommerce website. That is why an approach must be designed by you to attract as many customers as you can after developing your ecommerce website.
Interestingly, the methods required for marketing in the offline store are same as the ones used for an ecommerce website. Internet marketing has become the necessity of today’s businesses as an increasing number of people are coming on the internet from all over the world. This is also because the internet provides great benefits for businesses and marketers who utilize it properly. Thus internet marketing ought to be a big component in your business strategy if you want your business to prosper.
Here is our step by step guide for ecommerce internet marketing:
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It Starts With Your Customers:
A huge amount of time and money is wasted when a person attempts to market a particular product to everyone online. That is why it is important for every ecommerce website to have an internet marketing strategy that should begin with the customer base. In order to know how you can select the market, there are four main factors to consider: Market Size, Market Wealth, Market Competition and Value Proposition.
Know About Your Marketing Plan: Internet marketing is profit-driven. The moment it is rightly done, it works. But how does one prove the value of internet marketing? It is done through the help of right tools and a pinch of creativity.
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Understanding the Time Value:
Basically internet marketing is successful only when it is found by the right customers at the right time during their decision-making process. If you are working with a big ecommerce brand or running a small ecommerce business, you must keep one thing in mind, i.e. timing is everything. When advertisements are shown on the banner to audiences who’ve demonstrated curiosity in buying a product, they work well. Customers who want to shop with a brand but due to any reason are resistant to the purchase, coupon codes are most pertinent for them. Whereas marketing through email is alluring for people who’ve subscribed to the product or brand.
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Establishment of the Core Ecommerce Internet Marketing Goals:
Every internet ecommerce marketing campaign should be part of a goals-driven framework. You should be aware of the things a company requires to accomplish before jumping straight in with a test or marketing spend. It is advised to be as educated and strategic in your decisions as possible even if your plan is to only attempt something new or learn. Keep in mind that your marketing initiatives will be classified into the following core areas: awareness, engagement, decision, and retention. Understand which of these four functional areas are most important to your business and why. Make sure that your marketing campaigns align with the goals that are most important for your business to achieve right now, in the medium term, and down the road.
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Narrate the Brand Story:
The heart of marketing is the connections of human-to-human and brand storytelling is a technique that can reinforce these bonds. It can be possible by blog posts, customer help centers, about pages, videos, etc. It’s how you communicate your message and how you connect with your target audiences. Your customers are the one who define your brand that is why it is important that you study and truly understand what they’re saying about you. Identify patterns, and hold these concepts as close to your heart as possible.
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Find The Customers Not Web Traffic:
It’s evident that ecommerce internet marketing adds visibility to a website. But web traffic takes place only when a lot of time and energy are invested in connecting with the right audiences and taking them back to the website. Focus on developing a high-quality product and robust marketing materials. When your stuff is awesome, there will be an echo effect in the form of free marketing through social media and return visits over the long-term.
6. Channels for Ecommerce Marketing
I. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): It is the process of affecting the visibility in a search engine’s unpaid results of a website or a web page – also termed as natural, organic, or earned results. The earlier and more recurrent a site appears in the list of search results, the more visitors it will get from the users of the search engine. SEO targets various kinds of search that includes image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search. As an ecommerce internet marketing strategy, SEO takes into consideration how search engines perform, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of back links, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.
Things to keep in mind:
- SEO and user experience should be parallel always.
- Prioritizing Bing along with Google. Even though the SEO community mentions a lot about Google, but still Bing holds noteworthy to share in the market.
- Aim on the technical elements of SEO along with the tactical elements. Think of SEO as a stratagem for the conveyance of information to search engines.
- Content marketing works really good for your company’s SEO. To enchant your customers make infographics, blog posts, and guides.
II. Pay-per-click Advertising (PPC): Effective PPC campaigns drive users with intent to purchase, making it more efficient than many traditional advertising platforms. Businesses bid on impressions for paid listings at the top of search engine results, paying on a per-click basis. Impressions are determined by user search query, with strategy revolving around which keyword bids yield the highest ROI.
III. Search Engine Marketing (SEM): SEM is often used to describe efforts on Google’s AdWords platform and paid platforms on other search engines, such as Bing. This multifaceted term is also used by many marketers to describe all paid and organic efforts.
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Content Marketing and Building Audience Relations:
Content marketing is more than just blogging. Get creative about the types of content you’re producing. Hold your content marketing program accountable by monitoring success through metrics that translate into revenue for your company. Focus on engagement, not self-promotion. Integrate your content marketing with a bigger-picture marketing strategy.
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Creating a Topic List:
Before starting the writing process first create the list of topics and put all of these ideas into a calendar. Decide what you are going to publish on which day. A blog calendar helps you track your topics from conception to completion. Once there are plenty of topics, you can begin the writing.
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Know The Type of Content to Publish
- Webinar: To give the customers and potential customers a sense of ease, make them hear your voice and engaging with you live. In the webinar’s end post your contact information after giving real value to the reader.
- Newsletter: Make the subscribing to the newsletter swift and easy but don’t exaggerate the sending of these emails because if you do so, you’ll end up losing the customers. For the same reason, you’ll want to make sure every newsletter offers actual worth and not just for the sake of pushing a new product. Offer a discount, a promotion, or a contest.
- Video/Images/Infographics: A picture is worth a thousand words. When a photograph can be worth a thousand words, just think how much a video would be. Video Marketing is now a popular option. Create a simple yet attractive video and upload it on YouTube which is regarded as one of the largest search engines after Google itself. By harnessing the power of visuals and videos, reach out to the customers, prospective. There are many companies online that provide a broad selection of video in order to provide your business a dynamic presence on the web.
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Getting Customers by Paid Channel Advertising:
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to ecommerce internet marketing. Learn the basics, and choose the right marketing channels for you. Pursue conversion opportunities, not traffic for the sake of traffic. Less traffic is better if you can earn viable business. Use budgets to regulate your spend. Don’t use budgets as a measurement of efficiency. If your paid channel advertising efforts are truly efficient, you won’t need a budget.
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Email Marketing:
A great way to convince the users to come back is by sending them an e-mail with right offers that are timely sent. However, it is not easy to get the email address of the customers. But you can obtain it with the help of offering information that is of real value. Having a sign-up option on every page is one of the best ways to get the email address of the customers. The bottom line of an email marketing strategy is personalization. The complete experience of the user should be prioritized and email subscribers towards should be ushered to conversion-focused goals.
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Mobile Marketing Strategy:
What holds as importance as the ecommerce internet marketing is a mobile strategy because you’ll end up losing customers if your website is compatible for desktop-only. While establishing an ecommerce internet marketing strategy, your approach to mobile should be prioritized. Apart from keeping track of the wants of your customers, also aim at where they are and what they might be doing while engaging with your brand. Instead of showing texts in bold fonts, use catchy pictures and visuals with users on mobile screens. Apps and mobile websites are two different things.
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Embrace Different Perspectives:
Ecommerce Internet marketing is multi-dimensional. For instance, if three marketers are asked the same question, it is likely that they’ll come up with their own different answers. One must learn to accept the differing perspectives and let strengths of others add value to your weaknesses.
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Getting the Word out with PR:
Public relations are the practice of managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization and the public. PR should be treated like business development and emphasis should be given on building key relationships with journalists. Make and personalize the pitches in such a way that they are captivating and meaningful and according to the requirements of the journalist.
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Choosing the Right Social Media Networks:
People who are new in the field of online marketing select without much planning the social media networks they work on. The two often errors they commit are the attempt to become a maestro of all the networks and trying to master specific networks just because the competition is doing it. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Reddit, Pinterest and the recent Instagram, are some of the most favored social networks these days. They can do wonders as tools of community building and in content promotion as they all possess their own unique characteristics. Each of the social network works differently, as in, how the community takes, interprets and digests your sharing and content varies.
When you talk about marketing a business or building an online community it can be a bit tricky to know where to start as there are hundreds of active social networks. To attain the best out of your business, you ought to be well planned about which sites to use, and where to spend the most time and resources.
Facebook: It is extremely vibrant, consumer-focused social media networking platform. People use it heavily to stay in touch with friends and family.
-App integrations with games
– High engagement
-Fan pages integrate with newsfeeds
-Free and paid marketing solutions
-Sponsored post opportunities
-Strong performance in the mobile ad network
-Rich in multimedia
-Viral traffic driver
-Consumers exceptionally critical about ad targeting and banners
Twitter: Twitter is the micro-blogging platform for rapid and efficient distribution of information. Strength is in short-form communication. Twitter users are masters of condensing information into short spaces i.e. ’Hashtags’, for discovering and participating in new conversations.
Pinterest: Virtual pin board for curation of your favorite topics.
-Can be extremely strong referral traffic driver
-Strong skew towards female-focused demographic
-Visually engaging and friendly format
-Opportunity for community to share and pin products that they love
-Can be a challenging marketing medium for non-visual brands
-Self-promotion is a big no here
Quora: It is called as question and answer engine. The audience of entrepreneurs, marketers, engineers, VCs, and students are usually found on Quora.
-Genuinely curious and intelligent community
-Opportunity to promote and get distribution for blog posts
-Amazing opportunity to research topics in depth and to learn
-Requires dedicated time and effort
Linkedin: It is the largest professional business-to-business social media network. It is designed for networking and making new connections.
-1:1 outreach
-Market intelligence
-Employee recruitment
-A variety of paid channel solutions
-Interest-based groups
Youtube: The world’s biggest DIY video network. Indeed, it is the significant referral traffic driver.
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Brainstorming Creative New Ideas:
What you’re already doing as an Ecommerce Internet marketer with all the above points is wonderful, but coming up with brand new ideas or experimenting and exploring different tactics is even better. It is evident that the Ecommerce Internet marketers who are the most successful have become so only after trying creative and new things.
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Keeping up With Ecommerce Marketing Trends:
All industries evolve, but Internet marketing tends to mature at a very high speed. Search engines and advertising platforms are constantly changing their requirements, rules, and algorithms that determine results. As such, it’s very important to stay updated with important changes. Some extremely successful SEO tactics, for instance, can become liabilities over a period of time. As Google and other search engines refine their algorithms to deliver the highest-quality results, it’s critical to monitor these developments and make sure your store is compliant. Algorithm updates can also offer opportunities. Hummingbird increased the importance of semantic search, allowing SEOs to rely less on exact-match keywords. Less stringent keyword requirements lead to more creativity, and high-ranking product results today are not as reliant on an inclusion of precise product keywords. Other updates have favored websites with quality informational content, increasing the importance and opportunity of utilizing blogs, buying guides, and other forms of content.