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eCommerce comprises of purchase and sale of commodities, services or even transfer of funds via an electronic medium. The two parties transacting over eCommerce could belong to different groups. It could be a business-to-business transaction or a business-to-consumer one. It could also be from a consumer to a business or another consumer.
Over time, eCommerce has grown in popularity. Among consumers, it is considered to be a convenient and speedy way of shopping for products in many categories. They can sit at home and place an order for food, medicine, groceries, clothes, shoes, electronics, stationery and many other products of interest. The list is quite long. With so much action in eCommerce, there is also a lot of competition.
What Is eCommerce Marketing?
Since the competition is tough, every business tries its best to reach and attract a greater share of the relevant consumer segment. To achieve this, they promote their products through various forms of marketing. This plays a very important role as the consumers, though love the convenience, miss the interaction with the actual product before purchase. They need to be convinced of the relevance of the product in their lives and also of the service and quality that they can expect. This is what eCommerce marketing is all about.
Modes of eCommerce Marketing
Advertising is a key component of an eCommerce marketing plan that works to improve the conversion rates and brand awareness among the target audience. The marketers for an eCommerce business can use several platforms for marketing the products. These include social media marketing, content marketing, SMS and e-mail campaigning and search engines. Advertisements can appear on all these platforms as banner ads, display ads or even as rich media ads.
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Social Media Marketing
Social media has a very wide reach among various segments of consumers. Having a page on social media proves beneficial for businesses of all kinds as it helps in increasing their visibility and connecting with the right target audience. For an eCommerce business, visual appeal is of prime importance, so the platform you choose must allow you to display the products as high-resolution images. These images contribute a lot to the attention and traffic for the respective product page.
You can also enable the page to sell the goods directly through links that connect them to the website. You can also have a business page dedicated for the purpose.
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Content Marketing
The components of content marketing include blogs, videos and articles. These help in improving the ranking of a website in search engines in response to consumer queries. It is also important to understand how content and its quality can help in growing sales on an eCommerce website. To use content effectively, you can do the following:
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- Optimise the description and details on the product page. Use keywords in content, titles, tags, headers and image descriptions.
- Write blog posts relevant to the products sold through your website. This helps in engaging the target segment with the product.
- Have guest posts on external websites for improved domain authority.
- Post interesting and engaging product-related videos on YouTube.
- Host an FAQ page for the products on the website.
These pointers are specifically useful for eCommerce business strategy.
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Search Engine Marketing
This combines SEO and paid advertising such as PPC and display advertising, which together can improve the visibility of the website regarding the specific products that the consumers could be searching for. Paid advertising ensures that the users searching for a particular product will be able to see a link to the website hosting a product related to the search query posted by them.
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E-Mail Marketing
When we talk about digital marketing, this can be considered as one of the pioneering formats. Automated e-mailers to subscribers filtered by the segment of interest can keep the engagement levels high without much extra effort. A carefully curated list of leads generated through your marketing efforts must never feel that their privacy is being violated.
Keeping the consumers updated with events relevant to their purchase and a follow-up email can make the consumers feel valued. Also, keeping them informed about the activity regarding the items in their abandoned shopping cart can help give them a gentle push towards completing the sale.
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Influencer and Affiliate Marketing
The Influencer model focuses on those brands and celebrities that have a hold on the consumers and their perceptions towards a particular category. Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, needs you to connect with people who can reach their audiences and encourage them to purchase your products for a commission.
These are the common eCommerce marketing tools that can help the business grow. Using them effectively through proper planning can help you get ahead of the competition and attract the target consumers to your eCommerce store.
