As a business owner, it’s no surprise that investing in eCommerce digital marketing is an absolute must for your business no matter the size. If you search “eCommerce marketing tips,” you’re met with over 51 million articles on tips. Needless to say, it can be very difficult to decide where to start and what to prioritize on your website. Fortunately for you, 121eCommerce is here to cut through the noise, and share the steps we have noticed businesses in the eCommerce space have taken to be successful. If you have an internal marketing team already, or have been outsourcing your efforts to an agency, these seven tips can set up your business for marketing success in 2022 and beyond.
1. Stop spending on digital ads that don’t work.
When it comes to eCommerce advertising, digital ads are a must. While the space has become more of a “pay to play,” model, it can seem like you’re just, “throwing money” at Google and Facebook. As an agency, 121eCommerce has consulted businesses continuing to spend on ads that are simply not performing. If you’re not seeing a positive ROI, even if your campaign(s) have only been running for a few weeks, it’s time to pull the plug and adjust.
Having a smaller subset of ads rather than a broader scope of ads is also another way to ensure you’re spending effectively.
Last, but most-certainly not least, don’t go after your larger competitors to start! They will have significantly more spend, and you will aimlessly spend on digital ads with no return.
2. SEO isn’t a buzzword; invest in it.
Oh SEO, one of the most common buzzwords in marketing.
While it may seem like SEO is just a buzzword, search engine optimization is one of the only long-term, free marketing tools that has a tangible ROI.
If you haven’t started looking into SEO, or think it’s unnecessary, you need to start investing into it now! We’re fully aware that it is difficult if you’re not familiar with SEO, or have no idea where to start. When you’re starting your journey into optimizing your site, we strongly recommend working with a reputable marketing agency to set your site up for success. They will be able to give you a clearer overview of where things are working, what needs improvements, and the tactical strategy to implement changes. The beauty of investing in SEO is that it doesn’t just work for your brand only. Your individual product pages can also rank in Google’s (or the search engine of your choice) results page driving more value for your website.
Our last word of advice for the SEO side of things is to focus on quality over quantity.
Gone are the days of “stuffing” keywords into the coding of your site, and using other black-hat SEO techniques to get to the first page of Google. Not only will this directly impact your site based on Google’s algorithm, it can also mean that your site can be blacklisted. Needless to say, that’s the last thing you want! Having high-quality product pages, and a user-friendly site are important to your success.
3. Introductory, thank you, and other transactional emails go a long way.
All of these emails have become an expectation of consumers no matter if they are shopping online, or subscribing to a blog. A thank you email with their order, a backorder notification, shipping confirmation, and any updates or promotional deals are a great way to keep your customers engaged, and up to date on their orders. When we bring up these emails, we don’t mean that you should email everyone individually and write the emails yourself. This just isn’t sustainable long-term. With basic solutions such as MailChimp, and more-advanced solutions such as DotDigital, you can create email templates, and automate them to automatically send out once an order is placed, or shipped. To save your sanity, we recommend integrating one of these solutions to your eCommerce website.
It can be tempting to want to send email after email to your customers and potential customers. This ties perfectly into our next point for marketing success.
4. Smaller, more-targeted email sends > “Spray and Pray.”
Like we mentioned earlier, emailing your customers and potential customers is a great way to keep your business top of mind. Instead of a mass email to everyone in your database, we recommend sending smaller, more-targeted emails that are relevant to their user behavior. A great example of this would be a customer that is buying parts for Jeep. You wouldn’t want to send them part offerings for a Ford, or a different Jeep model that isn’t relevant to them. This creates a friction point and could potentially harm your future outreach. On the flip side, if you notice that your customer bought a lift kit for their Jeep, sending them a perfectly timed email for an exhaust spacer kit or even accessories is a great cross-selling opportunity that drives more revenue, and their satisfaction.
5. Improve your site and enhance its user experience.
First impressions matter.
You don’t want to show up to a formal event in a t-shirt and shorts!
Your website is the first impression your users have of your business, and starting off on the wrong foot will not produce more sales.
No matter how well your marketing campaigns are performing, if your website performance isn’t there, you simply will not see success. Being able to make small, performance-based adjustments to your site are absolutely crucial, and you need an eCommerce platform to support those. Or at minimum, you will need to consider integrations that can help your site’s usability. Speaking to the usability piece, enhancements like a robust search functionality, clear, concise, product data, and well thought out product categories are great places to start with your user experience. Another place to look is to your checkout experience to enhance the user experience of your website. If you’re noticing that there is a bump up in cart abandonment and checkout rates, your checkout experience may be to blame. As more and more checkout experiences are streamlined, a one-click checkout solution may be a good idea to make this process faster. Solutions like Bolt provide a direct integration to the existing checkout structure of your Magento site, and make it where customers can use one click for checkout.
6. Establish SMART goals and stick to them.
Setting goals for your business is a no-brainer, right?
While setting goals is a no-brainer, making sure they are SMART is well, smart!
When we mention SMART goals, they are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound; they aren’t too easy to achieve, and on the flip side, not too hard to achieve. Below are two examples, one bad and one good, of SMART goals.
Bad Example: We will completely eliminate our cart abandonment rate.
Good Example: We will decrease our cart-abandonment rate by 10% by the end of Q3 by implementing a one-click checkout process, and optimizing our search functionality.
See the difference?
This guide from Atlassian is a great piece to review for creating SMART goals. And of course when thinking of your goals, working with your team to establish them is an absolute must.
7. Get to know your customers. They are your greatest resource!
Above anything else, your customers are your greatest asset for not only marketing success, but the overall success of your business. They can help you find undiscovered pain points in their customer journey with you, and help you improve upon them. You can also gain valuable insight into products they like, and ones they don’t, to adjust inventory accordingly.
Outside of the business aspects, customer reviews are another great way to get feedback from your customers. Whether they are good or bad, it’s important to listen to their feedback and respond promptly.
How we talked about targeted emails earlier?
What better way is there to ask for feedback than sending an email after their products have been delivered?
It’s OK to ask for feedback, and in fact, we encourage it!
Need help with marketing? We’re here to help!
We hope that these seven tips help you market your eCommerce site more effectively in 2022 and beyond. If you’re still not sure where to start, our team of marketing experts are here to help! Our digital marketing agency, Focused ROI, offers comprehensive marketing packages to help your eCommerce site drive more conversions and sales. If you would like to learn more, contact us today for a marketing consultation!
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