eCommerce is the future. And that future is here for the taking.
Of course, this can be easier said than done. After all, it takes more than simply opening a Shopify store and reeling in the customers. Before you do decide to make your brand’s first entry into cyberspace, your online business needs to acquire the lay of the land, digitally speaking.
Online retail has expanded to reflect on modern day consumer behaviours. Just as bricks and mortar retail bases itself on the everyday habits of in-person shoppers, eCommerce shopping is very representative of what users and prospective customers are doing online.
This blog article will look at just that. We’ll give you a well-rounded overview of the most popular and overall best marketing channels for your business in eCommerce. Take this as a vital list of popular methods to connect with your target audience and find out what you can do to realise their potential and make them particularly effective.
A Background of the Best Marketing Channels
Look around, everybody has a phone, they’re peering into it, looking for clues on how to live their lives. That should be enough of a sign that the world practically lives online. Unsurprisingly, the eCommerce landscape is building and expanding in both size and sophistication since its inception.
A Statista survey highlights global online retail’s steady but consistent market growth since measurements first began in 2014. That year, worldwide eCommerce sales amounted to 1.3 trillion USD. Today, that total is currently 5 times that amount, whereas the prediction for 2024 pit the figureas close to 6.5 trillion USD.
Overall, we can expect the following marketing channels to take the lead this year:
1. Content marketing
2. SEO optimised pages
3. Email marketing
4. PPC-driven advertising strategies
5. Social media marketing
6. Affiliate marketing
7. Influencer marketing
Examining the best marketing channels for your business
As our audiences continue to be in better contact with their needs, it’s important to find out which methodology best applies to your target demographic. As you will see, each channel can work wonders for your brand.
It’s time we offered some more details into these powerful directions for your business. Let’s take a closer look now.
1. Content marketing
Demonstrate not just what’s best about your brand, but about what it represents. Content marketing means producing materials that illustrate the lifestyle associated with your company. It can directly or indirectly cite your brand’s strongest attributes as well as come in a wide range of enticing and vibrant materials.
There are many ways to define high quality content. A general success metric would be providing valuable information to audience and engaging with them on a regular basis. Your formats may very well depend on the characteristics of your audience themselves. For instance, some users may be receptive to blogs, or buying guides, whereas others may look for explainer video content, whitepapers, to just a simplified infographic.
2. SEO optimisation for eCommerce
A well-positioned store in the search engine might just behalf the battle! If your brand appears at the top of Google listings, that exposure will put your business at a considerable advantage, the common out comebeing more web traffic to your site. In eCommerce, that translates to more business opportunities for your brand.
Search Engine Optimisation is nothing new, yet it continues to be as popular and as relevant as ever. Its properties apply too, as your level of investment and commitment to SEO will determine your ranking on searchengines for your store. A range of other practices will also assist you, such as keyword-based backlinking.
3. Email marketing
A well-organised email campaign is a sure-fire way to reach your users in structured and controlled manner. When done successfully, this method lets you grow subscriber lists of those with an interest in your brand. Aside from building a list of credible contacts, your brand can monitor and evaluate engagement with your company.
eCommerce can be a wild-west of promotional ideas – we know. Here are some interesting picks for successful email marketing campaigns to inspire you:
· Promo mail campaigns – citing seasonal or festival sales
· New arrival campaigns – exclusive offers for returning customers
· Triggered email campaigns – activated by a shopping cart or wish list product addition
· Transactional emails – confirming orders or issuing invoices
4. PPC strategy
eCommerce PPC strategies concern website traffic arriving from engaging with paid ads from Google, as well as other search engines or social networks. You may also know this practice as either SEM, or PPC, which are Search Engine Marketing or Pay-Per-Click advertising, respectively.
These strategies take careful consideration and market research, but thanks to unique management tools could be among the best marketing channels for your business online. You can also boost your reach and improve ad performance with clear analytical insights.
In fact, PPC search engine marketing can offer considerable ROI for campaigns that are well-targeted and executed. Behavioural remarketing ortargeting are just some of the most powerful methods for leveraging paid search results and converting visitors to leads.
5. Social media marketing
Social media is a lifeline. Actively avoiding it as a marketing tool is ill-advised, unless of course that is the cornerstone of your brand’s marketing message. As that is highly unlikely, your brand should be invaluable to even a small, or niche eCommerce businesses.
Your brand’s presence on social networks is essential but must be approached with the same degree of strategy as paid marketing channels. For one, each social media network has its own audience among demographics, geography, and even along professional groups. Therefore, it’s advised to research the characteristics of each before engaging in promotional campaigns. Choose from Facebook, to Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok,Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and many more!
6. Affiliate marketing
Remember, you’re online. That means, you’re constructing a lifestyle for your consumers, albeit in an abstract form. In this case, even direct marketing can be deemed 2-dimensional. But by associating yourself with certain product categories, you can effectively position your company as fun, relaxed, sophisticated, or reliable, without so much as saying a single word.
Quality visitors can be brought in using the marketing efforts of your affiliate brands, which may have a foothold among a target demographic. Marketing that’s based on performance can be beneficial to complementary brands, by awarding partners with sales-based commissions for reeling-invisitors and leads. On the other hand, your brand may also return the favourand attract customers for their brand as well…
7. Influencer marketing
eCommerce relies on credibility. In this case, a good word from a great face can give your company an injection of authority. Today, influencers are an established marketing channel, and will continue to prevail as it penetrates increasingly narrow product categories.
Keep in mind that as with each best marketing channels for your business, this method has evolved. A focus has now been placed on key individuals, who attain a more moderate user-count, albeit have considerable trust from their niche category of viewers. This of course will require considerable targeting but will more effectively drive your brand messaging and offers to wider markets.
It’s a great time for eCommerce!
Your possibilities are endless. They always have been, but never have online tools provided such precision for target markets of online brands. Be aware that you can no-longer apply the same blanket strategies in digital marketing for eCommerce.
Today’s youngest voting-age consumers are digital natives, meaning they retain the strongest possible ability to distinguish between active and lacking efforts in eCommerce marketing channels. This is fertile ground for market researchers, who will need to face the challenge of identifying the nuances of diverse market segments. Nevertheless, this should be a challenge well-accepted.
Use these insights to pick your digital marketing channels and carve out your place in the future of eCommerce. The rewards will be worth the effort!