E-commerce marketers continue to drive success by introducing new trends and emerging technologies. They embrace change and meet it head-on with excitement not to maximize their profits, but to be able to better serve customers. If you want a piece of the e-commerce pie, you have to step your game up. There are many tools which can help you improve your e-commerce marketing. Make sure to invest in these resources. They shouldn’t be missing from your e-commerce marketing strategy.
1. Customer Support
You sell a product to a customer. If that customer is happy, they’ll come back and buy another product. On the other hand, if the customer runs into issues, and can’t find someone to talk to, they won’t complete the purchase. This is why it’s important to have a good level of customer service. Marketing and customer support aren’t distinct entities. They have a close relationship, in which both practices work together to boost growth and drive success. Customer support is one of the most powerful e-commerce marketing tools at your disposal. Why? Because it encourages higher spending decisions.
Companies that have the best customer service:
Amazon: The largest online retailer in the world masters customer support. It tries to match customer pace and understand their situation. The company treats every customer like a friend, and they don’t behave badly when it comes to friends. Last year, Amazon was ranked number 1 in Harris Poll’s annual corporate reputation survey.
Shopify: The Canadian e-commerce company is one of the most popular ones in the world. The web-based retailer offers its services to the United States, as well as many other countries. Shopify is a customer-centric organization, which is willing to go the extra mile to ensure an unforgettable interaction. The company doesn’t let customers assume their time is invaluable.
2. Google Analytics
The purpose of an e-commerce platform is to connect shoppers with suppliers. Analyzing chunks of data can help you better understand the situation. This includes new audiences, active pages, etc. If you interpret the data correctly, you can generate more leads. You’ll finally understand customer’s shopping behavior and micro-moments – in other words, those valuable moments when decisions are made and preferences are shaped. You can use micro-moments to predict customer tendencies and action patterns and to make better strategies.
What you need is a tool like Google Analytics. It’s completely free. Thanks to Google Analytics, you can monitor online marketing campaigns. To get started, all you have to do is open an account, add GA tracking to your landing website, and turn on Link Tracking in Campaign Monitor. Google Analytics will help you understand which sales funnels are the most effective and how you can optimize your marketing.
If you’ve got social media channels included in the campaign, you can deploy the insight tools developed by the companies in question. Twitter and Facebook have interactive insight tools that enable you to track user interaction. Just think about it.
3. Project Management Software
As far as e-commerce marketing is concerned, there’s a lot to do. You barely find time for yourself. The art of e-commerce marketing can seem overwhelming. If you’re hired to do digital marketing for important brands, invest in project management software, which can facilitate tracking and planning of projects. These are the features available to you:
- Create estimates
- Track project time
- Generate and send invoices
If you don’t plan your time and effort, you’ll miss deadlines and upset clients. There is a variety of tools to come to complete the project management process. There are a few aspects to take into consideration when making a decision. Price is one of the most important considerations to make. Know how much the program will cost you on a monthly basis. Ease of use is equally important. If it’s hard for the members of your team to use, it’s not worth it.
4. Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is at the heart of e-commerce marketing. The volume of search queries fielded by search engines grows, which means that you have a chance to drive traffic through paid and organic results. Since it was introduced in 1997, Google has dominated the search engine market. So, you’ll want your client’s website to show up on the first page of Google. Online users avoid advertisement, so focus your attention on organic search results.
Having a quality website can turn out to be useful in the customers’ decision-making process. Site pages should have human-centered content that ranks. The links between the pages should have a certain degree of trust and authority with search engines. The biggest mistake you can make is optimizing product and category pages using random keywords. Look for information keywords, which have really great search volume. These keywords are easy to identify, as they contain the words “how” and “where”.
Think about using Amazon. It’s the biggest e-commerce site online, not to mention an invaluable source of product keywords. Long keywords tend to be targeted and have higher conversion rates. Since they don’t get many searches, sites don’t try to rank for them. Find keywords for the most important pages of your client’s website. Always optimize for user experience. search engine optimization is about real people and not search engines. The point is that the content needs to be easily accessible and comprehensible.
5. Social Media Management
Social media has changed a lot in the past few years. In the old days, it was used to follow old friends or check up on celebrities. Now, social media is used to communicate. Brands can speak to their audiences directly. They have the power to control the message and make sure that it’s correct and consistent. Customers, on the other hand, turn to social media if they need help with making a buying decision. Therefore, e-commerce marketing through social media should be prioritized.
If you’re having trouble managing several social media accounts, use these tips to stay on top of things:
- Use social media management software – You don’t have all the time in the world, so you can’t manually copy and paste the same content to multiple accounts. This will most likely make you inefficient and prone to forgetting things. It’s best to use a social media management tool. Software of this kind has many useful features, such as publishing with a queue, analytics, engagement, team features, etc. You can accomplish so much with the click of a button.
- Create an editorial calendar – With a simple calendar, you can control the publication of content. Google Calendar is your best bet. Make sure you’re logged into your Gmail account and set up Google Calendar so that it can accommodate the information. Click the three dots that are right next to the “Add calendar” feature and choose “New calendar”. All you have to do now is fill out the fields and don’t forget to click “Create calendar”.
Edit and proofread social media posts ahead of time. You can use online tools, such as Hemingway App or Grammarly (which is recommended by Forbes). Carelessness will result in failure.
6. Competitor and user research
It’s essential to research the competition to avoid wasting time and resources. Use market research to develop strategies and adapt to changing conditions. Categorize your main competitors and see if you can get some insights about the experience they offer. You can find valuable pieces of information in newspapers, journals, reports, and so on and so forth.
Do you know what could come in handy? Online visibility software. It’ll help you get a better understanding of the competition and why it’s so successful. What’s more, you can find better advertising opportunities. User research is more manageable, so you can craft the perfect user experience. The shopper is at the center of the process, so the shopper should be at the core of your marketing decisions.
Is it even worth paying for such a solution? Actually, yes. An online visibility management platform provides the necessary tools to ensure that you’re getting measurable results from digital marketing. If you want to cut to the good stuff, you know what to do.
7. Responsive Design
Experts all agree with the fact that responsive design is one of the most important marketing concepts. Why is it so important, anyway? Making a website mobile-friendly boost the number of visitors and increases the amount of time they spend there. It doesn’t matter if a website looks great on a desktop if it’s absolutely horrendous on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. Users will refuse to navigate an unresponsive site on their mobile devices. They’ll leave and head on over to the competition.
Best examples of mobile website design:
- Huffington Post: According to the experts at HubSpot, Huffington Post’s mobile site is pretty impressive. It features very few columns and readers can easily interact with the content. if you take a close look at the desktop and mobile versions, you’ll immediately notice the difference.
- Etsy: Yet another honorable mention. Many buyers visit Etsy to find vintage and handmade items. Google says that Etsy the most user-friendly mobile site. And who are we to argue with them? The search functionality is significantly improved. Most importantly, users can complete a purchase really fast.
8. Email Marketing
People have busy lifestyles, so they may be distracted. How do you let them know what’s going on? Simple. You send an email. Emails can be used to sell to buyers directly. Even if they’ve abandoned their shopping carts or haven’t made a purchase in a long, long time, there’s still a chance. Email marketing is, sometimes, more effective than social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook. They convey something actionable, but they’re not an aggressive type of marketing.
No matter if it’s news about the company or the launch of a new product, make sure to email people. First impressions do matter, so if you include new members to the email list, send a welcome message. This is a great chance to introduce the company and its offering to the subscriber. Send only valuable content. If you don’t know how to write addictive email content, there’s no better time than now to learn. Instead of recycling content, take a new angle on a hot topic. This will establish you as an authority in the field.
It’s a good idea to try new channels, where competitors don’t have big audiences. Experimenting with your marketing efforts is fun, to say the least. See what marketing channels the competitors are using and don’t follow in their footsteps.
9. E-Commerce Store Referrals
Regular individuals don’t want to do business with someone they don’t know. If you want to be more efficient in your online marketing role, consider using referrals. They will help you pass the first stage of the sales process. If someone does visit the website and buys, this is hugely important.
Encouraging customers to recommend products or services, for that matter, is a tough job. Some people may not be willing to leave referrals at the right time. You could create great content which people will love. Or you could organize a contest. Individuals are always eager to win something, so you have a true shot at succeeding. They’ll do what it takes to win the contest, including making e-commerce referrals.
In the past, Amazon Prime used referral marketing to get more clients. Not everyone knew what it was when it came out, so the company had to do something. It’s easy to find great examples of referring to marketing.
10. Headline Analyzer
Headlines are worth most of the e-commerce marketing efforts. This is because they determine whether or not people will read the content. It’s the job of the headline to capture attention so that the reader ignores everything else. You can write headlines in many ways. Nevertheless, some formulas have proven to be more effective than others. In whats follow, we’ll present the winning formula:
NUMBER + ADJECTIVE + KEYWORD + RATIONALE + PROMISE
The idea is pretty simple to grasp. Many headlines have some of these components, if not all.
Final thoughts
As you can see, there are many tools that can make your e-commerce marketing efforts pay off. The most important aspects to concentrate on are customer support, analytics, project management, SEO, social media channels, market research, website design, email marketing, referrals, and, last but not least, headlines. There you go! Did we miss out on something?
