6 Marketing Strategies To Implement To Boost Your Online Sales
In a context of explosion of e-commerce and rapidly increasing competition, the choice of the best e-commerce marketing strategy becomes decisive . Whether your web platform is your only sales channel or an extension of your physical stores, you are faced with the same issues: attracting the attention of prospects, generating traffic (or store visits) and boosting your sales . But to achieve your goals, there is not one but several methodologies. Which one to choose ? Which approach will be the most effective? Above all, it is a question of knowing these different marketing strategies and determine if they can meet the needs of your e-commerce site.
Content marketing: producing content with high added value to promote your products
Content marketing for professional Wikipedia Consultant, or content strategy , has the advantage of adapting to all stages of the customer journey. You can produce content to attract the attention of Internet users who are looking for information, to generate visits to your e-commerce site, and then to convert these visitors into customers. This, provided you use the right content at the right time .
Content marketing can only become an effective e-commerce marketing strategy by providing audiences with relevant information. These must meet their needs and concerns, so that they naturally want to buy. Your content must teach them something, bring them an interesting light. As such, you can deploy a strategy based on different formats such as:
Blog articles dealing with topics that interest your audiences depending on the stage of the buying journey where they are
- Videos to demonstrate your products, present testimonials from satisfied users, offer expertise, etc.
- FAQ sections integrated into your e-commerce site , in particular from an SEO perspective to increase your chances of benefiting from a rich snippet on Google or appearing in the "Other questions asked".
- “Shoppable” content allowing consumers to buy the products presented directly .
This e-commerce marketing strategy is ideal for generating qualified traffic, increasing its notoriety, and ultimately boosting its conversions . It is also one of the most ROI methods. However, it requires significant effort and only yields long-term results.
Email marketing: communicate directly with your potential buyers and your loyal customers
Emailing may be an old (web-wide) marketing strategy, but it remains one of the most effective . For a good reason: email marketing solves most business problems. Indeed, it allows to generate traffic, to acquire prospects, to follow leads throughout their journey until conversion, and to retain existing customers.
With email, you can do anything. Overall, it allows products to be presented, promotional offers to be submitted and news to be communicated. It also allows you to confirm a purchase, provide delivery details and request feedback. Finally, it is an opportunity to practice retargeting, and to suggest other similar products.
However, it is not an easy e-commerce marketing strategy to handle. Practicing email marketing involves acting in several stages:
- Build a mailing list from emails collected from Internet users who have visited your e-commerce site. The latter have, at some point, filled out a form or created a customer account, for example.
- Segment this list by contact categories , based on personas, interests, and stage of the buying journey. Because we do not address a visitor who discovers the site in the same way as a loyal buyer.
- Automate its emailing campaigns taking into account the segmentation carried out. As a result, the right messages are sent to the right people at the right time.
Pay attention to the reception given to your emails! This is to comply with the requirements of the GDPR with regard to the use of users' personal data. It is also important to ensure that your contacts receive messages likely to interest them.
Retargeting: seeking out Internet users who have not completed their action
Retargeting is an e-commerce marketing strategy consisting of seeking out visitors who, after browsing your store, have left without taking any action or have abandoned their shopping cart. You should know that most visitors do not convert on their first visit. Therefore, a marketing lever capable of bringing them back to their destination is essential.
By tracking the movements of your visitors on your e-commerce site, you can determine at any time who did what , then send emails adapted to the situation . You can, for example, invite them to come back to discover your new products. You can also offer assistance to help them overcome a possible obstacle. For those who have abandoned their cart, encourage them to complete their purchase.
Note that this e-commerce strategy also works with advertising campaigns: paid links or display banners are displayed on search engines or social networks consulted by Internet users who have not completed their action on your platform.
Social media marketing: using social networks to attract the attention of Internet users to your products
All major brands, and all major online stores, are active on social networks. Why ? Because their audiences are on these platforms. 54% of users check social media for product information.
An e-commerce marketing strategy based on these applications is therefore almost essential. Networks are used to target your audiences and introduce them to new products, share customer testimonials, launch special offers, etc. These audiences follow your social pages and see your advertisements. As a result, they are likely to be more receptive than generic audiences. Moreover, it is the algorithms that make sure to adapt the display of advertising to the interests of users.
Such an approach involves choosing the relevant social networks . Instagram and Facebook are particularly suitable for B2C commerce. You have the possibility of publishing photos of your products, of communicating in an original way about your store, of displaying positive opinions from customers… These networks also make it possible to create “shoppable” content. These send visitors directly to the "basket" page of your e-commerce site, eliminating several steps in the purchase process.
As for the advertising placement of products , it proves to be extremely effective (although expensive) on social media, due to the innumerable possibilities offered in terms of formats and audience targeting.
Local marketing: reach localized audiences to increase your physical sales
Local marketing is crucial in e-commerce, when you seek to reach audiences concentrated in a given territory (or several territories) , where your physical stores or warehouses are located.
Although an e-commerce site is accessible worldwide, it is wise to primarily address highly localized audiences , those who constitute the heart of your clientele. This online sales strategy is all the more important in multichannel, if you practice Web-to-Store (the fact, for an Internet user, of locating or ordering an item online and going to pick it up directly in the store ) or if you offer products with a regional dimension, such as locally produced foodstuffs.
The audience targeted by local marketing is necessarily small, but it is also more highly qualified and engaged . A restaurant has more interest in attracting customers from the neighborhood than in attracting consumers from the other end of the department – who will not make the trip every day.
The other advantage of this e-commerce strategy is that it can be deployed in addition to a more global visibility strategy. Nothing prevents you, in fact, from working on the local referencing of your product sheets and generating visits to the store using local Google campaigns while seeking to reference your site on a national scale.
Influencer marketing: benefiting from the impact of web personalities on their audiences
Influence marketing is based on the activation of influencers – public figures or web stars – who will communicate on your behalf with their community of Internet users. This e-commerce marketing strategy is especially relevant for brands that operate in niche markets.
Of course, it all depends on the impact these influencers have on their audiences. As such, the number of followers or subscribers is certainly a key point (whether on Instagram, YouTube or other), but it is not the only one: we must also take into account the credibility of the influencer in the eyes of his community and the engagement potential of Internet users who follow him .
In this sense, targeting a micro-influencer with 5,000 subscribers, but capable of boosting your sales, is more relevant than wanting to work absolutely with a sports star followed by a million people, but unable to generate the slightest conversion.
Which e-commerce marketing strategy to choose?
When building your marketing plan , these different approaches are available to you. But none is better than the others. Indeed, each e-commerce marketing strategy has its advantages and disadvantages. In addition , each is more or less adapted to your sector of activity, the products you sell, the size of your market, and the nature of your audiences.
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