Online retail is a booming industry, growing by leaps and bounds every single year; in 2018, online sales accounted for more than a half trillion dollars in the United States alone. Brands of all sizes cannot overlook this massive segment of the economy and expect to survive long term. Driving the bulk of these sales are ecommerce stores, ranging in size from Amazon and Google to independent, niche-driven store-fronts.
Online stores face a series of hurdles that make marketing more difficult for them than many other brands not driven directly by profit. As such, optimizing marketing strategies to embrace the most effective forms of advertising is crucial for optimal success.
Below are four of the most effective marketing strategies that ecommerce stores can use to boost sales and visibility.
PPC Advertising
Pay per click advertising is arguably the first and most powerful aspects of an ecommerce store’s marketing arsenal. This approach allows brands to instantly target consumers across a variety of popular platforms, showing them products and services relevant to their tastes. PPC advertising can be utilized with both incredibly large and small budgets, allowing it to be an effective marketing strategy for ecommerce stores of all sizes.
Some brands have found notable success with a combination of PPC advertising campaigns and landing pages for specific products, providing a wealth of information to shoppers (along with calls to action). However, the success of landing pages largely depends on the quality of a store’s web design: hiring a professional Web Design Firm to ensure optimal store functionality and appearance is crucial in marketing situations such as these.
Search Engine Optimization
While some may view it as separate from other marketing tactics, search engine optimization definitely is a form of marketing. This long-term tactic involves driving organic traffic to your store-front by achieving visibility in various search engine results. Driven predominantly by content creation, keyword optimization and link building, SEO is not a marketing tactic that can be executed overnight – but the massive amount of free traffic driven to your store via search results is a hard benefit to forgo.
Email Marketing
As ecommerce stores grow and evolve, so should their mailing lists. While attracting new customers is a top priority for any online store-front, extracting maximum value from existing customers is equally vital. With email marketing, stores can deploy recurring pitches to customers who have already demonstrated a propensity for making purchases (click here for the benefits of email marketing).
While email marketing isn’t necessarily a viable strategy for ecommerce stores that have recently opened, those with established reputations and a healthy number of prior sales can make tremendous use of the tactic. Given its low cost and high conversion rate, it belongs at the forefront of any store’s marketing efforts.
Affiliate Marketing
Ecommerce stores aren’t just limited to selling products on their own websites: it’s possible to sell on other websites as well! Through the use of affiliate marketing, stores can take advantage of affiliate marketing networks to boost product visibility across the internet. From product reviews to on-page ads, most affiliate marketing networks cost nothing up-front for stores to utilize, instead billing a percentage off of each sale generated through an affiliate link. This can be another great way to bolster product visibility when your marketing budget is less than substantial.
While there are many unique marketing methods online retailers can use to boost sales, visibility and overall performance, these four methods are generally the most effective. When balancing reach, cost and effectiveness, incorporating all of these strategies into your marketing efforts simply makes good business sense.
