5 Essential Marketing Tips for Ecommerce Success
Marketing can be a real sore point for a lot of ecommerce entrepreneurs, often because having entrepreneurial ambitions and/or a great business idea does not mean you have experience in digital marketing. When you combine inexperience with a lack of funding and the many other online businesses trying to get noticed, establishing an online presence is a challenge. There are, however, some simple principles that all ecommerce businesses can benefit from no matter their budget or market share. Here are five essential marketing tips that do not require a lot of financial investment, which you should keep in mind when pursuing success for your ecommerce business.
- Put your audience first
One of the most important objectives of your market research should be identifying your target audience. Which demographic of customers are you hoping to attract, which websites are they visiting, what do they look for in a brand or product, and which social media platforms do they use? When you understand this, you can create and implement a digital marketing strategy that targets the right people. Click here for more on identifying a target market.
- Invest in content
You can buy advertising space on search engines or social media platforms, but a cheaper and often more successful tactic is to invest in content marketing. By having a blog on your website, you can create articles, videos, infographics, etc. about your business, products, team, and wider industry developments. This gives you the opportunity to show your brand’s personality and values, which helps you to connect with customers, and to share important information about your products or services.
- Maintain a social media presence
Think about the kind of content your target audience is interested in to maximize the likelihood that you can post it on social media, where it will be enjoyed and shared by your audience. You should avoid trying to be active on all the social media platforms as this is likely to be a waste of your time. Instead, focus on one or two that are popular with your target audience and suit the tone of your business, e.g. formal, friendly, funny, professional.
- Keep working on SEO
To get your website and content to the top of search engine results when customers search for your keywords, you need to take search engine optimization (SEO) very seriously. Search engines like Google have developed complex algorithms that analyze and rank website pages to decide which should be shown first when a person searches for a particular keyword or phrase. There are key features that make a website or page more likely to be favored by the algorithm (e.g. high quality backlinks, domain authority, relevancy), but it is being updated regularly, so SEO needs to be a consistent part of your marketing strategy. If you are completely new to SEO, it may be worth seeking professional ecommerce SEO services.
- Go mobile
More and more people are choosing to use their cellphones and tablets to browse the internet rather than a desktop computer. For this reason, it is essential that your website is easy to use when people are viewing it on a cellphone. This may mean making the design simpler and including only the key information, so people do not have to scroll endlessly and read lots of text. Your website should also load quickly and be easy to customers to navigate.