E-commerce Marketing: Importance, Marketing Plan, Tactics And Tools

E-commerce Marketing: Importance, Marketing Plan, Tactics And Tools 

What is E-commerce marketing?

E-commerce marketing is about making sales with the help of creating consciousness about an online store’s products as well as the brand. It refers to the universal superset of all sorts of digital marketing campaigns. Its goal is to target a group of audience towards an online shopping website. And the campaigners can use social media, emails, search engines and more for serving this very purpose.

Importance of E-commerce Marketing

Below are some of the factors signifying E-commerce:

• Brand recognition and good UI/UX
• Responsive web design and search engine friendly that we gain through E-commerce
• The highly secured payment process and instant feedback for products from E-commerce
• A good customer base irrespective of the existing geographical boundaries
• Low operational costs along with fascinating users with sales and offers.

These are some of the important factors that prove the significance of e-commerce.

E-commerce marketing plan

It is important to note now, that in this constantly changing environment, one needs to put more effort to further grow online sales. Awareness building is one of the major concerns for an e-commerce website. So here we bring to you some helpful points for the creation and execution of an e-commerce marketing plan. A few tips before one starts with building and executing the marketing plan :

• Seeking out mentors and advice by finding out companies and individuals who are already a success in the e-commerce business, basically within the same industry.
• Hire experts when possible because a talented marketer will help bring the much-needed knowledge and experience.
• Being honest with oneself does help. It is important to set realistic expectations and give quality products and services.

Building an E-commerce marketing plan

• Writing an executive summary to mark the beginning of an e-commerce marketing plan.
• Setting clear and specific goals and objectives. They should be realistic and attainable.
• Setting out the company’s mission statement and value proposition.
• Knowing the targeting customers, personas as well as markets. Here it is important to know the age range, geographic location, gender breakdown and purchasing power.
• Making a situation analysis thorough assessment of the company’s current status. It is also worthwhile to make a study of the current competition along with the overall marketing plan.
• Pricing and positioning strategy such that they give real value to the target audience.
• Finally, making a distribution and fulfilment plan. Such plans can be those that help you grow in case you are starting small.

Execution of the E-commerce marketing plan

The execution part involves the determination of sales along with the lead generation strategy. One needs to get the technology and the reporting software. You will need to know if the technology will be effective, whether KPIs will improve and will you be able to determine the ROI.

Then you can do some testing by using a part of your E-commerce budget to test new strategies. Last but not least, one should go ahead with refining and expanding the E-commerce marketing strategy itself by this time.

Tools and tactics to E-commerce marketing

Below are some of the new marketing channels to consider while crafting the plan for the year:

• Pay-per-click advertising: PPC involves your brand paying an ad network every time someone clicks your advertisement. PPC involves paid search, shopping campaigns and display.
• Search Engine Optimization: SEO helps you get a higher ranking on the search engines. Besides boosting your website rankings, it is also about adhering to the on-site best practices.
• Social media marketing and local marketing: Social media is a great source of marketing these days while local marketing still seems to impact decisions.
• Influencer marketing and email marketing: The former is about using someone with huge credibility within the niche, while the latter is about using emails to spread awareness.
• Content marketing and affiliate marketing: Good and precise content helps greatly. The latter refers to you paying after sales through an external website.

Conclusion

There is an enormous number of strategies that can be followed to frame the right E-commerce marketing plan for the year or any year. It may seem daunting in the beginning, but as one starts working out a plan, s/he will start getting better. And who knows, you may get on to reach enormous online sales that tend to grow continuously.