Having a great ecommerce site is only part of the equation for online success. Even the best ecommerce site will not increase revenue if there are no strategic marketing programs in place to drive targeted traffic to the site. I’ve outlined six key digital marketing programs to grow your online business.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You can’t grow online sales if your customers can’t find you. A strong SEO strategy is critical. It all starts with in-depth keyword research specific to your target audience and product line. Remember that the best keywords are not automatically the ones with the highest search volume, but instead are the ones that have the highest conversion rate (the rate at which visitors are turned into customers) and a balanced amount of search volume and online competition. Once you have identified your keywords, you can properly integrate them into your ecommerce website, using the best SEO practices.
Content Marketing
The best way to compliment an SEO strategy is with high quality content. Creating rich content encourages people to share it, and sharing it allows you to reach a new audience of potential customers. The goal here is to provide content-driven experiences that are either entertaining, educational or useful to your audience and eventually drive awareness, engagement and sales for your brand. Creating a strong, ongoing content marketing strategy that utilizes your keywords and supports your products and brand is the best way to rank in search engines and attract and convert website visitors into customers.
Email Marketing
Keep your customers coming back (and converting!) with an email marketing strategy. Email marketing is an effective way to collect valuable information and feedback from your customers. It’s also a great way to establish strong customer relationships. Enhance the personalized shopping experience by sending personalized emails to your customers as these emails increase CTRs and conversion rates by 14%.
Social Media Marketing
Continue to build a loyal customer base by creating a strong social presence. Social media has become a powerful marketing tool for online retailers. Consumers use social platforms to praise products or voice their concerns. Either way, it’s important for online retailers to be a part of that conversation. Your social media marketing plan should incorporate a mixture of listening to your audience, sharing your brand message, and enabling others to share your brand.
Paid Search Advertising
Ever wonder which is more important – SEO or paid search advertising? The answer is both. Paid search advertising is one of the best measurable ecommerce sales channels. It’s a great way to drive traffic to your site, but it is no simple task. Running highly targeted campaigns across both Bing and Google can be challenging, but when done right, paid search advertising can provide an excellent return on your investment.
Display Advertising
It takes more than showing up on search engine results pages to really grow your business. That is why it is important for ecommerce sites to take advantage of display advertising. Originally, this type of advertising strictly referred to banner ads that reached visitors when they were browsing the web, with only a few options for targeting audiences. Today however, display advertising has expanded greatly in terms of audience targeting abilities, the sites and devices where ads can be shown and the user experience they provide. Display advertising allows you to get your brand in front of your target audience and build market share.
To drive traffic to your site and create loyal customers, you must execute a variety of digital marketing programs. Keep in mind that this outline merely scratches the surface of this high level information. For a deeper understanding of these digital marketing programs, check out some of our other blog posts about ecommerce site essentials.