Marketing and advertising are areas of your business where you can express your creativity while still maintaining a level of objectivity, especially when dealing with sales. Your marketing efforts ensure that you create materials that will entice your audience and target buyers to visit your store, check out your product page, and consider making a transaction.
Excellent marketing materials convert interested parties into purchasers, and don’t we all want that?
This article will share ten effective e-Commerce marketing tips, so that in the sea of tasks you need to accomplish, you know which to prioritize. Let’s begin!
1. Create “magical” ads
“Magical” ads do not require pixie dust, however, they do need a message that taps into the viewers’ hearts and minds—without doing any hard selling. Check out these Thai ads, and you’ll know what we are talking about.
To accomplish this, your ads need to be sensitive to current events to create relevancy. What is your audience up to right now? What are they most concerned about? Focus on creating content that is top of mind for your viewers, and engagement will follow.
2. Be strategic with your ad placements
The materials you produce should be created to be seen by your target audience, which you will determine early in the marketing planning. Some of the details you will check are the following: target audience age, gender, social background, shopping behavior, and even location. Aside from target audience demographics, you also need to place your ads strategically.
Competitor pages: We recommend placing your ads on the pages of your competitor to help increase brand awareness and sales, especially if you provide a better offer and competitive prices.
New listings: This technique particularly may work on Amazon where some new listings which are optimized properly can still rank on the first pages of the search results especially now on the A10 algorithm. New listings will have an equal chance of getting customer clicks and views. If your ad appears on new listings with less customer feedback, your ad which has more reviews and higher ratings will appear as a more reliable brand and hopefully, you’ll get the customer to choose to buy your product.
Product pages your product complements: Aligning your ad with a relevant product targets both brand and product awareness. Your product may not be the exact thing buyers are looking for, but they might be converted because your product contextually complements what they originally intended to purchase.
Social media accounts: Statistics show that among all individuals who have an internet connection, almost 94% have social media, and 85% of people who own mobile phones have Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking accounts as installed applications.
As a result, when you post your ads on social media and optimize their reach, there is a high chance that you will reach your target audience. Also, the shareability social media platforms offer increases the chance of your ad reaching more and more audiences.
3. Please the algorithm with the right keywords
Algorithms and cookies govern everything on the web, tracking every click on every page your customers browse. Access data about what your potential customers are searching for through keyword research tools.
Google keyword research tools
- Google Keyword Planner
- Ahrefs Keyword Generator
- Keywords Everywhere
Social media keyword research tools
- Rank Tracker
- PostRank
- Social Mention
e-Commerce keyword research tools
- KeywordTool.io
- Wordstream
- SemRush
Many keyword research tools offer an all-in-one function of searching keywords for different platforms, such as various e-Commerce sites, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, or LinkedIn.
After deciding which keywords to use for your posts and pages, seamlessly incorporate them into your content for readability. Most importantly, monitor the performance of your keywords so you can adjust accordingly.
4. Sell products in bundles
Consumers love getting a great deal., So instead of selling your products separately, put them in bundles. How do you do this?
For instance, if you sell knives, you can offer a bundle including a cutting board, knife block, or knife sharpener. You can make different bundle combinations as long as the products complement each other. Chances are, people who are just looking for knives may choose your bundled offering because, for just a few more dollars, they can get additional items.
Case Study: Cosmos Kitchen Knives Sold On Amazon
Just below the bullet points of the Cosmos Kitchen Knife Set, the buyers will see a message saying, “Make it a bundle. We found 11 bundles with this item. The 11 bundles like the ones below are offered to customers.
Through this method, you get a step ahead of your competitors: plenty of stores sell knives, but you make your store original by offering bundles. As a result, you can increase your sales and keep your stocks moving. Product bundling is also a way to protect your brand on Amazon as counterfeiters will have a hard time copying your offers.
5. Create ads based on the platform you are posting them on
The generic type of ads are images, videos, and texts, but different types of content are more effective on different platforms. Let us walk you through the content you should be posting.
e-Commerce sites
- Instructional or demo videos on how to use a product
- Brand videos
- Images showing detailed information about the product
- An informative product description that answers all possible questions of customers
- Customer review videos
- Almost all content types: images, videos, and text, but videos perform best
- Short but snappy text to satisfy the character count limit
- Include trending hashtags in your text content
- Video and image content should be relevant to the trending hashtags to get more views and retweets
- High-resolution images and videos
- You should include hashtags relevant to the content in the text
- Create a website and build links leading to your products and store.
Creating a website ensures that when your consumers search outside the e-commerce platform you are selling on, you can provide them with a site where all the comprehensive information they need is posted. Aside from informative content, convert the traffic into sales by adding links within the article leading to your product page or store.
Let’s go back to selling knives as an example. You can be creative with the topics you post on your website. Some content ideas are the following:
- What features make the best kitchen knife.
- Characteristics of a well-manufactured hunting knife.
- The different types of knives you can collect.
- How to forge blades according to experts.
As you can see, these topics do not involve hard-selling, but they are captivating because the topics offer additional knowledge to viewers. You can smoothly include your product links in these articles.
6. Offer training and webinars.
Another way to build your brand and product credibility is through training and workshops. Going back to selling knives, wouldn’t it be nice to invite knife enthusiasts to forge training and workshops where customers can learn how to build and customize their blades? In this way, you are able to introduce your brand through immersion, and of course, you are able to educate your buyers about how your knives are made.
Because of the pandemic, aside from face-to-face training, you can also hold webinars and invite guest speakers who can talk about topics related to your products.
These are also venues to create a community and a network of patrons who can share your product’s credibility by word of mouth.
7. Don’t forget to hold fun and exciting events.
Strike a balance between the training and workshops that offer technical information and hold fun events letting you and your customers loosen up. Here are some of the fun ideas you can do:
- Hold games to stir excitement in your followers.
- Have customer feedback contests where buyers will post on their accounts and tag you with their photos or videos about their experience with your products.
- You can also hold raffle draws with qualifiers that will help you increase your sales and reach (i.e., buyers who purchase a certain amount will get to have a free ticket for the raffle draw, or followers who like and share your posts get one raffle entry.)
Holding these kinds of events unleash your fun side and engages your audience. These are also moments to get organic followers who then buy your products, increasing your sales.
8. Partner with celebrities and influencers.
This marketing type is a bit costly as you need to pay for influencer and celebrity talent fees. Yet, even most e-commerce lead generation tips would tell you that your audience reach and brand awareness will surely increase, especially if you partner with content creators whose followers belong to the same target audience you are eyeing for your business.
The content created by your partner celebrities and influencers shows the real-life use of your products from a credible source. A solid example would be producing cooking show content where the knives you sell are being used. What a smooth way to incorporate your product! No need for hard selling spiels for this. You just need to show the viewers how your knives easily slice and dice different ingredients. You may insert call-to-actions (CTAs) to visit your store in strategic parts of the content.
9. Utilize video marketing.
Prioritize producing video content for your marketing campaigns as it is preferred by 72% of consumers trying to get to know the product they want to buy. Here are the strategies to get quality videos:
- Prepare everything you need for the video production, such as talents, script, sets, camera, and lighting.
- Decide whether you will do live or recorded videos.
- For recorded videos, have a solid post-production team edit your videos to make them more enticing to viewers.
- Hook the viewers in the first 10 seconds of your videos to keep them interested to watch until the end.
- Insert your CTAs at the start, middle, and before ending your video.
- Produce different types of video content like demo videos, vlogs, and commercials.
Final Thoughts
These are the different techniques you can incorporate into your marketing plans. It is vital to know your audience and what they like to engage them and get more views. The more views, the higher the chance for these viewers to turn into successful customers.
Also, think out-of-the-box for your content. There are plenty of marketers competing for customers’ attention, so your ads and content must stand out. The best way to do this is by tapping into the emotions and curiosity of your viewers. You can also provide lasting experiences through workshops and webinars.
Your choices for marketing techniques are as endless as your creative ideas. Just a final reminder to always monitor your campaigns so you can see your plan’s efficiency, work on the areas for improvement, and sustain your best practices.
