Concepts of E-commerce Marketing Explained!

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E-commerce is highly competitive. For nearly every type of product, there are multiple sellers, marketplaces and brands selling it. So, how do you make your brand stand out? Through an effective e-commerce marketing strategy, of course. Your marketing strategy, if done right, can set you apart and potentially attract the lion’s share of customer attention. E-commerce marketing makes use of many affordable and easy-to-use tools to promote your products.
Concepts of E-commerce Marketing Explained!
Offline advertising relies on the ability of customers to touch and feel the products before they buy it. But, the reach is limited to the number of people present in the store at the time. Marketing for an e-commerce company or an online business is different in that it uses only the digital medium to advertise products and services and build brand awareness. In doing so, online businesses benefit immensely from the wide reach it offers.

The goal of e-commerce marketing is primarily to create awareness about products and services through various online platforms and then sell them. But before you dive into what works best for your e-commerce company, you have to understand the basic types of strategies used.

Here are some key e-commerce marketing insights to help you climb to the top of the e-commerce marketplace.

1. Product Recommendations

Product recommendations are one of the many ways to increase sales in a competitive industry. When you make a product recommendation, you showcase items that can anticipate and cater to the customer’s needs, without them needing to search for it specifically. These are the items that buyers have not seen but are similar to what they have purchased in the past. Providing relevant product recommendations can help you upsell and cross sell products.

Recommendations can be listed out in three ways. First, you can list out your own company recommendations. Second, you can highlight recommendations generated from wishlists that buyers create for themselves. Third, you can suggest items that complement what the customer is currently buying. For example, if they buy hair dyes, you can recommend hair-coloring brushes. Or if they buy tennis shoes, you can suggest socks or shoe cleaning items.

Here is how you can use product recommendations on your store.
  • Trend-based recommendations: You can recommend items to your users that are trending or currently in fashion. You can also recommend items that are popular in the customer’s geographical region.
  • Ratings-based recommendations: Products with good ratings and reviews can be recommended to users.
  • Purchase history-based recommendations: Customers are more likely to buy from your store if you recommend options based on their past purchases, based on their purchase history.
  • Offers-based recommendations: Let your customers know about the latest discounts, coupons and attractive deals on different products. Recommend such products to them.

2. Cart Reminders

Of course, there is no guarantee that customers will buy every item they have added to their carts. This is where you can use cart reminders to bring them back to your store. A cart reminder informs users about the non purchased products in their cart. If the user abandons their carts by either closing the cart page by mistake, due to technical issues or any other reason, you can remind them through cart reminders to ensure your products end up getting purchased.

Personalized reminders should include the buyer’s name and the product details. You can also provide additional discounts, free shipping offers, or other exclusive deals along with the cart reminders to lure the customers into buying their selected products. Besides emails, you can also use push notifications to remind customers about their pending transactions.
Cart Reminders

3. Wishlist Reminders

At times, the customer’s choice of products might not be available when they wish to place their orders. One e-commerce digital marketing tool that can be used to resolve this is a wishlist reminder. Some e-commerce marketplaces allow users to be notified once the products arrive by submitting their contact details. If the person is provided with an option of adding products to their wishlist, you can reach out to them when it is back in stock. This encourages them to revisit the marketplace and complete their transaction.

4. Product Sharing

Sharing an item on social media is another way to market your brand. You can create your own social media channel and post content about your products. Social media marketing is an important element of your internet marketing strategy. Once customers have purchased a particular product, it is always helpful to make provisions to allow them to tweet, post or share their thoughts about it on social media platforms. This form of referral marketing on social media is advantageous because consumers are more likely to buy a new product when they learn about it from friends on social media. It is quite natural for people to give a referral in return for some benefit. This benefit can be in the form of some incentive, membership to a loyalty program or even a shout-out on social media. So, it is important to encourage customers to share their experiences with your brand on social media platforms and reward them for doing so.
Product Sharing

5. Product Videos

Showcasing a video of the product is a great way to promote it. Videos, as a content format, often linger in the viewer’s mind longer than written content or even static visual content. Videos are highly shareable and can be shared on social media or your e-commerce marketplace. Your product video can simply show all aspects of the item and provide viewers with a 360° view or a tutorial describing its usage. For instance, if your product is a dishwasher, you can attach a video in the product description to show how it is meant to be operated.
Product Videos

6. Product Reviews

A product review is feedback from a buyer about your product or service. A review is an honest opinion from a customer that covers their shopping experience with your brand. This may also include their experiences with the delivery process, product quality, and customer service support, among others. So, ensure all aspects of your brand experience are of a high quality. If customers rate you well, other shoppers will be encouraged to buy your products.
Product Reviews

7. Personalized Website Content

Attractive presentation is the key to attracting more buyers. One major e-commerce advantage is its ability to personalize the content for buyers. If you sell your products on an e-commerce marketplace like Amazon, you can control what your buyers see. For example, you can choose the images and description to upload with a product listing. You can also improve the navigation and the layout based on the e-commerce marketing strategy you have created for your brand. Here are some tips on how you can personalize your offerings:
  • Create personalized homepages: You can collect cookies on your e-commerce website so that you know more about your potential customers. Cookies allow you to track the online activities of the visitors to your page. This information can help sellers personalize their online store’s page for every visitor. Online shoppers are fine with providing their personal information as long as it benefits them in some ways. You can use the information about the product categories that interests your customers to improve the customer’s shopping experience during their future visits.
  • Provide personalized on-site assistance: You can offer personalized guides to your visitors after making them answer a few questions about their taste, style choices, budget, size, etc.
  • Location-based customization: After receiving the visitor’s location through cookies, you can provide customized currency, size details, suggestions, and other relevant things. For instance, if a US-based user is looking for shoes on your marketplace, you can display the price in US dollars and change the size information to US sizes.
  • Customized on-site messages: You can provide different messages to customers who have already registered with your marketplace and different messages to first-time visitors. For instance, you can provide an incentive to first-time visitors to sign up and create a user account. Similarly, you can showcase popular products to registered customers. You can also offer discounts to shoppers who have removed items from their cart to lure them into buying those items.

8. Email Campaigns

Email campaigns are relatively easy to deploy, as you just need to collect the email addresses of your registered buyers and send them emails about new offers, new product launches, new store features, and more. The email addresses come from the registration process when a person creates a buyer account on your store.
Email Campaigns
You can send emails to customers with personalized messages wishing them on their special days, rewarding them or simply thanking them for the items they bought. Emails can also be used to let your customers know about new products, the items in their carts, exclusive coupons, offers and discounts. Email marketing is also a great way to connect with customers and request them to review your products. However, it is important to limit the frequency of emails. Even loyal customers may get annoyed if they receive multiple emails per day. E-commerce marketing experts need to be careful and refrain from spamming their customers’ inbox.

9. User Experience

User experience (UX) is determined by the presentation and layout of your store. And that’s where user interface (UI) or the means by which a user interacts with your store, plays an important role in providing a top quality experience to the shoppers. In fact, most successful e-commerce marketing practices excel at UX and UI. Ensure that your e-commerce marketplace employs all website sales best practices features to provide the best user experience. Everything on the e-store page should complement the main color palette. Pages should not be overly text-heavy and the text and font size should be tasteful, clear, and easy to read. The product pictures should be of high quality and must be coupled with accurate and detailed descriptions. Avoid cluttering the homepage with too many elements, but ensure that your brand name, logo, and tagline grab the visitor’s attention. It is also important to ensure an easy checkout process for the user.

A well-balanced store layout not only looks attractive but also helps customers easily navigate the product or service they are looking for. Ensure that all payment modes and social channels are well integrated. In fact, test run all the technical aspects of your store before you go live.

10. SEO on Product Pages

Product pages can be search-engine-optimized to help customers find a product easily. If a user is searching for laptops priced under Rs. 15000, they will use these keywords in a search engine. The search engine then shows them search results with those exact keywords. If your product listing page contains these keywords, it will show up in the search results. The keywords should be research-based, relevant and must be used in a natural way. Search engines send bots called crawlers to go through any website content and search for these keywords. Once these keywords are located by the crawlers, they are stored in an already existing database of related content. So, you must also ensure that your product page is SEO-friendly and that your content consists of the right keywords, which users will use to search for your products or services.

11. Integrating Social Media

Email campaigns are relatively easy to deploy, as you just need to collect the email addresses of your registered buyers and send them emails about new offers, new product launches, new store features, and more. The email addresses come from the registration process when a person creates a buyer account on your store.

12. Launching E-Store on Social Media

You can also create an e-store on social media platforms to sell products. Such stores can work well for both home-based sellers and big scale enterprises. Buyers can browse, buy, and share the items available on your e-store. It also helps to increase your web presence.

13. Rewarding your Customers

Customers will return to your site if they feel special. Loyalty programs allow you to provide your users with this experience. Loyal customers can be given special prices, free samples, and even discounted shipping on every order placed. The aim is to thank them for buying from you and encouraging them to continue the same.

Conclusion

If you implement these e-commerce concepts the right way, your store’s visitors may increase and help improve your conversion rate, potentially taking your business’ profitability to the next level. But, applying these concepts is not easy. The smart option is to build your e-commerce on a renowned marketplace like Amazon that will provide assistance in every aspect of your business. Click here to sign-up with Amazon.
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