Your ecommerce business, like a car, has moving parts that all work together to keep it running and moving forward. Consider your marketing activities as an engine that propels your brand and business ahead to achieve positive outcomes. But how can you get that marketing engine going and keep it going?
Analysis is the first step.
Internal analysis is the first step in supercharging your marketing. You must assess your company’s existing status. How much traffic do you get, and how well do sales convert? Examine the data in your Google or Shopify Analytics. It’s time to optimize your internet presence if you’re not gaining traction. Inconsistent outcomes can also indicate that you aren’t doing enough of what works. Look for traffic spikes and sales to determine whether promotions were successful.
The seven most significant aspects of your internal digital scenario should also be included in your internal analysis:
Website
What is the source of your online presence? Do you have a WordPress, Etsy, or Shopify store? Every company has its own set of best marketing practices. Etsy, for example, has an ad campaign and an internal system for getting things noticed. WordPress has a number of SEO tools and plugins, such as Yoast, that can aid in the optimization of your marketing efforts. Additionally, Shopify provides hundreds of plugins and tools for cross-selling and properly structuring your business.
Here’s the reality. Not every marketing strategy will translate well to many platforms. For your specific selling platform, research resources and best practices.
Blog
Your ecommerce blog is a great place to start experimenting with content marketing. Selecting the correct keywords and polling your readers on what they want to read might help you shape your content. Produce interesting DIY tutorials, create case studies around your goods, and launch a video series about your products if you’re new to ecommerce blogging.
SEO
The goal of most ecommerce company owners and anyone with an online presence is to rank on the first page of Google. You may not be able to rank for every keyword, but you should be able to rank for a selection of search terms that are really relevant to your business.
The Internet and Social Media
Some online entrepreneurs use social media for all of their marketing and sales operations. But, rather than diluting your efforts, are you focusing on platforms that work for your business, such as Instagram or Pinterest? Make it a mission to become an expert on social media by keeping it updated on a daily basis. What is your post’s engagement rate? Which content is most effective for your company?
Marketing via email
For most online firms, email marketing is a viable marketing technique. According to research, the average email open rate is 21%. A welcome email, on the other hand, has an average open rate of 82 percent. Understanding how to use and improve your email list for results could result in a flood of conversions and purchases.
Advertising on the Internet
When it comes to ecommerce sales, organic reach isn’t everything. To run advertising for your business, pick your chosen platform and use the built-in metric tools. Start with Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, and LinkedIn Ads.
Analytical Web
You can build a good marketing strategy, but without web analytics, you won’t know how your firm is doing. What is the average number of visitors? What are the most popular pages? What is the total number of conversions? What is the average time spent on the page?
External Evaluation
It’s time to turn our attention to External Analysis now that we’ve covered Internal Analysis. The first stage is to conduct extensive research into your target market and industry, as well as new trends.
What you do next will depend on whether you’re competing in a mature or emerging market. In a mature market, there is a lot of competition, however in an emerging industry, there isn’t much.
Most ecommerce sellers are aware that defining their target consumers aids in the refinement of their marketing engine and strategy. However, there may be many target audiences in some circumstances. For instance, suppose you sell both men’s and women’s apparel to consumers over the age of 50. Creating a profile of your prospective clients based on their interests, activities, issues, and demographics will help you optimize your marketing strategy even more.
By investigating your most immediate competitors, you can make the external analysis process easier. Examine their digital presence, content strategy, how they interact with their social media following, and any other indications to their online presence that might help you understand what they’re doing well and what you can improve.
Step 2: Establishing Goals
To help shape your results, a good marketing plan necessitates certain objectives. It’s also vital to measure your strategy’s return on investment (ROI) in order to set particular, SMART objectives: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
Here are some examples of the various types of objectives you might include in your marketing strategy:
Promote your company and the services or products you sell through branding.
Optimize web positioning and boost organic traffic with SEO.
Leads: Create a database of potential clients in order to develop a relationship with them through email marketing.
Increase the number of people who buy your products or hire your services.
Customer retention and loyalty: by offering special deals, you may enhance your relationship with your customers.
For your marketing plan, choose three or four SMART targets. Listed below are a few examples:
In six months, increase visitor traffic by 20%.
In just three months, you may cut your bounce rate by 10%.
In just four months, you can increase qualified lead conversions by 30%.
In just six months, you may get a 45 percent open rate in email marketing.
Increase your online store’s sales by 15% in 6 months.
Step 3: Tactics and Strategies
You’ll need a strategy and action plan to get there now that you’ve identified your goals. How are you going to put those strategies into action and achieve your objectives?
The first goal is to improve organic web positioning.
– Plan: start a corporate blog and optimize the content.
– Strategy: publish instructional pieces and update existing content.
Objective 2: Increase the number of qualified leads.
– Create a landing page as a strategy.
– Strategy: Host a free webinar or write an ebook.
Reduce cart abandonment as a third goal.
– Plan: enhance the user experience.
– Strategy: examine the order form.
Increase the company’s visibility as a fourth goal.
– Plan: Establish a Facebook page and a YouTube channel.
– Strategy: Make educational information and tutorial videos available.
Action is the fourth step.
How will you put those marketing goals into action? Designing an action plan that determines what, how, when, where, and to whom you conduct your actions is required.
Each step of your strategy must be included in the action plan to assist you achieve your goals. Action planning should be done for six months (minimum) or twelve months (maximum) as a general rule of thumb (recommended).
Measuring, Measuring, Measuring
A means to measure the results and return on investment is also required in an action plan. Keeping track of metrics isn’t fun, but if you don’t do it, you’ll be squandering time and money.
Make a monthly report containing the primary measures or KPIs to see if you’re meeting expectations. Keep track of metrics so you can fix what isn’t working and replicate what is.
Add More Fuel to the Fire with Promotional Items
Promotional products help consumers remember your company and your message, resulting in a favourable impression. When your consumers wear your T-shirts or use your coffee mugs, it’s also a chance to promote your brand offline.
You don’t even need to know how to customize white-label products to make them look like your own. CustomCat provides print-on-demand services, allowing you to quickly generate high-quality, branded items.
Want to learn more about how CustomCat can help you supercharge your ecommerce store and make more money?
