There is a lot of experimentation in the industry and new techniques are coming up every now and then. But the biggest change has been driven by the internet.
People 20 years ago found new businesses by asking for their friends or family members or luckily if they found something in the papers or hoardings. But most local businesses could not take advantage of those marketing channels.
This is because customers did not have much choice and there was no way to find new businesses. Even if they found new ones, there was no way to know if they were any good. Because there were no customer reviews.
So people had to randomly choose businesses and hope for the best.
But when Google came along, these habits changed. Today, when someone needs to find a new product or any new information, the first thing they do is ‘Google’ it.
Search engines provide a lot of information about businesses. We can learn everything about everything with just a few clicks.
Naturally, most people look for new e-commerce businesses online, and businesses also have to make sure that they appear on the search results. Otherwise, they won’t be able to tap into this online market.
But in the last 20 years, search engines have changed a lot. The search algorithms have become more advanced. It is not possible to trick them to rank your page higher. Websites need to provide relevant and helpful content that users like.
Not just search engines, there is social media today. And it forms a big part of the strategy for digital marketing for e-commerce companies. Social media apps now offer the functionality where users don’t even have to leave the app to buy a product.
Business processes are transforming very rapidly thanks to different digital tools. E-commerce is one of the businesses that has seen high growth in recent years, especially due to the easy availability of raw materials and technical know-how and many channels to list products like Amazon and others.
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New trends are coming every few weeks in the e-commerce industry. Digital marketing is also seeing new techniques and systems. Digital platforms for selling and promotion are releasing new features and marketers are quick to adopt and take advantage of them.
But since there are new trends to be seen all the time in the e-commerce industry, it is important to know the latest trends and not risk becoming irrelevant. This is especially true for companies focusing on products for teenagers and young adults, for example, food, fashion, and automobiles.
E-commerce businesses will constantly need to update their digital marketing tactics to make the most out of their marketing budget.
There are many benefits to digital marketing for e-commerce businesses.
- It is especially beneficial to small e-commerce players because digital marketing can be done even in the smallest of marketing budgets.
- It has much higher penetration.
- The possible reach of digital marketing efforts is the highest of all marketing channels today with the spread of high-speed internet and the immense popularity of social media.
- The marketing campaign can be analyzed in real-time using advanced analytical tools and manipulated in order to be optimized.
- Any demographic based on age, gender, location, language, interests, likes, etc.
- The advertisements are highly focused in the sense that only those users that are potential customers are shown your ads. The audience that is not interested in a certain kind of product is not shown the ads, thus saving a bulk of advertising money.
E-commerce businesses have a great advantage in creating a powerful online presence. Businesses can show a huge variety of products. Interest in a product often leads to a sale on online websites.
This is because customers can access these shopping websites right from their homes. They do not need to even go outside. This removes the biggest barrier of distance. With the internet, markets have reached the home of the customer, always ready to show the products they like the best.
Websites and services like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra for fashion, food delivery apps like Swiggy and Zomato, and many more have made purchasing behavior incredibly simple. The only thing a user needs to do is open the app on their smartphone and browse.
With the help of these apps, users can now just select their item, add it to the cart, and pay online and get home delivery without even moving an inch. This is the age of instant gratification.
The growth of the ecosystem has been driven by technology and every e-commerce business must take advantage of this trend.
If you have an e-commerce business, here is how you can develop a digital marketing campaign or plan.
As you focus on the growth of your e-commerce business with the help of digital marketing, it is important to understand a few basics that will help you get the most out of your marketing budget. This way you can develop a better strategy for digital marketing for e-commerce businesses.
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Here are the characteristics of a good marketing plan to ensure the growth of a business:
Marketing goal/ objective
Start out by first deciding the big picture goal for your business. Do you want to increase the number of customers, or increase profit, and so on?
This big picture goal is based on conversations with mentors and advisors. This is a prerequisite to developing a detailed and specific marketing objective.
Once you have the big picture view of where do you want your company to be in a year or two years. It is time to sketch out a detailed marketing plan.
When preparing a detailed marketing plan for your e-commerce business, remember the SMART framework for goal setting. Any marketing objective must follow all criteria according to the SMART framework which stands for
S- Specific
M-Measurable
A-Achievable
R-Realistic
T-Time bound
It is important to have a very clear and specific aim out of your marketing plan. You need to decide between whether you want growth, or do you want increased revenue, increased profit, is your goal only brand awareness or do you want to promote a new product line.
The next criterion is to have goals that are measurable empirically. Increasing brand awareness is not a measurable goal but increasing profits by 15% is. If the goals are not measurable, you’d never know if you are achieving them or just wasting your money.
The next quality of a good goal is that it should be achievable. Goals must not be too lofty that they can’t even be visualized properly by your team members.
A goal must be easy to visualize and divided into smaller goals if it is too big. It must be realistic too. Your business should possess the means to achieve a target. If you expect a very big goal from a small marketing budget, this just makes it difficult for everyone, and the plan is doomed to fail.
One of the most important qualities of a goal is that there must be a time limit to when the goal should be achieved. There is not unlimited time. A goal without a time frame to achieve it makes no sense.
A good example of a goal that follows the SMART framework looks like this: “ increase online revenue by 10% in a quarter.”
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A marketing plan must also contain the mission statement and the purpose of the company. What is it that your company does and how does it solve the problems of the audience.
Know your audience
Every e-commerce marketing plan must be clear about which target audience is the one to which a product is aimed. The target audience or the buyer persona must be clearly specified.
With digital marketing for e-commerce businesses, you can target very specific demographics. This helps save the marketing budget and increase the ROI of the campaign.
A vague targeting will waste money and not be able to achieve the KPIs specified in the marketing plan.
Not just demographic but it is also important to target the individuals who are more likely to convert within a demographic. Some people may have all the qualities of the target audience but may be unlikely to buy products online, and only like to browse, It is a waste to target these individuals.
Some characteristics of a buyer persona include age, gender, location, purchasing power, interests, and preferences.
4 Ps of marketing
The 4 Ps of marketing is Price, placement, promotion, and packaging. While talking about a digital marketing campaign, we often forget the right pricing tactics.
Sometimes results from a plan for digital marketing for e-commerce businesses do not bear fruit without there being anything wrong in the marketing campaign.
The product must be priced according to the target audience and assessment of the competition.
The product placement and positioning must also be as per the competition. The product must have a separate quality that separates it from the rival products. If it has everything the same as the rival product, that has been around longer, your product will not be successful.
These were the prerequisites of a good marketing plan for an e-commerce business.
It is important for a marketing campaign to stand out from others. People are becoming immune to advertisements everywhere. Their span of attention is decreasing and an ad often has only a few seconds to gather their attention.
Now let us learn about the various channels or ways of marketing that should form a part of digital marketing for e-commerce businesses.
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the practice of optimizing your website to gain organic traffic from search engines by ranking high up in the search engine results page. This is a great opportunity for e-commerce websites.
This can help businesses get customers on to their website organically, without actual advertising. This is certainly the cheapest way to attract customers.
Another advantage of SEO is that it builds credibility and trust in the audience. High ranking on search results gives the perception to the user that the business is more suitable than the rest.
75% of users, on average, only visit the first 3 results on a Google search results page. And hardly anyone visits page 2.
The only resource needed to perform SEO is an SEO professional. The need for a professional is further increased when there is considerable competition in the market among similar brands and products.
