Global trading over the internet is reaching unprecedented heights, with the ever-expanding eCommerce industry destined to reach and surpass 4.88 trillion US dollars in value by 2021. This means that online shopping is not only gaining in popularity across the world but that more and more aspiring eCommerce entrepreneurs are stepping into the game in hopes of snagging a sizable piece of the financial cake.
This also means that, however lucrative it might be, the eCommerce industry is a highly-competitive one, which begs the need for growth-oriented brands to step up their digital marketing game, stay on top of the latest trends, and drive innovation across the board. With that in mind, here are the five effective digital marketing tactics you should implement into your overall strategy to surpass the competition and pave the road to a successful, affluent future.
Exploit the endless opportunities of SM marketing
Social media is one of the most powerful mass media tools every 21st-century brand should aim to exploit to its fullest potential. After all, given the fact that some three billion people use social media on a daily basis, it would be a cry and shame if your eCommerce brand didn’t try to reach such an extensive audience and capitalize on such a rich pool of opportunities.
However, social media marketing is not just about being on social media, it’s about crafting and enhancing a comprehensive SM strategy that will drive people to your online store and inflate your organic click-through rate, ultimately boosting your conversions, engagement, and recognition in the industry. To achieve this, you will not only have to focus on relevant SM channels and monitor your KPIs, but you will also have to step up your content marketing game.
Boost your content marketing strategy
Regardless if you’re posting on social media or not (but please, do post on social media), you still need to invest in content creation in order to dominate the online playing field in terms of brand recognition, share-ability, SERP (Search Engine Results Page) positioning, engagement, and of course, traffic and conversions. This means you not only want to craft valuable, relatable, and engaging stories, but that you should also create content with SEO in mind in order to get on Google’s “white list”.
However, as and eCommerce brand, you want to focus on the following content tactics more than anyone else:
- Writing blog posts as engaging stories and not promotions of your products.
- Building an engaging brand identity with relatable and valuable stories.
- Diversifying your content pool with videos, tutorials, infographics, images, podcasts, live events, etc.
- Posting in regular intervals, and posting often.
- Tailoring your content to your target demographic using a unique tone of voice.
- Creating a strong value proposition in every piece of content you publish.
- Crafting an appealing CTA message that will incentivize the audience to visit your store.
Build an engaging online presentation
When it comes to making it big in the competitive eCommerce arena, website design will play a vital, if not the defining role. The keyword here is “full integration”, or getting a trusted digital agency to combine appealing visuals, stories, product descriptions and more into an amazing user experience with a beautiful interface and a simple yet effective roadmap from the home page to the checkout.
To achieve this, the visual design of your store not only needs to be creative and unique in order to stand out from the rest, but it should also be innovative, clutter-free, and engaging in a multitude of ways. This is why getting an experienced team to combine these elements into a great online presentation will be key.
Bring back potential customers with retargeting
No matter how much you shorten the road from your products page to the checkout, and no matter how engaging your copy might be, people are still bound to abandon their shopping carts for a myriad of reasons. Why you can’t do much to change their mind as they’re bouncing from your website, you can do plenty to catch up with them later, and get them to come back and finish their purchase.
To achieve this, you want to use retargeting software to your advantage, and get in touch with your potential customers with engaging emails, strategically-positioned ads on social media platforms, and more. Remember though, in order for this to work, you need to be more creative than asking people to come back – you need a great value proposition. So be sure to offer discounts, special deals, limited-time offers, coupons, and more.
Optimize your website for the mobile audience
The world is increasingly becoming a mobile-friendly place, and you can bet that the mobile audience will soon surpass the desktop faction. People are increasingly consuming content on the go, taking their social media feeds with them, and browsing the web on their smartphones. This means that at this very moment, people are trying to load your website on their mobile phones.
This also means that you have a golden opportunity here to appeal to a whole new audience, and convert a massive number of followers into paying customers if you simply optimized your store for mobile. Be sure to optimize product images, and scale your presentation to fit every screen size perfectly and cut loading times.
In conclusion
Making it big in the overly-competitive eCommerce arena is definitely not a walk in the park, as there is a need to invest in a comprehensive marketing strategy with accompanying tactics that will guide you towards recognition and success in the industry. With these insights in mind, though, you will have no problem staying one step ahead of the competition and elevate your brand’s standing in the industry.
