The world has embarked on a transition from traditional brick-and-mortar stores to online digital businesses. Since the advent of technology, primarily the internet, this transition was slowly being implemented. However, things have accelerated post the pandemic. In 2020, 2 billion Consumers have shopped online and generated $4.2 trillion in online sales.

These numbers have encouraged more and more businesses to shift their attention towards online sales and digital Marketing. This shift has manifested itself into a cut-throat competition between e-commerce businesses. These businesses are racing against each other, trying to tap into the same consumer base, which has resulted in saturation in the market.

Digital marketing is a great tool to work past saturation and convert potential consumers into buyers. There are several advantages to implementing digital marketing strategies for your online business.

Digital marketing creates brand awareness and increases visibility. It is cost-effective and has a wider reach. It will also facilitate high conversions, which contribute to high revenue generation. Since e-commerce businesses are completely functioning online, it makes sense that digital marketing is the only bridge between the business and its consumers.

Top 10 Digital Marketing Strategies for eCommerce

These top 10 digital marketing strategies for ecommerce businesses will aid you in expanding your reach and generating more sales. They are:

1. Actively Influence Consumers

This strategy is a blend of traditional and modern marketing practices. Regardless of providing the best visual treat and seamless user experience, if you do not indicate consumers to buy, they will abandon their carts. Your e-commerce business is missing out on valuable sales due to over-the-top distractions and flashy features.

Here is where the less is more approach deems beneficial. Similar to face-to-face marketing, asking consumers to make the purchase clearly and simply is a guaranteed way of ensuring sales. A simple route with clear links suggesting shop now or buy now is the way to go. This plan, blended with exciting discounts and offers, is bound to generate more revenue. It is a subtle yet powerful way of encouraging consumers to make purchases.

Strategic upselling, cross-selling, and CTA placements influence consumers to up their budgets and expand their shopping lists. This will contribute to better revenue generation. Fashion retailers like Urbanic and Fashion Nova have optimized their strategies to influence consumers to make more frequent and high-quantity sales.

2. Optimizing Your Social Media

Social media users are an endless pool of potential buyers. The approach here is a long-term benefit rather than immediate results. Your e-commerce social media sites must be optimized to convert viewers into customers. With social media platforms having billions of users, sales and revenue can be generated by analyzing the latest trends and creating innovative content.

Having dynamic and engaging content on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest helps in identifying the ideal consumer base and marketing products to cater to their needs. The Dollar shave club is a genius in video and digital marketing. They develop innovative and relatable video concepts and market these on YouTube.

ASOS is a fashion brand known for its visual and aesthetic approach to marketing. Hence, they have fully optimized their Instagram feed to attract ideal consumers thereby multiplying their sales.

Similar to these e-commerce businesses, you need to finalize your medium for social media marketing and customize content accordingly. Video and long-form content for YouTube and aesthetic and trending content for Instagram. Mood boards and aspirational content for Pinterest and finally simple yet impressionable listings on Facebook would be the ideal approach.

3. Creating an Effective Email Marketing Strategy

Email marketing is a great strategy to establish a reliable and personalized channel for communicating with your consumers. It functions as a fully optimized funnel as it filters out the consumer pool and only retains the high-probability customers. This saves both time and resources.

There are 5 important categories of emails that need to be directed toward your consumers. Welcome emails wish list reminders, emails informing about sales or discounts, and emails in the form of surveys to collect valuable feedback from your customers. These emails, when sent out consistently, will keep your consumers engaged in between their purchases. It will also make sure that your business is always at the back of their minds.

envelopes.com is an e-commerce business that develops and sells customized envelopes. They have an excellent email marketing strategy which was created post research and analysis of their website data. They devised three kinds of direct emails to cater to the abandonment at different stages like cart, payment, and product choice. Drift, PayPal, and BuzzFeed also have optimized their email marketing strategy to generate maximum conversions and sales.

4. Listing Reviews to Build Credibility

Consumer reviews are a great marketing tool to generate organic buyers. It paints your business in a credible and authentic light which facilitates an influx of sales. 92% of consumers have expressed their trust in consumer reviews over any other channel of marketing. Hence, strategic placement of reviews along with listings of your e-commerce product is an ideal approach.

Reviews allow for the exchange of information between consumers, which functions as an unbiased source of information. They also function as a reliable feedback source that helps your business devise better quality services and products. They play a key role in the SEO of your business, thereby improving your search rankings.

Businesses of all scales and magnitude ensure to include product reviews in their marketing strategy. All major e-commerce businesses like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Ajio, and Nykaa have mobilized their reviews. They encourage consumer testimonials supported by pictures and videos to help translate the experience and quality to other consumers.

This is a great strategy that simultaneously increases brand value, brand awareness, and credibility.

5. Develop and Market a Unique Brand

Branding is everything today. The right branding strategy WILL make or break your business. In a world where businesses are limited to similar products and a scarcity of resources, uniqueness and individuality are difficult to source. However, once your niche and brand identity are established, the right plans can be developed to market the same to your consumers.

There are several benefits to having a unique brand identity and marketing it to your consumers in an authentic manner. A unique brand is a memorable brand. When you market your e-commerce business by focusing on the individuality aspect, it is bound to strike a chord. It ensures that your consumers resonate with your brand message and make efforts to show their support. It acts as a great barrier to separating your business from the market competitors and increasing sales and revenue. Branding allows for your Unique Selling Proposition or USP to be relatable and engage your consumer base the right way. An effective branding strategy facilitates quality content creation and also permits future scaling of your business.

Brands like Dior, Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen, and Prada have established their identity as luxury fashion brands. Fashion Nova, ASOS, H&M, Zara, Shein, Forever21, and Boohoo occupy the affordable spectrum and exclusively market to their clientele. Each of them has its unique brand identity and markets it accordingly.

6. A Seamless Customer Experience Using Technology

Customer experience is integral to the sustenance of any business. It reflects the brand value and facilitates the conversion of more users into buyers. Therefore, an adequate investment of time, capital, and resources into developing a smooth experience for your consumers is a necessity.

A website and application that adapts to different devices is the first major convenience that needs to be provided to your consumers. Quick and seamless navigation through your e-commerce sites and easy access to filters and necessary information helps ease the customers.

Flexible delivery options and payment methods ensure completion of purchases and guarantees revisits and future sales. Chatbots and trained customer care professionals provide consumers with much-needed assistance thereby making their shopping experience more pleasant.

And finally, small but powerful personalization gestures help engage the customers and forge a valuable bond. Personalization in the form of congratulatory messages/emails, discounts and offers, and updates on new launches enlighten your consumers about your approach to business. All of this combined provides a pleasant shopping experience which makes the whole thing seem like a stroll in the park.

FedEx, Amazon, and Apple are some of the businesses which have exceptionally curated consumer experiences. From the beginning to the end, they guide and follow through with the consumers virtually. This reflects their brand value and encourages consumers to become loyal customers of these businesses.

7. Collection and Analysis of Data Using Technology

If you wish to treat your customers to a high-quality shopping experience with an inventory of mind-blowing products, it is important to know their preferences. This is where collecting user data and analyzing it comes to play. Several tools can be utilized by you to collect credible user data. With this information, your business can move strategically and generate higher revenue.

Gaining insight into the likes and dislikes of your consumers has many benefits. It allows your business to develop high-quality products and services that are in trend. It allows you in curating the best customer experience, which manifests in revisits and future purchases. Increases brand value and awareness and also the quality of content that you are putting out.

But above all, it gives you valuable feedback about your marketing strategy. This will allow your e-commerce business to audit the existing tactics and replace them with innovative and data-driven ones.

There are several methods of collecting user data. Through email surveys, google forms, location-based advertising, built-in provisions like insights from Instagram, and sophisticated software, also known as data extraction tools. Teamscope, KoboToolbox, REDcap, Magpi, and Survey CTO are just a few of the tools that are available for collecting and analyzing user data ethically.

8. Optimizing your Brand Visibility

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the perfect approach to increasing the visibility of your e-commerce business online. It helps improve your search ranking through carefully implemented strategies. And it also generates organic traffic, which is a much-needed asset to build your business credibility.

There are innumerable benefits of SEO, among which cost-effectiveness and high ROI occupy the top tier. Technical and content audits are performed on the website of a business to identify gaps in its reach. Through the analysis of these gaps, effective plans can be developed to fix them. Keyword search is a crucial aspect of SEO. Tools like the Amazon keyword tool and Ahrefs can be utilized to analyze and implement effective keywords to generate more traffic.

Semrush, Buzzsumo, Google Analytics, Google search console, and Hubspot are some of the most commonly used SEO tools. SEO will facilitate your business to rank higher in search engines, thereby generating higher-quality organic leads with high conversion rates.

Woot, Macy’s, Etsy, Amazon, and Overstock are some of the e-commerce businesses which have optimized their online presence effectively, resulting in high revenue generation.

9. Beneficial Partnerships and Brand Placements

There are several benefits to strategic partnerships between e-commerce businesses. It is a great way to change things up and engage consumers and also expand into different consumer bases. Partnerships allow brands to exchange valuable user data and thereby facilitate the curation of high-quality user experience. And finally, businesses can exchange ideas and strategies and gain equal access to the profits gained.

Nordstrom partnered with home product retailers during the pandemic to create a one-stop shopping destination for its consumers. The partnership between West Elm and Piecework puzzle is a great way to exchange channels and facilitate small-scale businesses to break into a wider consumer market.

Clever product placement influences the consumers and makes them gravitate towards your business. Placements through high-buzz celebrities and movies or TV shows is a traditional marketing tactic that is highly relevant to this day. It deems your business and product much more credible and desirable.

Audi in Iron Man, Etch-a-sketch in Toy Story, Reese’s Pieces in ET, and Nike in Forrest Gump are some of the classic examples of the buzz and marketing one can generate through calculated product placement. By analyzing these cases, e-commerce businesses can approach like-minded mediums to maximize their reach. For example, if your brand sells skin care products, placing them in the storyline of positive characters in movies, web shows, and TV shows is a great way to market to your consumer base.

10. Retargeting and Staying in Trend

Retargeting works on the principle of reminding consumers to complete their purchases. Reports suggest that consumers need to be exposed to any product at least 7 times before they make a purchase. Hence, retargeting based on accurate user data is a great way to convert leads into sales.

Emails, social media, and paid ads are the three most commonly utilized retargeting tools. There are several benefits to retargeting. It helps narrow down your consumer pool and curate custom ads specifically for a narrow group of consumers with high chances of conversion. It creates brand awareness and high ROI and increases the credibility of your e-commerce business.

Ruggable, Storyworth, and Warby Parker are three of the businesses that have fully optimized their retargeting strategy resulting in high user engagement.

Observing and analyzing the latest trends in marketing and content creation will facilitate better vision planning and goals. Clear and effective strategies that resonate with your consumers can be developed to benefit your business.

Conclusion

Optimizing your digital marketing strategy is pivotal to the success of your e-commerce business. With technological advancements and the pandemic having accelerated the engagement and relevance of online businesses, the competition is tense. By conducting consistent research and analysis of competitors, you can gain valuable insight into what works and what does not. 

With this information, few or all of the above-mentioned strategies can be developed to meet the demands of your business. A customized strategy implementation plan can be developed to increase consumer engagement and revenue by factoring in the latest user data.  Let go of traditional marketing tactics and adapt to digital marketing to secure the best piece of cake on the table – more revenue for your brand.