9 Proven Marketing Strategies to Grow Your E-Commerce Business

Depending on what they’re selling, e-commerce business owners usually adopt a combination of marketing strategies to grow their businesses. They like to combine classic strategies, such as event promotions, paid ads and direct mail with modern approaches, such as content marketing, social media engagement and email outreach to get the results they desire. The rule of thumb however is that what works for you is what you use. If you run an e-commerce business and you want to grow the business, following are nine proven strategies that can be of help to you if you choose to use them.

1. Content Marketing

In digital marketing, content is king. Content marketing simply involves the creation of relevant, valuable content to attract, engage and retain a specific audience. You can package this content in form of blogs, videos, images, texts and infographics. The aim is to use them to increase brand awareness, establish expertise in a specific niche, foster strong connections with an audience and drive sales.

2. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a cost-effective marketing strategy that can be effectively used to drive e-commerce sales.  It helps businesses to communicate directly to consumers through their inboxes. Email marketing is not only cost-effective, it can be highly personalized. This is why e-commerce businesses can segment their email lists to specially craft and tailor messages to specific segments of their audience. By way of these targeted emails, e-commerce businesses can promote products, share news and build a community. Email marketing platforms usually allow marketers to track and analyze the success of each email. This is how marketers get to have valuable insights into their audience’s preferences.

3. Podcasting

Even though comparatively a new kid on the block, Podcasting has become quite a valuable marketing tool that lets e-commerce businesses owners talk directly to their target audience. With Podcasting, e-commerce business owners can delve into industry-specific topics to showcase their knowledge and establish their authority. The main advantage of Podcasts is that they can help e-commerce businesses nurture customer relationships by creating a personal connection with listeners. If well packaged and broadcast, Podcasts can help supplement a business’s content strategy by driving increased website visits, lead generation and conversions.

4. Social Media Marketing

This marketing strategy leverages on the huge popularity of social media platforms. Social media marketing thus allows e-commerce businesses to easily showcase their personality, share stories and connect with customers in real time. The vast reach of social media platforms means even the smallest business can amplify its voice, reaching new audiences and building a community around its business when active on social media. Exactly why social media marketing is an ideal cost-effective marketing strategy for e-commerce businesses looking to expand their presence on the internet!

5. Paid Ads

E-commerce businesses that have the resources can use paid ads to cut through the noise and ensure that their messages get in front of the right consumers. These ads can be used across multiple channels, such as search engines, social media and traditional media that offer a straightforward way to connect with a targeted audience. With valuable insights into tangible metrics—impressions, clicks, conversion rates and return on ad spend—marketers can easily monitor campaign performance closely and make adjustments as needed to optimize results.

6. Traditional Marketing

Technically, traditional marketing encompasses a range of tactics including print advertisements, television commercials, radio commercials, direct mail and billboards. Their major setbacks however are the huge costs involved in some of the techniques even though effective marketing strategies in their own rights. Traditional marketing is known for its non-targeted reach. Despite the rise of digital channels, traditional marketing still holds significant value, especially in reaching local audiences.

7. Gamification

Gamification is a marketing strategy that mixes the engagement of gaming elements with traditional marketing campaigns. It is another very effective e-commerce marketing strategy. Gamification involves using contests, challenges and reward systems to spark customer participation. This approach can range from loyalty programs that reward regular interaction with the e-commerce business to educational games that both inform and entertain. The inclusion of gamified elements, such as scavenger hunts or interactive quizzes can enhance user engagement in virtual events, making it a good and effective marketing strategy.

8. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Personalization

In today’s e-commerce business, AI is no longer just a fleeting trend. The way marketers embrace it is increasingly making it look like one advantageous marketing tool for the future. Because of its versatility, AI can be deployed to collect user data on behaviors, preferences and interactions. Marketers then use the data to personalize marketing campaigns. So, e-commerce businesses can thus use AI-driven personalization across email campaigns, social media, website design and more. This is with a view to increasing user engagement, boost conversions and foster customer loyalty.

9. Influencer Partnerships

Marketers have since discovered that influencer partnerships are an effective means to amplify e-commerce business reach and credibility. This is why they try to foster mutually beneficial business partnerships with influencers as much as they can. They easily turn to industry influencers. This is because industry influencers have a built-in audience and established authority that e-commerce business owners can leverage on to open their e-commerce businesses to new audiences. Sponsored posts, collaborative events and social media takeovers are the most popular partnership strategies out there on the internet.

Effective Website Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Online Business

Technically, websites are the centerpiece of your online business. They are online windows that help to provide your business insights to consumers, help you to sell products and services and generate leads. It takes quite some marketing techniques to get all these activities going satisfactorily. So, if your website isn’t working for you as you expect, you need some effective marketing strategies to get it to work for you as you expect it to. If you want your online business to succeed, you must have a marketing strategy in place on your website specifically designed to attract traffic to the website. The following strategies come in really handy in that quest.

Organic Social Media Marketing

Out there the internet, organic social media marketing is where you create a business social media account and push posts out to those who follow you. Such posts may consist of an ad, tip list or new products photos, making sure you provide the link to your website so that people can find and access your website easily from your social media posts. If your post is so well-liked and shared widely, it creates some viral effect that attracts organic social media traffic to your website. Through this traffic, you can get more leads, more followers and even make more sales.

Press Releases

Press Releases are great when your business has some news that you want to share with media outlets. PRs help to give media outlets enough information to understand the news and some basic info about your online business. If your PRs are picked up by media outlets, they may decide to feature your business in a news story at no cost. PRs help your business to expand its reach very widely and very quickly thereby helping the business to attract the much needed traffic back to your website. These releases can help to give your business brand credibility thereby distinctly setting the business apart and even making you a leader in your industry.

Search Engine Marketing

Google search usually turns up some top of the search results as “sponsored results.” These sponsored results are mostly paid ads by businesses listed in the search results. These are well targeted ads that usually point to a specific page on the website that meets the search intent. This sort of targeting is centered on specially selected keywords related to the website of the business. In search engine marketing, users always have the option of clicking on a sponsored link or going for the organic results. A business using search engine marketing aims to make its sponsored link so enticing that it best matches the user’s search intent. That best encourages more clicks and consequently more traffic.

Influencer Marketing

A business that uses Influencer marketing aims to open up its business to a loyal audience someone else has already grown. That someone else is the Influencer who already has some hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. This is always a ready audience to market to. Either as a commissions earning affiliate or with some other inducement, an Influencer can directly market the business to its followers which otherwise the business will never have had access to. Some Influencers can even directly sponsor/promote a business to their followers. Such relationship usually translates to more and better incentivized traffic back to the business website.
 
Email Marketing

Even though it has been around for quite a while, email marketing still remains a popular method used to market websites. First you’ll have to build an email list over time. It is this list you’ll have to be sending periodic emails inviting them to your website for more info, new products or even deals. You’ll get more and better responses to your emails if they cover a wide range of topics such as product promotions and sales, discount coupons, tips and tricks and loaded info to provide real value for your email subscribers. Even though emails lists take quite a while to build, they can be great marketing tools if they manage to get readers to open and read. Better still if the emails are able to get the reader to click the link back to the business website which may be the home page or a special page promoting a product/service.

SEO and Content Marketing

SEO is a technical term referring to the use of certain keywords in the content of your website with a view to helping the website to rank high on Google SERPs if and when someone searches for that keyword term. With SEO, all traffic is organic which makes it highly valuable. If your website content ranks organically, it increases the chances of people clicking through to your content through searches if they use the right terms and keywords. This is why content marketing falls into the category of SEO. It enables marketers to deliberately create content packaged in form of blogs or products review to sell a specific product/service. When the content is written well with the right mix of keywords and search terms, it will rank high in the SERPs of search engines. That translates to good organic traffic.

Guest Posts and Guest Blogging

It can be a good marketing strategy for your own website if you are writing posts or a blog for another website with links back to your website. This is either by guest posting or guest blogging or both. Regularly creating content for another website with a link back to your website is thus a great website marketing strategy. The idea is to creatively expose your own website and products to another website’s audience. Doing this helps to extend your business reach by taking advantage of another loyal audience of readers. This is one great way to get more clicks and ultimately good traffic back to your website.
 
Referral Programs

What a referral program does is to give incentives to the loyal followers of your business when they refer others to the business. Such incentives may be a gift or a special coupon code they can use to get them a discount. The idea behind a referral program is that everyone knows someone who knows someone else be they family, friends, and acquaintances. Most people generally trust the judgment of family and friends when it comes to buying products/services. The reason they’ll first ask for recommendations from such people before making purchases. That is where referral programs become highly valuable as marketing strategies. Technically, as more and more people get to know about a referral program, the easier it is to start building word-of-mouth campaigns which ultimately help the business to sell more products/services.

Online Reviews

Asking your consumer to give a review about your product/service is a great way to build brand awareness and consumer trust. That’s where online reviews become good website marketing strategies. For good business reviews, businesses can take advantage of a lot of review sites out there on the web. Popular sites like the Better Business Bureau (BBB), Trustpilot and Yelp can be of help. Just have your detailed business profile online and the review site links back to your website. This helps your business to build valuable backlinks that can help to enhance its SEO. You may choose to encourage reviews by simply asking for them. There’s nothing wrong with doing so. Alternatively, you may choose to give some sort of incentive such as a discount on future services to entice people to leave a review.

Paid Social Ads

If you need traffic and you have the resources, you may want to pay for social media ads. Social media ads are the sponsored posts that appear in social media feeds. Such ads are usually designed to target a specific demographic. They are about the most effective ads you can find in today’s market because of the peculiarities of social media. Many social media sites are not only hugely popular, they also have a lot of personal information of their millions of users stored up. This valuable info allows the sites to put a specific ad in front of an interested buyer fairly easily.

Last Line

The internet is such  a vast network that can help any business to grow rapidly. Businesses can always take advantage of the internet using their website strategies to build their brands, sell more goods/services and enhance their online reputation. Most smart business owners know they can’t afford to ignore the importance of a website to help them drive sales. But first such business websites must be found easily on the web before they can effectively render such assistance. For most websites to be easily found therefore, specific marketing strategies must be put in place to enhance the websites to enable them attract new visitors. This is exactly why effective website marketing strategies become really important. These strategies come in really handy to help a business tell its target market about its website and the products/services being marketed on the site.