Competition is heating up once again across the eCommerce sector and marketing teams must rise to meet the challenge. Changing shopping habits, accelerated by the pandemic, now look like they’re here to stay.
We’re all spending more online and buying new types of products. This not only creates huge opportunities for online retailers but challenges, too. Businesses must fight for the attention of an often overwhelmed or distracted customer.
How to Hit Ambitious eCommerce Marketing Targets
If you’ve set yourself ambitious targets this year, there are many ways to take your marketing strategy to the next level.
- Optimize your email marketing so it delivers much greater ROI through multi-step customer journeys.
- Create original content and battle for the attention of your customer.
- Personalize your output and remember the human you’re speaking to.
- Diversify your social media approach and include “out of the box” platforms like TikTok and Reddit.
- Optimize for voice and wearables so you don’t simply rely on mobile and desktop campaigns.
Make your email marketing deliver.
Email marketing, long a staple of effective eCommerce marketing, is more relevant today than ever before.
As personal data becomes more difficult to obtain through online tracking, marketing teams are going back to the powerful datasets they already have from their email marketing campaigns. A great email marketing campaign can build on this foundation of data and lead to conversion and customer affinity.
Email marketing has always boasted one of the highest ROIs of any digital marketing channel. Despite this, many brands are not fulfilling their true potential.
Optimized campaigns take customers on a journey that truly feels personalized and, when automated with powerful tools like Sendlane, can be delivered at scale. These tools allow marketers to build customer pathways that gather relevant data with consent along the way, all while building brand loyalty and, ultimately, converting sales.
In many ways, email is one of the most personal forms of communication we have. It should feel special for the customer. So while marketing teams are thinking about the sales funnel, remember that it’s ultimately an ongoing conversation between you and your customer.
Create original content.
The world is full of content. Your customers expect to be able to see something new, exciting, and interesting pretty much whenever they want. Whether it’s a new show on Netflix or an update from their favorite influencer, people always have something fresh to view. Your best eCommerce marketing campaigns need to fight for these eyeballs.
The best way is to create original content. This might be a flashy new video, or perhaps it’s a useful “how-to” style blog.
At its core, though, it needs to be something that your target customers can’t get anywhere else. This ultimately drives traffic to your online store, while also connecting with the real needs and desires of your customers.
It can be tempting for marketers to cut costs by using content already out in the world, but if you’ve set yourself ambitious targets, you need to aim higher.
Before you get started, distill this strategy down to one core idea. Are you looking to entertain? Maybe you want to educate? Or are you trying to communicate your social purpose? Once you know what you want to say, work with your creative teams to build out a content series that can then be woven throughout your marketing campaigns.
Personalize your eCommerce marketing and make it human.
Whether or not content is great, however, is subjective.
Different people will have a different view on how useful and interesting a certain video, blog, or online quiz is to them. At the end of the day, all your customers are unique and they’re all human. The best marketing strategies recognize this and personalize it at every level.
This isn’t always easy. We live in a world where collecting personal data is becoming more restricted.
Marketers are faced with the complications of personalizing content in a world where cookies are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. However, while personalization is becoming more difficult, it simply means working smarter.
Personalization requires data, which increasingly requires consent. It’s therefore important that you give your customers a good reason to part with their data. If the quality of the content you supply them with increases when they share their data, they’re much more likely to say yes.
Take a very simple example of asking a customer to share their favorite fashion styles. If you then use that data to show them relevant “get the look” content, they’ll be happy to keep sharing. However, blast them with endless irrelevant ads and they’ll question why they shared their valuable data with you in the first place.
Get social across more platforms.
Social media platforms remain some of the marketers’ most important channels for their campaigns. From raising awareness to driving sales, to effective retargeting, social media has long taken up the attention of marketing professionals.
Anyone keeping an eye on social media behavior will know that the landscape is always changing.
TikTok continues its seemingly unstoppable rise across the world, forcing eCommerce brands to focus more on short-form video. Meanwhile, Reddit is growing in popularity and opening in new markets around the world, taking a different approach to data collection and advertising. All of this is set against a backdrop of mixed fortunes for Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.
Picking the right platforms, as always, depends on what your brand is looking to achieve and what audiences you want to reach.
But the best eCommerce marketing strategies don’t just take the easy route of using Facebook’s (and possibly Twitter’s) advertising platforms and calling it a day. TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, and more all have audiences that aren’t replicated on other platforms.
Brick-and-mortar retailers wouldn’t focus advertising on regions they don’t have stores in. Similarly, eCommerce brands shouldn’t advertise on social platforms where their customers don’t spend their time or pay attention.
Optimize for voice and wearables.
Odds are you’re reading this article on either a laptop or on your phone. Most of the content we consume is through a screen in this way. As a result, you should focus your eCommerce marketing strategies on mobile and desktop.
The best eCommerce brands don’t just stop there, however. We’ve filled our homes with more devices than ever before. This includes voice assistants and wearables like smartwatches. All of these are great channels with which to drive sales, particularly because you’ll face far less competition.
Optimizing your eCommerce marketing campaigns for voice can range from creating a specific “skill” for Amazon’s Alexa, or fighting hard to secure Google’s Featured Snippet which is usually the response read aloud by home assistants.
Meanwhile, marketing email campaigns should take note of the number of people who will preview them on a smartwatch. The need for snappy and concise copy has never been greater.
As spending begins to rebound around the world following the initial shock of the pandemic, eCommerce brands will naturally be setting ambitious targets. But a safe and steady campaign just won’t cut it amongst so much competition. This is where the expertise of an ecommerce branding agency can make a significant difference. Take these new approaches though, and your next-level marketing campaigns can attract new customers and drive online sales.
