How to create a spotless digital marketing strategy for your e-commerce
By Estelle Liotard
Running an e-commerce store today requires a lot of effort and hard work. Regardless of what you are selling and who your target audience is, you have strong competitors trying to take a piece of your cake.
That means that you have to fight for your place in the market and work hard to win over new customers ― and retain existing ones. The only way to do this is to create a strong, effective digital marketing strategy for your e-commerce.
Building a marketing strategy is like building a house of cards. You have to lay solid grounds and carefully build on them from there. And, with the right guidance, it is far from impossible. This article will help you create a spotless digital marketing strategy for your e-commerce.
Let's break it down together.
1. Know your customers
The first thing you need to define is who is your target audience and what do they expect from you.
Building a digital marketing strategy means creating content with a specific set of people in mind. This is why you have to define your target customers:
- What is their sex?
- What is the age range?
- How do they spend time online?
- Where do they live?
- What is their social status?
Once you know the answers to these questions, you'll find it easier to produce significant content and build your digital marketing strategy toward the right goals.
2. Improve product visualization
Today, presentation is everything. People no longer want to spend their precious time reading explanations and long product descriptions.
They might go into such detail once they're interested, but you need to create the perfect hook.
Improved visualization of the products will get you more customers and will motivate people to go ahead and make the purchase. Therefore, you need to:
- Use high-quality product images
- Allow people to zoom in
- Add a 360-degree view
- Use 3D technology
Once you improve the visual aspect of each of your products, you'll see how beneficial for your marketing it actually is. People will spend more time getting to know the product and they'll feel like they know exactly what they're buying.
Capture from AliExpress
3. Use product videos
Product videos are another necessity when it comes to improving your digital marketing strategy. To make your e-commerce stand out from the rest, you should offer product videos.
Product videos should:
- Explain how the product is used
- Explain how to put the product together
- Show close-up footage of the product
- Show different purposes you can use it for
So instead of writing a mile-long instruction manual in the product description section, you should make things simpler for your customers.
Tell them everything they need to know in a single video and show them how the purchase will make their lives easier.
The simpler the presentation, the bigger the chances of people making the purchase.
4. Use social commerce
Capture from Instagram
When we are talking about digital marketing, we cannot forget about social media. Social media is one of the strongest and most powerful marketing tools today.
The best way to use social media for the purpose of advertising your e-commerce is to start using social commerce.
Social commerce allows people to find and buy a product by using your social media.
Consider product tagging on Instagram:
- a customer is looking at your Instagram page
- they see a product they like
- they just click on the post and see the tagged products
- the tag shows the price and leads them directly to your e-commerce where they can purchase it
Social commerce saves your customers time but also promotes your products in the best possible way. It will work wonders for your digital marketing strategy, so make sure you start using it as soon as possible.
5. Employ blogging
Blogging is another inevitable segment of your digital marketing strategy.
Running a blog can improve your digital marketing strategy and make it even more effective and productive. The blog section on your website should:
- Cover trending, niche-related topics
- Provide valuable information
- Give guidance to your customers
- Give them advice
To make each of your blog posts successful and inspiring, make sure that you rely heavily on search engine optimization (SEO). Optimizing your posts for search engines will increase your brand awareness and bring more people to your website.
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Capture from Babylist
6. Use email marketing
Email marketing can play a huge role in the way your customers perceive you. It is especially important for e-commerce since it allows you to communicate with your customers freely.
With email marketing, you get to send your customers messages such as:
- Reminders about abandoned carts
- Special offers
- Sales
- Knockouts
- Coupons and gift certificates
You can also send welcome emails to people subscribing to your newsletter and thank them for joining your little family.
7. Turn to user-generated content
Capture from Instagram
When people are buying things online, they usually do it with a grain of salt.
Is this seller trying to trick me? What does this product really look like?
To help your customers gain trust toward you and perceive you as a trustworthy e-commerce store, you should make use of user-generated content (UGC).
UGC is any comment, review or image made by one of your previous customers. People will share their experience with the product and you need to make sure other customers see it:
- Use and encourage hashtags on Instagram
- Create a comment section for each product on your website
- Repost images by your customers
- Ask people to give feedback
- Ask people to make a review
“People care about the quality of the product they're buying. A recommendation from an actual customer can sometimes send a stronger message than the advertisement made by the seller,” says Maya Lopez, a digital marketing specialist and a writer at
8. Personalize content
Personalization is another super-important element of your digital marketing strategy. When you make your customers feel special, you are encouraging them to like you even more.
When a customer feels closely connected to your e-commerce and your brand, you are looking at long-term loyalty on their side.
This is why personalization is important. Here's what you can do:
- Send personalized emails
- Make precise recommendations based on their previous purchases
- Analyze their wish-list to understand their interests better
- Adjust your messages based on the climate, social events and other local specifics
For example, at the end of January, you can recommend your Chinese customers things related to New Year, while you would be offering your customers from Australia summery stuff.
Final thoughts
Building a strong digital marketing strategy means being patient, dedicated and having a clear strategy to follow. Without a strategy, you can't go very far and the whole process will be a failure.
The advice above will help you define and create a spotless digital marketing strategy and bring your marketing game to the next level. Start working on it today.
Estelle Liotard is a writer and frequent contributing writer at GrabMyEssay and BestEssayEducation. She is an experienced content creator and a writer who excels in different spheres of marketing. In her spare time, Liotard enjoys quiet afternoons on her balcony and cooking.