7 Essential Tips for Ecommerce Marketing
Selling on the internet is neither automatic nor a guaranteed success. Although thousands of businesses of all sizes have made a success of it, many more have tried and failed. What’s the difference? More often than not, ecommerce sites are most successful when a successful marketing campaign is consistently in place. If people don’t know about you, they’re not going to be able to come and shop – it’s as simple as that. And even if you do have a marketing campaign in place there’s little to stop customers who bought from you in the past from not returning because your competitors’ marketing efforts are getting their attention. Here are 7 essential tips for ecommerce marketing that will help you develop the online business you deserve.
1. Product feeds: One of the best ways to get the word out about your products is through the use of Google Marketplace (formerly Google Base). This free service allows businesses to either upload an XML file or submit a live feed that displays all your products, pricing and images in Google’s search results. This way, every time a Google user looks for something you have, you have a chance to make the sale. Sure, not everyone will click through to your site, but at least you’re getting your products out there to compete for clicks.
2. Customer reviews: Make sure your site has an easy to use interface where customers can create reviews of the products you sell. Their, opinions and experiences can be shared and that can be very helpful information to your future shoppers. Besides providing content that enhances the value of your site to visitors, customer-provided reviews boost your search engine standings since the search engines like to see a steady stream of new content.
3. Be SEO conscious: It’s well known that both the structure and content of a website can affect the way it is viewed by Google and the other search engines. Therefore, SEO is a constant effort of evaluation and correction. Make sure you have relevant keywords and phrases so that people searching for products like yours can find you. Also, simple on-site optimization techniques such as creating internal linking, using header tags and having relevant metadata can make or break an ecommerce site.
4. Make your policies easy to find: One of the biggest reasons for customers abandoning their shopping is the unavailability of vital information. Customers want to know about shipping costs, processing times, payment methods, return policies, contact information and privacy. In sort, everything that you’d like to see when shopping should be part of your Web site. You can even make the transparency and accessibility of your store’s information one of your marketing points.
5. Encourage repeat customers: As with regular businesses, the majority of the marketing dollars are spent attracting new customers. Once someone becomes a customer, it’s a lot cheaper and more effective to get them to come back than it is to get another new customer. That’s why you should send out regular newsletters that have company and product news and special offers for returning customers. This helps you establish a customer base rather than trying to rely on one time customers for your livelihood.
6. Use social media sites: You might be weary of hearing about Facebook and Twitter, but if that’s where your customers are, that’s where you need to be. Social media presents great opportunities for people to learn about your products and follow your store inside the Web site where they spend much of their time. Some stores have even made it easy to buy their products directly from their Facebook presence, so customers don’t even have to leave Facebook to shop.
7. Get others on board: Every store should have money budgeted for marketing, so why not use some of that money to get other people marketing for you? By setting up an affiliate program, you pay other people for delivering clicks to your site and sales from your store. Some Internet users make their living but doing nothing else than directing traffic to their affiliates. This is a great way to boost sales and get constant, high quality traffic to your site.
This guest post was written by Tom Walker, a blogger who works with an online supplier of HP 300 inks and refills as well as other supplies. He is a regular contributor to their blog where he writes about advertising and design.
