Marketing is the lifeblood of any industry. E-commerce businesses are no exception. In this era where everyone can get information with just a click of a button, you need to step up your branding and marketing game to keep up with the cut-throat competition. As they say, what’s trending today may not be forgotten next month. This is where digital marketing comes into play.
Since e-commerce directly involves the use of the internet, digital marketing enters the scene, as it’s the most effective way to grow your business. Having no strategic digital marketing plan will only put your e-commerce shop at a disadvantage.
First, what is digital marketing?
Marketing plays a crucial part to drive business to your door, regardless of the type or size of the company and the product and services you offer. Marketing should be tailored to your goals and should be prioritized to achieve positive results.
In the past, posting an ad in the newspaper, passing out flyers, and advertising with a billboard allowed businesses to reach out to their target markets. Fast forward to today, the channel, information accessibility, competition, and even the consumers’ behavior dramatically evolved over the last few decades. This gave birth to what we call digital marketing today.
Like other forms of marketing, digital marketing is a strategy to raise brand awareness and action toward a business that sells its product or service. It is not an exclusive approach but should be multi-faceted. eCommerce marketers can use social media, search engines, digital content, video content, email advertising, along other platforms to connect to consumers and convert them to customers.
Why is digital Marketing so important in e-Commerce?
If you are a startup e-commerce business owner, you might have asked “do I really need digital marketing for my shop?”. The short answer is yes. In fact, you need a strong digital marketing and branding strategy today more than ever as new online stores continue to spring out in the marketplace.
Considering that e-commerce business is done online, digital marketing strategies are crucial to setting your brand identity and getting above the noise. When done the right way, you can acquire customers and create huge revenue.
According to a recent study by Statista, the number of internet users worldwide was 4.9 billion in 2021, which is 400 million higher than the previous year. While these numbers already speak a lot about the benefits of digital marketing, buying behavior has changed along with it too.
For instance, according to a recent analysis, 37 million social media visits led to 529,000 orders. Meanwhile, Shopify named Facebook as the top platform that generates traffic and has the highest conversion rate at 1.85%. Shopify also added that an average of 85% of all orders from social media come from Facebook as well.
It has become critical to capture customers’ attention because they are easily distracted; this is where Digital Marketing comes into play to assist E-commerce businesses in dealing with such challenges.
Not convinced how your shop can benefit from digital marketing? Continue reading to know the impacts of digital marketing on the e-commerce industry.
10 ways the digital marketing transform e-commerce business
Digital Marketing harnesses all appropriate marketing channels to make it easier for e-commerce businesses to reach their audience and drive positive results. Let’s look at ten ways and opportunities how it can transform your e-commerce business.
1. A single campaign can achieve mass reach
In the past, companies used to send separate letters to each potential client, which would cost a lot of time and money. Nowadays, you can achieve this easily and achieve even better results. Digital marketing is an online activity. Thus, it can reach global users at once. One can create email content and send a complete mailing list of customers with just the click of a button.
2. It connects you to the right audience at the right time
An effective digital marketing strategy allows you to identify and target the right audience. There are many ways to do this. For instance, in social media marketing, you have the power to present your ads to a certain audience based on their age, gender, location, interest, and networks. In search engines, you can also invest in SEO or PPC to deliver your content, when people search specific keywords related to your business, products, and services. In this way, your content which can serve as an advertisement will only appear to the people who need it at the time they need it the most.
3. Limitless channels
From social media to search engine optimization – there are a number of digital marketing strategies that are proven effective for e-commerce businesses. Digital marketing focuses on incorporating the right marketing channels where the e-commerce business benefits more.
There will be new digital marketing channels that will emerge in the future. You can expect that this channel will fall under the umbrella of digital marketing.
4. It offers measurable results
You can measure the effectiveness of your digital marketing effort. This is one of the biggest benefits that online shop owners can get. Unlike traditional marketing, you can see accurate results of your strategy in real-time.
On social media, you can see all impressions, shares, views, and clicks of your campaign. For your business website, you can view the exact traffic and your visitors’ behavior through analytics. Since you can track the results of your marketing efforts, it will be easier for you to measure your store’s ROI. What’s more, you can use all the data you have gathered by creating a more effective marketing or branding strategy in the future.
5. A cost-effective form of marketing
You can easily infer that digital marketing is more affordable than the traditional marketing approach, making it a perfect option for small e-commerce business owners. If you have little budget, you can go for social media, email marketing, content marketing, and SEO. These three strategies are proven to be effective, even with minimal spending.
Since digital marketing results are measurable, you can recognize all business opportunities to ensure you get the most bang for your buck. Using data analytics, you can calculate the performance of your campaign and understand your customers’ behavior. Using the data, you can adjust and focus on the right channel and strategy. Adjustments may be made to prevent wasting the campaign’s budget.
6. Enhances your conversion rate
As mentioned, the results of digital marketing are trackable. Understanding how each strategy performs can help you develop more effective strategies. Continuously refining your strategies can eventually improve your conversion rate. Investing in digital marketing ensures that everything is optimized for the highest amount of conversions.
7. Competition analysis
Knowing your competition and keeping eye on their strategies is an integral part of managing a business. It’s completely legal and you don’t need to be guilty about it. It’s always part of marketing strategy, allowing you to reflect on your strengths and weaknesses. You can also understand the keywords your competitor is trying to target. Digital marketing allows you to understand your competitors’ metrics and make necessary changes to your strategy.
8. It levels the playing field
Let’s face it. Small businesses find it difficult to compete with huge companies despite how good their products or services are. However, thanks to some digital marketing strategies small businesses have more chances to compete side-by-side in the marketplace.
Giving detailed information and creating consistent and quality content also clarifies customers’ doubts about your business or e-commerce shops. Strategies such as social media, blogging, affiliate marketing, and websites allow small businesses to rank on certain keywords and gain credibility.
9. Gains people’s trust
Consumers are smarter nowadays. They tend to research the products online before making a purchase decision. Google, itself supports this claim in a study they publish way back in 2019. According to a Google study, 82% of smartphone users say they consult their phones on purchases they’re about to make in a store. Now, if your business cannot be found online, then you are missing a lot of opportunities.
Your business website, social media, and other online platforms play an important part in your business branding and gaining credibility. Successful brands use multiple digital channels to shape their brand identity. Creating quality content such as blogs is useful for this as it can easily help you address your customers’ doubts. In making blog content, try to be the solution or answer to their problem. Consistently doing this can help you establish your expertise.
10. Improves customer engagement
Frequent communication and customer engagement are important in all businesses, especially in the e-commerce industry. Thanks to social media and chat applications, which enable direct connection with customers to answer their services or product-related questions. AI such as chatbots allows you to stay connected with your audience all the time. To create a deeper connection, it is recommended to stay in touch with your audience using personalized emails and social media engagement.
Digital marketing strategy that works for e-commerce business
Digital marketing is essential for business success. However, the results can vary depending on the strategy or the channel you chose to use. If you are unsure where to start in optimizing your marketing, it is recommended to partner with an agency that knows what they are doing.
For the e-commerce industry, Be Global E-commerce Corporation is your best choice. We have decades of experience working with different e-commerce businesses and online shops. We develop strategies based on the digital marketing needs of every client. There is no guesswork here as we strive at understanding your baseline first before recommending strategies for your digital marketing campaign.
Our team responds and adjusts strategies based on new insights and development. But we don’t expect you to take our word for it. Contact us to help you realize more business opportunities.
