What is eCommerce Marketing? Ideas, Tools & Strategies for Growth in 2021

Ecommerce Marketing Ideas And Tools For Growth

You have to be living in a cave if you’ve not been shopping and browsing eCommerce platforms in 2020! A trend that emerged in 2014, the leading eCommerce giants have changed how we shop and buy products, and honestly, things have never been the same. 

If not all, the year 2020 has brought us close to eCommerce, showing a growth of up to $215 Trillion. With Covid-19 being the situation and random lockdowns across different countries worldwide, eCommerce solutions have played an integral role in our survival. 

Today, online marketing is the center of attention for almost every business platform and is the best practice for driving customers and sales. It is an improved and better approach to traditional marketing where the brands can come up close and personal to their prospects in a much cost-effective way. 

The mix of different analytics and trends obtained via regular interactions with the customers helps online businesses operate seamlessly and make better decisions without wasting time and effort. Further, the rise of online marketing has made AI and ML automate marketing’s major processes. 

With the world to explore over a few clicks, online marketing sets the global stage for you. However, the term ‘online marketing’ is just the tip of the iceberg. 

When you dive a bit deeper, online marketing is further segregated into several formats, with eCommerce marketing being a primary focus. It is the essence of all the online shops that we enjoy shopping these days.

Sounds interesting, right? Let’s have a look at what eCommerce marketing is.

What is eCommerce Marketing? 

One of the significant sections of online marketing is eCommerce marketing. It is the art of driving awareness about a brand and devising strategies to increase its products and services over an online platform.

To break it down, eCommerce marketing can be explained in three different steps:

  • Driving relevant traffic to your online store.
  • Converting the relevant traffic into leads.
  • Converting leads into customers and driving successful sales.

Let’s understand the above concept with an example.

You have an eCommerce store catered to sportswear and accessories. In this scenario, your targeted audience should be the people that are active buyers of sports and fitness products. You can drive this traffic to your platform by pushing your digital presence over specific platforms where your audience is likely to be active – likes of Facebook, Instagram, or Youtube. 

When you are able to drive traffic on your website from your desired leads, you entice them with personalized products and offers/discounts that will push your leads to conduct sales. 

Post-sales marketing, including personalized packaging, sending in customized emails, and offers, can help change one-time customers to loyal ones resulting in a frequent purchase. 

The example explained above sums up an entire cycle of eCommerce marketing. 

However, the rising competition over the eCommerce business demands something more than just setting up campaigns. Today, modern marketers need to get their hands on dynamic marketing tools & ideas to stand out of the crowd and get their business’s desired attention.

 When you set your ideas strategically, you accelerate the effectiveness of your campaign. To help you out with the same, we have come up with a list of 10 eCommerce marketing ideas for improved sales in 2021.

Top 10 eCommerce Marketing Ideas to Use in 2021 

1. Pay per click or paid ads

Using Pay-per-click advertising for your eCommerce store is one of the best tools to help you provide the right exposure to your brands. Their nature makes PPC advertising the right fit for every business, allowing users to pay per click over your ads. Interestingly, when you opt for the paid ads strategy, you only pay for the number of times your ads are clicked.

Another added advantage of using a Paid ads strategy is that you can use several platforms to serve your ads, some of which are explained below:

Google Shopping Ads: Google Shopping ads are rich in product information and are used to reach out to potential customers. Therefore, we suggest you use such forms of advertisements for keywords based sales.

Display Advertising: Display advertising is the generic form of graphic advertising that is showcased over different social platforms. Their generic nature makes display advertising a go-to option when introducing your product to the market or announcing promotional offers. 

Retargeting Ads: Retargeting Ads are advertisements based on the interests of the website visitors towards your products, working like a follow-up. Therefore, we suggest you try retargeting ad campaigns over your warm leads and visitors who have spent time over your website, higher than average.

Tips

  • Use PPC ads for products that have a high keyword density
  • If you are new at Google Adwords, we suggest you understand the platform’s basics before spending on such paid adverts.

2. Content marketing

When you are the owner of a successful e-commerce site, you know for a fact that your conversions are the key to survival. And, a massive chunk of your conversions relies on the content marketing strategy you’ve applied to your business.  

Content is essential because using relevant content for your eCommerce store can give you an edge over others as it differentiates you from competitors. Implementing a successful content strategy is like building a relationship with your customers and building brand loyalty. 

Therefore, to reap the benefits of content marketing over your eCommerce business, start by building a product or service guide/videos to help your customers.

Tips

  • Every product is different, and so is their advertising need, so strategize accordingly. 
  • You should design your content based on the audience that you are targeting.
  • Your content should be a persona of the values that you want to portray to your customers.

Remember, having a nice content strategy counts for some of the best eCommerce marketing ideas.

3. Delivery and unboxing experience

Including your customers’ delivery video on your website is like adding that last bit of trust you need to add before conversion. However, there’s something more that can be added and matters:

Shipping Box design: Your shipping box design tells your brand’s story. Today, customers want something more than just a box containing goods. Moreover, the rise of pollution has made a mass section of consumers concerned with what they receive and how.

Coupon codes inside the box: Adding coupon codes inside the box is like adding a token of appreciation for your customers; this way, you build loyalty towards your brand. Further, these coupon codes are a great way to upsell your products.

Unboxing videos: Providing your customers with unboxing videos provide them with a first-hand experience of your delivery, allowing them to assess your products’ quality. 

Tips

  • Opt for a minimalist approach when you design the package of your product.
  • Your packaging should be able to dictate your brand’s story to your customers.
  • Focus on building an eco-friendly packaging solution.

4. Email marketing ideas

Your email marketing strategy has a lot to do with your sales and conversions. In fact, email marketing campaigns count for one of the best eCommerce marketing ideas. Having the right approach for every step of lead conversion down the funnel assures sales. Therefore, we suggest you prepare different email contents for every step, ranging from your new customers’ onboarding to the sales receipt sent after-sales. 

Tips

  • Keep your emails short but consistent.
  • Stay focused on the motive behind your emails.
  • Stay in touch with dormant leads but don’t bombard their inboxes every day.

5. On-site marketing

In layman’s terms, on-site marketing is like marketing over your website. This form of marketing comprises an array of elements that are responsible for engaging your visitors. The different on-site analytics provided over your page encourages visitors to leave behind their emails or check out the other sections of your website, amongst other such actions. Listed below are three on-site marketing suggestions that you should include on your website

Forms:  Forms are one of the widely used on-site marketing tools that offer website owners different marketing aspects. These forms’ nature can vary, ranging from lead generation to news-letter signup to event registration or sales contact. 

Remember, the design of your form puts a strong impression on your prospects.

Email signups: Email signups are commonly used for visitors that show an active interest in your business. These signup forms can be presented in several ways, ranging from offering a free demo, ebook, or directly asking your prospects to engage with the brand. 

Product pages: Product pages help users explore more of your product by showing all the related information that revolves around it (uses, features, and manufacturer details, among others). Your product pages are essential to build trust among the visitors and push them further in the sales funnel.

Tips

  • Spend some time coming up with an innovative form design for on-site marketing.
  • Use the right forms for relevant web pages.

6. Selling through social media

With the new marketing campaigns provided by some of the most popular social media sites, eCommerce marketing has been easier than ever. Let’s have a look at different aspects of eCommerce marketing ideas over the three leading social media platforms

Instagram: Instagram USP lies around its visuals. Once your prospects can see the products you sell, your followers or potential customers will be more likely to buy the product. 

The ‘Shop Now’ button also helps you with website traffic.

Facebook: the Facebook marketplace is the ultimate place to market your products. Its vivid list of marketing features allows you to display your products either individually or in the form of a craigslist-style shopping experience.  

The different campaign formats make Fb an ideal marketing tool for brands at every level.

Youtube: With almost 5 billion videos every day, YouTube is the most definite place to take your eCommerce marketing. If your brand can tell its story over a short ad, YouTube might be the platform for you. 

YouTube is the perfect tool to help in brand awareness and allowing you to build a loyal following.

Tips

  • Make sure that you understand the type of engagement in your platform before you begin your campaign.
  • Use high-quality images for your products.
  • Try out new and unique approaches when you design video ads over Youtube.

7. Market Your Business Beyond Geographic Boundaries

In a world full of limitless possibilities, what’s stopping you from taking your brand outside geographical boundaries?

When you launch your brand to different venues providing you with international exposure, you create new opportunities overseas. 

However, before you make the necessary leap, make sure that you have targeted a segment of users, to begin with.

Tips

  • Segregate your campaigns as per the countries.
  • When you target different geographies, make sure that your contents are personalized as per individual preferences.   

8. Highlight Reviews

Highlighting your reviews does a great job, especially when you are dealing with eCommerce marketing. Your reviews are an important tool for building trust amongst the new visitors, making you credible and safe for purchases.

However, you should also focus on replying to your customers’ reviews to maintain a healthy relationship. 

Tips

  • Never hide your bad reviews.
  • Focus more on providing quality reviews, giving an insight into your product.
  • Your reviews tell your brand’s preference.

9. Optimize for voice search

In an era where the likes of Siri and Alexa are helping us with various tasks, what’s stopping you from optimizing your brand for voice search?

Optimizing your eCommerce platform for voice search is one of the best measures that you will take for your business. Interestingly, voice search has been one of the most preferred search mediums, with over 27% of the global population using it already.

Tips

  • Create different content for voice search.
  • Get inside the mind of your searchers.
  • Improve your site speed before you optimize your voice search.

10. UGC and influencer marketing

Among UGC (user-generated marketing) and influencer promoting, brands remain to see enormous development openings – particularly through the content they’re ready to determine.

However, your job isn’t done after partnering with an influencer for your brand. You need to strategize your marketing even after having a famous influencer onboard. 

When you have the right tools at your disposal, executing your strategy becomes easy. Ideas paired with the right eCommerce marketing tools is like adding a cherry to your cake. But, the numerous options available over the internet can often lead you in a two-way street.

Yes, we know how that can be. Therefore, we have come up with our curated list of suggestions to help you with the same.

Top 10 eCommerce Marketing Tools for Success  

1. Prisync

Prisync is a price tracking & monitoring software that allows you to view and compare the analytics of all your competitors over a single unified platform. This tool will enable you to define all your products in bulk or a single manner, allowing you to analyze everything over a single screen.

When you use Prisync, you can have an eagle’s eye view of all the details around price changes in your market, the price trends, and the different brand/category level indexes. Interestingly, users can also export their data to Excel to attain a competitive edge over their customers.

2. Keap

Keap is an all-in-one sales & marketing software designed to serve the business of every type and size. One of the most reliable eCommerce marketing tools, it is designed for automating the business process of every scale, allowing automatic follow up, and providing an edge in sales and marketing automation. 

With Keap, you can easily automate and scale all your campaigns with easy integration with the existing apps. This tool organizes all your customer information and saves you from the mundane tasks of payments and follow-up. 

3. Rejoiner

Rejoiner is a behavioral email marketing platform that is engineered to serve the B2C eCommerce applications. This tool comes with a unique mix of ESP and advertising mechanization, allowing eCommerce vendors to explicitly tailor email promoting systems as per the needs of their campaign.

Interestingly, this tool also allows users to send customized emails to visitors/users who have abandoned their carts. Further, Rejoiner also offers users to follow-up with users who browse product and category pages. 

4. AdNabu 

AdNabu is another cloud-based platform that uses Google Ads to help eCommerce businesses utilize AI-based functionality, managing their sales and conversions.

One of the leading eCommerce marketing tools, AdNabu also facilitates group ads of single products, targeting keywords for searching for different products based on customers’ preferences and revenue generation. 

5. TaggShop

One of the most-advanced eCommerce marketing tools, TaggShop is a visual commerce platform that uses social media content to function. This tool utilizes the UGC of your brand and converts it into attractive visual commerce content.

Further, TaggShop also allows its users a wide variety of customization options, allowing you to update and personalize your feed in real-time.

6. YoGrow

A growth accelerator for e-commerce sites, YoGrow is the perfect tool to help you boost your presence. This tool helps the users to analyze their data and allows them to set different targets, helping them maximize their revenue. 

YoGrow also allows businesses to hire experts to help you maximize your efficiency of operations. 

7. DotDigital

DotDigital is another cloud-based omnichannel advertising automation tool that helps advertisers utilize their information to send highly relevant messages over the client lifecycle. 

This way, users can easily associate client information and surface helpful insights to curate savvy messages across email and SMS. This SaaS platform allows businesses to draw in clients over all the necessary touchpoints.

8. Promo

One of the most effective eCommerce marketing tools, Promo is a leading video creation platform that allows businesses of all sizes to develop visual content, ranging from images to videos. 

Promo helps users create professional-grade visual content in several creative ways. Interestingly, this tool is also a marketing partner for Facebook and Instagram. 

9. Reactful

An AI-driven website engagement platform, Reactful makes use of smart machine learning to understand the visitors’ intentions that scroll through your website. 

Further, this powerful tool analyzes the Digital Body Language of visitors. It interprets the behavior in real-time, sending across the right content, suggesting visitors with the actions that could lead to a successful conversion. The real-time data assessment of Reactful makes it one of the leading eCommerce marketing tools.

10. Triberr

Triberr is a tool that focuses on engagement problems over blogs that are posted by various eCommerce businesses. This tool helps the bloggers by linking them to a community where they can easily share and support each other.

This way, Triberr builds a community for improved readership by connecting like-minded bloggers.

Conclusion 

The above suggestions are based on ratings and reviews gathered from several users. Like other practices, these eCommerce marketing tools & Ideas also need some testing to help you come across the perfect fit for your brand. Test the above tools & ideas on your eCommerce business and improve your ROI for the year 2021. 

Here’s wishing you success over your next eCommerce marketing campaign.

Additional resources

  1. How to Sell on Shopify – Complete Guide by AdNabu
  2. How to Get Traffic to your Shopify Store?
  3. How to get more loyal customers to your Shopify store?
  4. Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization for shopify stores by AdNabu

Post by AdNabu

AdNabu helps improve sales in Google Ads for eCommerce companies. If you are running the search, google shopping, or display campaigns in Google Ads, This software will be able to increase your sales.