You might want to start selling online, but is it the same as building an online business? For that, you need to do much more than just make and sell. To survive the competition, your online business also needs to have a strong and effective digital marketing strategy in place.
Confused? Overwhelmed? Don’t be. We collaborated with Adyogi, a SAAS performance marketing tool that helps eCommerce businesses run ads on search engines and social media.
And we have come up with the ultimate digital marketing checklist that you need to focus on when you are starting your own eCommerce business. Let’s get started!
Contents
Start your own eCommerce website
Before starting to sell your products you need to have a starting point. There should be a platform people can come and browse through the products and services you offer.
An eCommerce website of your own allows customers to directly interact with you and gives you more control over the customer journey.
You can build your own eCommerce website, or use our platform to build your own free online store in just 5 easy clicks.
Optimize your eCommerce website
53% of the total people visiting your website will leave if the waiting time is anything above 3 seconds! 3!
In today’s world of marketing and eCommerce, having a slow website on a desktop or mobile phone is absolutely unacceptable.
Once you have your eCommerce website ready, you need to start optimizing for its speed. That means you need to ensure you are checking it regularly.
High image sizes can also often slow down the website loading time. You can also use tools given by Google to check your page speed and the areas that need work.
Choose a brand language for your online store
You don’t want to confuse your audience about what you sell. Before starting your eCommerce business, you should have a clearly mapped out brand strategy.
Here are a few things you should define:
- Your target audience characteristics
- The language that you would use to connect
- Visual identity of your brand
- Purpose of your brand
- Your market niche
When you do run ads, or start your digital marketing, you will know exactly whom and how to target for the maximum conversions.
Related read: Digital ads to become the largest advertising medium in 2022: 3 reasons why
Optimise the product catalogue on your online store
Even if all your products are in one category, for example in the handmade category, you can still try to divide it up further. Maybe you want to categorise them according to the material used, themes, or sustainability.
You can decide how and why to divide it, but the more clearly defined and relevant categories you have, the more trust is built between you and your website visitors.
Apart from the categories, you should also ensure other details are updated and relevant. Don’t forget to update the:
- Category titles
- Banners
- Title for the product
- Product descriptions
- High-quality images of the product
- Return policies
- Delivery schedule
- Reviews and testimonials
- Product bundles
- Discounts offered
- Extra information that might help the buyer
On Instamojo, you can easily add all these details to your eCommerce website. You can choose from a variety of themes that help make your website look attractive and aesthetic.
Allocate a budget for digital marketing
Once your eCommerce website is ready to serve customers, how do you attract them to your online store?
You can either do it organically, that is wait for people to specifically search for your store.
Or, you can run ads. Ads help in showing your online store to customers who didn’t even know you existed.
Running ads maybe a slightly expensive affair if you are just starting out. But, it’s a great way to bring loads of additional traffic to your store. This is why it is good to have an allocation for digital marketing in your eCommerce business budget.
Separate the allocation according to
- Platforms – Ads on different platforms would have different financial expectations. Google and Facebook are relatively more expensive than Youtube when you want to run ads.
- Purpose– Ads on social media would attract impulse buyers(buyers who came across your product accidentally while scrolling and liked it), whereas ads on search engines like Google would attract intent buyers (buyers who intended to buy a specific product).
Related read: How to set up social media for small businesses; A complete guide
Focus your efforts on performance marketing
A health strategy for digital marketing for eCommerce businesses cannot just purely depend on ads. For true active users, customer retention and long time brand recall value, online store owners should adopt performance marketing.
What is it?
Performance marketing is the subsection of digital marketing that is results-oriented. You only pay the advertiser when you achieve certain results.
And what more? You don’t depend only on paid ads.
Along with that, there are multiple other strategies that an online store owner needs to implement to achieve specific goals.
- Social media – It is extremely important for your brand to have an online presence. Social media helps you build credibility and a community. It also helps increase your brand reach.
- Influencer promotions – Influencers already have a community built around them. You can take advantage of that by asking the influencer to do a sponsored post. If the influencer likes your product and talks about it even without you paying them, it’s a huge win!
- Automations – Try to set up processes that automate communications with your customers. For example, WhatsApp messages informing them of where the order is or of a special discount, emails that keep them informed etc.
Our webinar with Priya Kandasamy, a marketing strategist at Adyogi, walked us through various digital marketing strategies that have a long-lasting impact on each of the following sections of the customer journey:
- Pre-purchase
- Operational
- Post-purchase
- Retention
In case you missed it, watch the full digital marketing masterclass here!
We have another resource that can help you scale your brand to new heights!
Download our free eBook on “Cost-effective ads for DTC brands” to ensure maximum conversion with minimum investments for your independent eCommerce business.
