We developed a marketing playbook designed specifically for online stores - outlining the essential steps for building a winning ecommerce strategy. This marketing strategy for ecommerce business focuses on driving traffic, optimising storefronts for higher conversion, and then both attracting and retaining your most loyal customers.

Defining your objectives and setting goals 

The first step to success is to understand what your aims and objectives are for your ecommerce business, and set specific goals to help you achieve results. 

Make sure that every goal and objective you set is SMART:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Examples of SMART goals for ecommerce businesses may include increasing sales by 20% this year vs last year, or improving customer retention by 10% in the first 6 months of the year. 

By having a clear view on what your goals are and a date you need to achieve them by, you’ll be in a better position to create marketing strategies that help you strive towards success.

Optimising your online store 

As an online store, it’s vital that your website or storefront is optimised, allowing customers to navigate and convert easily. 

Prioritising in SEO

Undertaking keyword research can help you understand the demand for your products and tap into this purchase intent. Choosing relevant, specific keywords can help prospective customers discover your business in the SERPs (search engine results pages), increasing your organic traffic and discoverability. 

Improving User Experience 

Once customers land on your site, it’s important that they have a positive experience to increase the chance of conversion.  Ensuring that the site is easy to navigate and creating a clear path to purchase can decrease the opportunity for customers to drop off in the purchasing journey.

Creating engaging, informative content 

Alongside the design and functionality of the website, focusing on creating content for your online store can also drastically help improve conversions. 

Balancing your brand tone of voice and relevant keywords with informative, engaging content can be tricky. But with a clear content strategy, you’ll be able to optimise your online storefront to drive more traffic, and increase sales. 

Attract new customers and build brand awareness 

Using a variety of channels can help you create a full-funnel approach to brand building and help you to attract new customers. 

Social Media Marketing 

When it comes to organic social media marketing, often quality is better than quantity. Think about where your target audience is spending their time on social media, and focus on these channels, rather than trying to do too much across every channel. 

Community engagement is important on organic social media, so take time to respond and interact with engagements, as well as posting engaging and interesting content. 

Paid Media 

Ecommerce businesses can harness the power of paid ads, such as Google PPC (pay-per-click) or paid social media channels, to help new customers discover their brand in a cost-effective and targeted way.

With a range of formats and platforms to explore, from video or image to text-only, testing different media approaches can help you define what paid media channels resonate the most with your target audience. 

Retaining customers and promoting loyalty 

While it’s important to look at your customer acquisition, customer retention is a great way for ecommerce business to promote loyalty and encourage repeat custom. 

Customer service 

Providing excellent customer service is non-negotiable. Utilising a range of customer communication channels, such as live chat, email and telephone, will enable all customers to contact you in their preferred way, and have a consistently positive experience when engaging with your brand. 

Loyalty programme

Creating a loyalty program can help to encourage existing customers to become repeat purchasers and grow your retained revenue.

Giving your VIP customers early access to new products or collections, promotional discounts or other exclusives can all help loyal customers to feel appreciated.  

Email marketing 

While email marketing can be used for prospective customers who sign up to newsletters, CRM is a great tool to nurture existing customers. Segmenting your repeat customers and creating specific communications paths for them can help you to really speak to these customers and foster relationships that encourage further loyalty.   

Measuring results 

In order to understand if all your marketing efforts have been successful, you’ll need to regularly monitor your performance and report and record your results. 

Many free tools can help you to monitor your performance, like Google Analytics, as well as lots of paid-for services and platforms that can track anything from social media engagements to email open rates. 

Finding the right tools that can help you to measure your success will lead to efficient and accurate reporting, enabling you to fine tune your marketing strategy, adapt your channel mix and put your efforts into the areas that are proving successful. 

Final thoughts 

With clearly defined objectives, a full-funnel marketing mix and the tools to measure results, you can grow your ecommerce business in a strategic and sustained way. 

Want to take your online store to the next level? 

We are experts in creating results-driven ecommerce Solutions to help you to scale and grow. Get in touch.