The Fundementals of Marketing
It can be difficult to know where to begin when thinking about marketing in the world of e-commerce. Thankfully, we have a quick-start guide for you! In this article, we will cover the fundamentals of marketing and break down how it applies to online stores.
If you're an online store manager or interested in getting into e-commerce as a whole, then this is the place to start. You'll get an understanding of what goes into successful marketing strategies and why they're crucial for your business.
1. What is marketing?
To understand marketing in e-commerce, you need to first understand where you're going to put your money. For example, if you're thinking of starting a clothing line or selling jewelry then an advertising campaign is probably not the best move. Targeted ads are typically more effective for this kind of product since they are often specific to the users' needs. However, if you have a different type of product that people would buy based off of looks alone (like a luxury handbag), then your ad campaign could be drastically different and potentially more effective. This scenario is exactly why we will cover both advertising and direct marketing for your e-commerce business below!
2. Advertising
Good advertising is powerful. The most effective ad campaigns are simple, catchy, and use all of your marketing channels to spread the word. There isn't one specific method to running an ad campaign; it's up to you and your business' unique selling points as to how you want to go about it, but you should always consider the following:
a. Timing: When are people browsing for your product? Are they mostly doing it in the morning before work or at night when they get home from work? That will affect what type of ads you should be using. Or, on the flipside, if people are looking for your product at all then you should definitely be running a social media post or ad campaign to get their attention. These are some great examples of advertising campaigns for e-commerce businesses:
How To Get Free Traffic With The Right Adwords Campaign For Your Online Store (by Andrew Casale)
3. Direct Marketing
Direct marketing is more common in the traditional brick and mortar stores, but it can work just as well in e-commerce with the right setup. There are two important things that you need to think about when implementing direct marketing: customer base and conversion rate.
Customer base: what kind of people are you reaching with your direct mail? If this is your first time selling online, then you'll have to think about who you're going to target. You can keep it simple and sell to everyone who looks at the items on your website, but that's not likely to be the best use of your money. If you want more sales, consider using targeted advertising campaigns. However, if you want a bigger audience then you can easily do with something like Magento.
Conversion rate: This is a tricky one, as it requires you to look at your transaction history and identify where your slowest areas are. You can run these stats for the past 12 months and then make changes that will increase your conversion rate based off of those numbers. There are two ways to make this work: increase the number of people who use coupons or run bigger sales. The end result is going to be more profits!
Do you have any advice on running a better ad campaign? Let us know in the comments below!
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Title: An Introduction To Community Management For E-Commerce
Article by Nexcess | May 16, 2016 | No Comments on An Introduction To Community Management For E-Commerce An Introduction To Community Management For E-Commerce
Social media is the cornerstone for an ecommerce business’s social marketing strategy. Since 2012, the number of brands using social media for business has almost doubled each year according to Salesforce.com, and 92% of brands that use social media say they have seen a rise in sales as a result.
Yet many businesses fail to leverage their social media efforts for success. They post regularly, but don’t engage with the community in any meaningful way. In fact, only 30% of businesses use their social media pages to respond to customer concerns, according to the Direct Marketing Association’s Consumer Response Study.
This can be problematic for an ecommerce business not only because customers feel like they’ve been ignored but also because it could result in lost sales.
Community Managers are the perfect person to help turn around poor social media practices. As your first line of direct customer service, they create the tone for your brand through an optimized social media environment that creates positive engagement and retains loyal customers who feel like they’re part of something special.
There is a lot to think about when it comes to setting up and scheduling posts, but Community Managers can do this for you—helping you focus on other important tasks by implementing a plan that is specific to your business needs.
If you’re thinking about hiring a Community Manager for your ecommerce business, here’s a list of questions to ask yourself and potential candidates:
1. Where will your Community Manager spend most of their time?
Community Managers are often busy supporting customers on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, but they also play an important role in the product research process by offering feedback and suggestions based on user comments. And they may offer support to customers via email or phone as well. This can lead to heavy multitasking when responding to customer inquiries in a timely manner.
While some Community Managers are able to handle all of these tasks, a good fit will be someone who can operate their email, handle social media inquiries and look for opportunities in the community to offer product information and support. If the candidate has a second or third job outside of ecommerce, you likely won’t see them around as much.
2. What is your current hourly rate?
Even though Community Managers work hard for your business on social media, they aren’t just one-person teams; anyone with that title should expect to be paid at least minimum wage if that is your rate.
Conclusion
Community Managers are a crucial role in your company’s marketing strategy, but you can’t just hire anyone.
Just as important is finding the right person for the job.
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