Brands are compelled to reconsider their ecommerce marketing strategy due to significant modifications. The introduction of fresh data-privacy regulations has resulted in the inclusion of previously unnecessary procedures to avoid illicit acquisition or exploitation of personally identifiable information (PII). Additionally, consumer preferences have advanced, and they now anticipate tailored encounters in real-time across all touchpoints.
It is challenging to provide personalized experiences in real-time, especially when considering that up to 90% of website visitors remain unidentified. As a result, ecommerce marketers struggle to find innovative approaches to satisfy the demand for personalization. Furthermore, the present economic climate, characterized by record inflation and uncertainty, makes it even more challenging to acquire new clients and engage with current customers.
What steps are leading brands taking to adjust their online marketing approach considering the current circumstances? To circumvent a drastic decrease, incorporate the following elements into your 2023 strategy.
1. Customer-centric product pages
Your product pages act as your sales representatives in a digital storefront. The content on these pages must serve the purpose of educating and closing the deal.
Educational content allows consumers to independently learn about the brand and products without any disruption, while closing content utilizes various tactics such as limited inventory, customer reviews and ancillary products to create a sense of urgency and help increase sales.
To be successful, both content positions should prioritize customer needs by adopting a customer-centric approach. Failing to prioritize customers will result in losing 88% of your potential consumers.
2. Targeted site offers
Instead of using site-wide offers that decrease margins, consider either suppressing them or presenting promotions that are based on the likelihood of visitors making a purchase. With new AI models and machine learning capabilities, it is possible to make smarter decisions about incentives that are tailored to potential customers who may be swayed by the right offer.
A major U.S. retailer discovered the benefits of utilizing focused promotions.
- 12x ROI within the first year
- 4% – 15% average lift in revenue per visitor
3. Organic traffic
Investing in search engine optimization (SEO) can be a viable solution when third-party cookies have retired and you are unable to laser-target your customers. This way, you can attract customers naturally.
In order to save on paid marketing expenses and establish a sustainable source of web referrals, it is beneficial to conduct keyword research for all product pages to enhance their ranking and generate organic traffic. As per the Search Engine Journal, 49% of ecommerce marketers consider organic search to have the greatest ROI among all marketing channels.
4. Social media and influencers
There are 4.7 billion people worldwide who use social media.
Ecommerce marketers have a huge audience available for advertising, with people spending an average of 2.5 hours on social platforms daily. Despite privacy laws reducing the effectiveness of social media targeting, influencers continue to be a crucial factor in the success of any ecommerce marketing campaign.
Brands are utilizing well-known personalities across various scales of influence, including mega, macro, and micro-influencers, to endorse their goods to a powerful demographic, leading to:
- 65% of viewers visiting a company’s website or app
- 46% of viewers converted either offline or online
- 31% of viewers followed the promoted brand
- 37% of viewers made the trip to visit a brand’s brick-and-mortar location
5. Marketplace utilization
Apart from the customer traffic generated by your direct to consumer (DTC) venture, you can also broaden your brand’s scope by featuring your stock on different online marketplaces in 2023.
Websites such as Walmart, Etsy, and Amazon offer a vast audience of shoppers who are either in the process of researching or buying products. Just Amazon, for instance, manages to sell more than 400 products every minute (meaning 24,000 purchases hourly!).
For small and medium-sized brands, marketplaces represent a great strategy for ecommerce marketing as they can leverage the significant website traffic and raise brand awareness.
Walmart.com attracts over 120 million monthly visitors, whereas Amazon receives more than 2.7 billion annually. Even smaller websites, such as Etsy, have a reach of tens of millions. As a result, ecommerce generates significant returns on investment due to this considerable attention.
- $390 billion third-party seller gross merchandise volume on Amazon;
- $10.4 billion marketplace revenue on Ebay;
- And $1.7 billion marketplace revenue on Etsy.
6. Reduce cart abandonment
Approximately 70% of visitors who add items to their cart on your website are expected to leave without completing a purchase. As a result, seven out of ten shopping carts will not result in a successful transaction. Consider the impact of an average cart abandonment rate on a retailer generating $100 million in yearly revenue.
If cart abandonment were eliminated, the revenue generated would be over $330 million, which is nearly two and a half times the revenue being lost for various reasons, as only 30% of the potential revenue is accounted for by the $100 million earned according to the average rate of cart abandonment.
To decrease cart abandonment, brands should first focus on tackling the key reasons why it occurs, as outlined by Baymard.
- Extra costs (shipping, taxes, fees) are too high
- Requiring consumers to create an account
- Slow delivery times
- Site seems untrustworthy
- Complicated checkout process
Although there are additional elements to consider, ultimately they all lead to the same issue: resistance during the checkout procedure. These potential customers are already browsing on your website and have displayed a willingness to purchase your products. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure a smooth checkout process for them.
7. Live chat
Live chat is an ideal complement to any ecommerce marketing strategy because it facilitates one-to-one conversations with all website visitors, allowing brands to use either a human or AI-driven chat feature to get to know their customers better through communication.
The utilization of chat to obtain data through a set of personalized questions is an excellent means of minimizing the collection of personally identifiable information (PII). This also strengthens the customer experience by adding a human touch to their interaction with the online store.
Kayako conducted a study to examine the effect of live chat on both the brand and the end user, collecting inputs from 400 consumers and 100 businesses. The results are as follows:
- 79% of businesses say live chat has had a positive effect on sales, revenue, and customer loyalty
- 38% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that offers live chat support
- 51% of consumers buy again from a company that offers live chat support
For live chat to be advantageous, it is crucial that the approach is customized. Customers can easily detect when a generic script is being used, and it tends to result in negative reactions (as demonstrated by the 28% of consumers who report feeling highly annoyed by impersonal, scripted responses).
Naturally, it is impractical for larger brands to personally interact with every visitor. Therefore, implementing AI to identify those in need of tailored assistance and those who can be assisted with existing content is crucial. Invest in developing a chat feature that caters to different personas. This endeavor will yield fruitful results.
8. Referral marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing, affiliate marketing, or referral marketing is the practice of motivating customers to spread the word about your products or services to their social circles with rewards. It is a potent advertising strategy because individuals typically rely on suggestions from their acquaintances.
For eCommerce businesses, affiliate marketing is a particularly advantageous method that enables you to leverage personal networks and create a loyal customer base. You can motivate your current customers to become brand advocates and promote your products by providing rewards for referrals.
Outway Socks, a performance sock company headquartered in Canada, excels at utilizing their customers to generate referrals for their eCommerce store. By offering a $15 reward per referral, they motivate their customers to express their affection for Outway. Thanks to referral marketing, Outway generates 9% or more of their overall revenue.
Getting started with referral marketing
In order to execute a thriving referral marketing strategy for your online retail business:
- Offer incentives for referrals. This could be a discount, a free product, cash, or some other type of reward.
- Make it easy for customers to refer their friends and family. Provide them with referral links, codes, or other tools.
- Track and analyze your results. This will help you identify what’s working and what’s not. Make adjustments as needed!
9. Community building
Building a community involves cultivating a feeling of community and inclusiveness among your clientele and followers and providing them with a venue for interaction. For eCommerce firms, this is especially crucial since virtual communities can assist in establishing an emotion of attachment and dedication among customers who have engaged with your brand.
Your brand’s retention rate could improve by establishing a community, which will also contribute to brand building.
Utilizing the influence of their community, Obvi, a brand that produces collagen supplements, enhances their marketing strategies. They frequently engage with their customers during the launch of new product variants and flavors, resulting in a powerful brand that entices community members to remain loyal.
Building a community
Community building is greatly facilitated by various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Through these platforms, you can establish a connection with your client base. Forming a home base, such as a Discord or Facebook group, to interact with your clients is vital for them to connect with one another and share feedback about your brand.
Promote your community through your website, packaging inserts, and post-purchase emails! Over time, your community will evolve into a force that champions your product.
10. Google Ads
In 2023, any eCommerce brand will find Google Ads to be a crucial marketing tool due to its vast range of placement options.
By utilizing the pay-per-click (PPC) platform, brands can target specific audience segments with varied ad formats like Search, Shopping, YouTube, Gmail, and Display ads. Remarkably, Performance Max advertisements integrate all of these formats within a singular campaign type, offering a formidable marketing strategy.
Google advertisements are usually geared towards those who are ready to convert, making them more effective at capturing customers at the final stage of the buying process. Consequently, the conversion rate of ads on the platform, particularly through its Search campaigns, is higher than that of paid social ads. However, one of the drawbacks of Google ads is their relatively higher cost as compared to social media advertising.
For eCommerce brands, Performance Max campaigns have shown great success because Google leverages all its marketing formats for advertising placements. This is especially beneficial when running Google shopping ads and looking to target smart shopping, which has been enhanced to the Performance Max campaign type.
Google Shopping Ads enables eCommerce websites to display their products on the Google search results page by introducing a Google Ads format. These ads exhibit the product’s image, name of the store, and price, and when clicked, lead the user to the product page on the eCommerce website and elevate the product’s exposure.
ASOS, an internet-based fashion seller, employs Google Shopping advertisements to promote their merchandise.
Starting with Google Ads
Bidding on your brand keywords and running shopping or Performance Max campaigns are both great uses for Google ads.
If you have observed an increase in competitors bidding for your keywords, you may be losing impressions to them. To prevent losing clicks to your rivals, it is advisable to bid on your own branded keywords.
When it comes to upper funnel initiatives, Performance Max can assist you in achieving your conversion targets. Simply submit a well-optimized merchant center feed and top-performing creatives (pro tip: select the ones that do best in your paid social ads), and rely on Performance Max to drive conversions for you!
11. Email & SMS marketing
One of the most economical marketing activities that brands can carry out is retention marketing. Email and SMS marketing provide eCommerce brands with efficient means to directly contact customers and increase sales. Brands can devise focused campaigns targeted at particular segments of their audience by gathering customer data, such as email addresses and phone numbers.
Businesses can utilize email marketing to reach numerous customers simultaneously through targeted email campaigns featuring promotions, discounts, and other offers. This strategy can be optimized through the use of analytics and tracking tools like Triple Whale, which provides comprehensive information on conversion value, order tracking, new customer data, cart additions, and more.
By analyzing the effectiveness of email campaigns, businesses can modify them accordingly. Besides, businesses aim at a customer base that is already inclined towards their brand, either by purchasing from their website or by casually browsing. This is less challenging than reaching out to unknown prospects through alternative online marketing methods.
Alternatively, SMS marketing is another approach where businesses communicate with their clients via text message. Considering that the majority of people are constantly using their phones, SMS marketing tends to yield favorable outcomes, with typically high rates for both opening the message and clicking on embedded links.
Just like with email marketing, it is possible to direct tailored messages to particular subsets of your audience, geared towards promoting your products, extending special discounts, and making other types of offers, while also delivering customer service and assistance.
