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eCommerce Marketing Fundamentals

Launching your own eCommerce store is just the first step towards the success of your entrepreneurial journey.

The next step, which is also the most important one, is to get the right kind of attention to your eCommerce brand.

That means you need to aggressively invest in eCommerce marketing in order to increase your brand awareness and stand above your competitors.

But What is eCommerce Marketing Exactly?

In layman terms, eCommerce marketing is basically the act of spreading awareness about a business that sells its products or services on the internet.

Now when it comes to eCommerce marketing, a lot of first-time entrepreneurs think that eCommerce marketing and digital marketing are not mutually exclusive.

But the truth is, eCommerce marketing can use most digital marketing practices such as search engine marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, etc.

In this article, we will look at the most critical eCommerce marketing fundamentals that are crucial to succeed in your eCommerce business.

eCommerce Marketing Fundamentals

Evolving customers’ behaviors have impacted eCommerce marketing at its core.

Though no marketing strategy is static, as it requires continuous tweaking from time to time, there are however some new important skills that every eCommerce business needs to learn and apply.

Below, we’ve shared the top 5 eCommerce marketing fundamentals that eCommerce business needs to use for succeeding.

1. Leverage the Biggest eCommerce Marketplace: Amazon

Amazon is the biggest eCommerce marketplace in the entire world and is in fact critical for many types of eCommerce businesses.

According to the Future of Retail Report 2019 by Walker Sands, 32% of American consumers received at least one package from Amazon every week in 2019.

The same report also further revealed that the above percentage is arguably higher for millennials. Around 43% of millennials have received at least one and even more packages from Amazon every week.

The point is, today’s shoppers just love Amazon.

In fact, 45% of these consumers are excited about Amazon’s growth since they find shopping on Amazon is more convenient and less expensive.

What’s even more surprising is that 66% of American consumers start their search journey for a product from Amazon.
In other words, the majority of online shoppers in the U.S. begin on Amazon.

So, if you want to spread awareness about your eCommerce business faster, listing your products on Amazon helps a ton, not just with discovery but also with getting the first few customers in.

2. Chatbots

Recently, many eCommerce businesses have started adopting various messaging applications that consumers mostly used to talk to each other.

These messaging applications with a combination of AI chatbots have come much more mainstream than the traditional customer service representatives to improve buyers’ experience.

In simple words, Chatbots basically provide an efficient way to communicate with customers and increase the chances of sales.

And not just that, but with Chatbots eCommerce businesses are able to anticipate customers’ queries in advance, thanks to Artificial Intelligence, and turn them into rich marketing interactions.

The key takeaway is, investing in AI technology and a combination of chatbots with social media and messaging applications helps to converse better with customers, instead of spending resources in real people.

3. Google Featured Snippets

snippets

SEO is undoubtedly the most important eCommerce marketing fundamental of all.
In fact, SEO can have a huge impact on your eCommerce business if done right.
But SEO has also changed a lot in the past few years.

For example, the founder of Moz and Sparktoro, Rand Fiskin, reported that 61.4% of Google mobile search queries did not result in clicks.

This is because Google now answers the questions directly in the search results page. Hence, no click is required.
For example, if you search for common questions, let’s say “What is eCommerce marketing”, then you would get the following in the search results page:

This is called the Featured Snippets section.

A Featured Snippet is basically a special section on the search results page where Google shows a certain result that Google feels will be most useful to the person performing the search query.

Google first introduced Featured Snippets back in 2013 and was originally called “Quick Answers”.

But as years passed, Google kept updating the “Quick Answers” section which is now evolved into Featured Snippets.

These Featured Snippets come in a variety of forms such as a table, a paragraph, a list, etc.

For eCommerce businesses, especially new ones, the featured snippets are extremely useful.

Let’s say you’ve recently launched your own eCommerce store.

You’ve uploaded all your products on the product page but they are appearing in 10th position as of now.

But, by optimizing your product page for the Featured Snippet section, you can immediately get to the top of search results, which not only attracts the most clicks but also helps to boost brand awareness.

Take a look at the below example:

google example

As you can see, PriceSpy is ranking in the 10th position in Google SERP. But by optimizing for Featured Snippets, they’ve managed to rank on Position Zero and are getting the most clicks compared to competitors.

You could also achieve similar results for your eCommerce store by aiming to reach the Featured Snippets section on Google SERPs.

The best way to reach Featured Snippets is by using a Magento 2 extension that helps you optimize your online store pages best suitable for the Featured Snippet section.

In layman’s terms, the extension will increase your chances to rank on Featured Snippet for as many keywords as possible.

4. Semantic SEO

While optimizing for Google’s Featured Snippet section is promising, it’s not the only SEO-related eCommerce marketing fundamentals.

To get more out of your SEO efforts, you must also consider optimizing your eCommerce store for semantic phrases.
With the rise of Voice Search, especially, all the giant search engines including Google, Bing, Yahoo, and also Amazon are aiming towards semantic results, instead of traditional, lexical results.

For those who don’t know, Lexical results are about search engines trying to match the exact query.

Back in the old days, marketers used to optimize for search engines by simply creating as many backlinks and including as many keywords as possible.

Today, however, the search engine understanding has quite evolved and shifted towards semantic results.

Semantic results basically first attempt to understand a user’s search query and what it means, and then the search engine provides the best answer regardless of if the exact keywords are used or not.

The point is, today optimizing for exact keywords is not enough. eCommerce businesses must also understand what those keywords mean, and what is their search intent, and then provide valuable information that contextualizes those keywords.

5. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is all about working with people and brands that influence your target audience.

The term, influencer, mostly refers to social media accounts including Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Youtube, and so on with several thousand loyal followers.

Although, sometimes it could also be a celebrity or community that the majority of your target audience follows.

These influencer people, brands, and celebrities basically build their own community of people who like them and trust them.

Businesses usually reach out to influencers in their industry and ask them to garner attention towards their products as a recommendation in return for money.

This marketing strategy has proven to be extremely valuable for new eCommerce businesses since it only helps with selling products but also helps to build brand awareness directly to your target market.

Wrapping Up…

Nowadays,eCommerce businesses have a variety of marketing strategies at their disposal.

Using a combination of these eCommerce marketing fundamentals, new eCommerce businesses can easily build brand awareness, attract new customers, and grow faster than the competition.

So, go ahead and start leveraging these fundamentals and you’ll be well on your way to establishing a reputable eCommerce brand and generating revenue.

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