You have to register a domain name, buy a hosting service, and use website builders to get started. Setting up your ecommerce website is decidedly easy; you can even hire a professional to assist you. However, the hard part is to promote your brand in order to gain a foothold in the market.
The good news is that there are plenty of automated tools that will help you build your ecommerce store from scratch. So, you can devote maximum time on building your brand and promoting your products.
Here are a few ecommerce marketing ideas that will you start your ecommerce business and increase your outreach.
1. Identify Your Target Audience
The internet is inundated with thousands, even millions of other ecommerce stores like yours.
In fact, the giant Amazon that sells just about everything is always just a click away. And the chances are, Amazon will have similar products at a lower price than your store.
That’s why you need to build a special connection with your target audience. For that, you need to identify your target audience first.
Once you identify your ideal customer, you can devise your marketing strategy in such a way that it touches the pain points of your audience.
2. Identify how you can help your customers
Think about Uber or Airbnb. They created a billion dollar business by bridging the gap between cab drivers and home owners respectively to their potential customers.
When you know who your target audience is, the next step is to think about what they really need. You need to analyze the problems plaguing your customers and identify how your product will solve them. After that, think about the product/service you want to pitch. Would it appeal to them? Would it add value to their life? Can they afford it?
These are some of the most pertinent questions you need to ask yourself before making your ecommerce business live.
3. Market Yourself Differently
Thousands of startups get bootstrapped daily, and even a higher number of them get shut down prematurely. In fact, statistics reveal that about 90% of startups fail.
Naturally, you want to avoid this situation.
But why would your business succeed when so many others could not? How is it any different from the existing ecommerce websites in your niche? How are you going to attract potential customers?
Having a unique marketing strategy will solve all these problems. If you are not offering anything new in the market, then you need to market your product differently.
Make it so unique that it grabs eyeballs and piques the interest of your target audience.
According to an analysis on Yotpo, typical ecommerce stores fail to earn beyond 500 followers on Facebook.
This analysis proves that your marketing strategy has failed to create the required buzz. You have been unable to earn those fans who would buy your products, spread word of mouth, and spread their love for you on social media.
And to build a healthy base of dedicated fans, you need to have a USP to market your products. You can’t compete with biggies like Walmart or Amazon; what you can do is to build a special connection with a niche audience by marketing the USP of your product.
Set a narrative to present the benefits of your products and services effectively to the audience.
4. Work On Premium Customer Experience
Selling excellent products at reasonable rates will help you scale up your ecommerce business. But it is not nearly enough. You need to work on providing an outstanding customer experience to turn your audience into loyal customers.
To offer an excellent customer experience, you can personalize the entire shopping experience by providing things like customized packaging, premium-membership, and loyalty rewards, making each touch-point shoppable, and so forth.
A premium customer experience will also help you earn free word of mouth marketing, which will ultimately result in massive traction to your website.
Wrap Up
In this article, we discussed some excellent ways that will help you kickstart your ecommerce business.
The bigger question here is how to position your startup differently, how to sustain it, and make it valuable for your customers. Above mentioned points will help you execute the right marketing strategy for your next ecommerce business. However, don’t forget to stay up to date with the most recent trends, learn more about machine learning, chatbots, for example, and think if you need them in your business.
The key is to offer a great customer experience to your audience, stay innovative, and implement out-of-the-box strategies to attract your target audience. Remember to provide value for those extra bucks you are charging, and your customer will never complain.