Marketing 101, the very basics of marketing and how the basics will move your store toward greater success and increase your product sales. Marketing plans fail when they forget the basics.
Most people obsess over the tools they use to help them with e-commerce marketing. It would help if you were obsessed with the plan. Every store is different, so how you execute the strategy will be too.
If you have a website built or are looking to build one, or want a plan and a direction to go, this will help you. Here are the ecommerce marketing tips and you don’t have to use discounting at all.
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Step 1. Who is the product for?
Who the product is for seems very basic, but most of the time, it is overlooked.
For us who own a product line or store, we are too close to the product. We understand everything about it and often overlook who the product is for. You wouldn’t believe that many businesses don’t know their ideal customers.
Your Ideal Customer
That’s who the product is for.
Some of you may have some data on this, and some may not.
This is the most crucial step in digital marketing.
What data do I look for?
I like to use google analytics since it tells me many things.
First thing I look for when seeing who the ideal customer is:
Who is buying more of the product? Is it male or female?
Look at who is buying, not users.
So we have 38% male and 62% male. Chances are those males are buying for their wives.
So now we are going to focus on women since most buys are. We can focus on the men too. We need to dial in the marketing for ladies first. You may have to go into your store data and look at the names in order to find out this information.
Okay, what are some things in common that these women have?
Let’s look at all website visitors.
Okay, let’s see who is going to the site the most. You’ll have age gaps of 10 years and 65+. Find out which one is visiting the site the most and then look at who is buying the product the most.
What are things in common?
Now, where do those people live?
Chances are there is a state where people tend to buy more. This is good to know because it will be the way you talk or communicate with them, and also if you have a small ad budget, you know a few states to run ads in.
Find out how to get 3x more sales without discounting!
Discounting is hurting your business more than your think.
Look at reviews.
What are people saying in reviews?
Look at 50-100 5-star reviews, see what people like about the product, and tallie up any primary keyword you see.
Do the same for 1-2 star reviews. Find what people don’t like about a product. If you need more reviews, look at a competition with a product close to yours.
Save that info because it will be used in the next step.
Ideal Customer Recap
- Male or female?
- What age is buying?
- What state or cities do they live in?
- What common things can you find with them?
- Look at reviews, both positive and negative.
Step 2. What’s your offer?
What to say to your future customer
This is the biggest step people mess up on. What do you have to offer your customers?
People buy based on what you are offering.
What do I mean by that? You have 3-5 seconds to capture someone’s attention.
Your offer could look like this:
( What the product does)For (Your customer) ( What the customers likes) Without ( what they don’t like)
Use the information you got in the reviews for what they like and don’t like.
Example: Cooling mattress for hot sleepers that has the right amount of comfort and doesn’t over-chill you while sleeping.
If you were a hot sleeper, this offer would pique your interest in what the product is and does, and the real question is, does it really work?
If you love heat when you sleep, you will skip right over it because you don’t like being chilled. That’s okay because they weren’t going to be a potential customer.
Did you notice how I didn’t mention the product name?
People don’t buy a name. They buy what it offers. Your product brand reputation isn’t up there yet. Even when people say they got a brand-name product, they buy what the brand offers.
Your offer needs to be one sentence.
It will be how you build your content, what you say on the site and all your marketing efforts, Your landing page, social media marketing and your whole marketing campaign. It will help with user experience since we are getting the right type of user.
Step 3. Backing it Up with Social Proof
Now you are a newer product or you just haven’t had a bunch of exposure so people don’t know you, and they certainly don’t trust you. So what is the first thing people do if they think this product looks good? Did others like it or have a good experience with it?
Where are the reviews?
Chances are you don’t have any reviews, so what can you do instead?
You should only give honest and truthful content here.
Video the product working or using the product and showing how it works.
Go to the street and film people interacting with your product.
Get a group of people, introduce the product, and have them play with it.
Send the product to a review channel your customer would be interested in watching.
Now you are building social proof and building value in your claims and offer.
Are you filtering product reviews?
Customers want to see how you handle bad customers. Everyone is so afraid of bad product reviews. Are you getting a bunch of 1-star talking about the quality of a product? If you are, you might want to resign the product so it works better.
1 star about service, that’s easy fix your service.
70% of buyers look to see if a brand is filtering product reviews, and what it looks like is 5 stars and 4 stars only. People posting fake reviews.
The best-selling products have a 4.2 -4.7 rating for eCommerce sites.
Step 4. Funnel people into your system.
The step everyone wants to jump to because they want to get sales fast.
This is always the last step. You don’t have a house party before the house is built.
When people start to market the product before having the last 3 mentioned steps, it’s like picking up a bucket of water and having holes in your bucket.
Not us, we have a plan in place, and we know exactly what we are going to say and how we are going to market and build value in the product.
Funnels are the way you get people to your website on Shopify, Big Commerce, Woocomerce, or your E-commerce platform.
Some popular funnels are:
+ SEO, Search engine optimization
+ Social media ads: Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and others
+ Email Drips; Abandoned carts, email list, sign up, the best way to retarget your customers. Don’t build this around discounts. Don’t ever have your ecommerce marketing strategies focus on discounting.
+ Search engine ads
+ PPC
+ Amazon Ads, I don’t know why anyone would want to give a commission to amazon and pay to have ads on a site you already pay a commission to as well.
+ Affiliate, Getting people to talk and market your product for a commission in sales.
Either way, this is what everyone jumps to, and when it’s not working, they say let’s discount our products to get people to buy since it’s not working. You see a little success and want to discount even more and more.
We don’t have to discount because we have built value in the product. When you run ads and funnel people into your system, it will work because we know who the customer is and what to offer to solve a problem.
When running ads, people think you need a studio production to succeed. Sure, it helps, but your message needs to be clear, and your offer is what will get them interested. Poorly filmed videos go viral all the time. It offered something funny or entertaining like your offer.
Your ads need to look like you care about your product and message.
Time to produce content for your ideal customer.
That’s the four steps to 101 e-commerce marketing and the best strategy I’ve used in the last 7 years. Follow those steps to increase sales and grow your ecommerce business.
Let’s dive into the tools and what they are good for.
Don’t get focused on the tools, a hammer is a hammer, its how you use the tool.
Google Analytics – I love this tool because you can dive into everything about your customers as much as possible. Shopify has a good analytics tool as well, but it’s what you do with the data that matters.
Email Systems– I like Drip since I help stores on many platforms. They integrate with almost every platform out there so you can target your customers. Email marketing is just reaching out to people who have given you their email addresses and getting them to your ecommerce store.
Optimizing – Hotjar is free and easy to set up. It will let you watch users and see how they interact with your online store. This is where you find out what helps with conversion rates and seeing how people interact with the product pages. What images work best and what colors are best for your CTA.
A/B testing – See what users like more. Helps with building a friendly website. Takes a lot more work, WordPress theme Divi has this built in. Shopify they’re is plugins, and there is google optimizer.
SEO– Seo is good for getting people to learn about your store. You can target keywords that are information and words that your customers search for to get people in their research phase. Then once your site has authority, you can go after a transaction keyword.
SEMRush– I use that tool to look at my competition and to find keywords.
What about AI tools?
AI tools are very helpful but you have to have the vision in place. I like to use Jasper for blogging and text creation and for testing out different verbiage. This article was written without any AI.
What are the 4 p’s of marketing in e-commerce?
People look to the 4p’s when marketing. That’s the Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
Don’t get confused about promotion; it’s not discounting. It’s how you promote a product.
The product, what does the product do?
Price, Are you priced too high or low? Do you have an advantage with price? ( Not a fan because you can build value to justify a price.)
Place, Where are you going to show the product?
Promotion, What will you use to promote the product?
My method covers all this and more.
What are examples of content marketing?
Content marketing is what people consume.
Blog Posts, videos, podcasts, and social media posts are content marketing. People will consume that to get educated on your product or service. You need to be sure it’s educational and informative so they can learn about the product before they buy.
What it needs to be is value to the customer.
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