Ecommerce Marketing Strategy Everyone Should Use For 2023

Who is your customer?

Now, dive down into this and find out who your customer is. The one that will buy regardless of any marketing or convincing. I talk about this a lot on my blogs but it’s because its the number one step to your marketing plan, business structure, and everything.

I’m not talking about

Where they live, age, male, or female, although these are good. You need to dive deep into this. Find out what items they like, their interests, hobbies, and even their culture. What is motivating them to purchase from you?

We can find everything by looking at your competition and seeing where you can improve.

Where to get this information if you don’t have any data?

One of the easiest and cheapest ways for you to find out this information is to go to your competition. Go to their social media and look at their post. Find the people committing, go to their profiles, and write down everything you can see. Put it on a spreadsheet and see what the common data is. Chances are they will be very close to your customer and will give you an idea on how to be different.

There is a sea of companies that do what you do. If you are the only one doing it, you can count on competition showing up soon.

So what makes you different?

Is it Quality?

Customer Service?

Are you cheaper than the leading brand?

Most experiences but have a lifetime warranty?

Offing free shipping is no longer what makes you different. Everyone does it. Find out what and where you can be different from your competition, but make sure its something that your customer will enjoy and be beneficial to them.

For expensive items, a Lifetime warranty is excellent because you stand behind your product.

It doesn’t work so well for cheaper items because it’s cheap.

Once again, look at your competition and see where you can be better than them, it doesn’t mean being cheaper either.

Customers Buy when the perceived value is more than the price.

Everyone wants a good deal, but this doesn’t mean giving discounts left and right. You start to devalue your brand. People notice and wait until a sale goes on to make a purchase. It can be tempting to do, but it hurts in the longer run.

So how can you make it look like the customer is getting the best bang for their dollar?

Focus on the pain points people feel without the product, Then look at the solutions it provides and focus on how it will benefit your customers’ life. This is the value you should be presenting when marketing your products.

Pain – Solution – Benefits your solution brings.

This is just a quick example to get you thinking about how you can do this.

Example:

Pain – Stiff neck, neck pain, waking up feeling unrested, can’t sleep on your side.

Solution -The Neck pillow because of …

Benefit – Relaxation, Reduce Muscle Tension, Improved Posture, Better sleep, faster falling asleep, designed for side sleepers, More energy from a rested night, and a healthy lifestyle.

Customers Are Skeptic

Better make sure your product will do everything that you claim it does but how can you convince someone that it does? You will not be able to convince people that your product does what you say it does just by saying what it does. You are going to have to use….

Strangers– Yes, random people. These can be past customer reviews or you can go to the streets and ask random people and film it if you don’t have product reviews. Testimonials and reviews are the ultimate way to do this. Testimonials from real people who have bought and used your product is priceless. You can also use influencers to give their opinion on it as well.

These must be people who do not benefit from you whatsoever. Do not pay people for this; customers have a nose to smell if it’s genuine.

There is another way.

Science, You can do a test and demonstration and record it. What wild claims can you do with your products?

Show your customers the results and tell them why it worked. Show them that if they buy your product, they will get these same results with regular use.

These are just a few things you can do to help show potential customers what makes you different and why they should choose you over someone else. Keep in mind, it’s not about being the cheapest or even having the best product. It’s about making sure your customer can feel and experience the benefit of choosing you.

If you want to stand out from your competition, take a look at what they are offering and figure out how you can do better. Find ways to make your customers feel like they’re getting the most from their purchase. Show them why you are different and why your product is better.

Let’s talk about the product page.

Most companies will have the default product page. Simple images of the product and some basic information. We want to stand out and be different. Your customer is interested enough to look at the product lets not drop the ball right before they buy.

Let’s take a look at the product images or what I like to call is the product content.

First off, we have a tie from a big box retailer, They have a simple product image, and most sites are like this.

However, all this does is leave it up to the customer to wonder if that would look good on them.

When you let the customer decide, chances are they don’t want to go through the guesswork of wondering. So you have to entice them with discount codes and promotions to get them to take a chance on you.

VS

The product is being displayed in a fashion that the customer would be using it. Leave less wondering and more deciding. This eCommerce store took the time and effort to help their customers see how a tie would look short of putting it on themselves. I would have recommended that they change the blazer to a different color jacket so they could see what it would look like and match other colors. Then have a faraway shot with a model wearing a full suit to get them a really good idea of what to expect.

Potential customers can tell if you care about your product by how you display it. Everything about your online presents should be displayed as you care about your product and customers.

It can be a lot of work, especially if you have a lot of products. Your marketing strategy is different so you must be different as well. That will require work and effort.

If you don’t want to do it to all of your products, choose the top sellers and slowly work it over time.

Landing Page

The real reason we have landing pages is that a customer is not ready to go to the product page. This isn’t door to door salesman that forces the sale and shoves it down your throat, buy, buy, buy, is all the customer will see and cause them to go hold up and leave.

Home pages are a good place for a landing page if you have one product, maybe two, and most of your information is on one page.

The home page is just a directory of what you have to sale and should be easy for the customer to get where they want.

Your landing page should be information about your offer. This is your chance to prove that your product does what you claim it does.

What makes a great landing page

There are a few elements that make a landing page great.

• Your Offer
• Clear Call To Action
• Explainer Video
• Product In Use
• Testimonials
• How you beat the competition / What makes you different
• FAQ section

Your Offer

This should be straightforward, but most people don’t get it right. Its the same reason a book won’t sell but as soon as they change the title and only the title it becomes a number 1 hit.

Your offer should be a benefit and a benefit.

Example: The golf club that increases your distance while keeping your shot straighter. 

The pretty big claim to make, but if you can prove it, the customer gets 2 things for one. The benefits are increasing the ball distance and keeping it straight. These are the 2 things most every golfer wants.

Remember benefit and benefit. Customers only buy if the perceived value is higher than the cost.

Call To Action

What action do you want your customer to take?

• Sign up for your email list
• View a product page
• Buy a product
• Join a subscription club?
• Join a rewards program

I recommend sticking to one call to action on the landing page and not using the buy now.

I recommend using ” view product” On the product page will be the call to action that you really want the customer to take ” add to cart or buy now.”

If you have the product on the landing page, it’s okay to have that on there. Have the call to action throughout the landing page.

Explainer Video

Simple enough, having a video showing to the product will benefit their life. Keeping everything we’ve talked about so far in mind. This can double as the product in use photos as well. You can put how you are different in the video too.

Social Proof

Does it work for others? If you don’t have any reviews, you better hit the street to get people to try the product and video it, just like we have covered before.

Advertisement

Running ads on Facebook is not a marketing strategy. It is a tool for your business to deliver your offer to potential customers.

First thing, advertisement platforms are good for one reason and only one reason. Putting what you have in front of people’s eyes. Building your brand awareness is what ads do. Getting a sale is a by-product of ads. Your offer is what will get people to buy.

Where are you going to advertise your e-commerce store?

I recommend where most of your customers are should be your main focus.

Choose your flagship product. You are spending money on ads you want to have your most popular products to bring customers in.

There are many places you can run Digital advertising

Social Media

Search Engines

Other Websites

When you find your ideal customer, based on what they do will be where you choose to advertise. Your message needs to be a hook to grab attention since people will give you 3 seconds time spend to give it to them.

Using the golf example from before.

Wondering how to increase how far you can hit your golf ball and keep it straighter? Now you can do it with the all-new driver that will increase your distance while keeping the ball straight by adjusting the face of the club, so you don’t need to change your swing. Click the link to learn more.

The only goal of advertising on any platform is to get them to the landing page.

The goal of the landing page is to get them to take action.

Ads are not a marketing strategy but a tool used in your marketing campaign. Make sure you research where your customers are and watch how they interact with your ads. This will help you refine your message and increase conversions from people visiting the landing page.

How to get the customer back if they don’t buy

It takes, on average, seven interactions before a customer decides to buy a product. This is why you need a complete marketing strategy in place. 

There are some tools you can use to help you with this.

They are:

• Email
• SMS
• Retargeting Ads

Email is a great way to stay top of mind with your customers. This can be done by crafting an email series that will give them even more value and increase the chances of them coming back and buying from you later.

SMS is becoming a popular way for businesses to communicate with their customers. It’s a great way to send out alerts, offers and updates as well.

Retargeting Ads are also an effective way to get back customers that didn’t buy from you the first time. This type of marketing allows you to serve ads directly to those who visited your website but didn’t convert.

All these tools can be used together in your marketing strategy to ensure that customers don’t forget about you and return when they are ready to purchase

Marketing Tools used

1. Email
2. SMS
3. Retargeting Ads
4. Social Media
5. Search Engines / SEO
6. PPC
7. Content Marketing
8. Influencer Marketing
9. Landing Pages

Most people who have had a bad experience with any of these items listed about is because the marketing plan lacked everything described above. They try a marketing tool because they heard it works but say there was no results or had a few but the cost was just to much.

What Your Plan Can Look Like

When you take your Offer, Ideal Customer, Divlery of Message, What to do when they don’t buy, How to get Customer back, Keep repeat customers and you put them all together is when you get an e-commerce strategy and a plan for success.

Knowing what to use and how to use it are the key elements to any successful online marketing strategy. You will need to make sure you have all the pieces in place including research, analytics and a plan for testing and optimizing your campaigns.

When done right, e-commerce advertising can be an incredibly powerful tool. With the right mix of creativity, research and analytics, you can build a successful e-commerce marketing strategy that will help you reach more customers and drive more sales.