6 Best e-Commerce Marketing Strategies to Grow Traffic and Boost Conversion

Key takeaways:

• Optimize the website keywords for higher ranking in search engines
• Smartly utilising paid traffic to attract ready buyers
• Advantages of social platform to reach new potential customer segments
• Why sales promotions on online marketplaces are able to boost visibility?
• Building brand campaigns to connect with audiences
• Why a website can be one of the foundations to build a sustainable audience?

Saying that every store wants to increase its sales is not a long-shot by far. The growing trend of online consumer purchases have also resulted in more people being interested in making money online through sales activities (around 80% of enterprises now operate exclusively online). But how can you boost sales using the online medium and increase traffic? It's not difficult to increase e-Commerce traffic and sales, but it does take a fundamental knowledge of growth marketing.

Your e-Commerce marketing efforts should be focused on capturing the interest of customers seeking for your products and utilising a variety of techniques to get them to seek you out.

What Is e-Commerce Marketing?

e-Commerce marketing strategy is the process of applying marketing methods to increase consumer traffic, conversions, and purchases. This can happen both on and off the web. The goal of these strategies is to increase traffic to your online store and increase sales of your digital products. This guide includes 6 e-Commerce marketing strategies that your company can consider to apply right away.

1. Use SEO to Boost Organic Traffic

Organic traffic refers to any traffic at your site which isn't paid for. In e-Commerce, these are people who discover and visit your website or online store from Google and marketplace search results. This is often a result of search engine optimisation (SEO) where you optimise your website or online store around specific keywords in order to rank high in search engines.

87% of shoppers, according to an article by algolia, begin their product searches online which makes SEO one of the best e-Commerce marketing tactics with the highest ROI. For e-Commerce marketers, SEO can also be accomplished through content marketing, such as blogging, posting social content, and even creating podcasts or any free resources targeting certain relevant keywords.

Some of the key aspects to look out for in the setting up of the website will be as such,

• URL: It should be easy to read for good indexing of your e-Commerce website, but also for better customer experience.
• H1 header: This includes the product title. Keep it straightforward.
• Product image: Use multimedia on a web page and add optimised alternative descriptions to your images to help the page rank higher in the SERP.
• Meta title and description: The title and introduction text that appears in the SERP and is only visible in the source code. This text should encourage browsers to click through to your site.

2. Use the Marketplace Paid Traffic to Attract Ready Buyers

On the other hand, if you have a ready budget and are looking for quick results, paid ads on marketplaces like Shopee or Lazada might be a better choice for your company.

It gets you the results of SEO by showcasing your products at the top of the search result page and positions you in front of ready buyers who are interested in your products. Here, customers are more sensitive to pricing. So, make sure your products have a competitive pricing with good value and positive customer reviews.

3. Use Non-Marketplace Paid Traffic for Brand Awareness

Besides marketplaces, advertising on 2 important sources of traffic: Facebook and Google can also provide e-Commerce businesses with great return on their marketing investment. Creating ads on platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Google Display and Video can be helpful in establishing your e-Commerce store brand while acquiring new customers. This is different from organic content marketing which can take months to see results, whereas a well-structured ad campaign can bring in quality traffic almost immediately.

With Facebook marketing, having a good understanding of setting up a consolidated ad account structure with ad sets picking up new visitors while another retargets to close the sale will be an evergreen source of traffic. Additionally, using Facebook Custom and Lookalike Audiences feature can be helpful in targeting your competitors' audiences and also to reach new potential customer segments.

4. Participate in Marketplace Campaigns and Utilise Tools for More Sales

Sales promotions on online marketplaces are a simple yet effective way to boost visibility for your online store to reach buyers who have their wallets out and ready. Marketplace campaigns can be differentiated into the Super Campaigns like 11.11 Raya Sales, monthly campaigns like 5.5, 6.6 or 25th Payday sales and to custom daily sales as well as event category specific campaigns as well.

One thing to be mindful of is to have a guideline setup for discounts and promotions for joining these events. This is where you need to be able to manage variable costs, which can bring tremendous impact on your profitability. In addition, there are 2 free tools to use such as Boost selected products for additional visibility on Shopee and Seller picks for Lazada. These are limited in nature, so choose your top-selling products to give your products an edge over the competition.

5. Build Brand Campaigns to Connect with Your Audiences

Every business should have a brand marketing campaign. It is a way to control your brand's narrative and public image, as well as differentiate yourself from the competition. A typical consumer purchase journey requires multiple touch points with the buyer. An effective brand campaign usually means having multiple touch points with the target customer such as paid channels, using influencers, organic postings on social media, marketplace efforts and more.

At Commerceplus, Alliance Bank's BizSmart^® Solutions partner, we especially believe that a lasting relationship is an emotional one. This means you should always try to connect and evoke emotions from your customers, as many studies have pointed out, consumers often decide to buy a product first because they felt a deeper sense of connection and strong association with the brand or the product only to rationalise their buying decision later. Thus, a good brand campaign should aim to keep the message tight and drive in traffic without overselling; so that customers can understand and connect to the story behind the brand first.

More importantly, it places your message in front of audiences, which lets them remember you and start building brand equity in the mind of the consumer.

6. Build a Website for Brand Assets Traffic

You might have found success with your e-Commerce business on Instagram or Shopee, but nothing beats having your own official website. This is to avoid being at the complete mercy of marketplaces where e-Commerce companies could take a hit to their traffic as a result of marketplace policy changes.

Having a website can be one of the foundations to build a sustainable audience in the long run. A well-optimised website can also provide information about your business and gather direct traffic when users are actively looking for you. Above all, everything on your website will be under your control and you can easily reach out to your potential customers as they subscribe to your email list.

Final Thoughts:

Increasing profits is nearly always at the top of the priority list of every company out there. It takes a combination of creating growth and managing costs efficiently to build a sustainable and profitable e-Commerce business. Should you have any questions regarding the e-Commerce growth formula or are looking for expertise to bring your e-Commerce business to the next level, feel free to reach out to Commerceplus to learn more.