Recent years have seen a boom in the number of eCommerce companies doing business. And while there is plenty of room for all of them to thrive, only the ones that stick to a deliberate marketing strategy will experience greater success.
For eCommerce brands, there is often no better form of marketing than digital marketing — especially given that the business itself is predominantly digital. But in order to succeed in digital marketing, one must first understand the trends that dominate the field.
1. Utilize Social SEO
Social media has become a powerful digital marketing tool, with data showing that apps such as Instagram and TikTok are becoming the “new search engines”. With this shift in user behavior comes an entirely new form of “social SEO” for communications. Optimizing for social media is both similar and different from optimizing for web search engines, emphasizing valuable tools such as hashtags, trending sounds, and keywords to ensure maximum performance and engagement.
For marketers, social SEO is all about creating content that has maximum discoverability. Thankfully, a great deal of data is available regarding audience behavior, and brands can use it to their advantage to optimize their social media content. Incorporating keywords, hashtags, and sounds that are popular and relevant to the brand will ensure that they maximize their reach.
2. Focus on Omnichannel Experiences
Given the interconnectivity of today’s world experiences, it is more important than ever for marketers and their brands to invest in omnichannel experiences. Customers and brands can now connect on multiple touchpoints, including apps, browsers, email, and social media, to name just a few examples. However, the image created for a brand is the image customers expect — regardless of which medium or platform they encounter it on. In other words, the company they interact with online has to “feel” like the same company when they interact with it in person.
When coordinating omnichannel experiences, it’s crucial that marketers ensure consistency in their brand’s messaging across every platform they utilize. After all, the primary goal of marketing is to cultivate a brand image. Without this, consumers will often be left feeling confused, or even alienated due to conflicting messaging. Consistent messaging is necessary for any brand seeking to convert potential users into paying ones from their digital marketing efforts.
3. Invest in Community Building
Building a community around a specific brand is critical for marketers looking to improve customer engagement. These days, customer expectations are higher than ever, and that means that brands need to focus on the customer — and their experience with the brand — above all else. The easiest way to create and improve customer engagement and invest in community building is to establish genuine connections with users in order to create exciting, personalized experiences. For marketers in 2023, this means doing more than “liking” and responding to followers’ comments or hosting the occasional giveaway.
If marketers aren’t sure how to go about building a community around their brand, they can start by looking into the experiences that VIP membership programs can provide. For eCommerce businesses, the perks of a VIP membership program can consist of anything from in-cart holds to VIP-only events and sales. Although these may seem like small steps to take, they can significantly impact engagement by making customers feel more included as part of a niche community. As a result of the enhanced experience this brings, customers will be more likely to remain loyal to the brand in the future, making it easier for marketers to upsell them in the future.
While these trends may seem exciting, marketers must first create an effective social media marketing strategy to maximize their potential. And as any marketer knows, planning and preparation is a significant portion of their overall strategy. Without the proper planning, brands can run the risk of creating an inconsistent image or content that, to customers, feels rushed and inauthentic.
When creating a social media strategy, marketers must first consider several factors that go into what makes the most sense for their business. ECommerce businesses that operate in several different industries, for instance, will approach digital marketing differently than others with smaller, more niche consumer markets. As another example, a business selling beauty products will approach social media and community building very differently than a hardware brand because their audiences share few similarities.
After implementing their social media marketing strategy, marketers should ask for feedback on it from their customers. One of the best things about social media in today’s world is how easily a company can measure engagement. If a particular strategy does not generate the desired response from customers — be it views, likes, comments, or shares — marketers will know that some aspect of their strategy needs to change. Don’t be afraid to try new things, but don’t be scared to change something if it doesn’t work.
If an eCommerce company successfully utilizes social SEO, ensures consistency of its brand image across its social media platforms, and uses these to create genuine customer engagement, then it is already well on the way to leading a successful digital marketing campaign. Although developing a marketing strategy can be intimidating — especially for eCommerce brands in their infancy — there is plenty of room for trial and error. It may take brands some time to find a digital marketing strategy that fits their business, but once they do, the results will be worth the effort and planning.
