It would not be an overstatement to say that effective digital marketing is the backbone of any successful e-commerce business. Online marketing not only helps you reach out to your target audience at lightning speed, it lets you measure the impact of your marketing efforts in terms of outreach, conversion, and revenues.
A well-thought and well-executed digital marketing strategy are bound to bring results for your e-commerce business, whether you’ve already established your brand or are just starting out. Here are 4 reasons why online marketing is essential to the success of your e-business.
Cost-effective marketing
Unlike conventional marketing, which involved big budgets and bigger advertising plans, marketing your business through digital media is cheaper and more effective in terms of reaching out to a large number of people in a short span of time—and with minimum effort.
SMEs, in particular, cannot afford to spend a lot on marketing when in the growing phase. But this phase is crucial in terms of marketing, as the e-commerce brand needs to establish visibility among its target customer base. Digital marketing enables new online businesses to create a marketing strategy that’s cost-effective yet impactful. You can choose from the various marketing platforms and focus on the ones that best serve your business goals.
Additionally, digital marketing allows you to market your products or services to a niche audience, thus saving valuable resources from being used upon wasteful advertising expenditure.
Brand loyalty and trust
By employing a robust digital marketing plan, you establish your brand’s presence on major online platforms frequented by your potential customers. Target-marketing through multiple modes (email, social media, blogs etc.) builds recall and retention in the customer’s mind. This is particularly important if you are an e-commerce brand competing with a hundred other online platforms selling similar products or services.
When customers find you easily accessible online, they are able to leave positive reviews as well as constructive feedback that you can respond to in real time. This builds trust and loyalty for your e-commerce brand and encourages existing customers to recommend you to their friends and family.
Remember that a good online image is crucial to the success of any online business. While social media also gives people the space to leave negative reviews, you can combat negative publicity through customer-centric conflict resolution and share those updates publicly. This sends a strong message to your potential customers that your business cares about its patrons.
Greater conversion rate
As stated before, the advanced tools of digital marketing enable you to analyze the impact of your campaign from start to finish. You can ascertain the number of people who viewed, say, a product on your Facebook page and then went to your website and made a purchase or subscribed to your mailing list.
You get access to all of this data and more in real time, which in turn helps your marketing team fine-tune its marketing activities for greater impact.
Employing tried and tested tools such as SEO, email marketing, social media marketing and blogging helps bring traffic to your e-commerce website, which is the first step to lead generation and then conversion. However, it is extremely important that you engage a digital marketing team that has the expertise and experience to help your e-commerce business make the most of the various modes of online marketing. Digital marketing is an investment and you must treat it like one.
Learn about the 7 SEO Mistakes That E-Commerce Websites Must Avoid, especially when their focus is an SEO-driven lead generation.
Opportunity for growth and expansion
The advent of e-commerce has meant that brick-and-mortar stores and sellers are no longer confined to a particular physical location. By bringing your physical store online and marketing it well, you can reach out to audiences you never thought could be turned into your loyal customers.
Digital marketing allows you to expand your operations across cities and even countries. The only prerequisite to such an ambitious plan is to get your basics right, that is, understand what an effective digital marketing campaign can do for you. For this, we recommend that you contact a trusted digital marketing agency and let professionals tell you what social media, email and content marketing can achieve for your business.
Any form of marketing activity costs money, and the longer you shy away from reaping the benefits of digital marketing, greater the risk of your brand disappearing into oblivion as far as the consumer’s memory and attention are concerned.
