Ecommerce Marketing
Are You Using the Best eCommerce Marketing Strategies?
Digital Shift's eCommerce marketing strategies are specifically designed for your business. How? Our Marketing eCommerce website specialists work with you to design a three part eCommerce sales funnel. Marketing funnels include a top, middle, and bottom/end. The eCommerce funnel is designed to walk your prospective customer through their sales journey with you - from discovery, consideration, and to purchase. Contact us to tell us about your eCommerce marketing strategy, or continue reading to learn more.
eCommerce Marketing with Social Media Advertising
Social Media Advertising is an important element of any eCommerce marketing strategy. Using Social Media Advertising will allow your business to get new cold leads or target a "look-a-like" audience using the Facebook Advertising platform. Cold traffic can be described as website visitors that have never heard of you and don't know what you offer. Cold traffic can be "warmed up" by building trust and credibility as the visitor becomes more familiar with your brand. Why use social media for cold traffic? Cold traffic click on Facebook and Pinterest can be up to 4+ times less expensive than starting off with traditional PPC efforts. More information can by found at the Facebook for Retail and eCommerce center.
Check Out Additional eCommerce Sales Funnel Resources
Understanding The Cyclical Nature of eCommerce Marketing
eCommerce for products is cyclical, and most of the shopping occurs during the holidays. Using Facebook Advertising allows your business to re-target existing visitors of pages (such as the shopping cart, checkout, etc.) and encourage him/her to convert into a customer. eCommerce is similar to retail shopping with most of the action taking place during major holidays, life events, or online shopping days including Amazon Prim Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday to name a few. Preparing to time your strategy before, and around, these events can be extremely rewarding!
Social Media for eCommerce Marketing
Social Media Advertising allows the prospective customer to learn who you are and what you do at a lower cost. Like building any relationship, social media has a lead time before the acquisition occurs. The prospective customer has to understand the following (similar to other marketing processes):
understand who you are/what your business does- understand what you do/offer
- understand how you can help/solve their problem
- have a need, or want, for your product/service
- are ready to purchase/trust you
Social media advertising is an effective way to start the customer journey and get them through stages 1-3 in a cost effective manner. Also, social media helps strengthen the relationship between customers who have already purchased from your business in the past and allow him/her stay connected via social updates.
What is a Facebook Look-a-like audience?
Lookalike audiences allow advertisers to target more people who "look like" their established customers, website visitors, visitors of specific web pages, etc. To generate a lookalike audience you must have at least 100 people in your audience list. The audience list can come automatically from prior website visitors, or be uploaded by you based on email addresses, phone number, etc. Facebook will then examine your current audience (psychographics, demographics, etc.) and find people that have similar traits and personalities so that you can start targeting this new audience that is similar to yours. This is a very powerful method of targeting when used correctly. Who wouldn't want to target people who are very similar to their existing customers?!
eCommerce Marketing with Google AdWords
Be everywhere your shoppers are online! When implementing an eCommerce marketing strategy you absolutely can't forget to integrate your Google AdWords account with your Google Merchant Center account. Integrating these accounts is absolutely necessary and if you are not currently doing this, sing up for a Google Merchant account and have it linked to your AdWords account right away. If you have someone else managing your eCommerce PPC ensure that this is setup correctly to ensure you are getting the best return on investment with you eCommerce PPC strategy.
What is Google Merchant Center?
Google Merchant Center is a management tool created to assist you with uploading your online store and product data to Google. Once your account is confirmed and your data uploaded your products will be made available in Google Shopping as well as other Google services. Want to open a google merchant account? You can learn more about at the Google Merchant Center.
What are Shopping ads?
Shopping ads allow prospects to find the exact product that they are looking for. Shopping ads become available when you link your Google AdWords account to your Merchant Center account. Once this is completed you will be able to display your eCommerce products directly to prospective buyers through Google Shopping ads.
What is The Maximum Bid I Should Place?
That depends on your product profit margin, your customer acquisition strategy, and marketing data. The real goal is to determine the cost of acquiring a sales conversion of your products and understanding your numbers. These are the three critical elements that assist in determining your decision:
- Product Margin: Understanding how much profit margin you have in your product will help you better determine your costing structure.
- Cost per Customer Acquisition: It is equally important, to ensure that you calculate the cost per customer acquisition, which is the average cost to acquire a customer.
- Keyword competitiveness: Each keyword will have a different bid and search volume. Picking the right ones based on the customers' sales journey with your brand is the key.
The most common factors to determine the Max PPC bid include the product margin, cost per customer acquisition, and keyword competitiveness. However, there can be other factors that are equally important depending on the product/services, industry, and advertising platform. If you're uncertain contacts us to speak with a specialist.
Check Out Additional eCommerce Sales Funnel Resources
Need Help Managing Your eCommerce PPC?
Contact Digital Shift to learn how we can help you implement and manage an eCommerce marketing strategy. Get started for free with a strategic marketing session.
