Establishing an ecommerce website can potentially become one of the most profitable moves you ever make. Unlike the brick and mortar stores, online ecommerce sellers enjoy the privilege of building a strong virtual presence and reach out to customers from all around the globe. However, looking into the cut-throat completion prevailing in the ecommerce market today, simply creating an online ecommerce store would not be sufficient. Effectively marketing the ecommerce store is also essential to compete with the bunch of ecommerce giants and other competitors. An effective marketing strategy can bring new customers to your store boosting your conversion rates and driving more sales. With the Indian ecommerce size expected to reach $99 billion by 2024 as per the reports from the American Multinational Investment Bank, Goldman Sachs, this marketing of the ecommerce website would seem tricky. Therefore, in this article, we will be covering ways to promote a new ecommerce website in India.
What are the ways to market a new ecommerce website in India?
The ecommerce giants are not always the culprits. Usually, a traditional online retailer would consider a multi-channel retail model wherein they’ll list their sellable products on multiple sales channels apart from their dedicated ecommerce website. Now to maintain a balance between the brand identity across the sales channels as well as the website is an issue that must be looked upon by new ecommerce websites in India. Whatever the scenario be, here are a few important tips for you to market/ promote your new ecommerce website in India:
Content Marketing Strategy
Nothing works well without a strategized planning; especially when it comes to an ecommerce website/ store. You’ll need a well-planned content marketing strategy before you start your ecommerce website. List down all the methods you shall employ to reach out to your targeted audience, whether it is newsletters, blogs, emails, or videos. Make sure you follow this strategy as well as keep a check on the plan every week or month. While building your content marketing strategy, you must be sure that you are taking a customer-centric and content-first approach.
Search Engine Optimization
The SEO or Search Engine Optimization is one of the best ways to enhance web traffic on your website. Using trending, relevant, and the right keywords on your website will slowly help you rank higher in Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Focusing on SEO will help you enlist your ecommerce website ranking web pages on the top, competing for other similar websites when people search for the keywords you have used. SEO is extremely essential, not only for ecommerce but also for all kinds of businesses. The more you optimize your ecommerce website, the higher will be your chance to rank on the top list of SERPS generating more sales and bringing more traffic.
SEO integration is a proven method to ensure the success of an ecommerce website. However, there are many elements to optimize Search engines. The sooner you understand it thoroughly; the better will be the results. Also, you need to consider and work on the speed of your ecommerce website. You must have heard the fact that online shoppers have the worst patience level and if a site does not load within 3 seconds of their visit, chances are, 90% of the visitors are going back. Therefore, it is extremely important to make sure that your ecommerce website is fast loading. It will help you engage your visitors and hence you get higher chances to convert them into your loyal customers. Now, you may ask, what the website speed is to do with SEO. Well, let us tell you, the website speed plays a significant role in ranking your ecommerce website in the SERPs.
Efficient Blogging
Although blogging has been an effective way to market an ecommerce website online, many sellers still fail to rank based on the blogs they publish. The reason is, simply publishing a blog cannot suffice to grab customers’ attention. You must publish efficient blogs with quality content and high definition visuals to attract and convince your store visitors to go through your blogs. Moreover, after you navigated your store visitors to the blogs section, it is your content and way of writing that decides whether they should continue reading it. If you are selling products of a particular niche in your ecommerce website, you can easily interest the customers with valuable blogs regarding that niche. Once they get to your blog, you must tell more about your products in a subtle and engaging way to be able to convert at least a few of the visitors into your customers.
Social Media Utility
The globe is taken by social media platforms at present. Many prominent social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and video sharing channel such as Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, have changed the way we live. These platforms have immense potential that has not been completely tapped on. Marketing your ecommerce business on such platforms can help you get endless exposure, within a few bucks. You need to invest your quality time and efforts in planning out this kind of marketing to get the best results. We suggest you start with posting content and links based on your target audience which would navigate them back to your website.
Up-Selling and Cross-Selling
Up-selling helps you convince your customers to purchase products that are costly than the one they have already chosen. On the other hand, cross-selling aids you to convince customers in purchasing products that can complement the one that they are about to purchase. Both these methods are widely used by ecommerce businesses of all sizes, including the ecommerce giant, Amazon. However, it depends on you to create a suitable product match and suggest your customers motivate them effectively.
Automated Email Marketing
Email marketing is the foundation of an effective ecommerce marketing strategy. It is one of the best methods to influence and convince your customers to purchase more. Online shoppers tend to open emails even if it is a plain advertisement. You can consider creating an email marketing campaign to be in touch with your customers, send them useful information, as well as sell your products. You can also find many email marketing software online to help you automate the process of connecting and personalizing your contact with the customers.
Paid Promotions
In the age of valuing people and companies with millions of followers, we cannot overlook the importance of marketing the ecommerce business. Unless your content is world famous like the release of an iPhone, you’ll need to invest some amount in boosting your online ecommerce business. There are many ways for paid promotions such as paying on a per-click basis or for the keywords that are relevant to your ecommerce business. With the increasing demand for ecommerce businesses to be online, investing a few bucks for paid promotions won’t be a bad idea. Online customers today are willing to trade capital in exchange for convenience. They seek everything right at their fingertips in a few clicks and ecommerce business can serve the purpose by satisfying such customers. The readiness and flexibility of the ecommerce businesses are what sets it apart from the traditional brick and mortar stores.
Product Reviews
As an ecommerce seller, you can get your products reviewed with the help of bloggers who write product reviews. You can approach the bloggers and ask them to review and write about the products you sell. If needed, you can provide them with free samples or access to your products. Favourable reviews from them can potentially encourage the website visitors and customers to purchase the products; eventually building up your website traffic. You can also consider partnering with relevant companies to effectively market your ecommerce business.
Contextual Marketing
There are various variations of the meaning of Contextual Marketing; however, here it is referred to using your marketing in such a way that compliments your demographics while adding the right messages at the right place. This kind of marketing, when done right, can help you generate an increased customer base for the long run.
Conclusion
Every online store in India has different types of products to sell. Therefore, it depends on the type of business to choose the right marketing strategy. Although we have tried covering the marketing strategies that can be helpful for all kinds of ecommerce businesses, some of these may be useful for one kind of ecommerce business, while the others may be suitable for other kinds. You can try and test these methods as per your convenience.
