How Digital Marketing is helping E-commerce to Grow

Nowadays, digital marketing has penetrated into every field. The primary reason behind this phenomenon is that business processes are evolving very quickly and there are a lot of experimentation and changes done in the industry. We are getting diverted by one or the other upcoming trends. Coming to consumers, we can’t pretend about them as their behaviour is changing by every minute. Digital marketing as a mechanism can easily adapt to these changes.

What is trending today might not be the trend next month.

All of this is creating a lot of challenges for the different businesses. So, now the point is, how to keep up with everything?

E-commerce?

It is your birthday coming up but no time to go to a shopping mall, and you know you need to shop a lot – from a dress to a pair of shoes, accessories and bags. What comes to save you that moment is your E-commerce shopping website. It is a saviour again when guests are coming home for dinner but you are out of groceries, you order and you get it on time. These are a few day-to-day examples and in fact, this has become a part of our lives.

We got so used to these sites, for a dress, we order from Flipkart, Myntra, Ajio, Jabong or any other site, for groceries- Reliance Smart or Grofers.com and Zomato, Swiggy or Food Panda for food.

E-commerce is a business where buying and selling completely depends on the internet. Therefore the Digital Marketing comes into the picture, as it is the only medium to help E-commerce business to grow. The speedy growth of smartphones and internet give comprehensive access to selling and purchasing merchandise at an ease.

Why is Digital Marketing Essential for an E-commerce Business?

Using Digital Marketing, E-commerce creates huge revenue as it helps to acquire customers and brand value. Customers are no more dependent just on content or a word-of-mouth before buying a product; they make sure to read the reviews about a product on all the platforms on which the product is listed.

According to the recent analysis, 37 million social media visits led to 529,000 orders approx. Out of others, Facebook helps to get more traffic to the website which leads to sales constituting average 85% of all the orders.

It has become very important to grab customers attention as they get distracted really easily, this is where Digital Marketing comes into the picture and help E-commerce businesses to go through such challenges.

Digital Marketing focuses on incorporating it’s appropriate marketing channels to make it easier for E-commerce businesses, find out few of the most important Digital marketing channels below.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

For your e-commerce website, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is like a blessing in disguise. It is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

Let us take an example of the case study of Zagg, which is a mobile accessories retailer. They produce lots of content and aggressively post up to 35 times per week, which helps customers find them online easily.

They promote their products through a content, giveaways and by other promotional activities, Zagg’s content drives a lot of sales and engagement. In 2012 alone, the company reported a 172% ROI on their blog – all of which came from direct sales.

Did you know that IMS Proschool offers a comprehensive Digital Marketing course?

2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is focused on improving the website’s visibility in order to increase organic search engine ranking. It is a perfect channel which provides short-term results really quickly.

Search engine marketing (SEM) uses paid ad campaigns based on keywords to reach out to users actively searching for your website.

The most well-known and effective platform of SEM is Google AdWords, it is the paid search channel where E-commerce businesses should definitely focus on. Here is a case study of Trivago, how they used Google AdWords to be listed at the top of relevant search results.

In 2015, Trivago used Google’s Dynamic Search Ads to improve automate complex search doubts, which included the question like “What are the nicest hotels in San Francisco?” According to Google, their Dynamic Search Ads feature also “automatically generated longer, more relevant ad headlines for the company’s ads based on a person’s specific search.”

This resulted in a 140% higher click-through rate, with better conversions in new markets, and greater ad ROI in the markets.

3. Email Marketing

Email marketing is not dead yet, it is still the most effective channel of Digital Marketing for retailers delivering actual ROI.

Emails play an important role in providing a better customer shopping experience. Once you order or pay for your product on the E-commerce website, immediately you get the confirmation email and also a digital invoice. Users might email questions about products, your experience, or remind customers of their abandoned shopping cart. or general information requests about the company. Personalised emails help your customers connect with your company well.

Let’s take the case-in-point of Amazon.They started with personalizing their email campaigns as per customers’ preferences. They started with segmenting customers for email marketing campaign, which made it simple for them to get personal and tap into customer’s interest which helped in enhancing the profitability index.

Amazon’s process worked by having a strategic email campaign which began with sending out the welcome email with an engaging subject line, link, the brand story, any special offer and also sent out social media invitations. They even sent out the invite people to browse the store.

Amazon started sending out the product suggestions based on the previous purchases and browsing history. After the purchase of the product, they started sending out thank you emails.

It was the database of the customers which helped Amazon to enhance the personalization of the message and making it so effective. They designed a specific blueprint for each customer to ensure they were getting the best ROI.

Did you know, you can learn E-mail Marketing in IMS Proschool’s Digital Marketing Course? Click Here to view the course.

4. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media has taken over the world, there is hardly anyone who is not active on social media. Posting regularly on Instagram or Facebook have become a day to day habit. It has become easier for brands to reach out customers through social media. As social networks are getting stronger it has become for Digital market professionals to include paid social media as part of their strategy to reach out more customers.

Below is the case study of Zappos which is an online shoe store.

Zappos is successful at social media not because of some special campaigns but what they did was, they projected their unique service and culture to the world.

The first element of their approach is their service which are;

1. They have a Twitter account dedicated to Service Issues
2. To uncover service opportunities
3. Initiate response
4. Augment praise
5. Strengthen Service reputation

 
Coming to their second element of the approach, which is their culture,

1. There are 400 employees in the company and they all got Twitter accounts.
2. Who they hire is cooperative with this culture of service
3. Most of their social media initiatives are about exposing the people at Zappos, who through their actions strengthen the company’s competitive advantage. Which makes the company real.

 
The CEO of the company also communicates about his passion over Social Media. The main strategy of Zappos is to make people more eager to know about their service and culture over social media

Conclusion

It is not possible for an E-commerce platform to grow organically by itself in a short span of time. Digital marketing professionals could make it possible by grabbing maximum attention from the target audiences and helping out your business to convert those into sales. Also, don’t forget there would be more digital marketing channels popping up in the future, so what you have to get a hang of the above ones properly and then start with the new ones.