Ecommerce Marketing Strategies for 2021
Ecommerce sales are expected to hike up to $476 billion by 2024. Then again, the figure could be higher as the 2020 eCommerce explosion has seen the sales rise to $374 billion.
With such growth, eCommerce stores must work harder to stand out from the crowd, which calls for unique and effective eCommerce marketing strategies.
Think about it. In a single minute, savvy customers are accessing discount codes on apps, following influencers on social platforms, clicking on Facebook ads, reading promotional emails, comparing shopping marketplaces, spending billions online, and more.
To capture the customer’s attention, therefore, marketers should take note of eCommerce marketing trends and strategies that, besides gaining traction, are proven to lift sales for businesses.
What Are the Ecommerce Marketing Strategies for 2021 and Beyond
The internet provides marketers with a myriad of effective means of connecting with prospective and existing customers. For instance, high-quality and informative content can lead to brand loyalty by helping customers make informed purchase decisions.
On its end, Omni-channel marketing can open new communication lines between the business and its customers. The same goes for smart retargeting ads, influencer marketing, and the use of machine learning technologies to analyze data and make predictive decisions.
Here’s an in-depth overview of some effective eCommerce marketing trends for 2021 and beyond.
Content Marketing
The internet is content – from funny GIFs on Twitter to mind-blowing articles and thought-provoking webinars. As such, consumers spend over a third of their day engaging with digital content on multiple devices.
So how do you use content to your advantage?
Content marketing involves creating digital materials (e.g., videos, blog posts, GIFs, etc.) that attract, convert, and retain the target audience. This strategy educates potential customers about your services/products while establishing your brand as a thought leader in a given subject.
The logic is simple: you provide informative, problem-solving content to your prospects free-of-charge, which, in turn, establishes you as their go-to thought leader. It also showcases your expertise, which means your products and services will be the obvious alternative whenever your prospects cannot DIY. Moreover, content creation provides you with a free chance to promote your products/services.
So, whenever you see eCommerce sites adding a blog section on their sites, opening a YouTube channel, and whatnot, they’re trying to tap into these benefits.
Ideally, the content should be well-researched, in-depth, and helpful. Quality content includes:
- Prove-packed content like testimonials and case studies
- Interactive content such as quizzes that help match your prospects to appropriate products
- Informative content such as webinars, e-Books, and whitepapers
- Instructional content such as videos and blog posts
Applying Content Marketing to Your Business
Search engines love content. In fact, content is among the top three ranking factors on Google. Thus, creating quality content with a high search demand, will i. send traffic to your site, and ii. Generate lead and demand for your products.
To do so, look for focus keywords with high search volumes and develop content around them. Note, the term “high volume” is relative – while 1000 searches/month may be worthwhile to some people, others consider such figures to be worthless.
Here, think of phrases that describe your products. For example, yoga pants, yoga, or meditation for a yoga store and beards or shavers for a store selling beard products. Next, utilize keyword analysis tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, Ubbersuggest, and others to generate content ideas, determine the keyword difficulty, and keyword popularity/search volume.
Next, prioritize the ideas to tackle first and create content around them. When generating the content, strive to match the search intent as much as possible. (To identify the search intent, search for the topic or the keywords, and identify the content type, content format, and content angle of the top 10 ranking content on Google and other search engines). Experts recommend not to stray from what’s working – at least not too far!
