More about eCommerce marketing
The eCommerce industry has transformed the way businesses market, sell, and operate. With 96% of Americans shopping online, it makes sense as to why the eCommerce industry has become so popular over recent years, and why eCommerce merchants are strengthening their digital marketing efforts. In fact, global eCommerce sales will reach $4.5 trillion by 2021. With that said, by leveraging the right tools, eCommerce companies can improve their store’s traffic organically and drive more sales, leading to exponential growth with their eCommerce store.
eCommerce is the future for businesses globally, and it’s important now more than ever for merchants to understand the impact of eCommerce marketing. For this reason, we’re going to focus on the impact of 5 powerful eCommerce marketing trends.
1. SEO
While SEO doesn’t immediately lead to sales, the long-term results can lead to exponential growth. The idea of SEO has been tossed around for quite some time but only because it has proven to be an effective source of growth for eCommerce businesses. SEO helps eCommerce businesses generate organic traffic and strong leads, resulting in more sales.
Naturally, the more traffic your eCommerce site can generate, the more paying customers’ merchants are likely to gain. Additionally, the people that merchants do manage to successfully convert to their site are more likely to become repeating customers. SEO improves all aspects of the eCommerce experience. It is in business owners best interest to polish their SEO as Google is putting more emphasis on websites that are engaging and relative.
In fact, on average, businesses have spent $72 billion on SEO and that number is expected to increase to $79 billion in 2020. SEO has truly become a support for businesses as 29% of business owners pay between $1,000 and $2,500 a month for SEO optimization.
It’s important that merchants develop an effective SEO strategy to optimize their website for a better user experience and to improve their search ranking overall. Google has changed tremendously over recent years and merchants should be aware of Google’s expectations if they expect to increase their sales.
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing has easily become one of the most effective ways for eCommerce business owners to drive more traffic and increase sales. Content marketing focuses on creating high-quality content that, in turn, attracts and interests your target audience. In 2018, content marketing has become a staple marketing strategy for eCommerce business owners globally because the return on investment is promising. In fact, almost half of 18-49-year-old people get their news and information online and 61% of U.S consumers made a purchase after reading recommendations online.
Content marketing has afforded merchants the opportunity to tell stories, share experiences, and improve transparency. Additionally, content marketing has helped business owners do a more efficient job of adding value to their customers instead of solely focusing on quantity output.
For this reason, eCommerce business owners are more focused on leveraging content marketing to gain organic traffic and generate solid leads that translate into sales. In fact, 29% of B2B marketing budgets are spent on content marketing on average and 75% of marketers are increasing their investment in content marketing.
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing tools for eCommerce business owners to leverage. The reason why email marketing is extremely beneficial is that it creates the perfect opportunity for merchants to genuinely bridge a connection with new customers and continue to nurture relationships with existing customers.
Strong customer relationships are vital to every business’s success. Customers are more easily retained when they can connect with the brand. Additionally, customer’s want to invest in businesses that have established a strong presence, and email marketing is one of the most effective ways to do this. Email can be used to highlight new products or services, share valuable information, promote a new sale or remind customers of a current sale that’s ending.
For businesses, the average return on investment is $44 for every dollar spent. According to a HubSpot case study, companies spend 16% of their marketing budget on email marketing. In fact, email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences.
Email marketing has advanced over the years to be more integrative. ECommerce businesses are now able to display fully-functional campaigns that can attract new customers and keep current customers engaged. This is why businesses are expected to spend more time in this area moving forward.
4. Big Data
Big data refers to a large volume of data designed to help businesses reveal patterns, trends, associations related to human behavior, and interactions. With so many consumers online, it can be difficult for businesses to effectively meet the needs of their customers. In fact, people produce an estimated 17.2MB of new information per second. Leveraging big data allows for better strategic decisions that help merchants tailor content and marketing efforts to meet the needs of customers.
When merchants can understand their customers better, they experience better results simply because they are able to assert more precise marketing. This leads to less money being spent on marketing, allowing funds to be allocated to other areas of the business. In fact, according to Sageworks, data shows that small businesses spend about 1% of revenue on marketing. This means that a company that makes 100,000 will spend roughly $1,000 on digital marketing.
Some businesses tend to spend more money on marketing, especially if their marketing strategy proves to be ineffective. However, big data truly lends itself to eCommerce businesses, helping merchants to navigate through the internet world and target customers successfully.
In fact, IDC says that worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics will grow from 130.1 billion in 2016 to more than 203 billion in 2020 at a compound variable growth rate of 11.7%. Mckinsey Analytics conducted a survey where 50% of respondents stated that Big Data has fundamentally changed business practices in their sales and marketing functions.
5. Video Marketing
Youtube is the second largest search engine after Google. For this reason, eCommerce business owners have focused on creating video content to gain more traffic organically. Consumers already use video to get much of their information. In fact, 55% of people watch videos online every day. Video content works because videos are engaging and memorable. According to Syndacast, 65% of video viewers watch more than 3/4 of the video. What this means is, eCommerce business owners can expect to see exponential growth by integrating video content into their marketing strategy.
Merchants can leverage video content to give a closer look at a product, explain a service or give valuable information that helps to establish credibility. Aside from this, video content helps boost your business on Google’s search rankings. This would explain why digital video marketing is a $135 billion industry alone in the U.S. Businesses are recognizing the power that video marketing holds which is also why 56% of businesses are producing videos every week.
Video content proves your value to Google because they take more than just text into account when determining your site’s relevancy. Additionally, because videos are highly engaging, video content helps merchants seamlessly drive organic traffic to their website. Video content has also become an effective platform for boosting your brand’s social presence, making it easier for you to gain more exposure online.
In 2018, the eCommerce Industry is still on the rise. Every eCommerce business owner’s top business initiative is to organically bring more traffic to their site and improve sales. With that said, many business owners have realized the opportunity for exponential growth online with effective eCommerce marketing. For this reason, eCommerce businesses will continue to hone their digital marketing efforts to produce better results.
Credo connects businesses to reputable and vetted online marketing providers. If you have any questions on eCommerce marketing or want to know more about how we can help your business, contact us.