E-commerce is a big market, with Amazon dominating about 50% of all e-commerce trade toward the end of 2019, it can seem overwhelming trying to break the market when opening a new store. However, don't let this statistic put you off. If your product is good and you have faith in your customer service then use these tactics to get traction to your online store and help overcome new e-commerce sales challenges.
Marketing tactics to get traction to your e-commerce store
Micro-Influencer Marketing
Sponsored post for @CampariUK & Wilderness FestivalMicro stores warrant micro influence. The best thing is? These are often trusted better than macro-influencers. A study by aspireIQ found that, on average, micro-influencers with 10-50K followers have just over 40% higher engagement rates than macro-influencers with 500K-1M followers.
It's essential that you involve micro-Influencer marketing in your own marketing plan. Micro-influencers not only promise a high engagement rate and often better quality content but they're perceived as more trustworthy, are more likely to change their link in bio for your campaign link and will be more responsive with their community management.
If you're looking to gain traction for a new e-commerce store then micro-influencers who genuinely connect with your product can be a perfect fit.
Youtube Marketing
With over 2 Billion monthly active users, Youtube is currently the second-largest social media platform out there. It can be navigated in over 80 different languages and covers 95% of the world's mother tongue.
Where does your e-commerce business fit in? 90% of people say they have found a new brand or product via Youtube.
Use Youtube as your video content distribution channel, it's a fantastic way for you to not only reach new audiences but help to convince potential customers as well. A study from Wyzowl found that nearly 70% of all consumers prefer watching product videos than reading about them.
Take this into account. Create review videos that answer FAQs, use interactive walkthroughs using Youtube's video cards, comments, and 360 features. Lastly, gift the product to potential Youtubers that would be interested in reviewing it.
Social Media Efforts
Use your social media following wisely. No matter how big or small it is, it can help you to overcome that teething period of launching a new e-commerce site or product. If you have a small audience don't doubt it's strength.
Firstly, ask your audience to help build or grow your product and you'll develop loyal brand ambassadors in the process. 90% of Instagram users follow a business, they want to hear from you, so give them content they'll want to engage with and let their interactions fuel your business decisions.
Secondly, engage with your audience in innovative ways. Consider using interactive quizzes or live videos and keep them as active and entertained followers.
If you're looking to reach new markets then identify social accounts with similar demographic followings and work with them. Look for specific groups and host social media contests and giveaways to make your social collaboration worthwhile.
Whether you're reaching new audiences or nourishing your own, done so correctly will see you driving traffic to your e-commerce store when you need it most.
Put emphasis on Pinterest
At the end of 2019, Pinterest reported having 322 Million monthly active users worldwide. Pinterest is the social platform where your e-commerce product can fly.
On average, Pinterest is used 36% more by women planning life moments in comparison to Instagram and Facebook. Women are actively shopping on Pinterest, they're looking for inspiration, and 58% of those women say it helps them to make purchasing decisions.
If your brand isn't on Pinterest then you're missing out on a potentially huge revenue source. Use the channel to inspire purchasing decisions, create boards and pins that are not always showcasing your brand but are certainly centered around it.
Onsite product review for MVMT watchProduct Reviews
95% of buyers read online reviews before making a purchasing decision. If you're looking to get traction to a new e-commerce store then don't only consider using reviews on your product pages.
Place reviews in other touchpoints in the buyer journey to ensure someone is convinced from the word go. Consider interweaving your reviews into your social media plan, email marketing, partner and influencer strategies and throughout your website. Yes, a review can be a huge converting factor, but it can also be the attraction in the first place.
Partnerships
Partnerships are a huge opportunity for growth and for your e-commerce store to reach new markets. One of the biggest challenges with launching a new e-commerce store, no matter how user-friendly it is or how great the product works, is that you don't have the eyes to put it in front of.
Partner up. We briefly touched on this with the social media point, earlier, but there are many ways you can consider partnering with brands and not all brands' greatest opportunities for exposure are in social media efforts.
- Email marketing: Newsletters, Campaigns
- Internal communication platforms: Slack, Apps
- Content marketing: Video, Blogs, Infographics
- Downloadables: Ebooks, Whitepapers, Webinars
- Public Relations: Press stunts, News articles
If you've identified another brand as having the right demographic for you then consider partnering with them via:
Find unique ways that you can partner up and bring value to the partnering brand's follower base.
What's more important is that you get your product in front of new eyes in a seemingly organic way. Let the customer feel like they have discovered your product rather than you have sold to them.
SEO
SEO could be a whole blog in itself. Organic search equates to 94% of all web traffic, and by having the first position on Google search you'll have a 34% click-through rate on desktop and 35% percent on mobile. SEO needs to be part of your marketing strategy for your e-commerce store.
- Host a quality over quantity blog and hit a certain word length per blog
- Use keywords, both onsite and in your blog
- Optimize your images to be read by spiders/crawlers
- Use Meta-descriptions
- Create problem-solving content that introduces your product as a solution
- Use google trends and similar google searches to inform your blog
- Build a backlinking strategy, both within your own site and from external sites
- Write for voice search
There are so many tactics within the field that you can use to help push your e-commerce page. What's important is that you're trying to hit as many of these tactics as possible. We'll list a few for you to start with, but SEO needs to be top of mind when you're introducing a new website to the world.
Wrapping up marketing tactics to help drive traffic to a new eStore
I hope you managed to find some new tactics to take away with you and implement in your own e-commerce marketing strategy. Remember, no matter how big or small your demographic is, there's a route to them and there's plenty of space alongside Amazon for your store to exist. Use your size as an advantage.
