E-commerce, also known as online shopping, is becoming more widespread as more consumers look to the Internet for purchasing decisions. Consumers can find a wider variety of goods, often at more competitive prices, However, because shopping online requires much less commitment than shopping in a store consumers can fill up a virtual shopping cart from the comfort of their living rooms at any hour of the day as many as 95% of online shoppers don’t “convert” (or purchase) from a website on their first visit. Businesses implement e-commerce marketing strategies hoping to solve this issue, easing consumer decision making online.
What is e-commerce marketing?
E-commerce marketing is the process of driving sales by raising awareness about an online store's brand and product offerings. Digital marketing for e-commerce applies traditional marketing principles to a multichannel, data-driven environment. E-commerce marketing can be divided into two general actions:
driving website traffic and optimizing the user experience for conversion. Both are critical components to growing an online business; failure in one is all but sure to undermine any success in the other.
E-commerce Marketing Channels
• Pay-per-click Advertising (PPC): Effective PPC campaigns drive users with intent to purchase, making it more efficient than many traditional advertising platforms. Businesses bid on impressions for paid listings at the top of search engine results, paying on a per-click basis. Impressions are determined by user search query, with strategy revolving around which keyword bids yield the highest ROI.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Sometimes used as a synonym for PPC, referring to paid advertising campaigns. SEM is often used to describe efforts on Google's AdWords platform and paid platforms on other search engines, such as Bing. This multifaceted term is also used by many marketers to describe all paid and organic efforts.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Unlike the paid media opportunities described above, SEO traffic comes from unpaid "organic" results on search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
• Display Advertising: Banners, sidebars and other predominantly visual advertisements that appear on other websites. Display ads are facilitated by ad networks such as Google Display Network.
Affiliate Marketing: Referrals from other websites with industry or product-focused content such as reviews, comparisons, and testimonials. Successful affiliates have a loyal following or receive traffic from some of the above channels. They typically receive a set commission of referred sales, often determined on a case-by-case basis.
Email Marketing: Newsletter and remarketing all use email to target past and potential customers.
E-commerce Marketing terms
• Google AdWords: Google's advertising platform pioneered the PPC model and capitalizes on the company's majority share of the search market.
• Search Engine Results Page (SERP): The cumulative results from users executing a search engine query, comprising organic and paid listings. Having results on the first page of SERPs is critical to acquiring new customers.
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): The process of improving every aspect of a website so that more visitors purchase. Faster load times, fewer clicks to purchase and more enticing product descriptions/images make it easier for the user's to evaluate your products and follow through to the most common metric for evaluating CRO efforts is conversion rate.
• Conversion Funnel: The steps taken by a prospect to become a customer, beginning with awareness and ending with a purchase. Higher-priced items generally have a longer sales cycle, while low-cost items can convert in a much shorter period of time.
Keeping up with e-commerce marketing trends
All industries evolve, but online marketing tends to mature at warp speed. Search engines and advertising platforms are constantly changing their requirements, rules, and algorithms that determine results. As such, it's very important to stay abreast of major changes. Some extremely successful SEO tactics, for example, can become liabilities overnight. As Google and other search engines refine their algorithms to deliver the highest-quality results, it's critical to monitor these developments and make sure your store is compliant.
Conversely, algorithm updates can also offer opportunities. Hummingbird increased the importance of semantic search, allowing SEOs to rely less on exact-match keywords. Less stringent keyword requirements lead to more creativity, and high- ranking product results today are not as reliant on the inclusion of precise product keywords. Other updates have favored websites with quality informational content, increasing the importance and opportunity of utilizing blogs, buying guides, and other forms of content.
What types of careers work with E-commerce Marketing strategies?
Because e-commerce marketing is a digital marketing field, a career in e-commerce marketing requires marketers to not only have a marketing background, but also a firm understanding of the ever-changing world of social media, search engine analytics, and broad-based online marketing. An effective e-commerce marketing the team will be made up of individuals who are extremely comfortable with technology trends and have the creativity to let your e-commerce website stand out from the crowd.
Marketing Managers:
What do they do?
A successful e-commerce marketing campaign should be led by a marketing manager with the knowledge and training necessary to manage and effectively strategize campaign activity. Typically, marketing managers oversee all activities within a company’s marketing, advertising, and promotional department. They establish brand guidelines and growth strategies, evaluate customer needs, and tweak marketing plans dependent on success.
Education and experience
Most marketing managers hold at least a bachelor's degree in marketing or a related major like communication, advertising or business. Marketing managers generally begin in entry-level marketing positions and work their way up the career ladder.
SEO Specialist:
What do they do?
SEO Specialists ensure that their websites are optimized to attract and engage the largest amount of applicable visitors who will eventually convert into customers. They do so by making sure that the website’s branded content across all platforms leads Internet users to their offerings by building search engine rank, reputation, and traffic.
Education and experience
A Bachelor’s degree in marketing is the best path to a career in SEO, and a background in programming can also be extremely useful. Beyond formal education though, individuals who want to pursue an SEO career should continue they’re training individually by staying up-to-date on the ever-changing world of SEO.
Webmaster:
What do they do?
A webmaster collaborates with the e-commerce marketing team to develop and maintain the look and feel of a website. He or she is responsible for the usability and functionality of a website day-to-day and ensures that it is performing at the best possible level. By monitoring traffic and customer experience, the webmaster can adjust expectations and improve performance.
Education and experience
Beginning a career as a webmaster generally requires a Bachelor’s degree in business or computer programming, as well as a working knowledge of programming language like HTML. Usually, a webmaster will have a few years of experience in the programming industry before becoming responsible for a website.
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