5 Methods of Digital Marketing in E-Commerce

Digital Marketing Strategies in E-Commerce

Digital marketing is carried out in a wide variety of tactics and technologies which are used to reach customers online. We can easily say that, as a form of online marketing to promote products or services, digital marketing makes it possible for the organisations to create a brand identity. Having a brand identity has clearly changed the game in the marketing industry. In this article, we present to you a number of digital marketing methods for businesses to promote their products or services for a larger base of customers in the competitive world of e-commerce. 

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” In simple terms, it means the process of improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business in search engines. 

The goal is to increase search engine traffic which basically means that the company ranks higher when a person punches a word in the search bar. But how do you actually do that? How exactly do you accomplish ranking higher in search results? 

SEO marketers begin by researching words and phrases which are being used by the consumers to search for information online. Then the marketers use those words in their content. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business. You can conduct SEO activities both on-site and off-site. There are some things that can improve the SEO of a site.

Search engines need to be able to read the content of your site ‘clearly’. This means, anything you put on your content that are videos or audio content, there needs to be text transcriptions. This activity is called Content Indexing.

To find all the content on your site easily, search engines need to be able to crawl your site structure. This means an SEO specialist can work on formatting the links,URLs and sitemaps properly so that site crawlers can access them easily. This is called Good Link Structure.

You want your site to be found which requires deploying search words carefully. What we call “headers” are one of the most important components of search engine optimization. You cannot just ‘stuff’ your contents with as many keywords and their variations as possible. It’s crucial to write high quality content which uses keywords in the headers and in the crawlable page content. And this is called Keywords and Keyword Targeting. 

Content indexing, good link structure and keyword targeting are some of the things an SEO marketer would consider working on so as to improve the site’s SEO.

2. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing in digital marketing strategies basically includes every single thing a business does via social media channels. Marketers still should approach social media with integrated and strategic understanding for this kind of marketing goes far beyond simply creating posts for social channels and responding to comments. 

Analyses done on customer behaviour show that the trend of social media will keep going because of technological improvements, digitalization and smartphones. This doesn’t mean to say that you just go on and use social media applications like Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok and Twitch like a regular person. 

These channels should be approached with an integrated strategy so that you can increase contact with customers. For effective results in social media marketing, the work must focus on the right items and the entire body of activities should be in coordination with the efforts. 

Posting messages regularly, creating quality content and replying to customer comments in a timely fashion are crucial if you wish to increase the impact of social media marketing. There are many online tools available to automate and schedule social media posts however, you must remember that automation should be used as a tool not a ‘set it and we’re good’ type of solution. Users will definitely figure out at some point whether there is a real person behind the posts. 

As for the cooperation of efforts, social media marketers should be a part of all other marketing functions of the company. They need to work with the main marketing team to coordinate their message across all platforms (online and offline platforms) which means every part of the brand is telling the same story. This is also important for customer loyalty and company identity.

One other thing that is quite significant in social media marketing is analytical performance. All social media marketers should be able to analyse the performance or the posts. They should be trained very well so that they can come up with strategies using that data. When we put all these points together, one can easily see that social media marketing is not as simple as managing your personal Facebook profile. It is much more complicated. Creative thinking blended with data-driven strategy are necessary for effective social media marketing activities.

3. Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing is also known as Affiliate Marketing and it is one of the most popular methods of digital marketing to bridge the gap between consumers and companies or organisations. Influencer marketing activities basically utilise the popularity of industry experts and social media influencers. This literally means, your company can get more business simply because the leads bought by them. In other words, the collaboration between these third-parties and your business results in more business for you.

Social media influencers create blogs, leave posts or make videos that engage their audience. Their audience is your target audience so the relationship between the target audience and the influencer is very important. Affiliate marketing has grown in a major scale with new media like TİkTok, Instagram, YouTube and blogs being a mainstream form of entertainment and news. 

Hence affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular forms of digital marketing and is making its mark in digital marketing strategies. Affiliate marketing is even compatible with small businesses as it helps the business to build some kind of recognition in the world of -commerce. 

4. GoogleAds / Pay-per-click (PPC)

Per-per-clicks are paid advertisements and promoted search engine results. As long as you pay, the ad exists and that is why it is considered a short-term form of digital marketing. PPC  / paid advertisements are ways to increase search traffic to a business online. It is exactly the same logic with SEO. However, unlike the SEO, you pay for the results and results only. For instance, GoogleAds is a typical PPC model which means you will pay only when someone clicks on your ad and lands on your website. It’s completely up to you how much you would like to spend on a PPC campaign and plan your digital marketing strategies accordingly. Businesses doing digital marketing on search engines use GoogleAds and reach out to their customers easily. GoogleAds analyse the targeted customer base suitable for you by categorising your products on any e-commerce platform and advertise your products on various places.

5. Content Marketing

Most users tend to investigate and learn about the services or products they are about to buy before they make the purchase. Marketing, information sharing and storytelling are the concepts which are used in content if you aim to increase brand awareness. Why do we do this? Because we want the reader to take action towards becoming a potential customer. For instance the reader can ask for more information or sign-up for an email list or make a purchase. Blog posts, resources like white papers and ebooks, podcasts, digital videos and many other things can be ‘content’. However, one thing is clear: content should provide value to the customer. It cannot be simply about advertising the brand and trying to make a sale. Content marketing is about building a trustworthy relationship with your customers. This trusting and sustainable relationship has the potential to increase sales overtime. 

Content marketing is a long term strategy during which marketers build up a library of content -text, podcasts, video, etc.- which will continue to bring users to the site through search engines. Knowledge of your brand will be promoted and your profile as a source of information will increase with the help of this content library. İmagine users visiting your site for information which translates as they will remember you as an authority when it is time to make a purchase. 

This means, businesses should create quality content about the topics users are searching if they wish to reinforce the connection between the users and themselves. You will build trust on your brand with the help of quality content and the users will be able to gain more information about your services or products. The more the user contacts, the better for your business. We know that content marketing is an area where writing and producing activities are important but let’s not forget it also calls for strong strategic and analytical skills as with digital marketing in general.

Advantages of Digital Marketing

The advantages of digital marketing in e-commerce are as follows:

• Easy access to target customer base / target audience.
• Improving traffic on your website by using sponsored ads, quality content and influencer marketing activities.
• Conducting customer behaviour analysis by using digital marketing techniques. When you reach out to your customers by organising sales campaigns, drawing schemes or reduced price campaigns, you will get a reaction from them. The data will be useful for customer behaviour analysis.
• Digital marketing methods are known to be effective to increase brand awareness and trust on the brand.
• While analysing digital marketing methods, you will also be able to detect what appeals to the customer and how customer behaviour is shaped, both of which will give you an opportunity to build new strategies.