1) Get your messaging right.
Getting your messaging right is crucial to online marketing success. Your message needs to do a few things. It has to be compelling. It has to be informative. And it has to be concise.
How do you make your message compelling? Make it meaningful. People won’t buy something from you if it doesn’t mean anything to them. Ask yourself these 3 questions.
Answer these 3 questions, and your message will be compelling. You also have to be informative. Make sure you’re actually answering their questions before they ask them. Don’t leave them guessing who you are, what you offer, and what they need to do to buy from you. Make everything clear and easy to follow.
Finally, you have to be concise. People notoriously have short attention spans. Entice the customer in with short, snappy sentences. Pique their curiosity. Then, when you have their attention and they’re ready to learn more, they’ll read about your company and what you offer until they’re satisfied and ready to buy from you.
2) Choose your channels
Online marketing is about picking your fights, or in this case, channels. If you choose every possible channel – Google Ads, email, every social media that has ever existed across the entire internet, online influencers – you’re going to be wasting a lot of money on channels that aren’t right for your business. Alternatively, if you only choose one, you’re severely limiting yourself, and there’s a strong chance that your customers are not going to see your wonderfully written ads.
Find a balance. Choose a few channels that you know your customer spends their time on. Google is a safe bet, because it’s where (nearly) everyone goes when they have a question or want to find something. Other popular options are Facebook, LinkedIn, and email marketing. Once you’ve got a handful of channels you’re confident about, you can work out your online marketing strategy and start getting your brand out there.
Do note that customers are more likely to buy from a company that has been endorsed by someone they know and trust. That is why it’s becoming increasingly popular to pay online influencers to advertise your product on their blog or social media – though it might not be the right strategy for every business.
3) Give your business the marketing budget it deserves.
There is nothing more frustrating than when you have a great ecommerce website, a great product, great messaging… and no one is seeing it because you’re not actually paying to get your message out there.
Online marketing can have a great return on investment if you do it right, so do your business justice and give it the right funding. It’s commonly accepted that you’ll have to establish 8 contact points with a customer before they buy from you, and that’s going to require spending some money. There are ways to optimise your spending so you’re not burning a whole in your pockets, so be sure to work out a pricing strategy before you throw money at your marketing.
If you are confident your product/service will sell, you can afford to spend money on your online marketing.
We hope you feel more confident about getting your online marketing right. At the end of the day, online marketing is a process. You’ll have to see what works for you. Spend some time and money writing different messages, marketing via different channels, and tweaking your budget until it’s just right.
If you’d like to know how to get more from your ecommerce website, the team at Vertical Plus are here to help. For further details please email info@verticalplus.co.uk