The biggest challenge for new and emerging eCommerce businesses is usually to establish a meaningful online presence. Unless what you sell is totally new or truly unique (which is rare) it’s likely that you’ll be competing against large established online retailers. And even though there will be some unique aspects to what you sell, you will probably be competing for the same keywords and search traffic if nothing else.
And even for the ‘new and unique’ there’s still the issue of getting yourself known – how will people know what to search for if they don’t know you exist or know anything about what you sell? This is why an eCommerce strategy has to be about much more that creating your online shop – it has to include a marketing strategy that puts your business, your products and your brand values well and truly on the map. Achieving this means co-ordinated activity across a range of channels.
Growing an online presence
We talked recently about some of the ways that you can enhance your online presence and generate site traffic by using content marketing and social media networks. You can also look at generating sales and profile more directly by adopting a multi-channel retailing approach and by affiliate marketing.
If your basic issue is that not enough people can find your products because they don’t know about your business, the simplest option may be to place your products on sites that people do know, such as eBay, Amazon and Play.com.
Some eCommerce businesses find this difficult on an emotional level – it’s like giving a large, established competitor a cut of your business. But I take a different view – it’s more like a skilled Judo player who uses their competitor’s size and strength against them. These sites get millions of visitors and tapping into this traffic to generate sales and customer contact data just makes sense - as long as you have enough margin in your products to cover the listing fees for these channels.
SEO and loyalty
By placing products on the large online retail sites you benefit from their search engine optimisation. Additionally,people will often bypass the Google search and go straight to Amazon or eBay when they are looking for a specific product. And it’s often not a massive step to transfer the customer loyalty generated through your eBay store to your main eCommerce site - after all, you’ll be collecting valuable customer data and contact details every time you make a sale.
There’s a similar argument with using price comparison sites such as Kelkoo. Lots of people go to this site to buy things; so think of it as setting up a small shop in a large shopping mall where loads of people go, rather than being at the quiet end of town that nobody ever visits.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is essentially advertising. In the same way that businesses have traditionally placed adverts in suitable newspapers and magazines, here you’re placing them on suitable websites. The website owner earns some revenue, which is normally on a pay per click or pay per conversion basis, and you get to put your offer in front of their readership.
Affiliate marketing can be a really powerful and a cost-effective way to extend the reach of your business and generate sales.
One key to success is careful selection of the sites that carry your ads - do they naturally attract the people who are most likely to become customers? It’s vital to identify the most appropriate affiliate network and your eCommerce partner should be able to help you with this.
Additionally, you need to follow the principles of effective pay per click and display advertising, which we discussed recently. Here’s a quick summary:
Create your ads with care so that you generate clicks from the genuinely interested rather than the curious.
Use ads with a specific offer or promotion – these generate higher click through rates and conversions.
Be highly focused in your objective: link to a specific landing page that continues and completes the sales process. Your objective is to win that specific sale and collect the contact data.
Measure, analyse and refine your approach to keep CTRs and conversions moving in a positive direction.
Large and successful online retailers use multi-channel approaches (you’ll even find John Lewis on Kelkoo), because they want as many options as possible for generating sales. And if it makes sense for them, it certainly makes sense for smaller retailers trying to get noticed in an increasingly crowded online marketplace.