You need some side income and you’re wondering how to get it? Hey; why not start an eCommerce business?

You just graduated and you’re not ready for a boring office job because you want to travel? Ecommerce is the answer.

You really want to start your own business but you don’t know what it will be? It will surely be an online store!

Ecommerce is such a versatile category that fits into everyone’s plans for the future. It doesn’t matter what business goals you have; online sales can help you achieve them. But there’s something that most people forget about when they plan to engage in ecommerce: digital marketing.

Jumpshot found that 35% of product searches on Google turn into transactions within 5 days. This brings us to this logical reasoning:

• People who are interested to buy something will do some research online.

• When they do this research, they are highly likely to buy a product.

• Will this be a product from your store? It depends on your digital marketing efforts.

This sums up everything you need to know about eCommerce marketing: it determines the chances of success for your online store.

But we won’t leave it at that.

All You Need to Know about Ecommerce Marketing

1. Marketing Starts with the Store Itself

We won’t discuss the notion that there’s a buyer for each product. I mean; people sell used socks and other people buy them. Once you know that fact, you can’t unlearn it.

But if you want to build a successful online store, you have to stock products that many people would buy. Marketing is easy when people want your products. This is the most challenging part if you still haven’t decided on it.

Products that sell well have a few important features:

• They offer great value for the money. When someone buys this thing, it should meet one of their needs and improve their life. They won’t be sorry for spending money on it, and they will recommend it to other people.

• It’s a trending product. Influencers are already doing part of the work for you: they use it, so others want to buy it.

• It meets the market demand. When you conduct market research and understand what your target audience needs, you’ll easily find products that sell well.

• It offers something different. Potential buyers will compare your products to competitive offers. If you don’t give them better quality, lower price, or/and a more convenient shopping experience, you’ll lose them.

The point is: sell something that people buy! List your interests and do the market research. Meet your target audience with your offer, and the marketing process can start.

2. A Brand Is in the Center

Now that you’re settled on the type of product you want to sell, you’ll need to build a brand around it. Think of all the online stores selling equal or similar products to yours. How will your brand stand out?

Take DODOcase as an example. It’s a simple iPad case, serving the same purpose as all other cases on the market. Same, same, but different. This is a product handcrafted with a traditional bookbinding technique. It has a unique design with a story behind it. People like it because it’s a special, artisan product made in the USA. They are ready to pre-order and pay a higher price for it. This is what we’d call a successful branding campaign.

How do you build a brand?

• You find something special about your product and online store.

• You promote that special something quite heavily. You build the entire digital marketing campaign around that center.

The point is: when people think of the product you sell, you want them to think of your brand.

3. Content Is a Huge Part of Ecommerce Marketing

Even if you’re completely new to content marketing, you know what it is. You’ve read blogs before, haven’t you? You’ve seen YouTube videos by different brands. You’ve checked out the content at their websites. You’ve subscribed to an email list and received offers in your inbox. All these details were important when you were considering the purchase of a product. They are important for your audience, too.

It’s a lot of work. That’s why most eCommerce business owners hire professional writers from best assignment writing service uk and best dissertation writing service or some freelancers from Upwork to do it for them. They conduct market research to create a content calendar. Then they find the right keywords to fit into the content (we’ll talk about this part later). Then they develop outstanding content that informs the audience and convinces them to make the purchase.

These are the main elements of content marketing:

• Website content

Your website is the face of your business. It features all information your potential customers need to know about your products. This type of content has to be clean and full of facts. It should be focused not on the product, but on the advantages the users get from it.

Look at Apple’s website. It’s focused on visuals. When you get some text to read, it’s pure facts that you quickly remember.

• Blogging

Now look at Scentbird. It’s an online store that sells perfumes by subscription. The website content is great there. But there’s something more: a blog that keeps the target audience engaged. People who love perfumes come here. So this business owner gives them content to read. The blog posts trigger discussions and keep people coming back.

• Link Building

This is where the real work starts. You’ll easily develop content for product pages and one blog posts per week. But you’ll need to pitch blog post ideas to popular sites from your niche. You’ll develop content for them, too. In return, you’ll get a link to your site.

When their audience sees useful content that leads them to another website (yours), they will click the link. Guest posts are also developed for SEO purposes, since Google likes seeing links from high-authority websites.

• Email Marketing

You want to develop content that gets people to subscribe to an email list. This should be something highly useful for them. You may offer a free eBook for the subscriber, or a detailed guide on how to benefit from your products. Discount codes work well, too.

4. So Is Social Media Marketing

Every business is on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and any other social media platform you might think of.

You can even sell things directly via Facebook or Instagram. It’s where you’ll connect with your target audience and immediately make your sales pitch.

Social media marketing is useful from a few aspects:

• It helps with the branding process. When people follow you, they are exposed to your brand. They see posts from you on a regular basis, so they remember the brand.

• It connects you with brand ambassadors. When you get influencers to promote your brand, you may rest assured that you’ll notice an increase in sales.

• It’s content marketing, too. You share links to your content, so you get people at your website. There, you’ll convince them to buy whatever you’re selling.

• It serves for customer support. When someone wants to contact you, they will easily do it via Facebook Messenger or Instagram’s direct messages.

5. … And So Is SEO

This is the most technical (maybe also boring) aspect of eCommerce marketing. It relies on your knowledge of Google’s algorithm for ranking content. And that’s something that no one knows, but everyone assumes.

Does this mean that SEO is useless?

Absolutely not!

It’s an essential part of promoting a business online. There are tested and proven SEO techniques. They involve:

• Using the right keywords in context.

• Posting high-quality content that responds to people’s search engine quests. It must be unique, too.

• Link building – when great websites link to your site, Google takes it as a good signal.

• Fast, reliable, and responsive website. It must be optimized for mobile!

• Proper tags and attributes, which show Google’s bots what your content is about.

• Content optimized for voice search.

If you’re completely new to SEO, you might need to hire an agency to take this responsibility off your back. It’s a lot of work for a business owner to tackle. But if you’re ready to try it, an online course on the matter will prepare you well.

Was That All?

Of course it wasn’t.

Each of the above-listed points is a lesson on its own. But if you wanted a quick guide to successful eCommerce marketing, here it is:

• Choose a product that sells.

• Create a brand out of it.

• Promote that brand through high-quality content.

• Build social media presence for your online store.

• Focus on search engine optimization.

Getting all these things right isn’t easy. It’s a process that involves a lot of trial and error. But it’s also fun, so you may as well start enjoying it.

Tiffany Harper is a talented writer from New York, she began her career as a journalist and later proceeded as an educational writer and editor. Sometimes she works as blogger with essay writing service and college-paper.org reviews. You can find her on Twitter.