Marketing talent and data-driven eCommerce managers are in high demand, with growing competition among online merchants to drive performance, customer conversions, and efficient customer acquisition. But not all eCommerce businesses can hire in-house marketing staff, nor does it fit every business’ structure and strategy, writes Robin Marchant, Head of Marketing APAC, Shopify.

In fact, it is more important today for eCommerce companies to follow the ‘everyone is in marketing’ mantra, and that the business is structurally and technically setup for effective marketing,

Setting up for acquisition and engagement

More and more entrepreneurs are taking advantage of the eCommerce boom accelerated by the pandemic. As more retailers rapidly implement digital transformation strategies to keep up with customers’ shift to online shopping, here is an overview of the must-haves when setting up and marketing your eCommerce store for optimal customer acquisition and engagement.

Analytics and measurement – Know your customer

 For every channel and technology platform used to build and market your eCommerce store, there should be a highly intuitive and detailed analytics function impacting how and why it is being used. Whether it’s the analytics behind your Facebook ads, Google Analytics behind website landing pages, or Shopify Reports for your sales and payments, each of these tools will provide priceless insights into where your customers are and how to best meet their needs.

Many traditional retailers make the mistake of sticking to the same marketing channels for years at a time, assuming any remaining customers are loyal because of the consistency of use of those marketing channels. Unfortunately, this is where more disruptive and experimental eCommerce brands are making inroads.

While it’s critical to recognise that a ‘spray and pray’ approach to using every marketing, sales and advertising channel for the sake of it will inevitably lead to wasted budgets and resources, it is also critical to recognise that customers’ needs and preferred communication channels are constantly changing. The information they are looking for is also evolving and dependant on what’s happening in their personal lives. For example, as the state borders shifted throughout 2020, many consumers were expecting retailers to keep them updated in real-time about how that would impact delivery methods and timeframes. Similarly, as restrictions around crowded shopping events were specific to each city and state, online shoppers responded well to retailers that planned further ahead for events like Black Friday and Boxing Day, giving customers a chance to take their time with planning and browsing at their own pace for Christmas gifts.

Savvy retailers caught onto the latest trends as they were happening because of their ability to quickly access and analyse how customer behaviour was changing. For channels that were less effective in sales conversions, merchants could quickly divert associated resources to channels that were more effective. For products that were of high interest to social media followers but not part of a current campaign, these could be offered as an up-sell at the check-out stage.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) – Help customers find you

Many shoppers turn to Google and other search engines as part of their purchasing journey, whether it’s to find a product they saw or heard about through a friend or they’re conducting some comparison shopping for a purchase.

Helping your online store’s pages and your products appear in these search results can create passive streams of relevant traffic for free. However, it takes time to grow this source of traffic. SEO can help lay the right foundations. Also, keep SEO in mind for the Title and meta description fields. Include the brand name and a description of what the business is about, based on the keywords people might search for to find the business.

Always remember that the job of a search engine is to show the most relevant results to the user, so try to prioritise keywords that are directly relevant to your business. A free keyword research tool like Ubersuggest or Keyword Surfer (Chrome extension) can help estimate how many times people search a specific query in a month and what types of searches happen around that keyword. Estimated monthly search volumes aren’t always 100% accurate and the more popular a search is, the more competitive it usually is.

Personalisation – Form long-term and meaningful customer relationships

 Once you’ve understood your existing customers, where they’re coming from and what they want, as well as set up the business to be found by new customers, it’s time to start investing in keeping those customers happy and engaged. As well as delivering on customer service and product performance, personalised marketing is a highly effective way of communicating with customers in real-time and making them feel valued, while also adding to the feedback loop that helps further optimise the overall marketing engine.

Use insights from the analytics and SEO activities to understand customers’ preferred communication methods and then develop highly personalised tactics to sustain customer loyalty. For example, if the analytics are showing high engagement with humorous content on TikTok, but a higher volume of product-related questions coming through the website chat function, it may be safe to assume that TikTok is a way for showing the values and culture of your brand, whereas business and product updates will be most effectively communicated through key website landing pages. In this example, if a brand were to assume that all channels were appropriate for product-specific updates, it could lead to lower engagement levels and trust among customers, who now have higher expectations of brands to understand what they want to hear and when.

Setting up and amplifying the impact of an eCommerce store can be an exciting experience, though it’s important to not get carried away with investments in new platforms and tools simply because they are new. Getting the marketing foundations right means setting the business up from the start with the tools and means to understand customer behaviours as they evolve, and measure marketing efforts as they’re happening, while also providing insights that enable quick decision-making to improve marketing activities and save on costs.