How To Grow Ecommerce Businesses with Digital Marketing

In the turbulent waters of online commerce, it’s not just about survival anymore. Today, it’s about thriving, making a name, and securing a lasting, meaningful presence in the digital realm. For e-commerce businesses, the key to these lofty objectives lies in the art and science of digital marketing.

In a study of 46,000 shoppers, 73% leveraged multiple channels to do their shopping, so digital marketing isn’t just a one trick pony!

This comprehensive guide is tailored for business startups and small business owners navigating the intricate world of online selling. Equipped with the right digital marketing strategies, your e-commerce venture can not only break through the noise but also cultivate a community of loyal customers.

Let’s dive deep into how you can elevate your ecommerce business game through savvy digital marketing techniques that will not just drive traffic but also multiply your revenue streams.

Understanding the Ecommerce Landscape

Navigating the Current Trends

The waves of e-commerce rise and fall at the behest of technological advancements and shifting consumer behaviours. In an era where convenience is king, online shopping has surged, giving birth to a bustling digital marketplace. From the rise of mobile e-commerce to the burgeoning trends of social commerce, understanding these movements is pivotal to capitalising on emerging opportunities.

Dedicated mobile commerce apps are the preferred way to do mobile online shopping, taking 54% of complete mobile commerce payments.

Crafting Your Digital Strategy

The digital marketing landscape is ever-evolving. Whether it be jumpstarting your social media presence or fine-tuning your SEO for small business strategy, your digital tactics must remain agile and aligned with the currents of change. To succeed in the bustling marketplace, it’s not mere ad-hoc posts online, but a strategic and sustained campaign that resonates with your audience.

“At least 40% of all businesses will die in the next 10 years… if they don’t figure out how to change their entire company to accommodate new technologies.” — John Chambers, Cisco 

The Importance of Digital Marketing for Ecommerce Growth

The Boundless Reach of Digital Platforms

The digital horizon offers a vast expanse for your e-commerce business to flourish. Unlike traditional marketing, the reach of digital campaigns spans continents. The capability to target niches, track performance, and adapt strategies in real-time provides a competitive edge unparalleled.

Enhanced Customer Engagement and Retention

Digital marketing is not just about selling; it’s about fostering relationships. By engaging your customers through various touchpoints, you can create a vibrant brand community that extends far beyond the transactional domain. Loyalty programs, interactive quizzes, and engaging content are just a few examples of how to use digital marketing to grow your business and boost customer retention.

4 Strategies to Grow Ecommerce Businesses with Digital Marketing

It’s time for what you’ve been waiting for, use the below in your ecommerce marketing strategy and watch your target audience flood to your online store!

Search Engine Optimization: The Gateway to Online Visibility

87% of consumers now conduct online searches for products.

SEO is the magic wand that catapults your e-commerce website from obscurity into the spotlight. Through meticulous keyword research, on-page optimizations, and a constellation of backlinks, your digital storefront can bask in the warm glow of high search engine rankings, attracting organic traffic that promises high conversion potential.

You should thoroughly plan out strategies to target the precise keyword groupds that your audience are searching for in search engines by putting the best SEO tactics into practice. 

Using SEO to improve your product pages:

• Identify the terms you want to target: SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz can assist you in selecting the appropriate key terms.
• Use the right keywords: The title tag, meta description, and short URL of your products should all contain your keywords.
• Make sure you give each product a unique description that includes its size, shape, colour, and characteristics in order to give them a positive shopping experience on your ecommerce site.
• Incorporate client testimonials: Reviews are a very natural technique to come up with keywords. Your content will remain current with each new review that your customers leave.

Below shows the huge rise in organic traffic growth for one of our ecommerce clients, just look at that growth over a three year period! This is all a result of strategic content marketing and search engine optimisation!

Social Media Marketing: Creating Conversations

66% of Facebook users like or follow a brand on the platform.

Social media platforms aren’t just billboards in the digital highway; they are interactive forums where your brand can engage with potential customers in real-time. Through creative content for social media, strategic advertising, and community building, your e-commerce business can carve out its own niche in the bustling social media ecosystem.

Prior to putting this eCommerce marketing approach into practice, make sure you:

• Get as much information as you can about your target audience: Discover the demographics of your target market by finding out where they live, how old they are, what languages they speak, and what they like and dislike.
• Select the channels you want to use to market your brand: Examine each network’s demographics to determine which ones are best for your company. Find out how many users they have, how old they are, where they are, and other relevant information. Additionally, conduct research to find out which platforms are most advantageous for eCommerce companies.
• Keep a watch on your rivals: find out what they’re posting on social media. Look at the eCommerce marketing strategies they employ, the content and frequency of their posts, the networks they use, and the user engagement strategies they employ.

Email Marketing: Directly To the Inbox

49% of users prefer to receive promotional emails from retail brands they like weekly.

In an age where inboxes are inundated with promotions, personalised and timely emails stand out like beacons. By nurturing your email list through thoughtful segmentation and content curation, your brand can become a welcome guest rather than an unwarranted intrusion.

To get started with email marketing:

• Build an email list
• Decide on the types of content to send
• Incorporate personalization
• Use automation
• Analyse results

For increased traffic, more closed sales, and higher profits, blend textual and visual content while nurturing your email marketing list.

Content Marketing: The Value Proposition

Content rules the digital roost, and for good reason. Informative blogs, engaging videos, and insightful infographics not only drive traffic but also establish your brand as an authority within your industry. Create content that serves a purpose, solves a problem, or elicits an emotion, and watch as your customer base grows.

Customers will connect with your brand once they discover something valuable, which will eventually lead to increased lead generation and conversion rates.

How to implement a content marketing strategy:

• Think about what type of content you want to create
• Consider your audience’s needs
• Use your target market’s language
• Focus on user experience
• Incorporate visuals
• Distribute your content on various channels just like we do at Dandy! Check out how we share blogs to our social media platforms below!

Paid Advertising: Strategic Investments

While organic strategies lay the foundation for digital growth, paid advertising can turbocharge your results. Retargeting, lookalike audiences, and carefully crafted ad copy can elevate your visibility and funnel the right kind of visitors to your ecommerce store.

A fantastic method of obtaining search traffic is through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. When combined with SEO-optimised website content, it is a highly effective approach for driving organic traffic and reaching new customers.

PPC is used by 50% of smaller businesses with fewer than 50 employees, and it is invested in by 74% of businesses with more than 50 employees.

Due to its price and effectiveness, it is well-liked by small and medium-sized enterprises for increasing brand recognition. Only when a user clicks on your advertisement from search engine results pages do you get charged.

How To Grow an Ecommerce Business with Digital Marketing: A Case Study

To illustrate exactly how to grow an ecommerce business using digital marketing methods, here’s how Dandy’s SEO and PPC experts were able to increase a client’s organic and paid traffic, resulting in overall growth for their ecommerce store.

Objectives

• Conduct a comprehensive Technical SEO audit and resolve identified issues
• Enhance visibility and improve rankings through on-page optimizations
• Boost organic traffic with targeted content strategies
• Improve user experience to increase conversion rates
• Leverage PPC campaigns for immediate traffic and revenue growth

Approach and Implementation

Step 1: SEO Audit

Our collaboration with The Goodness Project began with a meticulous Technical SEO audit. We pinpointed essential modifications to canonical tags, meta elements, site maps, pagination, and error responses. Post-audit, our efforts were concentrated on:

• Technical Optimisations: A comprehensive landing page enhancement strategy was devised, leading to considerable ranking improvements.
• Internal Link Review: Correcting broken links and optimising the link structure streamlined both user navigation and crawler accessibility.
• UX Refinements: Intuitive changes to design and checkout processes were pivotal to advancing conversion rates.

Step 2: Content Strategy

Aiming to prominently position The Goodness Project within vegan and free-from communities, we:

• Keyword Research: Identified high-impact keywords driving unprecedented traffic levelling beyond seasonal peaks.
• Content Development: Longform articles on trending vegan topics led to a stellar 569% upsurge in blog traffic.
• Link Building: Executed a robust outreach strategy, enhancing visibility via established platforms and reclaimed historical links.

Step 3: PPC Outcomes

Capitalising on incisive keyword insights, we:

• AdGroup Formation: Curated purpose-built AdGroups for an array of PPC campaigns.
• Account Overhaul: Introduced new account structures, compelling ad copy, tactical extensions, and strategic device bidding.
• Google Shopping Integration: Set up a product feed that amplified bestsellers, optimally positioning the brand in paid media spaces.

Results

Our strategies yielded tangible results. Notably, there was a 157% hike in overall traffic, which was a remarkable 60% increase year-on-year. PPC campaigns, coupled with our UX strategies and the influx of lockdown-induced online shopping, significantly elevated order numbers on the platform. 

While ad spending witnessed a modest rise of 2%, our optimisations drastically cut CPC by 61%, directing a much more extensive stream of converting traffic to the website.

Read more on this case study here.

Looking for a digital marketing strategy to grow your ecommerce business?

Digital marketing is not an addendum to your successful ecommerce store; it’s central to its existence. By crafting a coherent and dynamic digital strategy, you can steer your online venture towards unprecedented growth and resilience in the face of the ever-changing digital landscapes. It’s time to set sail in the digital waters, and with these transformative strategies, there’s no limit to what your e-commerce business can achieve.

At Dandy, we’re a to-the-point digital marketing agency providing specialist SEO packages, PPC management and digital marketing consultancy services.

So, if you’re ready to take your digital marketing efforts to the next level, get in touch with us today. We’re a friendly bunch that’s always happy to chat!

Grab a free SEO audit to get started.

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