There goes a famous proverb. The “Law of Holes” adage first appeared in the Washington Post in 1911. This old proverb can be applied to business, economics, friendships, love, and even eCommerce marketing.
We live in an “interesting” era. eCommerce business globally transforming like never before in this world that’s turning from physical to hyper-digital with every passing second. Digital Commerce experts have witnessed a surge in an online spending spree amongst the global consumer base. In 2021, global digital retail sales touched the USD 4.9 million mark.
This proves that an ‘eCommerce First’ strategy is no longer an option. It’s imperative. The mantra for all brand owners & store owners is to embrace, adapt and capitalize on the virtues of digital commerce.
Why do we Need eCommerce Digital Marketing?
Setting up an online store on a top eCommerce platform is just not all; neither does it ensure revenue. You are not the only one out there. There are thousands of other online stores competing for their share of sales. Having a robust eCommerce marketing strategy for making your business stand out amongst the droves of lookalikes is equally crucial.
Having the best-in-class – feature-rich eCommerce store with all bells & whistles is like having a high-end car sitting in your garage. With no fuel in it, it will take you nowhere. Marketing is the fuel that fuels your store. There’s a difference between having “an online store” and having “a store online” Any business owner should focus on the former.
Marketing is not magic. It’s science. However, in marketing, nothing is certain. And to navigate through this uncertainty, retailers need a well-defined marketing strategy to attract, acquire and retain customers and enjoy all the good things that come with it.
What are the common Digital Marketing Mistakes?
Unfortunately, many eCommerce businesses fail to understand the nuances of digital marketing. As a result, as store owners, one might often make deadly eCommerce marketing mistakes that may seem insignificant initially but may take a severe turn later and impact the business.
Let’s look at our eCommerce marketing faux pas and prepare to build yourself a robust strategy and ensure the time and money you invest in your online store are paying off.
#1 The itch of doing everything but not knowing where to start
In marketing, it’s never enough. There are hundreds and thousands of things that can be done. But not necessarily everything has to be done.
- SEO, local SEO
- Google Ads & Bing Ads
- Social media marketing & Social Ads
- Affiliate marketing
- Content marketing
- Influencers
- Blogs
- Videos
- Emails and drips/promotions
- Coupons/discounts/sale & Store credit
- Chatbots
The list is endless!
There’s a saying, “in the want of trees, we lose sight of the jungle.”
It’s good to be everywhere and on all marketing platforms and channels – but what’s the point if you’re unable to manage them in the best way possible. Nobody wants to get lost in the forest. Give each thing its sweet time to settle before making your next move. Evaluate thoroughly what’s working and what’s not. What works for your competitor in the same industry and geographical location might not work for you and vice versa. So pick up a few, don’t do just good, but excellent efforts, evaluate results, keep doing the best, drop the bad, and pick up the next set.
Let’s see a small example of SEO: The trap of optimizing all pages at once. An eCommerce site typically has hundreds of pages.
- Look at top-performing and least-performing pages (categories/sub-categories, products, CMS).
- Create a mix of both, strengthen the good, and improve the weak.
- Focus on a business objective and strengthen a category of products in the next quarter.
- Unless you fully optimize the pages – SEO parameters, performance, UI, CTAs, content, needed information, specs, etc., you will not be able to track its improvement in the coming months and decide on re-optimization measures if needed.
#2 Ignoring the Technical SEO Errors
This one is in continuation of the first one. Whether digital marketing activities for a new site or an existing site, never ignore technical SEO errors. Put it as if there are SEO errors on the site, you have a handbrake pulled for your car. No matter how much you press the accelerator paddle, it drags. Remove your bottlenecks before going all out on campaigns. There are multiple audit tools to identify technical SEO errors and warnings.
Another grave mistake is ‘Ignoring Mobile Optimization.’ First, make peace, not war, with your eCommerce developers for mobile optimization and see the score from 19 to 50. Most potential customers find brands through social media advertisements or Ads in general via mobile. So, you are paying to bring visitors to a site that is not conversion optimized.
Further, we miss regularly updating the basics while busy executing complex campaigns – sitemap, robots, canonical, toxic links. How can the pages appear on search engines correctly if they are not crawled correctly? Be careful what you allow bots to crawl on to leverage the link juice.
#3 You Don’t Need to Sell to Everyone!
Not Targeting the Right Fit Audience for your store.
Before laying down anything in marketing (strategy, plans, calendars), you should work on your target audience and buyer personas, and it’s a continuously evolving exercise.
Whom are you targeting with your online marketing campaigns
Anyone/People
with a computer? | with a smartphone? | with the internet?
These answers are not enough. You need to narrow down your target market. Well, eCommerce is for everyone. But for an eCommerce brand/store, everyone cannot be the target audience. Targeting everyone means targeting no one.
The target audience should be as niche as possible. They can be further divided into small segments based on their similarities in Geographic, Demographic, Behavioral, and Psychographic elements of your current and prospective customers.
And there’s a mistake of skipping out on personas – not knowing who your buyer is? So start reverse and take a step back. Pick your best customers, and evaluate their characteristics, buying patterns, pain points, and problems the product solves.
Don’t begin messaging unless you know whom you are throwing your messages at. The next step is to personalize the messaging to each persona and be as customer-focused. Not doing so leads to another mistake of slothful planning. Unless you know your audience, what channels they are on, and what content engages them, your entire planning of campaigns may misfire.
#4 The trap of content calendars
Content is king but don’t forget that context is GOD! Craft meaningful content, not for the search engines but humans. Let’s not forget the context and whether it’s beneficial for users in the hunt for keywords.
Content Marketing needs Focus. Much content is created and thrown out each day for us to consume. And we are all in the race to constantly generate more content. Plenty is no plague. But there is no room for compromised content. Ensure you come across as credible and trustworthy to your audience.
Related content mistake: In pushing content to other channels, we often overlook content on our store where a consumer would come, stay and buy. We miss the essential content calendar for content refreshes on the site and spend much money creating and throwing content on the internet, only for a prospective buyers to visit a cluttered homepage with too many coupon codes.
A clear, well-written value proposition is one of the most critical conversion factors and usually focuses on three things:
- Relevancy,
- Defines specific benefits, and
- identifies why you are better than your competitors.
Anything and everything to deliver your webstore visitors an impressive experience, graphics, videos, product photos, description copies, FAQs – all need to be given equal attention as they are the major touch points during the customer purchase journey.
A typical content mistake: Please don’t forget to eliminate expired offers. There are many websites whose banner still reads – holiday season offer and the coupon code of Black Friday still works during checkout.
And yeah, not to forget the mistake of the social fighting to gain more followers. Run the right race, Increase more engagement on social posts.
#5 Set realistic goals
Goals are not good to have, they are a must to have. But most importantly, we need to ensure that our goals are correct and realistic.
It all starts with the revenue.
For instance, let’s say you have 200 monthly visitors. And the eCommerce conversion rate is 0.50%. With 2000 as an avg order value, your current revenue is (200×0.50×200) = 2000. You can do SEO, keyword strengthening, and increase the number of users to 250 (25% growth). You plan to increase the conversion rate to 0.75% (50% growth). Now with all the improvements in visitors and conversion rate – (250×0.75×2000) = 3,750. Remember, your goal is 50k.
You decide to invest 5000 in ads, and at a CPC of 5, you gain 1000 more users. The conversion rate you aim for is 0.75, which will not happen tomorrow. There with a gradual improvement over the month, but let’s take it for calculation purposes. At an average order value of 2000, you make more than 15000. Ok great! So let’s invest 20000 to get 50k-60k. No, it does not work that way. The direct multiplication factor does not always work.
This leads to another mistake – Lust for Customers—greed with the green – blind eye to costs.
Let’s face it, organically, growth from 200 to 500 users can’t happen overnight (unless there is a bot attack). Everything (SEO/Ads/Social) has its limitations and takes time to settle in and perform. If we factor in trends, things can get tricky. In the chase, you may end up targeting the wrong audience. So, there is a growth in users, but with little help and no intent to buy, they will decrease the conversion rate. Even worse, it leads to wrong analytics. And all your other strategies and investments go awry.
#6 Deprioritizing Analytics
Analyze what works and what does not. Ignoring a thorough post-campaign analysis is a mistake you should never commit.
After putting in these many efforts and successfully running the multi-faceted campaign, one should not overlook the results. It is essential to know how your campaign performed and if it was in line with your business objectives. Today, CIO has become a marketer and CMO a data analyst. Adopt a data-driven marketing approach to understand consumer behavior. It would be best to have all the data analytics before your screen to make timely and correct decisions. Pick up the right KPIs for yourself and work on future strategies based on the results. Set the goals correctly, and measure them accurately!
#7 NOT Retaining Customers
Analytics will tell you a lot about your existing customers. The eCommerce conversion rate for existing customers is high. Yet many online businesses spend most of their marketing dollars only to get themselves in an ongoing struggle of chasing down new customers instead of nurturing the ones they already have. Understanding the digital marketing funnel to nurture prospects and customers at each stage is a crucial part of any marketing strategy.
You need to make your customers happy to turn them into repeat customers who will bring their friends. You need them to be so captivated that they’ll buy into your brand, share it with others, and not turn to a competitor.
Loyalty is not bought but earned!
We all have customers in our minds and heart. But somewhere in the race to get more conversions and orders and push sales, we forget the basics. A related mistake is not capitalizing on social proof and validation. Ratings and reviews. These help build trust, inspire people to take action, and boost conversion rates.
#8 Trying to do it all alone
Focus on what you are best at. There are experts for each piece of the Digital Marketing pie. Engage agencies, not just digital marketing agencies but agencies specializing in eCommerce digital marketing, understand your industry and business objectives, and align with you as your extended team.
#9 Overthinking Things
Any online shop has many moving cobs. A common mistake that any company often makes is overthinking all minor details. Yes, we will make mistakes. That’s just part of the process, or some would say occupational hazard. If you focus too much on these minor issues, you will miss out on the more significant opportunities that lie ahead. Focus on the bigger picture and work towards that ultimate goal. Start by taking steps, and fine-tune them along the way. For example, if your email marketing content is not personalized the way you want it, you can always fine-tune it at a later stage. Overthinking at every step will slow you down in the long run.
Don’t be scared to experiment. Take the leap! Never ever get stuck in a comfort zone.
Conclusion
Like in traditional marketing campaigns, a digital campaign fraught with bad decisions will only harm your brand and business. However, if used tactically and strategically, eCommerce marketing can give your brand and store a good boost. Your primary tool is intense eCommerce marketing activities and campaigns – in line with the long-term goals and based on common sense.
So, think big and avoid the common pitfalls of digital marketing for eCommerce businesses.
Redefine ‘fine’. It is no longer good enough to be good enough. Go all guns!
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Minal Joshi is a content marketer at Krish with a flair for eCommerce and Digital Commerce aspects. She is a MarTech fanatic with a knack of writing with which, she helps brands to curate, create, & commence digital brand positioning. Sharing insights via articles, case studies, eBooks, Infographics, and other forms of content creation is what she lives for. Being an ardent traveler, when not writing, you'll find her sipping coffee into the mountains or petting a stray.
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6 May, 2024 Remember the times when the only advertisements and marketing material we had access to were print ads, newspapers, hoardings, and flyers? During those times, the only way to shop was by commuting to your favorite store. Those days are long passé, and thankfully, we are in the digital age where we get to shop for everything at our fingertips.
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