In a world of information and technology, digital marketing has become a lifeline for many businesses, most especially e-commerce brands. From time immemorial, humans have engaged in marketing, which is all about connecting customers to products and services.
With the rise of the internet and social media, marketing has become much more effective, offering opportunities that seemed almost impossible in the pre-digital era.
What is digital marketing? The answer is pretty straightforward. It comprises any sort of business transaction you do online through digital channels like search engines, email, websites, social media, etc. In other words, any business that connects a customer to a product or service or both is considered digital marketing.
Therefore, e-commerce brand owners should be able to leverage the opportunities that digital marketing offers to drive more traffic and convert the traffic into buyers. How does digital marketing help e-commerce brands? Read this article to find out.
10 reasons digital marketing is important for e-commerce brands
- Reach customers faster and more easily
According to the World Economic Forum, over 7.7 billion people use the internet. It means the world is your playground to determine what you want to do. This is a massive opportunity for any serious e-commerce brand to grow and thrive in a competitive world such as ours.
Many people think the only way to succeed in e-commerce business is to create a brand and then fill it with great products. But they may be disappointed. While great products are important, you cannot sell to people who do not know about them.
With digital marketing platforms like social media, websites and the likes, you can reach millions of people who may be interested in what you are offering.
- Reach your target audience
While reaching billions of people on the internet is good, it does no good if you cannot target your specific audience. In other words, digital marketing increases your reach better than traditional marketing, it can also ensure your message reaches your target audience.
For instance, if your target audience is Nigerian youths between the ages of 18 to 40, you can set up the demographic to suit your social media ad campaigns. This will help you reach your target audience faster than any other method of marketing.
- Your competitors are doing it
E-commerce brands are all over the internet. In fact, the sector is fast becoming saturated. To survive, many have adopted digital marketing strategies.
They have created their own websites and optimised for search engines, social media pages, created their social media pages and even run ads to reach their target audience. You have to do what others are doing and even be more strategic to stay ahead.
- Cost effective
Creating an e-commerce brand does not come cheap but promoting it can be a lot more affordable through digital marketing. Whether you want to promote your brand locally or internationally, employing digital marketing strategies such as SEO, social media, and content marketing may not cost you too much money. All you have to do is identify the strategy that works for your brand.
- Surviving competitions against bigger brands
The e-commerce sector is a tough one. To stay ahead of competitions including big corporations and brands like Amazon, Walmart, Jumia, Target and so on, you must be able to use digital marketing tools. It is difficult to compete against these brands because they already have a well-established relationship with their customers.
With digital marketing, you have a fighting chance against these corporations. Strategies like SEO, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and social media level the playing field for everyone. SEO ranks your site according to how you optimise your page. With PPC, Google ranks your site according to its relevance.
This is an opportunity for small and medium e-commerce brands to compete against bigger brands. All you need to do is create contents that are relevant to selected keywords. The best part is you do not have to spend so much money to do that.
- Spread brand awareness
It has already been established that businesses can reach billions of customers faster through digital marketing. However, it is important to note that not every lead can be converted directly to sales. Sometimes, your target audience may not want what you are offering immediately but that is okay.
They may want what you have tomorrow, which is why you should spread awareness to make more people know what you are selling. The more people know about your brand, the easier it is to make sales and revenue from your business.
- Multiple strategies to use
Unlike traditional marketing, digitial marketing offers many strategies to drive traffic and make revenue from your e-commerce brand. The strategies include SEO, PPC, social media ad campaigns, e-mail marketing and more. You do not have to focus on just one strategy but it is important to identify and stick to the ones that work for your brand.
- To optimise and monitor for better results
The thing about digital marketing is it makes tracking the progress of your e-commerce brand easier. It is more challenging to monitor the traditional method for their result.
With digital marketing, every campaign you run can be tracked easily. You can evaluate the analytics, see the number of engagements, see other metrics such as impressions, clicks, likes, shares, comments, conversions, and more.
These will tell you whether you are successful or you need more work to be done. They will also help you make the most of your campaigns even on a limited budget.
- Improve customer experience
Having a loyal customer base is the dream of any business owner. It is even more important for an e-commerce business owner because the competition is fierce. Not only that, the internet has reduced the attention span of many people, meaning you have to do a little extra to maintain users’ attention.
The good news is digital marketing provides several solutions to maintain your customer base while searching for more. This includes an effective customer service department where your customers can drop their feedback, make enquiries and file some complaints. These will foster your relationship with them and encourage them to continue to patronise your business.
- To get a faster and impressive return of investment (ROI)
Digital marketing offers an easier way to reach a huge customer base than traditional marketing. It is also more cost-effective. This means you will save time, save money and even make more money.
So what are you waiting for? Take advantage of the many opportunities that digital marketing offers and grow your e-commerce brand to greater heights.
