The objective of this guide is to define what ecommerce Marketing is from a strategic point of view. In this guide we are going to define and understand the most relevant elements of ecommerce Marketing, how they are related to each other, what dependency they have on each other, what is expected of each of them and when to use them.
There are thousands of tools on the market that are used in ecommerce Marketing in different cases, in situations and projects with very different objectives. That is why I do not want to go into detail about which tools to use, which are more efficient or recommended, each ecommerce is different, each company has needs and a different ecommerce marketing strategy, it would be very complicated to try to cover all the cases and tools. So this ecommerce marketing guide is focused on a more strategic level, intended for those profiles who need to draw the high-level strategy of an eCommerce, analyze the global results and plan the next steps of the ecommerce marketing plan.
Who is this Ecommerce Marketing guide for?
This content is aimed at Ecommerce Directors or ecommerce marketing Managers who manage multiple facets of digital marketing and need to draw a global strategy based on each element of the ecommerce ecosystem. Profiles that are in charge of drawing and executing an ecommerce marketing strategy and effectively managing its budget, establishing a sequence of actions planned over time, defining and controlling compliance with objectives and presenting the results to a committee or stakeholder.
Structure and parts of this guide
The content of this guide is presented divided into 6 different posts. In each of the 5 posts we will focus on a specific element of ecommerce marketing, going into detail about its definition, what objectives it meets, when to use it and what relationship and dependency it has with the rest of the elements of ecommerce marketing.
The content of the ecommerce marketing guide will be published progressively, every two weeks the content is expanded with a new post where an element of Ecommerce Marketing will be discussed. The elements that we will cover, the structure of the ecommerce marketing guide and its links are as follows:
- What is ecommerce Marketing and what parts does it have?
- How to define an ecommerce Marketing strategy
- Qualified Traffic: Techniques and strategy to attract the right user
- Retention, loyalty and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
- Measurement Strategy
- Ecommerce marketing dashboard
What is Ecommerce Marketing?
Ecommerce marketing is not simply generating traffic to an eCommerce, it is a broader approach, a 360 approach that ranges from attracting users to ecommerce, to converting new users into loyal customers.
Ecommerce marketing is the set of actions and strategies that aim to attract qualified traffic to your ecommerce, offer an optimized shopping experience to users, adapt each customer contact point to an objective (generally transactional, although not all objectives must be to sell) and, above all, build a lasting relationship with them.
It is important to view ecommerce marketing as a set of related elements that form a cohesive whole. Each strategy, each campaign, each action and each tool are interconnected and must be planned and managed sequentially. The omission or failure in the dependencies of each of the elements of ecommerce marketing can affect the overall performance of the ecommerce.
Ecommerce Marketing Goals
The objective of ecommerce marketing is simple in its definition (but not so simple in its execution): it is to increase the ROI of your investment by efficiently uniting analysis, actions, data and ecommerce development. Ecommerce marketing, like any other marketing strategy, must be governed by clear and measurable objectives that will guide actions and decisions in a planned manner.
Below we list some of the most relevant objectives of ecommerce marketing:
- Increase qualified traffic
- Improve conversion rate
- Increase average order value (AOV)
- Promote customer loyalty
- Expand market presence
- Improve brand reputation
- Optimize operations
What elements does Ecommerce Marketing have?
It is important to see ecommerce marketing as a set of related elements that form a whole, a set of elements that must be planned and managed together and in sequence. At this point, it is important to comment that ecommerce marketing is not a mathematical formula with a single result, but rather each person, each company and each project can have different structures and elements. So based on my experience as an eCommerce Consultant specialized in projects based on Magento, Salesforce and Shopify platforms, I proposed the ecommerce marketing structure that I consider most versatile and appropriate for the vast majority of cases, but it does not have to be the only one and fit. in all eCommerce.
In the following image we have the elements of ecommerce marketing that we are going to see in this guide. It is important to understand these elements as a sequence from 1 to 5, especially when we are going to implement an ecommerce marketing strategy based on this guide for the first time. Once we have implemented the elements of this sequence in ecommerce marketing, there are no priorities regarding each other, all the elements depend on each other and must be maintained and constantly improved equally.
Ecommerce Marketing elements and sequence
Ecommerce Marketing Strategy (step 1)
The ecommerce marketing Strategy provides the necessary strategy and tools to boost conversion, stand out in the market, optimize the user experience, strengthen the digital presence and create an ecommerce marketing plan.
The ecommerce marketing strategy is the first step we must take, without a strategy we will not know what our objectives are, how to achieve them or if we have achieved them. During this phase we will analyze and define the value of the product and services based on the Buyer Persona and we will answer the following questions:
- Who are our clients, what interests them and where are they located?
- What is the value of our product/service to our Target?
- What do we want to achieve?
- How are we going to get it?
- When are we going to get it?
In this phase we will also create an ecommerce Marketing Strategic Plan in broad strokes, where we will establish what milestones we are going to achieve, the KPIs we need to control objectives and the channels we should use. The ecommerce Marketing Strategic Plan also helps us align the actions we are going to carry out with the company’s business calendar (BlackFriday, Christmas, Sales, Opening of establishments, etc.), advance requirements for suppliers, establish the basis for effective management of the budget, identify and advance development of functionalities that our ecommerce needs, hiring of necessary tools, etc.
Qualified Traffic in eCommerce (step 2)
Set of strategies that aim to obtain qualified traffic to our ecommerce. The objective of an ecommerce is in most cases transactions. So we understand as qualified traffic the user who completes one or more orders in our e-commerce in a certain period of time .
In the previous point, our ecommerce marketing strategy has answered very important questions to define an efficient Qualified Traffic strategy: Who are our customers, what interests them and where are they located? and What is the value of our product/service to our Target?
Once we have answered these questions, we are ready to identify which actions and tools we should use to identify and attract qualified traffic to our e-commerce. There are thousands of tools on the market that you can add to your strategy to obtain qualified traffic, it is important to be aware and updated regarding innovation and trends, innovation has great value for these actions. For this reason we will not go into contreras tools and we will focus on the most strategic part, defining the 3, 4 most important strategies to obtain Qualified Traffic in eCommerce:
- eCommerce SEO
- Content Marketing
- PayMedia
Retention, loyalty and Conversion Rate Optimization – CRO (step 3)
In this phase we aim to optimize user conversion by offering the right content at the right time.
The qualified traffic strategy is giving results and you are receiving visits to your ecommerce, some of the visits are new users who do not know you, others already know you but have never bought from you, or they may already be your customers but they are just getting information, have they bought online or offline?… The profile of your users is very heterogeneous and the reasons for a visit can be very different. The art of building loyalty or converting a user into a customer is directly related to the experience that the user has in your eCommerce.
This phase deals with everything that happens between your users and your eCommerce, the user experience and their expectations before and after a visit. The objective is to optimize user conversion by offering the right content at the right time, as well as quantify the improvements and experiments carried out. To do this, we will deal in depth with the following points:
- Personalization
- Loyalty
- Conversion Rate Optimization CRO
Measurement Strategy (step 4)
The great advantage and the best ally of an eCommerce is that everything can be measurable and quantifiable.
A Measurement Strategy provides us with a measurement layer that allows us to collect precise data on what happens in our eCommerce, its ecosystem and the actions we take in it. In this phase we go into detail about the Google GA4 tool and the aspects to take into account in its configuration for an ecommerce, and we will explain what a measurable KPI is in GA4 with a concrete example.
As with other areas of ecommerce marketing, there are a large number of tools and connectors that facilitate the transfer and crossing of data between the eCommerce ecosystem. In this guide we are going to explore Google GA4, since it is the most used tool on the market and Google’s commitment for the following years.
- Regarding Google GA4, we will explain the points to take into account in an audit and the events that we must take into account for the correct configuration of the metrics of an eCommerce and
- Regarding other tools, we outline how to consolidate data from different sources and how to exploit them, but without going into detail.
Ecommerce Marketing Dashboard (step 5)
The objective of the ecommerce marketing dashboard is to visualize the data and KPIs that allow you to control the evolution of your past decisions and plan future decisions.
Having a dashboard with a summary of the most important KPIs of ecommerce marketing helps us interpret information from different sources correctly, make decisions based on data and not intuition. The points that we are going to discuss in this section are:
- The importance of data sources and their consolidation
- product feed
- external tools
- Budgets
- Planning
- Data visualization and dashboard/Kpis examples
- Overall Executive Summary and Performance Planning and Budgeting
- Commercial budgets
- Paid Media
- SEO & content
- Loyalty and Conversion Rate Optimization- CRO
The digital era is constantly evolving, and the world of ecommerce marketing is no exception. I hope this guide can help you in the definition and execution of your ecommerce marketing. Every two weeks I will publish the content of a new point. If you found this first installment valuable, I invite you to mark your calendar and visit this blog every two weeks.
Until the next installment!