E-Commerce Marketplace Blog

Tag: Content Marketing

  • How to start your E- Commerce business with no money ?

    How to start your E- Commerce business with no money ?

    Well, that is a little clickbait headline as no business can be started without money. Yes, you may utilize your time instead of money but in the end, nothing comes for free. The ideal headline should be how to start an E Commerce project with minimal investment. That makes more sense.

    E Commerce is a business can be started with a little initial capital or as unlimited money as you can invest. For a small business though, it makes sense to keep costs down. Let us discuss a few ways in which we can do that.

    Buying your brand domain is must

    This is a cost you cannot let go. Your brand is the one that identified you. If you sell something that has your brand name on it but the domain, say something else, it will smell fishy to the buyer of your product.

    Buying a cheaper domain and a cheap hosting space to host a basic website (minus any E Commerce functions) is better than not having a domain at all. There are a lot of ways you can lower down your prices of domain. For example, using comparison sites to compare prices or buying multiple years upfront to minimize average cost of renewals.

    Listing your product on large E Commerce Portals

    It is quite easy for anyone to start an E Commerce store almost for free on large E Commerce Portals. These include Amazon, eBay, Etsy and a host of others. All you need is an id and email and you can start listing your products for free. The initial fees are minimum and help you avoid capital expenditure. Just make sure that you are truthful about what you are trying to sell and write great product titles and description.

    Marketing using word of mouth (offline marketing)

    Word of mouth is one the free technique that you can employ for your marketing. You can always ask your friends to promote your store. You can create short URL of your shop and share them with them. You can also place flyers in local newspapers about your venture. You may add offers compelling people to visit your site and at least spread the word, even if they are not interested in buying. It is a great offline way to make your shop seen.

    Social media marketing

    If you are a local celebrity of some sort or if you have an expertise in certain area, you can create tutorials, walk throughs, how-to videos and place it on YouTube or Instagram. These sites allow you to upload videos at no cost. You may use open-source tools to create and edit your videos.

    Later you can share these videos with your friends and family on various social media.

    Writing content yourself

    You are going to run the shop and sell the products and thus it can be assumed that you have deep idea on how to best use your products.

    If you can convert that knowledge into words and start a blog based on those words, you can start seeing free traffic from Google. You may use free software such as WordPress to host your content. You may also use free content hosting sites for writing your posts till you migrate to your own platform.

    Sell from social media itself

    These days social media companies encourage you to create content and sell products from your content. It is becoming a go-to place for people who do not a have enough money to spend or they would not like headaches of maintain a full E Commerce project on their own.

     

    Photo by Marsel_Shots

  • Why small businesses need digital marketing?

    Why small businesses need digital marketing?

    In the era of social media, it is imperative that your E Commerce product needs to leverage the power of already existing networks that are curated by various social media giants.

    Using Google to leverage your content effectively, so that users can land on your page based on search results will work wonders for your E Commerce project.

    Let us discuss a few ways digital marketing helps you break new ground in your marketing and how is it essential to your business’s success.

    Reach

    A small business will often find it difficult to reach audience on a limited budget. Building an engaged base requires money, time, and teams to manage expectations. Social media instantly allows a small business to enhance the reach. The virality generated by a relevant content idea can reap its own reward without spending any additional dollar. Users share what they like on social media with their friends, and your content can effectively spread in a geometric fashion.

    Cost Effectiveness

    The costs of running an advertising campaign on social media is not remarkably high when compared to offline advertising for example using a billboard or using printed material to highlight your business.

    You can also use Search engine optimized content to give Google search a reason to display your link when products related to your categories are mentioned. It is often almost like a free traffic. Once you create articles or tutorials that have value to your prospects and keeps them on the hook, you will be rewarded with repeat traffic from search engines, even when you are not actively managing any ad campaign.

     

    Competition

    There are big sharks in E Commerce space and trust me when I say that you can not outspend them in advertising. They have specialized team and unlimited budgets and can bury your E Commerce site under their advertising blitz. The internet however levels this by giving you a chance to showcase your expertise in your product. Big competitors often will find it difficult to create content for every category and product they are in. That means using social media you can always have a leg up over them. By smartly creating helpful content which is authoritative you can bypass heavy spends and yet shine on the internet

    Results analysis

    The biggest advantage of online advertising is immediate data analysis available for your campaigns. You need to add markers often in the form of URLs parameters to your product and share the URLs for a specific purpose. You can instantly find in your analytics panel if people are clicking on URL and if you are getting engagement that you thought you would get. In addition to your own analytics, there are analytics dashboards provided by social media companies as well as Google to help you measure effectiveness of your campaigns.

    Using this data, you can see if your campaign is working well or it needs some tweaking. You can respond faster based on the data and increase your chances at higher sales.

    Customer retention

    We all like to entertained from time to time. Some brands do it very well. They often share witty updates on your social media timeline. The engagement that it may generate helps social media companies to reward you with more eyeballs since your content helps user to stay on their sites longer which is exactly the metrics they measure and report to their shareholders.

    In case of Google search, results mean the search is actually being effective at getting results and google loves it when you deliver on that promise.

    Repeated content, which is of high quality, helps not only create engaged customer base but also helps increase sales over time.

    Often you may receive feedback from customers right on the social media. You should be ready to take that into account and incorporate it into your process.

    Photo by Kindel Media

  • How to promote your E Commerce Store?

    How to promote your E Commerce Store?

    E Commerce store is easy to start. But one needs to be aware of the extreme competition in E Commerce world and the need to stand out among the crowd. It is a slow, grinding path to the end. If done right, the rewards are plenty.

    Next, we list out some of important and useful ways to promote your E Commerce store.

     

    High-quality product titles and descriptions

    The first step to a wonderful experience to an E Commerce site is attractive product titles and descriptions. You can create product titles that are SEO friendly.  Your product description may de divided into sections organized neatly. It should be easy to read and should provide a professional look for your site. If needed, you can create tables or comparison charts to make a point in favour of your product.  You may add images and videos to further enhance the appeal of your product.

    Clean and bright images

    Investing a good camera, photographic equipment is necessary. Clean images form the backbone of high-quality product listing. You would need images in various resolutions that satisfy printing requirements, multiple browsers, and multiple screen sizes. They also need to be mobile friendly. They need to be shareable as well, as sharing gives an opportunity for your product to be marketed at no extra cost to you.

    If you can’t take quality photos yourself, invest in a great photographer who can help you in this endeavour.

    Great content on the website based on Keyword research.

    In addition to the product titles, descriptions, and images, you may also incorporate blogging into your website. Blogging which is search engine friendly and which has an option to share the posts, helps people share information about you with their friends and provides you with free marketing (except for the expense of writing a great blog post).

    In addition, it helps you trigger word of mouth promotion which is radial and free.

     

    Use Social media!

    If you have budgeted money for advertising and marketing, use some part of it for social media marketing. Large companies such as Facebook, Pinterest and X have a sizeable population which is also engaged in their subject of interests. You may find groups of people whom you can target or also do interest based individual targeting. The ad should lead to your website and there should be a clean way to make the purchase.

    Influencer marketing

    Influencer marketing has become infamous for the actions of a few annoying influencers. However, in this age, one cannot wish away influencer marketing. An influencer may have fans who are eager to give a try to the product because the influencer has recommended it. This works great for electronics, restaurants and beauty industries. Strategic partnerships with influencers can help your brands go places you can not reach easily organically.

    Email Marketing

    Email Marketing is one of the most powerful methods to market your products. If an interested party (your lead/customer) has given you a permission allowing you to send them emails about your product, consider it is a privilege. People read their emails very seriously and will act on your recommendations. You need to make your emails readable and interesting.

    Also do not spam. You could be unsubscribed and even fined for spamming.

    Time sensitive discounting and promotions

    In marketing terms, marketeer creates the urgency when they can show that either prices are going to rise or stocks are going to zero in a certain time. Real Estate industry has shown to utilize this tactic very effectively. You may also use time sensitive discounts or discounts based on festivals or events to drive sales. This tactic is meaningful though when your E Commerce store has achieved certain level of virality.

     

    Photo by Pressmaster

  • How to successfully compete with E Commerce Giants

    How to successfully compete with E Commerce Giants

    So, you have decided to venture into your own E Commerce business. Welcome to the world of possibilities. There are more opportunities than even before in this area. However, you also need to know in this sea, there are giant sharks. Large E Commerce companies with huge marketing budgets and often predatory tactics can reduce your profit margin in a straightforward way to causing your venture to shut down at the extreme.

    Here are a few ways, your small or medium size E Commerce venture can compete against these sharks in the E Commerce world.

    Planning

    E Commerce startups often underestimate the importance of planning. You are stepping in a place where there are giant sharks waiting to eat you for lunch. You need to be able to find out how you are going to out compete. You need to do thorough research about their marketing and their strategies. It is similar to guerilla marketing tactics where you are the nimble task force fighting a mighty army. Planning at the strategic level as to what things you would compete upon (like offering/ price / customer experience) and then at the tactical level such as what steps would you take to make your offering better w.r.t. to your large competitors. It needs careful considers and market research.

    Local flavor

    Your large competitor is stretched thin. The segment they are in needs to be profitable enough for them to give you competition. They will find it difficult to conduct operation in every local segment. You may leverage your knowledge of area, local product, local language to create a strong offering that your competitor simply cannot match without devoting substantial resources to achieve similar results.

    Strong niche

    Your enemies i.e., the giants of E Commerce are often stretched. They have cost structures and often optimize for sales and cost. It is impossible for physical reasons for them to focus on every segment of the market and yet win profitably. That is where you can shine. You can determine the areas where you are strong. It could be your price because of sourcing, or it could be quality of your product or patents that you hold.

    If you perform well and deliver value, it will be difficult for the large competitors to dislodge you.

     

    Personal Connections to the shoppers

    E Commerce giants provide services that are automated. One needs to go through multiple levels of chatbots conversations, and AI provided answers which causes dissatisfaction. On your website on the other hand, you can provide a work phone and /or a WhatsApp number for rapid answers to your customer’s questions. You customers may like such levels of personalization.

    A thank you note to the buyers and if possible, a call asking them about their satisfaction of the product is how you build a long-term relationship with them.

     

    Your personal story

    If there is a business, there is a story. Is there a story for your business, a customer can instantly connect with and identify with?

    For example, often stories talk about how founders struggled through their life experiences and then stepped up to provide you the best of the breed solutions. A personal story helps a customer relate to their own experiences of struggles.

    You need to make sure that you have genuine reasons behind your story as your honesty will be rewarded with free advertisement and sales later.

    Unique marketing techniques

    Giant e commerce companies use billboards, big festivals and big ad spends to attract eyeballs because they have big budgets to spend.

    To counter, you can go low cost, high impact tactics such as surprise gifts, detailed content videos for example tutorials/ how to use your products. You may utilize humor to craft engagement that suits your product line and not cater to whole market that your large competitor needs to cater to.

    Leveraging social media to the maximum

    Social media is easy and cheap medium to get famous. Create and share posts and ask your friends and family to share them on their timelines. It instantly builds up the trust without need to spend additional money. You can also create product pages and share helpful content and updates. You can create group where you can share your expertise and even others can chime in too with their opinions. Keep an eye open for the feedback and respond personally and constructively.

    Image by Waldryano from Pixabay

  • How to list your products effectively for your E Commerce Marketplace?

    How to list your products effectively for your E Commerce Marketplace?

    Listing your product is one of the most important components of your E Commerce startup, if not the topmost. Listing your product in an optimized, well-organized fashion makes your customer move from a person looking for information to becoming a buyer quickly.

    The primary objective is to help customers know about product features, which are listed in your e commerce shop and then give them compelling reason to take that credit card out and make the purchase. That is what we are aiming for, aren’t we? For all the brouhaha about E Commerce setup and market, your visitors would not be inclined to make a purchase if they cannot figure out what your product is all about.

    Here are a few steps listed, that you can perform to make your product listing more meaningful.

    Keyword Research

    You would like customers to come and purchase from your E-Commerce Market Place or your E-Commerce Website, isn’t it? Sure, you would be happy to share links in social media posts but that you would also need customers to keep coming back when you are not actively promoting the website.

    Keywords identification starts with determining what your customers will see when they enter that specific web page which contains your product information.

    Keywords included in the product listing at title/description/images also help search engines to determine if they need to give any space on their result page when the user enters a query with an intent either to buy or look up information.

    A full discussion on Keyword research is out of scope for this article. However, let me outline a few of the important points and tools that you can utilize for doing it, to get the maximum possible mileage.

    Understand intent (info/purchase)

    The search engines have changed over time. Now they look for search intents. On a broad level there are four search intents namely informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional.

    It is important to ask these questions before you decide to write about your product.

    • Has user come to your site intending to know about it more or purchase it outright?
    • If they wish to know more about your offering/products, you should be able to guide them to the relevant sections that lists your product details.
    • You would see traffic from keywords like “reviews”, “how to-s”,  “comparisons” if the intent is to gather more information.
    • You would see traffic from keywords like “Price”, “Discount”, “Cheap” in case the customer has intention to buy.

    The purpose of a good product listing is to give customer the information they came in looking for. Here is a great guide to understand intent of customer search

    Competition research

    E commerce scenario is competitive and you need to do competition analysis to make sure that your product listing remains searchable and purpose worthy. You need to understand how a competition is placing their product in terms of heading, description, pricing in order to develop a strategy that will help you outsell their product. The friction is that even your competitor may be ranking on the exact or close keywords as your product.

    One of the ways to perform competitor research is not directly using the product name but with related words like compared to, reviews, vs. etc….

    There are so many tools you can utilize on the internet to understand where your competition stands. Here are some top ones.

    Craft Compelling Product Titles

    Once you have the list of keywords that your competition is using you can create content strategies around them. You can drill down into keywords. It is much harder to rank for popular keywords unless you are a large authority website. But you can still target areas which are related and unexplored.  You may also check the volume of the keyword and if it gets the right amount of traffic.

    For example, a how guide to reach potential customers in your location will be easier to target than for example Customers in New York.

    Use the keywords in your product titles.

    • Use simple titles that gives users what they want.
    • Analyse competition for what they are using as titles
    • Optimize your titles

     

    Write Detailed and Persuasive Descriptions

    Incomplete product descriptions make customers drop off quickly. It is a deciding factor between purchase and letting it go

    82% of shoppers feel product descriptions are extremely or very influential to their purchasing decision.

    (Source: Field Agent Digital Shopper Report – IMRG)

    Here are some important points to consider.

    What’s in for me

    When your customers are perusing your product, they need to become aware of your offering. If you are giving a discount, it can be listed on somewhere it can be seen easily. If you are offering free shipping, you need put it at the most visible location.

    Telling a story

    We all need that person who inspires us (real is better, imaginary ok) . But the person or let us call them as a hero, need to have achieved something significant. Then there is a story which takes a reader from position A which our hero was in peril to position B, which was to their advantage and for which they used tactics/work/products to reach.

    A story can be told by a mascot or real person.

    USP – your way into their hearts

    USP or unique selling proposition is the reason your product will stand out among the competition.

    It is impossible for a customer to find out which product is better among thousands of products they see on a shelf or an ecommerce store. They all look the same and have the same feature, so what uniquely sets your product apart.

    These features may not be easily copied by your competitors. For example, a USP could be about a feature that is provided by only you and none of the competitors. Or that your brand evokes a sense of commitment. You can use colours and design to specify the uniqueness

    Social Proof – We all like to buy what our friends have, don’t we?

    It is a psychological trait that when you see your friends buy something, you are tempted to at least look at what they are buying. Often you would rely on someone trusted to help you buy a service or product.

    In E-Commerce scenario, social proof helps a customer decide if to purchase or walk away from a buying decision.

    Discussion of complete psychological aspect is beyond the scope of this article. However, you may consider asking customers for reviews and photographs if any of how they used your product.

    Do not be scared by negative reviews as they also showcase that you are willing to listen and make changes in your process or product to make things better for your customers

    List of features and Specifications

    Listing features of a product help finalize a customer to make decision either to buy the product based on its suitability or reject it for further research (we want the former for sure)

    A good product listing would contain in addition to the contents mentioned in above points, a table enlisting specification for example wattage, voltage and current requirements for an electrical requirement.

    For an air conditioner, the product may list the energy consumption, the star ratings.

    The specification and features may contain why it is beneficial for the user to use the product.

    The features may include any advance features that separate your product from other run of the mill products

    You may add why your product is high quality product. For example, you may include benchmark scores and any test results that indicate its performance.

    You may also add any variants that come up in specifications such as colour, dimensions, wattage etc. It would be better to use a separate sub section to explain the differences.

     

    Use High-Quality Images

    Why do need to do this?

    The image often act as differentiating factor between your product and competitor. A bad image screams unprofessional or sloppy work. In clothing and fashion products without image would not be even considered worth a second look.

    In case of reselling, a reseller may want to use your product image in a dimension that is suitable either for printing or on a website. You as a manufacturer may need to supply high quality image.

    Again, the complete treatment of a how to take a great product image is out of syllabus for this article but I have added a few of the tips.

    • Get a specialist if you can afford. Nothing better than the person who knows what they are doing.

    In case you find it too costly to hire a photographer, here are a few pointers.

    • You need to have basic photo editing knowledge to post process your images. You can utilize multiple tools or even AI based tools to enhance your images.
    • A good environment is useful for taking a great photograph. For example, using a white background for electronics or using a chair and a table setting for a food product. Using pink colour for displaying feminine products is a good eye catcher.
    • Learn Camera settings: Anyone can use automatic settings but often it may not produce the desired results. Read about aperture, iso, white balance, raw photography etc.
    • Practice: Practice your craft under different conditions
    • Ask the manufacturer: Asking the original manufacturer or educating them about a good photograph is a great way to achieve scale and save costs. Ask your manufacturer to export files in multiple formats for different usages such as printing, small size image, and large size images.
    • Post Processing: Sometimes adding touches post processing help in enhancing the visual appeal to the image. You may learn photoshop techniques or even use AI to enhance that. You may use free tools as well (list)

     

    Price Competitively – No one wants to pay more than what they think is reasonable!

    We would like to have a product that we desire, that is of the best quality and that is available at the lowest price. It is wishful thinking, you must be saying,

    But having an optimal price strategy can make customers feel like they are getting a winning deal.

    Pricing is such a complicated topic that again in this largish article trying to cover everything, covering every pricing strategy would make it laborious to read.

    The purpose of great pricing is to

    • Reduce costs.
    • Increase conversion.
    • Increase customer engagement.
    • Provide insight into the mind of customers.
    • Improving the value that a customer perceives

    How would someone who has small to no idea of how to price a product need to go about it.

    • Market research
      • Ask your friends and family.
      • Goto a local shop and checkout prices
      • Location
      • Product average sales (an overenthusiastic salesman might tell you)
      • Use this guide
    • Customer Profiling
      • What price are customers willing to pay.
      • Value based pricing
      • Tiers of pricing for different customers
      • Understanding pricing psychology
      • Understanding pricing models

    Optimize for Search Algorithms

    If you have reached this stage, it means that you have a fair idea as to what will persuade the customer to make that purchase once they land on your product page.

    Land if they do. You may do paid advertising, but nothing beats an all the year-round traffic and that customers see “your” products before competitors, when they search for them.

    First step in this is to use keywords that come naturally to your products and product lines. Your need to categorize your product into neat categories for easier browsing.

    If a customer wishes to browse your product list by tags rather than categories, you need to make it easier for them to use the tags.

    The content needs to also appear fast. When user reaches your product page and it loads slowly, they might bounce and search another website. That is a lost opportunity.

    Your content needs to:

    – Use relevant keywords naturally.

    – Fill out all fields like category, tags, and attributes.

    – updated and accurate.

    Gather and Showcase Reviews

    Encouraging satisfied customers to leave reviews is a terrific way to create social proof and to show your new customers, why they can trust you. You may utilize:

    • Surveys
    • Polls
    • Timing and Ease of review

    Respond professionally to reviews to build trust.

     Provide Accurate Shipping and Return Policies

    – Clearly state shipping costs and delivery times.

    – Outline easy return and refund processes.

     Monitor and Adjust Listings Regularly

    – Track performance metrics.

    – Test different titles, images, and descriptions.

     

    Image by Couleur from Pixabay