Marketing

Now that you’ve set up your website and decided on a product to sell, it’s time for arguably the most important and most difficult part of running a business: marketing. Marketing can be the difference between a successful business and failure. Thankfully there are many different types of marketing strategies, and you could decide which is the best fit for your business.

Social Media Marketing

The first and most popular form of advertising when running an ecommerce business is social media advertising. By far the most popular platform to advertise on is Facebook. Facebook Ads are shown on both Facebook and Instagram, which explains their widespread popularity. That being said, there are many other options to choose from such as Snapchat, TikTok, Spotify, and Reddit to name a few. Thankfully, the principles of social media marketing can be applied to any of these platforms, as all their dashboards are nearly identical.

When creating a new ad, you can think of its organization in three main parts. Campaign, Ad set, and Ad. A new campaign is created for every marketing goal you have in mind. Examples of marketing goals could be brand awareness, website traffic, or website conversions such as add to cart, and purchases. When creating a new campaign, typically the dashboard will ask you what your marketing goals are, and the algorithm will optimize your ads to better reach those goals.

The second stage is your ad set. Inside a campaign, you can have as many ad sets as you see fit. For each ad set you will define numerous variables to better define your ad. These variables mainly include the audience in which you want to advertise to. You can target your ads to a specific geographical location, age, gender, and even down to minute interests and hobbies. Using these variables effectively can pinpoint your ads to your exact audience. Lastly, Ad sets is where you also define your budget. Some brands spend as low as $5 a day per ad set, well others easily spend up to 5 or 6 figures per day.

Lastly, within each ad set, you have ads. Ads are the advertisement themselves that are shown across various platforms. These can include media like text, images, and video. Like ad sets within a campaign, you can have as many ads as you would like within in ad set.

If you want to be successful with social media marketing, experimentation is key. When creating a new campaign, it’s important to create dozens of variations, changing minute details in each. This can be down to the music played in a video ad, to the specific interests in hobbies and interests you’re targeting. Sometimes the ads that you think won’t perform well, will end up being the most successful. Once you find a combination that converts, you can then allocate all your budget to that specific ad set and reach your campaign goals.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is still a new concept in the marketing world, and carries a bit of risk, however the results can be immense as well as being cost effective. In short, influencer marketing is the act of paying somebody with a social media presence to promote your product or brand to their audience. There are several different types of influencers to choose from on various different platforms, but the key concepts remain the same throughout

First, like social media marketing, you have to decide on your audience. What kind of person is most likely to purchase your product, and what kinds of things would they be interested in. If you’re selling dog bowls, look for influencers in the dog and pet niche. If you’re selling a massage gun, look for influencers in the health and wellness niche. In today’s age, there’s pretty much an influencer and following for everything, so be creative.

Once you decide on your niche, it’s time to start looking for influencers. When choosing an influencer to work with, it’s important to look beyond just their follower count. Lots of influencers boast a large amount of followers, however their posts get very little engagement. This metric is called like to follower ratio, or LFR for short. If an influencer has an LFR over 25%, it’s typically a good sign that their followers are active, and they are a good fit for business.

Once you decide on a couple of influencers it’s time to start reaching out to them. On Instagram, it can be as simple as sending them a direct message letting them know you are interested in working with them and think their followers would really enjoy your product. On other platforms, look for another way to contact them, such as a business email. If they don’t have any forms of contact, they probably aren’t interested in working with brands. Most influencers will get back to you with a how much they charge. Don’t be afraid to negotiate with them, but also respect their pricing, and don’t low ball them.

From there, provide them with what they should post and wait to see if the post is successful. Influencer marketing is very volatile, and sometimes doesn’t work as expected. Like social media marketing, it’s important to keep experimenting, with different ad briefs and influencers until you find a perfect match for your brand.

Organic Marketing

Lastly, we have organic marketing. This style of marketing has only grown popular in the ecommerce world with the recent rise of TikTok. TikTok makes free, organic marketing, extremely effective for brands, and some have experienced major success. Although simple by nature, this is arguably the most difficult form of marketing, however since it doesn’t cost a penny, it’s always worth a shot.

TikTok makes it incredibly easy for anybody to receive hundreds of thousands if not millions of views overnight, something that just isn’t possible on other social medias. Brands are not taking advantage of this, closely studying the algorithm and recent trends to try and go viral, well simultaneously advertising their product.

If you’re successful, you could see lots of new traffic to your website as well as increased brand awareness. However, form of marketing doesn’t lead to many conversions, as it’s much harder to target those who are willing to convert. Regardless, it’s still an effective form of marketing, and something all brands should look into.