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Is your e-commerce marketing à la mode?

Thomas Coppen
09 June 2016

Making sure your marketing efforts are up-to-date is vitally important if e-commerce plays a key role in your income stream, especially when it comes to the fast changing worlds of SEO and PPC. There are multiple factors that can be easily overlooked, such as the importance of placing AdWords bids on your own brand terms.

In order to stay on-trend with the latest techniques, you should initially go back to basics and make sure your website is up to scratch, otherwise whatever you do to attract new custom will only result in abandoned orders.

Make sure your site is user-friendly, responsive to mobile usage, and that all the important links through the sales process work flawlessly. E-commerce sales are expected to hit £67 billion this year, so you can't afford to have a site that doesn't work smoothly.

Thought leadership and outreach

On-page SEO is still very important and you should take care to ensure your landing pages are formatted correctly, but getting coverage on external websites can also have a significant impact on where your site appears in search engine rankings. Working with third-parties to promote what you do is integral to any online marketing campaign, providing valuable backlinks to your product pages, increasing your authority in the eyes of Google, and also giving you a nice PR boost.

If you’re something of a pioneer in your particular area of expertise - be it skincare, beachwear or revolutionary wellington boots - get in touch with industry-websites and add your voice to the conversation. Offer expert advice, competition prizes or guest articles to capture the imagination and get your products in front of the right people.

Reaching out to influencers can also have a huge impact. Look for bloggers and journalists with audiences similar to your own and work with them as ambassadors. This could be as simple as giving away a product for review, or you could engage in a large social campaign with them for maximum effect.

Urban Outfitters does this really well by sharing the looks of influential bloggers and linking back to the product page for the item featured in the outfit.

Urban Outfitters

Get social

Social media is a powerful tool and many people buy products after reading a good social review. In fact, Millward Brown research suggests 87% of Pinterest users have made purchases after seeing something on the site. Harness the power of this by working with influencers, but also by establishing yourself as an authority in your own right.

The key to social media is good imagery - if you can wow people with gorgeous photography, they’re more likely to click-through to see what else you have to offer.

The right PR

Public relations is one of the most powerful marketing methods and It’s important to build a rapport with bloggers and journalists, but you should also keep an eye on the news too.

If you run a sustainable clothing brand, look out for news stories that warrant comment from your CEO. This might be a charitable fairtrade initiative, or perhaps even the changing political landscape in a country that supplies your wares.

These news hooks make a story about your brand timely, and that’s exactly what journalists are looking for.

Test your PPC campaigns

In order to optimise Pay Per Click campaigns, you need to A/B test a number of ads to see which wording works best.

Each advert should target the same demographic, but you can experiment with different text and landing pages to see which delivers the best results. Once you have a better understanding of what works, you can continually fine-tune campaigns until they deliver seriously healthy returns.

The beauty of Pay Per Click marketing lies in its name, i.e. you only pay when people actually click on your ad, driving highly targeted traffic to your site and making it arguably the most cost-effective form of advertising ever created.

There are many facets to e-commerce marketing, but investing some time and taking care of the steps listed above will help you steal a march on the competition and give your brand a winning edge. PPC campaign management might seem overwhelming at first, so if you decide to outsource your efforts here’s 5 questions to ask your AdWords agency.

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