5 Important Digital Marketing Strategies for Online Retailers

1. Top 5 effective digital marketing strategies for internet retailers
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Whitepaper

2. In this age of information, where anything is
just a fingertip away, nearly 97% of consumers
use online media when researching products
or services. And these are not just the Gen Y
but people across different age groups. Peo-
ple now feel it safer and easier to buy online.
These changes, in the mindset of consum-
ers took some time to evolve. Even though
it’s challenging at times, digital media has
opened up so many opportunities for internet
retailers. The ‘word of mouth’ has turned into
‘world of mouth’. Data shows that 78% of the
consumers trust peer recommendations, only
14% trust advertisements (1800 Enterpris-
es LLC). The whole marketing paradigm has
shifted from being a one-way broadcast to a
multi-point conversation. The control has be-
come more decentralized and the consumers
are equally contributing in the branding of a
company as the company itself. And for that to
happen, it’s necessary to be present ‘out there’.
“If Facebook was a country, it
would be the 4th largest in the
world.”
Digital Marketing Channels &
End Customer Behavior
There is a gamut of channels which could
work wonders if utilized in an appropriate
manner. But often, it is being seen that these
channels are getting over-utilized rather than
properly utilized. There is growing evidence
that marketers don’t want to manage and
maintain presence across all the platforms
and networks. It is largely due to two factors:
• It’s just too much effort to reconcile all
the profiles, logins, etc.
• It’s simply not needed to be every-
where
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You have to choose just a handful of channels
which resonates with your business and your
target audience and then manage them really
well.Some of the channels which go well with
the e-commerce business are briefed here.
facebook
When you think of Facebook, the word e-
commerce doesn’t generally comes to mind
but when a medium is digital world’s most
loved one, there must be something about
it. It’s just not about the masses being there.
Facebook provides a lot of convenience for
branding and even transactions, consider-
ing the recent emergence of the ‘buy’ but-
ton.There are plenty of easy to use, tightly
integrated Facebook apps for internet retail-
ers, which can import the whole store into
the page itself. Below are some of the sug-
gestions which work well for this platform:
• Use more images for posting than vid-
eos
• Never post anything having just a plain
text
• Connect with your audience’s emotions,
don’t just promote
• Engage in the comment section giving
personal attention
• Use different apps for coupons, offers,
loyalty management, etc.
• Integrate with one of the e-commerce
apps like StoreYa, Storefront Social, Ecwid,
Shopify, etc.
Twitter
Same as Facebook, Twitter also introduced the
‘buy’ button, but even before Facebook has
announced that. This will let users to buy di-
rectly from the promoted tweets without hav-

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nel just like a visual blog and focus on engaging
with your fans rather getting viral. Some tricks:
• Shoot shorter videos
• Create your channel and segment the
videos into different playlists
• Figure out what frequency of posting
you can manage and commit to it
• Use analytics like Audience Retention to
figure out which videos aren’t working
• Engage with your audience using an-
notations which are either commentaries or
hyperlinks
5 Digital Marketing
Strategies
In this content centric, socially driven, digi-
talized world, social media channels play a
prominent role and judiciously utilizing them
can take your business to a different height.
But then, there are a few more things when it
comes to planning a digital marketing strategy.
Organic Search Marketing/SEO
For many internet retail businesses, more than
half of the traffic can come via the search en-
gine result pages. It is free of cost but you
need to earn it. Search Engine Optimization
is a vast area but even if you can take care
of a few basics, your website will start get-
ting the traction. Often, not enough atten-
tion is paid to these basics, which include:
• Including alt tags for images
• Blog posts having keywords in the
headlines
• Proper meta description of the pages
• Including social sharing buttons
• Creating contagious contents to attract back-
links
There are many such tactics which can en-
hance your search engine rankings without
even paying a dollar.
ing to go through any third party. This was done,
keeping in mind that almost 80% of the Twitter
users are on mobile devices. And this function-
ality is really a win-win for both end custom-
ers and the marketers. Some suggestions which
can enable you to effectively use this channel:
• Try to be creative. It’s got space for just 140
characters
• Use twitter cards for better engagement
rates
• Use images as much as possible
• Use hashtags carefully. Don’t spam around
by using unrelated hashtags
• You have to tweet a lot. The frequency in
the medium demands a lot of content creation
and curation.
• Don’t overshare self-serving promotional
tweets
• Integrate with different native apps for
providing coupons, contests, gift cards, etc.
Pinterest
Pinterest’s explosive popularity is making it a
major sales tool for social-savvy online retail-
ers. Last year, 38% of the users made a pur-
chase because they saw it on Pinterest. There
are different tricks which can enable you to ef-
fectively use this online pinning board plat-
form for getting more re-pins. For example:
• Use images having lighter colors
• Try more pins of taller dimensions
• Be sure to provide a call-to-action
• Try our promotional pins like Promoted
Pins and Rich Pins
• Use hashtags for business promotions
YouTube
Visuals always add a whole new dimension to your
marketing mix. So, we need to utilize the king of
all visual content platforms – YouTube, which has
over 1 billion unique visitors each month. Through
YouTube you can give your followers a face to as-
sociate with. You can consider your YouTube chan-

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• Choose your social handles/channels accord-
ing to your target audience
• Build sizeable followership but more than
that engage with the audience
• Social channels are like your digital assets
which speaks of your brand
• Use different media like blogs, images, vid-
eos, etc.
• This is the best place to show your offers and
events
• Be creative with your themes. Add humor!
Content Marketing
As of yet, whatever we have discussed, would
be successful only if we have a good content.
This is the core to the whole digital marketing
process. It has far reaching effects on search
engine results, paid marketing and even while
engaging in the social media. It is key to cre-
ate brand awareness and drive online engage-
ments. Even Google’s algorithm is giving more
priority to the higher ranking pages which
give unique content. As such, the advertisers
are evolving more and more into publishers.
There are a few things which online stores
should consider:
• It should maintain a blog with regular posts
• The blog should be consistently shared
across the social media channels of the
business
• Every page, wherever you are putting up
your content, should have the social sharing
buttons
• The content should vary according to the
channel viz. Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• The content should inform, entertain or oth-
erwise add value to the daily life of end users
Paid Marketing
With over 550 million websites, it becomes a tough
job to get your traffic especially when you are
bounded by a limited budget. Paid marketing is a
tricky job and you have to find out a formula which
fits your business. Many times internet retailers
will have low cost products for which they will be
doing paid advertising. If you consider just this one
‘buy’, you will never get the clear picture of the
ROI. It should rather be calculated on the basis of
Average Revenue Per User in a year. Paid marketing
should work hand in hand with other factors like a
smooth navigation in website, better offers, faster
checkouts, etc. Only then you can get loyal custom-
ers which in turn will lead to multiple buys. This
will in turn increase your ARPU. Some of the paid
ads which can work for internet retailors include:
• Google AdWords
• Facebook – Sponsored post, right column Ads,
etc.
• Twitter – Sponsored Tweets, Sponsored
Accounts, etc.
• Content Syndication – Outbrain, Taboola, etc.
• Remarketing
Social Media Marketing
As mentioned before, social media is not just a
playground of teenagers anymore. It has evolved
into a multi-purpose tool across different demo-
graphics. Social media opens up a forum of dia-
logues with your end users and it builds up cred-
ibility when you are easily accessible. It helps
you in crafting your loyal customers and in the
long term boosts your brand image. But if you
are here for a short-term direct sales target, you
might be in the wrong place. Social media is of-
ten hugely successful for e-retailors for bring-
ing the traffic and is a great way to get that
‘word of mouth’ momentum. But there are a few
principles of effective social media marketing:

5. Email Marketing
Last but not the least, email marketing is still
one of the most powerful ways to share across
your content and communicate with your
subscribers in a consistent way. Online retail-
ers are still using mass email campaigns, which
are smart enough to look personalized. Some
of the cases where this can prove really ben-
eficial are:
• Sending automated reminders whenever the
shopping cart is abandoned
• Sending personalized emails considering the
demographics
• Pre-booking reminders to highly engaging
customers
• Emails regarding offers, coupons, contests,
festival wishes, etc.
By seamlessly integrating various digital mar-
keting channels into one cohesive approach,
you are better able to foster deeper and more
meaningful connections with those who find
value in your brand. Following are the steps to
execute an integrated digital marketing strat-
egy:
• Define and Establish your brand in the
digital age
• Convey and Promote your brand message
across channels
• Connect and Covert your target customers
• Measure and Refine your efforts
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