Marketing Tools for E-Business is a comprehensive guide to Internet-based marketing, covering both traditional forms of online marketing and new techniques that are only now becoming available to e-businesses. This book provides detailed information on search engine optimization, advertising on the Web, creation of effective Web pages, content development, and more.
Marketing Tools for E-Business saves you tons of time and money by giving you the latest, most effective marketing techniques that will get your e-business noticed. You’ll discover smarter ways to market online; inside, you’ll find guidance on how to promote your domain name effectively; learn state-of-the-art ways to manage affiliate marketing programs; discover ways to leverage email marketing systems from free services to expensive one-on-one programs.
Email marketing
Email is the currency of the web, and for every ecommerce business, the ultimate goal is to convert prospects into paying customers. When it comes to conversions, email is a clear winner.
The average click-through rate of a Constant Contact email campaign is around 7% (of total recipients), whereas the average click-through rate from a tweet is around 0.5%. This means you’re 14 times more likely to get someone to click through to your website via email than from Twitter.
And, email is easy to track. Constant Contact customers have real-time access to reporting that shows campaign metrics, including open rates, clicks, bounces, forwards, social shares and more.
If you’re serious about email marketing for ecommerce, you’ll need to work with an email service provider; one who can provide you with professional email templates, automation tools to help you grow, easy ways to or manage your email list, and tracking features that show you how customers are responding to your emails.
When building your email list, remember to never purchase a mailing list. Email marketing is all about building and nurturing relationships; connecting with a smaller list of quality contacts is more impactful than blasting out email marketing campaigns to contacts that don’t even know your business.
Social advertising
Managing an online store is tough enough. Couple that with all the work that goes into maintaining an active social media presence across different platforms, and you have your hands full.
With the Facebook lead ads tool, you can create Facebook ads right from Constant Contact, where the lead information is automatically populated into your account using marketing automation so you can market to target customers using email.
Social ads are being credited with higher purchase influence, especially among millennials where it’s the second-most influential paid media. Using Facebook to collect business leads allows you to target your defined audience, both people and organizations interested in your business, who are willing to share their contact information with you.
One major benefit of Facebook for this purpose is that it supports mobile optimization, and offers the ease of submitting necessary information directly via Facebook. No new tabs, no leaving the Facebook page, and no extra hassle.
Google Analytics
Analytics tools use data science to help you understand what your customers want, why they came to your store in the first place, and how you can attract more of them. Keeping an eye on these statistics is a necessity.
A free tool brimming with information, Google Analytics can help you improve conversions on PPC ads; optimize your site and product descriptions, and track visitor behavior on your store. Google Analytics is a must-have for any ecommerce business. You can also set up reports that help you identify problems or opportunities in real-time.
Best e-commerce marketing tools
The types of e-commerce marketing tools you use will depend on the size of your business, your budget and your business goals. Here are 15 of the best tools to get you started:
Mailchimp
Best for: Email marketing
Pricing: Free for up to 2,000 subscribers
If you run a business, you need to have a way to stay in touch with your customers. Mailchimp is one of the best ways to make that happen.
Mailchimp is a leader in email marketing, and it is one of the easiest and most affordable ways to get started. Your account is free for up to 2,000 subscribers, and you can do basic audience segmentation.
With Mailchimp, you can automate your marketing campaigns to incentivize more customers to make purchases. For instance, you can set up automatic reminders for visitors who leave your store without making a purchase or abandon their carts.
Ahrefs
Best for: SEO
Pricing: Starts at $99 per month
Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool that makes it easy to perform keyword research, do competitor analysis and optimize your website. Plus, you don’t need to have any specialized knowledge of SEO to use it effectively.
When you get started, Ahrefs will crawl your website and identify any SEO issues that need to be addressed. You can also discover the top-performing content within your niche and identify link-building opportunities.
Ahrefs also provides detailed tutorials, so you’ll have the information you need to start using the software effectively right from the start.
Kissmetrics
This tool helps you understand your customers and their behavior. It answers common analytical questions like your most-engaged users, best-performing products and the customer leaving rates. This, in turn, will allow you to invest in better marketing campaigns so you can get new customers and keep the old ones.
Google Docs
This very famous editing and collaborative platform help you write content on the go and keep track of it. Businesses can use it to write content together, or share for editing and publication with ease. It also allows you to change formatting, track changes, and add images.
You can access Docs from anywhere. All your ideas and documents are stored in a cloud. With a simple login from your email ID, you can seamlessly write and edit from wherever you are. All you need is a stable internet connection- but you can even get Docs to sync new additions offline!
Conclusion
This fully updated second edition teaches both the digital and conventional marketing techniques anyone can use to start or maintain an e-business. It provides the latest information on staffing for your e-business, integrating SEO services into corporate marketing campaigns, using social media to promote your products, writing online banner ads, managing the exploding number of customer service requests, improving site navigation, developing e-mail programs that increase sales, and much more.