You might think that the best ecommerce marketing strategy is advertising. Banner ads, one line text links and larger graphic ads on websites and in newsletters are one way to advertise. It’s usually a fairly expensive way, though. Especially if you have the graphics made to be eye-catching, like animations that are sure to get people to notice them. But just because someone notices the person doing cartwheels on your graphic ad, that doesn’t mean they’re going to click it. And many people are so annoyed by ads, particularly moving, flashy ones, that they run software that automatically blocks them from ever having to see such things. How are you going to reach them?
And even of those who see your ad, what percentage of them is likely interested in whatever you’re selling? Like a billboard on a highway with everyone passing, not many are actually going to be looking for what’s in the advertisement. So if you base your e-commerce marketing strategy on those kinds of ads, it’s kind of like throwing rocks into a crowd and hoping you accidentally hit someone.
There are techniques you can implement in your e-commerce marketing strategy, though, that are very focused and take much of the randomness and guesswork out of your plan. Search engine optimization is an important part of your strategy. This will help you design your content and web pages to get noticed by the search engines. You’ll focus each page on certain keywords surrounding your business, and when someone’s searching on that phrase, your company comes up high in the search engine results.
At least that’s it in theory. In reality, it’s not nearly so simple. Just optimizing the content you already have will definitely help. But the key to this type of e-commerce marketing strategy is to show new content on a regular basis. This shows the search engines that the website is active and updated regularly with keyword rich content. As far as the search engines are concerned this makes one site more valuable and vital than another site with similar content that’s not updated as often. So an important part of your e-commerce marketing strategy should always be new content that’s also search engine optimized.