The aim of this article is to help online stores that want to invest in digital marketing and are lost with so many options, strategies and advertising channels. Google Ads, Facebook Ads and E-mail Marketing are just a few examples.
How to Increase Online Sales?
The first thing is to set a good target. How do you get to 500 orders a month in e-commerce?
In most cases, especially in the fashion sector where we have many customers, this is a good target for orders per month. This is considering that you are a small e-commerce business in your first year of operation.
To get there as soon as possible, it's not enough to have a good digital structure, i.e. good e-commerce integrated with your complementary CRM platforms, ERP, email marketing, social networks, etc.
You need to invest in digital marketing and promote your business to potential buyers on a wide variety of channels. Now, which strategy and which tools should you choose?
There are dozens of tools and strategies for promoting your products and services on the Internet. The problem is that not everyone has enough money or expertise to try them all out. The first step, therefore, is to define the best digital marketing strategies and the best channels for promoting your e-commerce.
In short, there are two ways of doing online marketing for e-commerce: through Outbound Marketing and through Inbound Marketing.
The first way consists of investing in ads to attract potential buyers directly, with a strong intention to buy. The second involves content marketing, i.e. publishing information that is relevant to your target audience in order to attract them to your site in a more organic, less commercial way.
The ideal is to invest in both strategies at the same time. Even a small e-commerce business can take advantage of both ways. Below are more details of what is best in each.
Outbound Marketing - Google and Facebook
To cut to the chase, you have to invest in the basics, in other words, every e-commerce business needs to advertise on Google and Facebook. There's no escaping it.
Through Google Ads you can advertise to people who search for your product or service on Google or who visit sites related to your industry.
Through Facebook Ads, it is also possible to define extremely targeted audiences and display ads in various ways within the social network.
Perhaps one system is more worthwhile than the other, but it is essential that you test each one thoroughly before concluding which is best.
Many people say that investing in Google Ads and Facebook Ads doesn't work or is too expensive. However, I doubt that these people have tested the right way and considered all the variables involved.
We have received many e-commerces here at the company who invested thousands of dollars and didn't even track the conversions that came from the ads.
Without proper measurement, it's impossible to invest insponsored links. In fact, tracking everything and being able to control spending in real time is the biggest advantage of digital marketing over offline marketing. This has to be taken advantage of.
Another important factor is that over 90% of Google's revenue comes from Google Ads. Billions of dollars are generated by advertisers promoting their products on Google every day. That's not going to change any time soon. If you don't invest yet, you're missing out on a lot of money.
You can also advertise on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, invest in blog posts and specialized websites and many other systems. However, if your monthly budget for digital marketing is less than R$10,000 per month, focus only on Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
Here at Pareto, we have clients who invest more than R$20,000 a month in Google Ads alone and break sales records every month. Other clients invest most of their money in Facebook Ads and see incredibly high returns. Some even earn more than R$15,000 for every R$1,000 invested in Facebook Ads! Regardless of your profit margin, with a return like that, I'm sure you'd make a lot of money.
If you don't yet invest in these systems or invest less than R$1,000 a month, start thinking about it!
Cut investments where you can't measure the exact return or simply allocate more investment to these channels. I suggest a minimum of 3 months' investment in well-structured and managed campaigns.
If you don't have the expertise and time to devote to it, take the free Google Ads and Facebook Ads courses. It's in their best interest to help you. If you don't have the time, look for an agency certified by Google and Facebook, such as Pareto Group, and automate your e-commerce marketing.
Inbound Marketing - Content and Newsletter
Content marketing is a fundamental strategy if you want to have an organic and continuous source of new customers in the medium and long term without having to invest a lot of money. The aim is to create free, relevant content for your target audience (like this one ;)) in exchange for contact information. This way, you can nurture this lead or registration with more content via email, for example, and when the time is right, offer them something they're interested in buying.
Many people get frustrated applying this strategy because they think that all they have to do is publish content every week or even every day to start getting lots of traffic to their site and generating sales in the first few months. Growth isn't that fast. With good planning, expect significant results after at least 9 months.
On the other hand, a great way to boost results is to combine it with Outbound Marketing. Advertising your free content, such as an e-book, an article or a video, can generate thousands of leads or prospects for just a few dozen dollars. For some segments, we've already managed to generate 1,000 qualified leads for as little as R$50!
To get started, I suggest a blog linked to the e-commerce or a company Facebook page. To get registrations and start working on email marketing, I strongly recommend MailChimp. It's a cheap, intuitive tool that integrates with all the platforms you need.
To keep your content relevant, you also need to understand SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Your e-commerce platform should offer automatic features to help you with this, but if it doesn't, find out more on the Pareto blog or talk to one of our consultants about your case. If you don't know what SEO is and how it works, read here!
TipThe secret of Inbound Marketing is regularity. Set out to publish content at least twice a week and do it every time. If you don't have time, hire someone to create it for you, but never stop publishing. That way, after a year you'll have great organic traffic, especially if you boost your content with ads.
Other Ways...
In addition to the above, an e-commerce can also invest in Marketplaces, make partnerships, test growth hacking strategies, advertise through other programmatic media platforms, etc. However, all high-level e-commerce invests in Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
If you don't use these two channels well yet and don't have the time or team to do everything, forget the rest for now. Focus on Facebook, Google and e-mail marketing.
ImportantBefore investing in marketing, you need to ensure that your digital structure is efficient. This will ensure that every penny you invest is put to better use. There's no point in getting thousands of potential buyers to your e-commerce site if, when they reach the shopping cart, for example, they can't complete their order.
As an example, we have clients who increased sales by more than 30% overnight just by changing their checkout payment system to a more efficient one. See this article for 7 tips from pareto to increase your e-commerce conversion rate.
How is your experience with Google Ads or Facebook Ads? How is your return? How much are you already investing? If not, why not? Do you invest in content marketing? How is your lead generation and website hits? Check out other articles on the Pareto Blog!
