There are hundreds of ecommerce demand generation tactics out there. However, very few of these tactics actually deliver on their promises. In fact, most of them do more harm than good.
One of the biggest mistakes that e-commerce businesses make is that they focus on tactics that don’t work. So, what kinds of tactics work?
List of Ecommerce Demand Generation Tactics
- Build awareness in the market with targeted digital banners.
- Retarget engaged business partner and customer prospects.
- Create authentic, interesting, compelling, helpful, optimized content to inform and engage.
- Leverage unaffiliated influencers to drive awareness and demand.
- On-site customer reviews of purchased products will build trust and loyalty.
- Improves your organic search ranking for SEO.
Social Media
- Drive awareness and engagement with social followers (Organic)
- Ads based on demographic & firmographic attributes (Paid)
- SEO and optimized content strategy to attract traffic (Organic)
- Bid-based keyword strategy to drive traffic to site relevant for new business partner or customer acquisition (Paid)
Email Outreach
- Account-level email campaign to current business partners and customer who selling and buying your products.
- Email campaign to your prospect that is not currently selling your products/services.
Display Advertising – Full funnel targeting
Display advertising across publisher networks is highly effective in targeting both existing and new business partners or customer.
Not only is it visually appealing which can increase brand visibility, but it also allows for precise targeting so you can tailor the message to the audience. For example, you can have a campaign message to target net new business partner and customer that may not currently be transacting with you and a different message, letting existing business partners and customer know the value proposition of the Why choosing your product/services.
Across social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, it’s also possible to target at a business partner level or an individual working for a business partner to serve up relevant contextual advertising.
Content Marketing should inspire and engage your audience
Content marketing is the creation of authentic, useful, educational or inspiring content your business partners will be compelled to engage with and which will ultimately drive them to your platform.
Content does not need to be tied to a specific product. It can include ideas on how to solve a problem that they didn’t know they had, or answer a question about a specific topic.
Content can be re-used across multiple channels in multiple formats including video, blogs, podcasts and infographics.
Influencers and small business partners can be really beneficial in creating great content for you. For example, unboxing videos and how to guides on YouTube or Instagram.
Business Partner or Customer Reviews – The power of peer recommendation
Business partner or customer reviews are a significant source of product information. Studies show they affect buyer’s likelihood to purchase a product so much so that one-point increase in product rating can increase probability of sales by 10%.
Owned Media
- Reviews and ratings generated by business partners or customer who have already brought a product
- Product test conducted by your subject matter experts
- Product advocacy campaigns based on limited trials or product seeding.
Paid Media
- Influencers conducting product reviews for you
- Co-operation with price comparison platforms that often obtain customer opinions on the purchased products.
Search Engine Marketing – Let new business partners and customer find you
The primary objective of SEM is to build your brand and online presence. A secondary, related objective is to lead prospect business partners and customer to complete a desired call to action on your eCommerce landing page e.g. purchase
The goal of SEM is to make your website highly ranked within a search engine, so it shows as one of the first results that business partners and customer see. Ultimately making it more likely for them to discover you.
To increase the visibility of your eCommerce platform on a search engine, such as Google or Bing, you simply pay a fee. Business partners and customer searching for specific terms in specific locations, both chosen by you, are delivered a results page that prominently features an advert linking to a specific landing page you own.
Below are a few considerations when planning your SEM keyword strategy:
- Ensure your content is related to the questions that business partners or customer will be searching for online and determine your keywords around these search terms.
- Include keywords in your page content, titles, meta tags and URLs.
- Leverage internal links to other areas of your site.
“Be creative when choosing keywords for your SEM campaign. Consider what will entice prospective business partners and customer at different stages of their buying journey.”
Your checklist for search-friendly content:
- Does the article answer a question?
- Does it explain how to do something
- Is it an “evergreen” topic that won’t quickly go out of date?
- Is it suggested by Google?
Conclusion Ecommerce Demand Generation Tactics:
Demand generation tactics to Increase Your Ecommerce Sales That Will Actually Work above, I’ve outlined the key things that you need to do to increase your e-commerce sales.
While these tactics are a great starting point, you still need to put in the work. I’ve included the links to the best tools I could find to help you get started.
Display Advertising : Google Adwords, Microsoft Advertising
Social Media: LinkedIn Marketing, Facebook Advertising, TikTok, Snapchat and so on
Search Engine Marketing: Google Adwords, Microsoft Advertising
Email Outreach tools: MailingBoss, Aweber, GetResponse
Now you know the list of ecommerce demand generation tactics, hope you can execute it and gain more sales.
