An online store lets you break away from the confines of a typical brick-and-mortar store.
Having an online presence creates so many opportunities to reach out to and engage with your target audience. Whether you run a mom-and-pop, a start-up, or a big business, ecommerce marketing tools can become an integral part of your business’s day-to-day growth.
You need to decide which ecommerce tool is worth the investment, and which offers you an advantage over your competitors. Combined with a smart marketing strategy, the right ecommerce marketing tools can grow your online store.
Find an ecommerce tool that works for your business
When choosing an ecommerce tool that works for you, keep in mind your technical skills and budget, as well as factors like SEO, mobile-friendliness, onsite search, and scalability. Knowing your limitations and needs makes it easier to select the tools that can help you attract users to your site, and grow your business.
You should also set up an ecommerce blog for your store. Having a blog is a great way to demonstrate authority and credibility; keep your customers informed and engaged, and boost customer acquisition for your online business.
To kick things off, we’ve listed down seven ecommerce tools that you can use to grow your business.
1. 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.
And, email is easy to track. When using a professional email marketing platform, you 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 emails to contacts that don’t even know your business.
2. 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.
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.
Pro tip: Go the extra mile and learn how to integrate Facebook seamlessly in your email marketing strategy.
3. 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.
4. SMS Text marketing
Contacts are the lifeblood of your business or organization. Without them, keeping customers or supporters engaged is an uphill battle. You can use SMS for retail to:
- Induce FOMO — Share time-sensitive product offers and updates.
- Customer service — Send shipping and availability updates.
- Capture more sales — Send abandoned cart reminders.
5. SEO tools
SEO, or search engine optimization, means setting up your ecommerce website and content to better show up in online search results. While many digital marketing tactics rely on you reaching out to your audience, SEO for ecommerce gives you the power to reach people as they actively search the information related to your products and services on their own.
SEO helps you improve your visibility within the organic search results, which is the traffic that comes to your site naturally, rather than relying on paid search results alone.
Another important factor in the growing importance of SEO is mobile, and the popularity of using devices like smartphones and tablets to search online. According to a recent report from Google, 50 percent of mobile users are more likely to visit a store after conducting a local search on a smartphone.
By taking steps to optimize your online presence with search in mind, you increase the chance of people finding your business and becoming a new customer.
Pro tip: We have a library full of helpful SEO best practices to help you turn your website into a trusted resource that benefits your business.
6. Facebook Ads
To increase brand and product exposure, you can use Targeted Facebook Ads to create campaigns that drive more loyal customers to your website. With Facebook Ads, you can target specific audiences based on a variety of demographic and preference factors, from location to favorite hobby.
When was the last time you whipped out a phone book to look up information on a local business? Chances are you can’t even get one of those big yellow books in your area. These days, you’re more likely to get your answer from a quick online search. So are your customers.
What makes Facebook Ads extra special is that you don’t have to create the demand — you simply need to satisfy it. Your audience is already looking for your products and keywords.
7. Ecommerce platforms
Constant Contact’s integration with ecommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce makes your ecommerce journey extremely easy. Once integrated, you can automatically sync critical customer data.
Choose marketing tools for ecommerce that scale with your business
The number of things you need to get into place when setting up your ecommerce business can seem daunting at first. Remember to plan carefully, choose tools and platforms that can scale with you, and invest where it counts.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the ecommerce tools available to you. However, using even one of them could make all the difference to your business, helping to create a marketing engine that grows your ecommerce store and elevates your marketing efforts.