Lecture 3

Revenue Strategies
As a business owner, a top priority should be creating a marketing strategy that
helps you to outpace the other e-commerce businesses in your industry.

10 strategies to increase your e-commerce revenue

1. Start an affiliate marketing strategy
2. Create an SEO strategy
3. Optimize for mobile
4. Offer personalized discounts
5. Use multichannel or omnichannel marketing
6. Upgrade your e-commerce software
7. Partner with other companies
8. Improve sales with current customers
9. Expand your audience
10.Increase your services and products

1. Start an affiliate marketing strategy

Through an affiliate marketing program, an e-commerce business partners with an

affiliate, usually a sales representative, social media influencer, or trusted expert.
The affiliate markets the product and if they make a sale or refer a qualified lead,
the business owner pays them a commission.

2. Create an SEO strategy

As an e-commerce business owner, one of your biggest marketing challenges is for

your product to be found easily online. An effective search engine optimization
(SEO) strategy helps your brand become a top result when online shoppers search
for certain keywords.

Depending on what words or terms best describe your business or solutions, you’ll
likely need to create content that uses these common keywords, answers related
questions, and ultimately represents your site as a relevant result for online
searchers.

3. Optimize for mobile

At the close of 2022, it’s estimated that consumers will spend $4.91 trillion
purchasing products from their mobile phones. Mobile commerce sales are
expected to increase to $6.56 trillion by the end of 2023. To have an effective e-
commerce marketing strategy, it’s crucial to tap into the mobile shopping market.

4. Offer discounts for customers

A small discount on your product may be what turns a semi-interested lurker into
a new customer. Online shoppers love to take advantage of sales and discounts, so
offering 10% off or free shipping may be all you need to increase sales.
Before advertising a promotion, create strict parameters for the sale, including
which shoppers and products qualify and the end date. Ensure you’ll still make a
profit while running the promotion and advertise your discount to draw in new
customers.
5. Use multichannel or omnichannel marketing

Consumers shop online at home, at work, and on the go. That means they may
browse your site from their phone, on a desktop computer, or on a tablet. Creating
an omnichannel marketing approach to sales means that your e-commerce
business offers a seamless experience, no matter how a consumer shops.

When your customer can look at a product on their phone, then hop over to their
laptop without skipping a beat, they’re more likely to find the product information
they need and buy from your brand.
6. Upgrade your e-commerce software

Your e-commerce software is responsible for creating a simple shopping

experience for the customer. It also helps you keep track of inventory and allows
you to fulfill orders quickly. Outdated software may not provide all the services you
and your customer need for a seamless and personalized experience.

7. Partner with other companies

To increase brand exposure and get the attention of your target customer, consider
partnering with other companies. To implement this strategy, identify businesses
in the same industry as your company that offer different products.

Create an agreement that the company will promote your products on its site if you
do the same. To incentivize customers to purchase your products from the other
company’s site, offer an exclusive discount code. Both you and the partner
company bring value to your customers by providing information on all products in
one place and offering a discount.
8. Improve sales with current customers

One of your business’s greatest assets is its current customers. These consumers
already know the quality of your product and may simply need to see your brand
name again to remember they want to make another purchase.

Keeping in touch with current customers improves your repeat sales through brand
recognition. Send out an email campaign to current customers to show off new
products or offer an exclusive discount code on their next purchase.
9. Expand your audience

The more exposure your brand and products gain online, the more sales you’re
likely to make. You may have already identified your target customer and
implemented an aggressive marketing campaign for this specific consumer.

While this is an effective marketing strategy, it’s also important to expand your
audience to include another group of similar consumers. By increasing your
exposure, you’ll drive website traffic and boost your sales and referrals.
10. Increase your services and products

Whether you’re engaged in wholesale e-commerce or selling direct to consumers,

your business can’t be everything to everyone. However, expanding your product
line is bound to increase your sales, as long as it makes sense for your bottom line.
If you simply can’t offer different products, consider adding to your services.
 Marketing on the Web

Marketing strategies in E-Commerce:

What is Ecommerce Marketing?

Ecommerce marketing is the process of attracting people to your website,

convincing them to make an initial purchase, and then retaining those customers
so that they continue to purchase from you.

1. Optimize your ecommerce website with SEO

One of the most effective ecommerce marketing strategies to spur growth is to

optimize your website for organic search traffic. When individuals search for
products online, they typically turn to Google. In fact, close to half of all product
searches (46%) start with Google.

2. Optimize your category pages

In addition to optimizing your site as a whole, you also need to optimize your
category pages. This is especially important for ecommerce. Your category pages
are an opportunity to target broad search terms with a high search volume and
should be thoroughly optimized for these terms.

3. Optimize your product pages

Ecommerce marketing strategies also need to cover the bottom of the funnel. And
to that end, optimizing your product pages is essential for pulling in bottom of the
funnel traffic. These customers already know what they want and are ready to
make the final decision.
4. Amplify ecommerce content marketing with a blog

Content marketing and blogging are a vital part of a successful ecommerce

marketing strategy. What is content marketing exactly? It’s the process of creating
high-quality, extremely valuable content and then distributing it to a wider
audience. It can include blogging, but isn’t limited to it. Podcasts, videos, webinars,
infographics, lookbooks, and social media can also be a part of your content
marketing arsenal.

5. Optimize for voice search

Since the introduction of Siri, voice search usage has risen at a stratospheric rate.
It’s estimated that by 2022, voice search will account for a staggering $40 billion in
retail sales in the United States and UK. In light of this, it’s essential that you
optimize your site for voice search in order to capitalize on this growing area of
ecommerce.

6. Engage in influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a powerful ecommerce marketing strategy because it

enables you to tap into a specific audience through someone with exceptionally
strong bonds of trust in the community. It’s especially potent when introducing
new products.

7. Go all in on social media

With billions of people using social media every month, it’s an obviously effective
area of digital marketing to connect with your target audience and generate more
revenue. The first step is to identify which platforms your target audience use most.
 Marketing Issues in E-Commerce

1. Cyber & Data Security

When it comes to eCommerce, one of the biggest challenges faced is security
breaches. There is a lot of information/data that is involved while dealing with
eCommerce and a technical issue with data can cause severe damage to the
retailer’s daily operations as well as brand image.

2. Online Identity Verification

When a shopper visits an eCommerce site, how would the retailer know if the
person is who they say they are? Is the shopper entering accurate information? Is
the shopper genuinely interested in the eCommerce products?

3. Attracting the Perfect Customer

Shoppers have a lot of options to choose from these days. If they are looking to buy
a handbag, they do some thorough research before finalizing on one. If shoppers
have several options, how do you make sure they pick you? How do you go about
finding that perfect customer that wants your product, at your rate and to the
places you can ship?

4. Customer Experience
Customer experience or user experience is key to a successful eCommerce website.
Shoppers expect a similar if not same experience as one they would get from
Amazon. The flow of the website, the segmentation of the website and the retail
personalization of products based on the shopper’s preferences are imperative.
5. Customer Loyalty
Here are two facts that show the importance of customer loyalty:(a) It can cost up
to 5 times more to acquire a new customer than retaining an existing one and (b)
the success rate of selling to a current customer is 60-70% compared to only 5-20%
success rate of selling to a new customer.

6. Converting Shoppers into Paying Customers

One of the biggest ecommerce challenges is to convert visitors into paying
customers. An eCommerce website might have a lot of traffic, a lot of clicks and
impressions but they aren’t making the sales they anticipated. What can they do to
get more sales?

7. Price & Shipping

We have all heard of customers that prefer to purchase products from places that
have free shipping. eCommerce giants like Amazon provide such attractive shipping
deals that customers seldom want to look at other places. How does one bring
down costs for shipping?
Difference b/w Product Based & Customer Based Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy is using a set of means to achieve a company's goals for

selling and promoting their products and services.
The "Four P's" of marketing are
product - the customers' perception of a product is the product's brand.
price - recently experts have begun including a customer's transaction costs into
the price of a product
promotion - how a product is communicated to existing and potential customers
(e.g. email)
place (i.e. distribution) - the need to get products to various customers in various
locations, the Internet allows efficient distribution of digital products

A product based marketing strategy is one which organizes promotional

materials, etc. on the categories of the company's products. This strategy works
well for customers who are looking for a specific type of product and can narrow
down their search by category and subcategory. But, the strategy does not work
for customers who are shopping based on a need for a relatively unknown
product. Therefore, it may be wise for companies to develop websites while
thinking of these customers' perspectives.
A customer-based marketing strategy is one that meets the needs of various
types of customers. First, a company must identify the different groups of
customers and even subgroups. Customer-based strategies begin by identifying
the company's target customers. Market research finds the customers most
likely to purchase the company's existing or planned products, then builds a
profile describing how to reach and engage those customers.