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E-commerce Marketing in 2022: How to Stand Out
E-commerce is big business in Australia—exciting news for retailers down under.
We have the eleventh biggest e-commerce market in the world, with a value expected to reach AUD47 billion by 2024.
Meanwhile, nearly 20% of Aussies now do more online shopping because of the pandemic, with similar trends occurring all over the world.
But with so much e-commerce now taking place, the online shopping space is becoming ever more saturated.
Customers have so many options available to them—spoilt for choice when it comes to quality and pricing—that you really need an e-commerce marketing strategy to compete.
In this blog, we’ll show you how to create an e-commerce marketing strategy that helps you stand out, using a few of our favourite e-commerce marketing examples.
Hone your unique value proposition
A unique value proposition (UVP) is a succinct statement that captures what your product does for your customer better than anyone else can.
Another way of thinking of your UVP is in terms of what problem your product solves for your customers.
This is going to be essential to e-commerce marketing strategy, as all of your messaging, web copy, product descriptions and advertising will stem from the UVP.
While your UVP needs to be snappy and easy to understand, it can take a bit of time to formulate.
Your UVP should include information such as:
- Why it’s relevant to your target audience
- Benefits rather than features
- Why you’re better than your competitors
A UVP doesn’t come easily and that’s okay. Continue to tweak it over time as you learn more about your customers and how to give them a better product and service.
Suss the competition
If you want customers to choose your products and your business over anyone else’s, you’re going to have to know what similar stores are doing.
Competitor research is a fundamental part of any e-commerce marketing strategy, especially if you want to cut through the noise online.
Look at what your competition is doing and take note of:
- What they’re doing well
- What they could improve on
- What e-commerce platforms they are using
- What messages they put out
- How your offering can do better
Know thy audience
It’s one of the most basic marketing principles and yet so often overlooked.
With sellers so busy handling the business side of things, it’s easy to forget that you need to know just as much about your audience as you do about your product.
While your UVP will help you nail precisely what problems your product is solving for your customer, you’ll need to go beyond this to start engaging a target market and building an audience.
Research when, how and where your customers go when they are looking to buy the kind of product or service you’re offering.
By knowing more about them, you’ll be better able to figure out what platforms they like to hang out on, what times of day, and how to position your store and products in the most appealing way.
Get on the right social platforms
E-commerce marketing and social media marketing go hand-in-hand, enjoying something of a symbiotic relationship.
You may have noticed that your favourite fashion brands have social media feeds alongside their products, showing photos taken by real customers.
Social proof like this is extremely compelling to a user who is weighing up a purchasing decision because it offers verifiable and trustworthy feedback.
This is why choosing your social media platforms is going to be so important for your specific e-commerce store.
Work out how your store and social platforms can work together to give your customers even more information to help them along their buyer’s journey and give them the confidence to make a purchase.
While your choice of platform will depend on your product type, we’re big fans of TikTok for e-commerce, especially for a younger audience who do the most online shopping.
What are some e-commerce marketing ideas?
Example: Koala Mattress – Killer UVP
One of our favourite e-commerce marketing examples is our homegrown brand Koala Mattress. They’re not the cheapest mattress on offer, but they sell like hot cakes because of their beautiful UVP.
While Koala Mattress has all of the dry and boring features that a high-quality mattress needs to have, “all you need to know is that it gives you a good night’s sleep.”
The simplicity of their UVP comes through in all their marketing, from their simplistic design to their easy wording.
Example: Jaded Garbage – User generated content
This modest little Etsy store selling upcycled phone covers does extremely well for itself and all thanks to its ability to deliver social proof.
Using Etsy’s user review feed, real customers can verify the quality of the product and not just through heart emojis and exclamation marks.
Here users upload photographs of the product they purchased, showing off how they use it and make it their own.
This type of user generated content is easy to enable, whether you’re selling on a platform like Amazon or Shopify, or using your own website’s social feed feature.
How to make your e-commerce store stand out
Now that you’ve seen a few e-commerce marketing strategies with examples, it’s time to make your online store stand out from the crowd.
By honing your unique value proposition over time, getting to know your audience intimately, and sussing your competition, you can engage your target market and make more sales than ever.
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