What Sort Of E-Commerce Business Are You?
Step 1:Which of the seven e-commerce Business Structures does your business fit into? What sort of product range do you have, and what is your USP? Once you have the answer to these questions you can start building your e-commerce MasterPlan.Step 2:Ways to build right websiteThe website is the most important part of any e-commerce business. What sort of website do you need? How do you build it quickly and effectively? How to find the right PiggyBack website? Plus, avoid conversion blockers.Step 3:Cost, growth and profitTo form the basis for future growth and profit, you need to get a handle on the key numbers in an e-commerce business. That is the Margin, the ROI, and the Scale. Then you know what you need to achieve.Step 4:Products and promotionsOnce you know the numbers, you can start organizing what your products are going to be, and promotions sit very closely with your product decisions. How many products do you need? What promotions are you going to run? What mix do you need?Step 5:I Have Built It: Why haven’t they come? (aka Marketing!)The first 4 Steps culminate in the creation of your marketing plan. It’s the marketing plan that will bring you your customers, and make them spend. Here we go through how to take the outcomes of the other 4 Steps and build them into a marketing plan.Section 2: Key Online Marketing MethodsContent MarketingFor some of the e-commerce business structures, content are at the heart of their online marketing. For others it is a very useful tool. The key is in getting organized.Email MarketingThe key tool every e-commerce business needs to master. It will keep your customers buying from you, it will drive your sales, and it will build your relationship with those customers.Social Media MarketingIt is increasingly important for every business because it impacts in so many ways. Social Media can build brand awareness, activate offline marketing, distribute your content, power your search traffic, and much more.Brand Awareness MarketingIf brand or customer base are your USPs you need to work on building brand awareness. There are thousands of ways to do this – how do you work out how it should be done for your business?Offline MarketingTo build an e-commerce business you can’t just look online for your marketing – offline is still very powerful.Search MarketingIf you can get search marketing working for you, then you build a solid foundation of sales – that just keeps coming in. But it’s getting ever more complex. How can you build your search marketing so it keeps working for you, no matter what Google does?PPC (Pay Per Click) MarketingIt is the quickest way to get sales online. Not as easy as it looks, though – success is in the optimization, and how you build it to start with.