Ecommerce Marketing Trends 2015

By Angus  |  9 Dec 2014 14:00:00

3 Ecommerce Marketing Trends You Should Know About In 2015

With the New Year fast approaching and merchants beginning to plan their strategy for the coming year, this post aims to highlight and summarise 3 key trends industry experts are predicting to take off in the next 12 months and why you should get involved.

The Rise of Paid Social Advertising  

With the ability to easily target prospects based on their liking of a complimentary brands page and to gain the advocacy of people and publishers who are influential amongst your target market, it is little surprise that this has been identified as the fastest growing marketing method in terms of acceptance by online retailers in the past year.

With this growth in popularity, the price of paid social advertising is only set to rise. For this reason, if you haven’t experimented with this form of advertising by now then 2015 should be the year that you allocate a significant portion of your marketing budget towards this channel.

Assuming you already have a solid understanding of your target market, you will find that the efficiency of paid social advertising is much greater than AdWords. This is because if well targeted, your advert will stand out more due to it having an image and it appearing in an environment where the viewer spends much more time actually engaging with the page they are looking at.  

What’s more, social media adverts are cheaper than AdWords and once your page has been liked you can expose prospects to your branded content for free, something which significantly increases the chance of them becoming a customer at some point.

Also as we know, a recommendation from a friend is far more powerful than a traditional advert in terms of getting prospective customers to pay attention to what you are saying. When an impression of your advert is given, it will always show the viewer which friends of theirs also like the page, thus providing both advocacy for your brand and a further reason for them to engage with your page.  

Adding Value After The Sale

With the increasingly competitive nature of online sales and the importance of customer retention as a source of revenue, 2015 should be the time that online retailers take full advantage of email marketing to give something back to customers.

This may be in the form of promotional codes but should also consist of exclusive content, newsletters or free competitions. Equally, email marketing can be a great way of gaining affiliates for your business.

Taking a spammy approach to your email marketing could be leading you to miss out on one of the most cost effective marketing strategies available to you. If your marketing emails don’t have any value to your customer then they are likely to delist you which could lead them to forget about your business entirely.

Recreating The In-Store Experience

Despite virtually full maturity of the ecommerce market in terms of consumer acceptance, there are aspects of the physical shopping experience that customers still value highly. Online retailers already hold the advantage in terms of choice, so we should now look to provide a unique and personal shopping experience.

Personalised marketing communications and content informed by greater targeting accuracy, is a growing trend to maximise ROI in terms of getting people to your website.

Once prospects have been attracted to your store, you should really consider how both your copy and overall design deliver the individual yet professional impression that you would expect from your favorite bricks-and-mortar retailer.

What it comes down to is differentiating you from your competitors by utilizing every aspect of the visitor experience to communicate a compelling and transparent message about your business.