Skip to the content 
What's The Difference Between Content Marketing And Product Marketing?
Table of Contents
Among the most promising markets in the world, eCommerce is expected to reach $5.8 trillion by 2022. Although this is a tough business – you have to compete with companies like Amazon.com and several million others.
One of the biggest challenges for any eCommerce startup is finding the right marketing budget. But a lot of people don’t know where to start or what to do with their marketing budget.
Ecommerce marketing and advertising are one of the most important parts of your business. But how much should you be investing in it?
That depends on the type of business you have. If you’re just starting out, then it’s probably not worth investing a lot into marketing and advertising, you should keep the eCommerce marketing budget to a minimum. As your business grows and gets more popular, though, you may want to invest more money into marketing and advertising.
When deciding the budget for an eCommerce website, think about what kind of return it will give you. If you want an immediate return, then maybe investing in PPC ads is where it’s at for you—but if not, then perhaps SEO or social media campaigns would be a better fit for your needs.
But first, let’s understand what eCommerce marketing is and what are its types.
What is eCommerce marketing?
E-commerce marketing is a method of promoting a business that sells its products or services through the Internet. A goal of eCommerce marketing is to drive traffic to a website, convert visitors into paying customers, and retain them once they have purchased.
Now let’s look at the different types of eCommerce marketing
What are the different types of eCommerce marketing?
Types of eCommerce Marketing
- Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Web push marketing
- Social media marketing (SMM)
- Chatbot marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Email marketing
A budget is important for teams to experiment and understand what type of initiatives will succeed, but no one wants to spend money on something that doesn’t work.
Many marketers avoid eCommerce budgeting and then deal with it as part of their leadership role. It’s common for marketing budgets to be created by guesswork and best assumptions without really knowing if there will be any return on investment.
It can be challenging to strike the right balance between tried and true budgetary expenses and allowing for new ideas, and therefore it is vital that you try to avoid overspending.
The question is, how can we make the most of the allocated budget in order to get the highest ROI?
Follow these best practices and steps to keep your business running smoothly –
Create a content calendar:
This should include when each piece of content will appear on your website and in other places like social media platforms and email newsletters. Make sure there are enough days in the calendar so that all of your posts can be scheduled without having to cram them at the last minute.
List your goals:
Having goals in place helps you understand which types of activities are most beneficial for your budget.
For example, if you’ve set yourself a goal to increase your sales by 10% in 2019, but you’re only bringing in $500 per month in revenue, then increasing the number of leads and conversions that you send out will be much more beneficial than spending money on marketing.
Set an idea:
Once you have a clear idea of what you want from your site, look at the various Ecommerce Marketing KPIs (key performance indicators) that are available on Google Analytics or Shopify’s analytics dashboard.
These metrics can be used to measure how well your site is performing overall and track changes in performance over time so that you can see whether certain changes were successful or not.
You’ll also want to look at other tools like Google Search Console as well as Google Trends data showing how people are searching for products related to your business category over time in order
Determine whether or not you’ll be using guest posts
Guest posts are great because they allow other people to share their expertise with potential customers who might be interested in similar products or services but haven’t made up their minds yet about which one is best for them. But if it’s something new for you, consider hiring an expert writer
Select your channels
There are many different types of channels that you can use for your marketing initiatives, but not all brands need to have an active presence in each channel.
For example, if you’re a startup with a limited eCommerce budget, it might make sense for you to only use social media and email campaigns to get your message out there, rather than having both a Facebook page and a website. But if you’re already investing in creating content for your Facebook page and other social media platforms, then it might be worth the investment to have an additional website where people can find more information about what you do and how they can contact you.
If you’re not sure which channels are right for you, ask yourself: What are my goals? What kind of audience am I trying to reach? What kind of experience do I want people who interact with this brand to have? How much time do I have available each day? These questions will help guide your decision-making process.
Evaluate your operational costs
Operational costs are non-negotiable in an eCommerce advertising budget. These costs need to be taken care of and should be set up first so you know how much budget is available for other activities.
Operational costs can include website hosting, SaaS subscriptions, platform costs, or other taxes and fees. These costs should not be included in the operational costs column of your spreadsheet. Instead, these costs could be listed separately in your budget.
You could consider whether or not you have any operational overhead that you can reduce by outsourcing some of its functions. For example, if you have a marketing team that handles social media campaigns for your company’s products, then it makes sense for them to handle most of those tasks themselves rather than having someone else do them for them.
Knowing your goals for the year is crucial to allocating a budget for different activities. What do you want to achieve, and how much revenue do you need to bring in? Are you looking for leads, conversions, or sales? Having goals in place helps you understand which types of activities are most beneficial for your budget.
Lay out your marketing strategy
The following are two of the many ways you can carry out marketing for your business –
- Google Analytics – Google Analytics and Google Ads are both great ways to get a good idea of what your site is doing and advertise them but it’s only as effective as the information you put in it. There are five reports that you should set up if you haven’t already, and run through the data and metrics to find areas where your marketing can be improved.
- Competitive analysis and website benchmarking – Conduct competitive research on your industry. But while you do this, remember, you do not know if their strategies are working or not. This is simply a good way to get a feel for your category landscape. Once you have some qualitative ideas, check out our guide on website benchmarking for quantitative competitive analysis.
Keep a close watch over your website’s behavior flow.
Data Evaluation
There is no question that eCommerce marketing is a lot of work. You spend hours crafting content and making sure it’s optimized for mobile and desktop, you have to monitor all of your social media channels and make sure they’re posting at the right time, and you need to keep an eye on what products are trending on your site, and then there’s the whole thing about shipping out orders…
It’s enough to make you want to just give up altogether! But if you can manage all of that, there’s still one thing you haven’t done: evaluate your marketing data.
There’s no better way than by diving into the numbers. The more data you have, the easier it is to identify trends and figure out what works best for your brand.
Your data is the key to helping you figure out which markets are performing well (or not), as well as helping you predict when new trends will start taking off. It also gives you a good idea of how much money your customers are spending and how satisfied they are with their purchase experience.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Have you ever heard the saThat’s a great way to think about it if you’re not sure if your company is getting the best bang for its buck, then it’s likely that they’re missing out on something. And that could be costing them money!
ying, “If you don’t know what you have, you don’t know what you don’t have?”
So how do you know if your marketing strategies are working? You can often figure this out by looking at ROI which stands for return on investment. The idea is that if a marketing strategy shows an ROI of less than 1%, then it’s probably not worth the effort. But what if it were possible to get more than 1%? What if your ROI was as high as 223%? Well, it turns out it is! It’s called conversion rate optimization (CRO). And HubSpot calculates that only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates. Yet, CRO tools have an average ROI of 223%
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of getting more visitors to buy from you. It’s a big job and it takes time, so it’s important that you start with the right approach.
Let’s say you run an online store for people who need a new kitchen. You have traffic systems in place to direct those who need the solutions you offer to your website and landing pages. Sounds like the perfect set-up, but one huge factor is still missing: conversion rate optimization (CRO). If you struggle to turn visitors into buyers, you’ve spent your branding and traffic budget unwisely. You’re not in business to pay for getting people to your site, you’re in business to help them through the process of buying from you. That is the job of conversion rate optimization.
Customer experience
You might think that your products are ‘boring’ if you are selling services or commodities. Regardless of what kind of product or service you are selling, it does not matter what type you are selling. In order to make sure that your content is unique and different from that of your competitors, there are many things you can do.
It is a good idea to look at your competitors’ content, but it is not a good idea to get too engrossed in it. It would be a good idea to look at examples outside of your industry as well.
Promote cross-selling and upselling
In order to differentiate the two, let’s first say that cross-selling is the process of offering additional products or services, such as a T-shirt with jeans, or shoes with socks. In contrast, upselling allows a customer to get a better or larger product – such as a meal or laptop component – for an additional charge.
It’s important to follow a few rules when it comes to upselling. Provide added value by thinking about the problems users might encounter with the product and how you can fix them. Emphasizing the advantages of the more expensive version over the cheaper one can be done by comparing them. The final tip is to be careful about prices and doesn’t ask too much – customers won’t pay more than 25% more than the original price.
Consider your cross-selling offer carefully. Your additional offer should be in line with your customer’s needs and interests. It’s perfect that amazon offers customers a whole look to choose from – chances are a buyer would like to have everything she sees.
Upgrade your website
There’s nothing more frustrating than a website that takes a long time to load. Customers admitted that 70% of them consider site speed when making a purchase. It is acceptable for the download time to be less than five seconds. The additional second decrease your website’s search results ranking by 7% and causes conversions to drop.
Optimize for voice search
Voice search shopping is predicted to be worth $40 billion by 2022. Consider optimizing your website for voice search now in order to stay ahead of the curve. If you take this information into consideration, you may rethink the way you approach SEO as a whole.
You should keep in mind that voice search is different from type search – queries are longer and more conversational. Answer popular questions with articles and other types of content on your blog or website – don’t be afraid to be conversational.
Among the companies that use this strategy is Kayak, a travel agency. Therefore, their website appears in the first line of search results for queries such as “Book a flight to Alaska”, “What is the cheapest flight to Alaska”, and “How long is the flight to Alaska.”
The Takeaway
Having more money has its advantages, there is no doubt about that. The fact that a small business or new brand can’t compete with a larger brand does not mean that it cannot exist.
When you are starting your own brand, you have to focus on immediate ROI. The article describes the importance of a marketing budget allocation process that is aligned with your business goals from day one. Your focus should be on becoming profitable from the get-go, as opposed to brands that have raised money. In other words, we spend a lot of our budget on channels that produce immediate results. One of the most common is Facebook advertising.
We won’t necessarily always be that way. As we continue to grow and have excess cash, we will begin to focus on longer-term ROI channels, like organic search, and eventually brand plays in the automotive space.
Consider hiring marketing experts for their services: Quality help can make all the difference. In order to manage a budget at a lower cost, you should run interviews with agencies and freelancers. The expert’s expertise will be worth the cost, but you’ll get a lot more for your money, and they’ll be able to get you there more quickly.
Utilize your flexibility: Small businesses face fewer red tape requirements, and they can move into new markets more quickly than larger brands. You can take advantage of this flexibility in all areas of your business, including marketing.
Hyper-focus: Any marketing budget the company spends over 10% might be better spent elsewhere. The key is to find pockets where you can dominate or win if you are considering paid advertising online or conversion rate optimization.
Details matter: Smaller brands should pay attention to each detail, while larger brands should focus on macro numbers. There are fewer data to sift through, which means you can identify growth opportunities more quickly. Take advantage of opportunities as soon as they present themselves.
The most important thing to ask yourself when you are setting a marketing budget for an e-commerce startup is how can you achieve your goals and how can you find the time and the money to really make it work.
Prathamesh magare
- February 23, 2023
- 10:00 am
- No Comments
