e-Commerce has become increasingly more popular as a business strategy in recent years. That hasn’t meant that capitalizing on it has been easy. Instead, it can be more difficult than you’d think. One thing to focus on is your marketing.
If you have to work within a tight budget, however, you mightn’t know what to do. Dave Conklin, among other marketing-focused business owners, has found that there are several strategies that you can take advantage of.
These can be more cost-effective than you’d expect, making them some of the more affordable marketing strategies to choose from.
Effective Marketing Techniques For e-Commerce Companies
Content Marketing
Content marketing focuses on creating content that potential customers find interesting and engaging. Once it’s generated interest, then your content marketing strategy nudges them toward buying.
Typically, this relies on a storytelling approach that convinces customers to purchase from you. Thankfully, this approach can be free if you go about it. However, it’s often recommended that you put some money into promoting your content.
Some of the standard content marketing strategies include:
- Podcasts.
- Video content.
- Blogs and news.
- Newsletters and emails.
- How-to guides.
Using a mix of each of these will help draw in potential customers.
Contest Marketing
You mightn’t think that a contest would be a great way to promote your company. When done right on social media, however, you could see a large return on investment. You will have to spend money on the actual prize, although that should be one of your only expenses.
Having the right prize, alongside appropriate terms and conditions, will generate buzz about your business while also encouraging engagement with it. That brand awareness can feed into your overall sales and marketing strategy, as you’ll now have new leads.
You could do this over phases, such as a timeframe for when people can enter, etc. That could add more interest in the contest.
Cost-Per-Action Marketing
You might not have heard about cost-per-action marketing before. However, it is one of the more affordable marketing techniques to take advantage of. That’s because you’re only paying when a potential customer does something.
What this action is, specifically, can depend on your marketing campaign. Typically, these will be:
- Buying a product through an affiliate link.
- Signing up for a newsletter.
- Clicking on a specific link.
- Filling out a form with specific information.
- Any other action that you can measure and analyze.
You can also set a budget with your cost-per-action campaign, so it will stop as soon as your maximum spend has been reached. As a result, you can make sure that you’re not spending more than you need.
Wrapping Up
Low-cost marketing techniques don’t have to be low-impact. Each of the above has been successful for countless companies in the past. That doesn’t mean that they’ll be easy. Instead, you may need to put more effort into them with a smaller budget.
Continually monitoring and adjusting your marketing strategy will be key to this. As such, you’ll need to be adaptable, although that’s also a good overall trait for a business owner.
