✨New✨ Publish your optimizations into your Shopify Store 🎉
Try now
  • 4 Min

Marketing Plan For Ecommerce: An Ultimate Guide

Learn how to create a marketing plan for eCommerce with this step-by-step guide. This guide covers everything from defining your target market to setting achievable goals.

Marc
Published on Aug 15, 2022

ecommerce, shopping, cart

Creating a marketing plan for your eCommerce business is essential to your success. Without a plan, you’ll likely flounder and fail. You can systematically attack your goals and achieve your desired growth with a plan.

65% of consumers are increasingly likely to use digital shopping channels in the future, according to a recent survey.

Ecommerce businesses need a solid marketing plan to take advantage of this trend and ensure continued growth. As your business grows, your marketing strategy will need to evolve to keep up with the changes.

But what exactly should an eCommerce marketing plan include?

This guide will cover everything you need to know about creating a comprehensive marketing plan for your online store.

What Is an Ecommerce Marketing Plan?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to create a marketing plan, let’s first take a step back and define what we’re talking about.

An eCommerce marketing plan is a document that outlines your marketing strategy and initiatives for your online store.

The plan should be clear, concise, and tailored to your individual business needs. It will help you attract more customers by providing them with what they are looking for in an easy-to-use format integrated into the rest of their marketing efforts across digital channels like social media or email campaigns – all while maintaining a seamless experience from the beginning until the end.

The best thing you can do when creating an eCommerce marketing plan is to start with a solid understanding of your buyer persona and top results priorities. Once you have that foundation in place, you can move on to the strategies and tactics to help you achieve your goals.

Why Do You Need One for Your Ecommerce Business?

Achieving success with your eCommerce business requires hard work, dedication, and, most importantly – a comprehensive marketing plan.

Here are a few reasons why you need a marketing plan:

  • A marketing plan will help you identify your target audience and understand their needs.
  • You can create relevant and engaging content that attracts more customers with a marketing plan.
  • A marketing plan will help you track your progress and measure the results of your efforts.
  • Having a marketing plan allows you to stay organized and efficient with your marketing efforts.

As you can see, there are plenty of reasons why you need a marketing plan for your eCommerce business. Now that we’ve gone over the basics let’s take a look at how to create a plan to help you succeed.

How to Create an Effective Ecommerce Marketing Plan?

Considering the saturation of eCommerce businesses in the digital world, you need to ensure your marketing plan is up to par if you want to stay ahead of the competition.

Here’s how to create an effective eCommerce marketing plan:

Goals and Objectives

How about if we say you go swim in a lake? You will probably say, “I need a swimming costume, I will get in the water, and I will start swimming”. It’s a plan, right? You have a goal (to swim) and the objectives (the swimming costume and getting in the water) to achieve that goal.

The same goes for businesses. You need to have a goal and objectives to achieve that goal. Your eCommerce marketing plan needs to have both.

Your goal could be to increase brand awareness or to generate more sales. How do you want to get customers? Do you want them to visit your online store via PPC or Facebook ads? On what platform does your target audience spend more time?

Your objectives need to be SMART:

Specific: They need to be clear and concise

  • Measurable: You should be able to track and measure the results
  • Achievable: They should be realistic and achievable
  • Relevant: They should be relevant to your business goals
  • Time-bound: They should have a timeline so you can track your progress

Once you have your goals and objectives in place, you can move on to the next step.

Mission Statement and Value Proposition

Your mission statement is a brief description of what your business does. It should be clear, concise, and easy to understand.

Your value proposition is a statement that explains what makes your business unique and how it can benefit your target customer.

Together, your mission statement and value proposition form the foundation of your marketing plan. They will help you determine your target audience, messaging, and marketing strategies.

Identify Your Competition

You can’t create a marketing plan without first understanding your competition. After all, how can you stand out from the crowd if you don’t know who your competition is?

It’s important to research your competition so you can learn from their successes and avoid their mistakes. You should also be aware of any new products or services they offer that could threaten your business.

There are a few ways to research your competition:

  • Google them: This will give you an idea of their online presence
  • Look at their social media accounts: See what kind of content they’re posting and how often they’re posting it
  • Check out their website: Take a look at their design, messaging, and overall tone
  • Read online reviews: See what people are saying about them

Once you have a good understanding of your competition, you can start creating a marketing plan to help you stand out from the crowd.

Pro-Tip: Use a competitor analysis template to help you track and compare your competition.

Target Customers, Personas, and Markets

How about you go to a clothes store and buy a pair of shoes? The salesperson will probably ask you a few questions first, like “What size are you looking for?”, “What style are you looking for?” and “What color do you want?”.

These questions help the salesperson understand your needs to direct you to the right products.

The same goes for marketing. You need to understand your target customers to direct them to the right products and services.

To do this, you need to create customer personas. Customer personas are fictional characters that represent your ideal customer.

You can use demographic information (age, gender, location, etc.) to create a basic persona. But you should also include information about their interests, needs, and pain points.

This will help you create targeted content that resonates with your target customers.

Once you have your personas in place, you can start researching your target markets.

Prompt Interactions, Subscribers, and Leads

A marketing plan is not complete without a strategy for generating leads. At some point, traffic won’t be a good enough metric to track the success of your marketing efforts. You’ll need to focus on generating leads and subscribers.

Achieving this will require you to prompt interactions with your website visitors. You can use call-to-actions (CTAs), forms, and pop-ups.

  • Your CTAs should be clear, concise, and relevant to the user. They should also be placed in strategic locations on your website. Such as in the header, footer, and sidebars.
  • Your forms should be short and easy to fill out. The fewer fields you have, the more likely people will complete your form.
  • And your pop-ups should be relevant to the user and not intrusive. You don’t want to annoy your website visitors with pop-ups that are irrelevant to them.

Pro-Tip: Try to use MCQs type or tick-mark fields in a form as it will take less time for users to fill out. Also, don’t forget to offer something valuable in return for their contact information. Such as a free ebook, report, or coupon.

Pricing and Positioning Strategy

Pricing is one of the most important aspects of your marketing plan. After all, if you’re not making money, your business won’t be around for very long.

When setting your prices, you need to consider your costs, your competition, and the value of your products or services.

You also need to decide on a pricing strategy. There are three common pricing strategies:

  • Penetration Pricing: This is when you price your products or services low in order to gain market share.
  • Skimming Pricing: Letting the early adopters pay a higher price so you can recoup your costs quickly.
  • Value-Based Pricing: Get paid based on the perceived value of your products or services.

Once you’ve decided on a pricing strategy, you need to position your products or services. Positioning is how you want your products or services to be perceived by your target customers.

For example, Apple positions itself as a premium brand. Their products are top of the line and come with a high price tag.

On the other hand, Walmart positions itself as a discount retailer. Their products are cheaper than most other stores but are also lower quality.

Your positioning should be in line with your target customers, your brand, and your prices.

In order to create a successful marketing plan, you need to understand your competition.

Focus on Conversion Rate and Revenue

Your marketing efforts should be focused on generating leads and sales. But how do you know if your marketing plan is working?

The answer is conversion rate and revenue.

Conversion rate is the number of people who take a desired action divided by the total number of people who see your call to action.

For example, if you have a CTA that says “Sign Up for Our Newsletter,” and 100 people see it, but only 10 people click on it, your conversion rate would be 10%.

Revenue is the amount of money you make from your sales.

If you’re not focused on conversion rate and revenue, you’re not focused on the right things.

Content Marketing Strategy For Ecommerce

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Content marketing should be a part of your eCommerce marketing plan because it will help you attract, engage, and convert your target customers.

Your content marketing strategy should focus on creating high-quality content relevant to your target customers.

It should also be focused on creating SEO-friendly content that will help you rank higher in the search engines.

Tips for Creating a Successful Ecommerce Marketing Plan

Use Trust Signals

Make sure your website is using trust signals. Trust signals are things that show your website is trustworthy and credible.

Some examples of trust signals are:

  • Security seals from companies like Norton or McAfee.
  • Customer testimonials and reviews.
  • Make an easy return and exchange policy.
  • Social media buttons.
  • Provide detailed information in the product descriptions.
  • Display contact information.
  • Add an SSL certificate.

Use on Site Cart Recovery

If you’re not using on-site cart recovery, you’re missing out on many potential sales.

On-site cart recovery is the process of recovering abandoned carts. It’s when someone adds something to their cart but doesn’t purchase it.

Write Excellent Product Descriptions

Your product descriptions need to be well-written and persuasive. They should be clear, concise, and to the point.

Your product descriptions should also be SEO-friendly. This means using the right keyword density and including relevant keywords.

Final Thoughts

Creating a successful eCommerce marketing plan is essential for any online business. You’ll likely struggle to make sales and generate revenue without a plan.

A successful marketing plan should be focused on generating leads and sales. It should also focus on creating high-quality content relevant to your target customers.

Use the tips in this article to create a successful eCommerce marketing plan for your business.

Go from guesswork to growth, faster.

The marketing platform that gives you a clear path to eCommerce success. Glowtify uses AI to find the best way to grow your online store, then gives you the tools to do it faster.

Try it - it's free

Go from guesswork to growth, faster.

The marketing platform that gives you a clear path to eCommerce success. Glowtify uses AI to find the best way to grow your online store, then gives you the tools to do it faster.