Use these 7 marketing strategies for eCommerce in 2023
Your marketing strategies for ecommerce in 2023 are changing.
Winning strategies for B2B e-commerce businesses is critical in 2023 if you want to grow your sales.
The e-commerce marketing strategies included in this post will increase your lead quality and reduce your customer acquisition cost.
The best strategies for ecommerce companies exist in the digital marketing space. This is where all the opportunities exist, and tracking is seamless.
Ten years ago, concepts like voice searches, data-driven marketing, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence were bordered by science fiction. Today, these sophisticated technologies have become mainstream and impact the marketing landscape.
To gain a competitive advantage, keep customers, and boost sales, B2B online retailers need to keep pace with marketing innovations and implement them as fast as possible.
The B2B ecommerce platforms, like WooCommerce and Shopify, have made it easy to create a website with e-commerce capabilities. DIY B2B ecommerce solutions like Squarespace and WIX are simple to create.
However, after about six months to nine months, these do-it-yourselfers often wonder why they are not getting any traffic to their website or converting any sales. This is where digital marketing agencies come into play for the right copy, testing, and conversion strategies.
Learn how these seven key tactics and marketing strategies for e-commerce any B2B ecommerce business must use in 2023.
1. Invest in Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is transforming digital marketing. According to Gartner, by 2021, 80% of emerging technologies will be based on AI.
Implementing AI in the B2B ecommerce ecosystem has many benefits, including lead identification, hyper-targeting, content personalization, sophisticated data analysis, better customer insights and forecasts, and so forth.
Many B2B-specific apps may help you here.
For example, 6sense uses AI to analyze large chunks of data for more accurate predictive analytics, precise lead scoring, campaign optimization, and so forth.
Many conversation intelligence platforms leverage artificial intelligence to monitor sales calls and generate insights on improving conversions.
Artificial intelligence can analyze customer behaviors and browsing patterns and use their data to help you understand how they learn about your brand and products. This is where chatbots play an essential role.
B2B marketing strategies for e-commerce that include artificial intelligence and machine learning is showing promise.
2. Make your Content Diverse with Interactive Marketing
Content marketing kept dominating the digital marketing landscape in 2022. However, its formats will change. To engage tech-savvy online shoppers, your content marketing efforts must go far beyond generic blog articles and keyword-rich product page descriptions.
This is where interactive marketing and interactive technologies come into play.
B2B marketing strategies for e-commerce that use interactive technologies see more sales than ones that fail to.
Immersive content with B2B Ecommerce Marketing Strategies
For starters, create dynamic content that provides targeted user experiences. Statistics remind us that 91% of customers want interactive and immersive content. These could be quizzes, polls, embedded calculators, etc.
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Create lead magnets
One of the significant purposes of content marketing is to help you generate more leads. That is where you should start creating lead magnets. Like their name suggests, lead magnets offer high-quality content for your customers in exchange for their email addresses.
Lead magnets are great B2B marketing strategies for e-commerce to build your marketing database.
Now, many content formats can become lead magnets. For example, as an ecommerce brand, you could create online brochures that will engage customers and build trust with them.
As brochures are critical for your B2B ecommerce brand, keep them pleasant to the eye, original, and convincing. Ensure your writing style, fonts, colors, shapes, and patterns effectively reflect your brand.
While you can use graphic design tools to create brochures yourself, leaving it to professionals is always a better option. For example, GHN Wholesale needed to compress an array of products into a compelling catalog. That’s why they outsourced brochure design to Infostarters approached the brochure design and helped them increase sales and brochure downloads. Apart from brochures, you could also use:
- Ebooks
- gated infographics
- ultimate guides
- free templates
- whitepapers
- webinars
- free tools
- podcasts
Video content
Customers often find video content more engaging than textual one. Stats say that 52% of customers claim that watching a brand’s video empowered them to shop online. According to HubSpot, video is the most popular way people learn more about products or services. This is how 68% of users find brand information.
Now, there are different types of video content to implement, including:
- 360-degree videos: Remember that customers cannot touch or hold your products when purchasing them. 360-degree videos let them observe your products from various angles to determine whether they are the right choice.
- Live video: you could use it for product demos, behind-the-scenes videos featuring your staff or showing the production process, interviews, etc.
- 1:1 video: You create personalized video messages rather than making phone calls or sending generic emails.
YouTube videos will grow your reach if you optimize them for search engines. For example, publish the transcription of your video and maximize your video for the right keywords. HubSpot also says that, in email marketing campaigns, the term “video” in a subject line can boost your open rates by 19%.
Use B2B Ecommerce Marketing Strategies for Social Media Stories
Snapchat first introduced the My Story features, followed by Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Given that stories disappear after 24 hours, they will increase users’ FOMO (fear of missing out) and, in this way, boost their interest in your brand. Some of the major benefits of social media stories are:
- Improved brand awareness
- Greater follower engagement
- Reaching younger customer groups
- Increasing website traffic
- Increasing sales with strong CTAs
- Collecting customer feedback via polls
- Providing more business data via location tags
3. Sell beyond your Website and Use Marketing Strategies for E-commerce to Boost Sales
Since both ecommerce and social networks are growing astonishingly, B2B brands need to combine them. Let’s take the example of Instagram which has become inevitable for most online retailers.
Social media marketing is a must for B2B marketing strategies for e-commerce. It increases your reach and amplifies your message.
It lets you present your products visually compellingly, build personal relationships with your audiences, and humanize your online presence. In March 2019, Instagram launched Instagram Checkout that lets customers complete their purchases from Instagram.
This is an excellent opportunity for both B2B ecommerce brands to grab customers’ attention, engage them, and inspire them to make purchases immediately.
Above all, with personalized and interactive ads, brands can target the right audiences and shorten their sales funnel. This way, they will minimize the risk that customers will ditch the purchase because they need to switch apps or complete complex registration forms.
4. Personalize Customer Experiences
Personalization is the backbone of any successful digital strategy. Research studies found that 63% of consumers are frustrated with generic ads, while 80% are more likely to buy from companies that offer personalized experiences.
This is important to B2B ecommerce sites, with more demanding customers and longer sales cycles. Therefore, to attract a customer, B2B ecommerce sites need to provide them with exceptional experiences.
Now, there are many steps to implement when personalizing B2B ecommerce customer experiences, including:
- Segmenting email lists. Most of your customers are busy. They receive a bunch of emails daily. They will open the most relevant ones without having time to browse them. And, to be among them, you need to stop sending generic emails. Instead, segment your email newsletter list according to your audience’s needs, problems, and preferences and send offers, content, and relevant products.
- Create loyalty programs for your returning customers. This will prove you care about them and inspire them to buy from you.
- Personalize website functionalities. For example, you could track their browsing patterns and past purchases and, based on them, recommend relevant content and products. Make your customers’ lives easier, letting them offer products in bulk and displaying similar products to the ones they searched for.
- Create targeted content. For example, you could segment your website visitors by age, location, or even gender and display relevant offers on your homepage.
5. Marketing Strategies for E-commerce Use Chatbots
With the rise of conversational marketing, customers expect brand communications to be natural, interactive, helpful, and, above all, timely.
Using live chat on your website and social networks help, but what happens when your staff clocks off? Not getting real-time feedback, your customers may leave your site frustrated and never return.
That is where a chatbot can help. According to some recent predictions, chatbots will power 85% of customer service activities by 2023.
B2B marketing strategies for e-commerce must use chatbots to reduce customer service costs and improve the customer experience if done right.
A chatbot can increase your online presence in multiple ways. For starters, they provide exceptional customer service 24/7. Backed by AI, they will keep “learning” stuff about your customers.
Getting answers to their questions faster, B2B customers will complete the purchase sooner, meaning that your sales funnel will be significantly shorter.
Another great benefit of chatbots is personalization. Many brands use chatbots as quizzes, asking leads about their needs, preferences, and expectations and, based on them, pointing customers to the right products.
Chatbots are a powerful weapon for humanizing customer interactions. They also use natural language processing, understanding customers’ questions and making sure they sound like human beings.
You can create amazing scripts to make your brand’s conversations with customers more natural. Stats back me up on that, claiming that 63% of customers do not know they’re not talking to a human when chatting with a bot.
, with chatbots, you can gamify user experiences. For example, you could create an engaging story, where your customers will take part and make decisions that will further impact their conversation with the bot.
6. Keep Optimizing for Voice Search
With the rise of smart speakers, voice search will skyrocket in 2020 and beyond. Research predicts that over half of all searches will be voice by the end of 2020. This will impact the retail industry, too. Voice shopping is predicted to jump to the astounding $40 billion by 2022.
B2B marketing strategies for e-commerce must include voice search. Have you ever ordered something over Echo?
Because of that, you need to optimize every aspect of your digital marking strategy for voice searches. For example, you could start by optimizing your site for the right keywords. Remember that voice searcher need not look at their screens all the time.
Using voice, they communicate with search engines. Their language is organic, and keywords are more conversational. For example, they will focus more on long-tail keywords, use action verbs (e.g., go to, find), and ask questions. That is why you will need to go beyond traditional keyword research tools. Use Google’s People Also Ask, Google Trends, Q&A sites, or Answer The Public as inspiration for intent-based keyword research that will get you higher in voice searches.
Besides redefining your SEO efforts, voice search also requires businesses to provide seamless user experiences. Many brands are already using voice technologies to deliver relevant content. For example, PayPal lets users use Siri to send money to friends and family. Jetson is killing it, too, allowing customers to use voice devices to make purchases.
7. Take Advantage of Augmented Reality
According to Gartner, 70% of businesses will use AR technologies by 2022. The main difference between virtual and augmented reality lies because the latter is more realistic and implementable in digital marketing.
Brands have already seen the fantastic potential of AR. For example, Sephora’s Virtual Artist lets users see how different types of makeup will look on their faces when purchasing online.
Ikea has designed the Ikea Place app, where customers (both individual consumers and businesses) can take a photo of their room and insert different pieces into it. They can even observe the furniture from various angles and move it around.
Wrap up on Marketing Strategies for B2B e-commerce Companies.
The digital marketing ecosystem is becoming more user-friendly. From content marketing to SEO, each aspect of your B2B ecommerce digital strategy needs to be customer-centric. Focus on providing frictionless user experiences across all channels in real-time. Above all, personalize your content ad offers according to your B2B customers’ needs to ensure faster sales and shorten the sales cycle.
B2B marketing strategies for ecommerce are changing quickly in 2020. Are you aware of them, and can you implement these B2B marketing strategies for e-commerce?
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General FAQ’s
What is B2B ecommerce?
B2B eCommerce stands for business-to-electronic business commerce and refers to online transactions between companies, often involving wholesale distributors selling products to retail buyers. Manufacturers may also market directly to retailers through B2B eCommerce.
What is the ecommerce marketing strategy?
7 Essential Marketing Strategies for Your eCommerce Business
1. Produce Original Quality Content.
2. Optimize your website layout.
3. Content Marketing.
4. Social Media Marketing.
5. Email Marketing.
6. Search Engine Optimization.
7. Pay-Per-Click Marketing.
What are ecommerce strategies?
What are the elements of a great e-commerce strategy?
1. Know your market and ideal customer profile.
2. Suppliers and supply chain management.
3. Warehouse operations.
4. Cost of acquisition & customer retention.
5. Effective and consistent branding.
6. Shipping costs.
7. Fulfillment.
What is the B2B ecommerce platform?
B2B ecommerce, or business-to-business electronic commerce, describes online order transactions between businesses. Because orders are processed digitally, buying efficiency is improved for wholesalers, manufacturers, distributors, and B2B sellers.
What is B2B e-commerce with an example?
For example, a computer manufacturer makes B2B transactions, such as buying computer chips, glass for screens, and wire harnesses for its computers. The final purchase, a finished computer sold to the consumer, is a single B2C transaction.