Digital Marketing Plan for Ecommerce: 6 Steps to Set Up Your Marketing Plan

Did you know that 90% of Americans are expected to buy goods and services online by 2023? As more people look to buy products online, you must have a digital marketing plan for ecommerce in place. An ecommerce marketing strategy will help you reach the right people at the right time with the right message.

But how do you start creating a marketing plan for your bricks-and-clicks business? To help you get started, here are six steps to help you set up your marketing plan, including:

1. Establish what you want to achieve with your marketing
2. Determine who you’re targeting
3. Identify your competition
4. Determine which strategies you want to use
5. Determine what makes you stand out
6. Determine how you’ll measure success

Keep reading to learn more about creating an ecommerce marketing plan!

Step 1: Establish what you want to achieve with your ecommerce marketing strategy

When you create a digital marketing plan for ecommerce, the first thing you want to do is determine your goals. You can’t run a successful campaign without determining what you want to achieve. Your goals will help guide your marketing efforts and determine if you’re helping your business grow online.

You can set multiple types of goals, including:

• Increase brand awareness
• Increase leads
• Increase sales
• Increase form submissions

By establishing goals, you’ll keep your marketing focused on achieving your goals and help your business grow online. Additionally, you’ll want to set individual goals for each of your campaigns that help you reach your larger goals. For example, you may aim to get more leads with your PPC campaign to achieve your overall goal of earning more leads.

Step 2: Determine who you’re targeting

Once you establish your goals, you’ll want to move on to determining who you’re targeting.

Your ecommerce marketing plan won’t be successful unless you know who’s most likely to buy your products or use your services. To determine who’s in your target audience, look at your current customer base. You’ll want to determine information like:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Occupation
• Income
• Hobbies and interests
• Buying or spending habits

You can take this information and form buyer personas. Buyer personas are fictional representations of actual customers that you can use to help you target the right people with your marketing. By establishing your target audience, you’ll help your business reach people interested in your products or services.

Step 3: Identify your competition

When you establish your ecommerce digital marketing plan, you need to know who you’re competing against online.

It’s essential to establish your competition to create an ecommerce marketing strategy that outperforms them. So, how do you determine your competition? Start by searching terms related to your business on Google.

Take note of who’s appearing in search results for those terms. If you see the same companies showing up for different search terms, they’re competition for your business.     You can also include any local competitors in your area as competition online.

Once you identify your competition, you’ll want to look at which strategies your competition uses. You’ll want to take note of how they use these strategies, so you can come up with a plan to outdo them.

Step 4: Determine what strategies you want to use

You can’t establish a digital marketing plan for ecommerce without knowing what strategies you want to use. There are dozens of strategies you can use to reach interested prospects online.

Some popular strategies include:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
• Social media marketing
• Social media advertising
• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Video marketing
• Influencer marketing

…and more!     You can use any combination of these strategies to help your business reach prospects interested in your products or services.

Step 5: Determine what makes you stand out

When you create your ecommerce digital marketing plan, make sure you establish what makes your business stand out from your competition. If multiple companies offer similar products to you, you need to find a way to make your business stand out from the crowd.

You’ll want to establish unique selling points (USPs) of your business that you can use to market to your audience. For example, if you’re the only company in your market that uses organic ingredients, you can use that as a USP for your business. Once you establish your USPs, you’ll want to use them throughout your marketing.

It’s important to note that when you create these USPs, you want to ensure you frame them in a way that puts your audience first. You don’t want to come off as bragging or arrogant. For example, if you use organic ingredients, you might say something like, “We use all organic ingredients to ensure you get the highest quality food that keeps you fueled throughout the day.” By establishing USPs and framing them to show your audience the benefit of using your business, you can help sell your audience better through your marketing.

Step 6: Determine how you’ll measure success

The last step to establishing your ecommerce marketing strategy is to determine how you’ll measure success.

If you put in the time and effort to run your campaigns, you want to ensure your efforts result in success for your business. When you create your ecommerce marketing plan, consider what metrics you’ll use to measure your strategies’ success. The metrics will vary depending on the strategies you use.

Some common metrics include:

• Organic traffic
• Traffic by source
• Clickthrough rate (CTR)
• Cost per click (CPC)
• Conversion rate
• Bounce rate
• Exit rate
• Returning visitor rate

  Tracking these metrics will help you determine if your campaigns drive the results you desire. If you see subpar results, you can analyze your campaigns to see where you can improve. It’s a great way to help you get the most from your marketing and improve your ecommerce digital marketing plan.

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Develop your digital marketing plan for ecommerce today

Developing an ecommerce marketing plan is critical if you want your business to stay competitive.

But if you aren’t sure where to start with your strategy, you may feel overwhelmed. That’s where the experts at WebFX can help. We have a team of over 500 marketing experts that can help you develop your ecommerce marketing strategy.

Our team knows how to create strategies that drive results. In the past five years, we’ve driven over $6 billion in revenue and handled over 14.9 million transactions. Ready to build your ecommerce marketing plan?

Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our ecommerce marketing services