Written by Raúl Carrión
Index
Defining an online marketing plan is very useful if we are going to start selling online or if we have an e-commerce and we want to improve our results. This article will set the guidelines to follow and will help us not to deviate from our objectives.
At Human Level Communications we develop online marketing plans for e-commerce following the following structure:
Analysis of the initial situation
In the first phase of an online marketing plan we work on collecting and analyzing relevant information about who the company wants to sell online, who are their potential customers and how the game scenario is drawn.
Temet nosce
Latin translation of the Greek inscription found in the temple of Apollo at Delphi and in the kitchen of the oracle in Matrix. It means “Know thyself”. All self-improvement work begins with an inner reflection, thanks to which we become aware of our abilities and our limitations.
We will start this phase by defining in a few sentences who we are, what we do better than others and what we need to improve to match our competitors.
These premises will be the foundations of our online marketing plan, therefore, we had better not confuse what we are with what we want to become.
Objectives
The marketing plan is a roadmap towards the achievement of one or more objectives. It is therefore essential to define which aspects we want to improve and to what extent. It is obvious that a basic objective will be to increase turnover, however we can set secondary objectives such as increasing by 10% the number of customers who repeat purchases with us or increasing the average minimum cart value by 10 euros.
Target definition
Not all of our customers shop in our online store to satisfy the same needs. If we want all of them to perceive an improvement in us, we must start by classifying them into groups according to some key characteristic: purchasing power, location, socio-cultural aspects, profession, etc.
For example, if we have an online decoration store, we will have customers who want to decorate their homes or professional decorators. Both will buy our products, but they need different treatment.
Analysis of the environment
In this phase we will study the current state and evolution of the market where we work, for this purpose, we will look for sectorial reports and analyze the evolution of searches for keywords related to our activity.
Secondly, we will search for and rank our main online competitors. We will start by defining a list of keywords for which we would like to appear in good positions in search engines and check which online stores are ranking for those terms. With tools like SEMrush we will get this information in a very simple way. In addition to telling us who our competitors are, it will list the keywords for which they are positioning themselves and will show us a graph with an estimate of the web traffic they receive, with which we can get an idea of how much traffic we can get and also what we can get. seasonality the sector. You can find more information about Semrush in other Human Level articles.
Additionally, we recommend following our competitors on social networks, subscribing to newsletters and periodically visiting their websites to see what they are doing and how it is working for them.
Promotion strategies
In the phase of the online marketing plan that deals with promotion strategies, we begin to define what actions we are going to carry out to achieve our objectives.
Online Store
The first aspect to take care of in our online marketing plan will be the online store, since this is where conversions are made. Our e-commerce must comply with all the aspects we have discussed in other blog articles: it must be usable, compatible with mobile devices -responsivedesign-, have the appropriate payment methods, shipping costs with adjusted prices, etc.
Natural positioning in search engines
We will define the strategy to follow so that our website will gradually gain visibility for the terms we have previously selected. A great advantage of SEO applied to e-commerce is that once we stop working on it, the results will remain for a long period of time. On the other hand, we will find that traffic growth will be gradual, so we will need to support this action with other types of tasks to achieve from the beginning a volume of traffic that will allow us to sell from the first moment.
Content marketing
This discipline is halfway between brand image improvement and search engine positioning. If we regularly generate quality content, we will be able to position ourselves as a reference in the sector and increase the traffic that reaches the e-commerce through searches related to our products.
In content marketing we must develop a blog within our online store and define a writing guide where we will detail the topics on which we will write the contents, the tone of the message and the frequency of updates.
PPC
If we want to sell from the beginning it is highly recommended to start with a Google Adwords campaign. We will design specific ads using the keywords we defined previously. We will frequently review the campaigns created to obtain a low CPC (Cost Per Click) and to obtain information about which products are more interesting for our potential customers.
Newsletters and promotional emails
We will program the sending of newsletters with the news of each month as a complement to the content marketing. By generating quality content we will be able to increase the list of subscribers who are ultimately potential customers.
In addition we will send sporadically – in order not to tire the customer – advertising emails where we will inform about the offers in the online store.
Satellite portals
If our product is likely to generate surplus, we will define the best way to dispose of this stock. To this end, we will establish contacts with portals for the sale of surplus stock and coupon offers.
Depending on the profiles of our clients , we will identify the social networks where we are interested in being and to what extent. At this point we will establish a temporary investment for ad campaigns in each of the social networks as well as an independent communication strategy.
Analysis of results
On a monthly basis, we will evaluate the actions carried out, investments made and the percentage in which we have met the objectives, so that we can make the appropriate decisions to achieve the goal. At this point, web analytics will be a great ally, as well as tools that help us to situate our evolution with respect to the evolution of the competition.
In short, e-commerce is not so different from a traditional business, the fewer random decisions you make, the more likely you are to succeed. You have to persevere, and never lose the hunger to learn everything that surrounds your business. This is the only way to achieve success.
