You’ve decided to take the plunge and begin a business online. Congrats! Now it’s time to design a marketing strategy that will get you customers and make you some money.
Where should you focus your efforts? Product descriptions? Landing pages? Marketing emails?
You’ll need to consider various factors, like the device your audience uses to access the internet and whether or not you’ll need an SSL security certificate to ensure the safety of your customers’ credit card information.
Here’s where you can expect to spend most of your time (when you’re not sleeping):
Product Descriptions
This is the copy that appears on your product pages. It’s important to get this right since you’ll be responsible for guiding shoppers through a complicated purchasing process that can often involve several clicks and a few minutes of their time.
How can you make this experience as effortless and enjoyable as possible? By crafting language that is both logical and compelling. You want to provide as much information as possible without being condescending or sounding like a robot. You want to make the buying process easy and painless.
The good news is, you’ve already begun the process. When a customer clicks on the product image or name on your website, they’ll see a bunch of descriptive text below the image (or article, in the case of an e-book.)
You don’t have to limit yourself to one or two sentences. You can use the available space to your advantage by including other examples of the product’s use or benefits. For example, did you know that most people who purchased this product also bought that one? Or perhaps the product reduces food waste by 50% or more?
Make sure to include as many details as possible. This will help you make the right impression on potential buyers and reduce the number of ‘live’ customers who experience technical issues. It’s also a good idea to provide support by phone or chat so customers feel like you’re always reachable.
Landing Pages
The landing page is the page visitors will arrive at after completing an online task, like purchasing a product or signing up for a newsletter. You have two options here: you can either direct them to the specific product or service you’re promoting, or you can lead them towards a conversion event, like filling out a contact form or subscribing to a newsletter.
The first choice is pretty self-explanatory; you want to drive as many leads as possible to a specific page so you can have a chance to make a sale. The second choice can be a bit trickier. You want to encourage users to subscribe to your newsletter or fill out a contact form so you can follow-up with them later on.
What kind of language should you use on your landing page? Again, you want to avoid being too salesy. Be as persuasive as possible when enticing visitors to take action, but don’t be so aggressive that it turns off potential customers.
Your landing page’s purpose is to convince visitors to take some kind of action, so you want to ensure that the language you use is clear and concise while also being interesting and engaging. Include enough useful information to keep users interested and make them scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the call to action. When testing different combinations of words and phrases, use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner to find the most popular variations and see how your website’s performance changes for different phrases.
Marketing Emails
Your email marketing is one of the more expensive and complicated parts of your marketing strategy. In addition to the fact that you have to build and manage the email list yourself, you also have to write and send the emails. So it’s important to get these right. You want to avoid using automated email marketing tools because humans should be in charge of sending out these emails. They should be personalized and, whenever possible, tied directly to a specific action the user took (like downloading a product guide or visiting a specific website.)
What kind of content should you include in your emails? Pretty much any kind of information that will be useful to your audience. These can include:
- Product information, like descriptions, benefits, and more
- Informational articles about the industry and related topics
- Social media handles and links to relevant content
- Freebies, like discounts, coupons, or special offers
- Links to related products
- Customer testimonials
- And, of course, more content about the product you’re promoting
How Does Ecommerce Copywriting Fit In The Bigger Picture?
Before you begin pitching in with your creative copy, it’s important to understand where you’ll fit in the bigger marketing picture.
You’re in charge of various aspects of your ecommerce marketing, from creating the product descriptions to deciding which products to promote and on which platforms. But you’re not a one-man show. You’ll need to work with an experienced team who can take the reins on various parts of the process so you can focus on what’s most important to you.
To get your business up and running as quickly and smoothly as possible, you’ll need to set aside a certain amount of money for marketing. This may mean that you have to scale back your other projects or take on a side gig to make ends meet. However, the sooner you get started, the more you’ll be able to spend on your growing business.
So, how much do you need to start? Well, that depends on you and your industry. You don’t necessarily need a lot of money to get the word out there. But, in order to grow your business successfully, you’ll want to have a fairly robust marketing budget. Which leads us to our next topic.