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Hello, and welcome back to the Bilna Sandeep Show. In today’s episode, we will explore how leveraging specific channels can help you skyrocket your e-Commerce business. From tapping into WhatsApp marketing to paid advertising and even SEO, we will deep dive into the eCommerce marketing strategies that can really make an impact on your bottom line. I am sure you don’t want to miss this episode. So, let’s dive in!
So, how have you all been, really? Because I think I kind of took a break from recording my podcast, and I can’t believe we are already on episode number 43, right? I mean, it’s almost gonna hit 50 episodes soon. And really, when I started my very first podcast, the very first episode I had recorded by sitting in my car connecting a very small portable Rode mic to my mobile phone. That was the setup which I had because it was been in my mind for so long that I wanted to start a podcast. And I kept procrastinating forever and I never really started, and I realised if I were to wait for the right time and the right setup, it was never gonna happen. So, that’s how it started from my car sitting in my building’s basement because if I come home, it would be a mess with my kids and I wouldn’t be really able to record it.
So yeah, it’s kind of nice to remember how it all started and how we have almost reached… going to be reaching 50 episodes soon. And I’ve got a lot of feedback and being the year end Spotify has released, you know, look back on your year. And when I see the statistics of the people who have listened to the podcast and the number of people who have listened to different…what do you say… repeated episodes, those all kinds of stats, kind of really inspired me to get back to recording because that is when I realise, it’s been helping a lot of you. Right?
Maybe from my sound, you have already recognised that I’m quite down … under the weather. So yeah, I think it’s been happening here in Dubai to many families because everybody I speak to … they say they are all under flu kids are having flu, whole families, having flu. So I think, let’s go past all that. Let’s get back to what we are here for today.
Product-Based e-Commerce
This episode is especially helpful to product-based businesses that have an e-commerce platform. So today, I’m going to discuss five channels to grow your profit as an e-commerce business. So when you’re an e-commerce business owner, you’re always looking for ways to make more money, right? I mean of course, not just e-commerce; every business is looking forward to increasing its bottom line. So the good news is that there are so many channels you can actually use to get the most out of your online store. So today, in this episode, I’m going to discuss the five best channels that will help you increase your revenue as well as profits as an e-commerce business.
1. Paid Ads
So these are the five things that we are going to discuss today in detail. So it’s, we will be starting with paid social ads, we will be talking about paid search, we will be talking about SEO, and we will be talking about how to create organic social media content for your e-commerce business. And also, we will be ending with conversational marketing or Whatsapp marketing. So maybe WhatsApp marketing is not something a lot of you have already implemented, probably, or sometimes we may be implementing it at a very small level, but we are going to discuss about how we are going to implement it at a bigger level. So that you can really increase your bottom lines. So coming back to the paid social ads, when I say paid ads, it is coming down to basically Facebook and Instagram ads. That’s what we are going to focus more on today. So we are a marketing agency; a lot of you know that I own a marketing agency as well. So inside our marketing agency, what we do for e-commerce businesses, we always set up packages just for them that are revenue based.
Ad Budgets and Platforms
So when we are onboarding a client we always ask them; What is your current revenue? What is the revenue that you want to reach? What/how many sales do you want to make per day? What is the figure that you want to make per day? We set these up. We set these as our KPIs, and then we come up with a package or a plan. Okay. So in that package or plan, it is never restricted to one channel alone. We always try to make it a combination of different channels so that the e-commerce business owner can get the best out of it.
So when a client comes to me and tells me I want to run Facebook ads for my e-commerce business. I tell them why are you stopping there. You shouldn’t be doing that just because we are specialists in that; that doesn’t mean you have to stop there. So we give them a customised plan in which we combine all these five platforms together or maybe, you know, in everyone’s case, maybe not all five of them, but we try to provide at least a combination of three of these platforms so that they get the best out of our service and we as marketers get the most satisfaction out of our work.
Read More: 5 tips for Running Successful Facebook Ad campaigns
Audiences
When we see our clients hitting the revenue targets, and based on our experience, this is how we can leverage the best in e-commerce. So, coming back to the Facebook and Instagram ads. What we do is, we make sure the audience is set up, right? Right. We collect their existing audience list as well, so they might be having an existing list of people who have placed an order on their website, so we will have an email list. We take that; we upload it on Facebook, and we create a lookalike audience of that particular people. So that is the first two sets of audiences that we create.
We also create an interest-based audience so that we analyze who they are ideal customers are so we set up an audience that is interest-based. To look at their email list so that we, we know that, you know, there are people who have been on their emails who’s been nurtured for some time. So we take them as well, those lists as well, and we run ads to that list as well as we create look like audience of that. So that is how we create different audiences for them and then based on what are the pain points. So, probably sometimes in your e-commerce business, you might have different categories, right?
So for each category, it will be a different set of ideal audiences. So for them also we come up with different creatives and what we always tell any businesses that come to us to run paid ads, is that they need to set aside some initial budget for testing because initially, we as marketers test out different forms of creators, different forms of copies because what works for one client may not work for the other person because both the clients have got a different set of target audiences, right?
If they are similar kinds of businesses, for example, we might be running ads for a beauty parlour, and if another beauty parlour comes today to run ads, we still have to start testing out for them because their existing audience may be different, their target audience may still be different because they might be in two different localities, right? So they may be providing different services and may be serving different kinds of audiences.
So just because an agency has run ads for one particular type of business doesn’t mean they will be successful for your business even if you come from the same category.
Ad Testing
So what the agency always needs to do is we need to test out different ads, different combinations, and different copies. So the first may be around one month. It really takes, practically speaking, it takes at least one month to completely test out and it also depends on the budget that you have. If you are ready to put in quite a good budget in the beginning itself for testing, we can complete the testing period quickly and move on to the sales phase very quickly. I’m not saying during this testing phase, you won’t have sales, but what I’m saying is it takes a little bit of initial time for the ads to come to a particular way in which it starts bringing the optimum results.
Conversation Marketing – Cart Abandonment Messages
Then the second phase, the second thing is that, once we start running ads, we always back it up with email marketing which comes under conversation marketing. We back it up not only with email marketing, we back it up with WhatsApp marketing. So what do we do with emails? For example, if you are on Shopify, okay, if your e-commerce website is hosted on Shopify, you can easily find out the people who have reached the phase of checking out, they have put the products in their cart, but they haven’t checked out. But what happens is if you are running a combination of email marketing using Klaviyo, along with Shopify, it’s very easy for us to pick up those people who have actually put things in the cart and not yet checked out; we can send a series of emails to remind them.
Probably what might have happened, as they might have put the things in the cart, they still want to buy them. Probably their card was not near them at that time. So then probably, you know what happens, nowadays we all get distracted, so soon, there’s a lot of distractions online. There’s a lot of busy life for everyone. So something might have happened so it’s always good to send those reminder emails. It is called cart abandonment emails. So those emails can do a lot of wonders. That itself can bring your revenue to a very good level just by reminding people who actually had the intention to buy to complete their purchase.
Sometimes what might happen is we also back it up with WhatsApp marketing. So if we have them already added to the WhatsApp marketing list, okay? And then we are also able to send the cart abandonment messages through WhatsApp marketing, so it is much more effective that way. We would be sending customised messages and again, do not think that we are sitting and sending them one by one. These are all automated ones, the process is set. It can all go automated, so it can go as a very personalised message to that person.
“Hey Bilna, we found you have put these items in the cart. Are you still looking for them?” You know this …and then the WhatsApp message goes with the button of ‘Buy Now’ so that when they click it, it directly goes to the checkout page, and they can just make the purchase. So these kinds of reminders coming through different channels can increase your revenue quite quickly. So this is why we say, do not stick to one platform, it is always a combination of different platforms.
2. Paid Search
Now, when it comes to Google search or paid search. So, when you search for something on Google, you see a lot of sponsored ads coming up, right? So that’s called paid search. So how do you combine or how do you decide, whether should you be investing money on Google Search or Facebook ads?
So what I would suggest is Google Search, whoever comes through Google search, the good thing about it is that their purchase intent is always higher because they have searched for that product and landed on your page. That means they already have the intention to buy it. They are looking forward to buying it. That is why they have searched for that particular product, right? So in that way, Google search is good.
But for you to create a demand, sometimes what happens is especially if your product is not a need item, like for example is not a food item, it is not rice or anything, if it is something that is actually like a luxury product or a makeup product, it is a want for us, right?
So how do you make people want your product to know more about your product? Create brand awareness as well as to make them have that desire. How do you arouse that desire in them to buy this kind of product? That is when Facebook ads can help… Facebook and Instagram ads.
Read More: How to get more Leads & Sales for your Business through Google Ads?
Facebook and Instagram Ads – Interest-Based Audience
Because these people are likely scrolling through Facebook or Instagram and based on the interest-based audience or based on the different targeting we have done, we make sure that your product is coming while they are scrolling. So after seeing it two or three times, they’ll start clicking on it, and they land on your website. They’ll see what this product is. So that is how the brand awareness about your eCommerce platform comes. The brand awareness that this particular product exists, all these things happens through Facebook, and Instagram ads.
The Right Combination
That is why we always recommend a combination of both these ads, Google search as well as paid ads, so that you can get the maximum out of it. Of course, you need to have the budget as well. So I always tell business owners, think big; you need to, of course, have that courage to put in the money so that you can get back four or five fold when it comes back to you, right? But you need to have the courage to put in the money in ads in the beginning.
3. Search Engine Optimisation – SEO
Now, the third one that I want to talk about is SEO. So SEO is mainly organic. Okay? So when people are searching for something… I already told you, right? When you search for a product first, two, three items that come up, it will come with the sponsored label on it, which means they are running ads so that it shows up in front of people. Now SEO is the organic one, the one, the search results that comes after the sponsored is what is happening when you optimize your website for SEO.
So SEO will not happen overnight if you start working on your website SEO now it takes a minimum of five to six or probably around seven, eight months for it to actually start showing good results. Of course, it depends on what product you’re selling and what category, or what industry you are in. It depends on that.
So, I will also link to our previous episodes related to SEO. We have had two SEO experts who had come as a guest on our channels and we have done two episodes later to that, so I will be linking that in the show notes as well, so you can know much more about SEO as well.
4. Organic Social Media Content
Now coming to organic social media content. Again, the reason why I’ve kept it fourth is because what happens is; I see a lot of especially small and medium-sized businesses. They are very obsessed with social media. They’re very obsessed with creating content on Instagram and Facebook. It’s very good, of course because it gives you that organic reach. People come to know about you organically, but over the last one year, probably 1 and a half years. I’ve seen the organic reach on social media has decreased quite a bit. So what is happening is when you’re spending a lot of time creating content, but the result that you get is not so much.
So I always recommend business owners to back up their organic social media content that they create with paid ads. So then it’s a combination of the good quality organic content with paid ads that can really skyrocket your business.
This is for e-commerce, as well as for all businesses. So that is what I would always tell about the organic social media content. The most important thing about organic social media content is about being consistent there, because if you decide to post once a week, make sure you’re posting once a week every week, or if you do it twice a week, make sure you’re doing it twice a week. Every week. Do not just, you know, dump all your content together once every one or two weeks and then completely go absent from your platform. Do not do that.
Consistency is the most important thing when you come to organic social media content, and then the second thing is if you back it up with a little bit of paid ads, it’s going to do really well.
5. Conversational Marketing – WhatsApp Marketing
Then conversational marketing, that is what I would call WhatsApp marketing as well as email marketing. The combination of these two along with paid ads is really going to do magic. So when I say, WhatsApp marketing, what happens is, you can find different ways to get people into your WhatsApp list. So now I’m not talking about the free WhatsApp business that you have on your phones? But I’m talking about the WhatsApp API, you can search for it online. You will find what WhatsApp API is basically.
It is a paid tool. You will have to pay monthly for it, but you can do a lot of automation with that. You can link it up with your CRM. You can link it with your Shopify website, you can link it up with your email marketing and all of your marketing funnel. It becomes a part of your marketing funnel. So, you are sending broadcast messages to your customers, your existing customers, or the people who opted in. So you’re sending customized WhatsApp messages to the people who are on your WhatsApp marketing list, who opted into your WhatsApp marketing. You are sending messages like, “Hey, Bilna!”, it goes with that level of personalization. And you know, what can you use it for?
For example, if somebody has purchased something from your website, you can use it to maybe like after a week, you can send them a message in which you can send them a video of how to use that particular product. So it is linked in such a way that they know exactly what product you have bought and you are able to send them a video of how to use that particular product. Then after another week, you can also send an automated message to that particular customer asking for the review of that product. I’m not saying all of them are going to give you a review, but a few might give you and you can use that review further and do your marketing, you can use them as testimonials for those products. So that again increases your chances, right?
And the people who have given a positive review, it is highly likely that they will come back to your website to buy the next products. For example, if somebody has bought a baby diaper, okay that means you will segregate them as a parent and next week you can send them an offer for a baby formula or a baby dress of that age. So that means you can integrate it in such a way that it can increase the lifetime value of your customers.
You can make sure that your existing customers are coming back to you, for more offers for purchasing more because they trust you and you are nurturing them through this sort of conversation marketing, backed up through either WhatsApp or email marketing. Email marketing used to do quite well earlier. But right now, I feel, WhatsApp marketing works much better because people are mostly on their phones and it’s much quicker and it reaches more people. Not everybody is opening their emails. And a lot of it is going into spam and promotion folders, but in the case of WhatsApp marketing, it works wonders.
Conclusion
So these are the five platforms you can leverage together to increase your revenue and profit margins as an e-commerce business.
If you loved this episode, and if you have any doubts about this, feel free to book a call with us. And if you would like us to execute this for you, feel free to let us know because our agency specialises in marketing your eCommerce business.
I hope you understood the basics of e-Commerce marketing. Book a call with me if you want a personalised e-Commerce marketing strategy for your business or even to ask any questions about it.
So, see you in the next episode, I will be leaving all the links to the related links to all other episodes as well in the show notes. See you all.
Ep-42 – Everything You Wanted to Know About SEO Optimisation
Ep-33 – How to get more Leads & Sales for your Business through Google Ads?
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