Traffic is a lifeline for any e-commerce business. The more traffic an online business will receive, the more likely it is to make sales, but many businesses are competing for the attention, time and money of your potential customers.
E-Commerce
As more and more businesses are trying to move out of motor and brick stores and join the online market the competition is increasing. Everyone from international business chains to local business stores is out to reach potential customers online. Using online platforms to reach potential customers and enabling online payment or cash on delivery options to customers, businesses experience a serious hike in their sales.
It is as important to have a visually pleasing and easy to navigate e-store as it is to have a presentable shop in the market, but you also need to get the word out and make the potential customers notice you. The more traffic an online business will receive the great chances of success it has. For promoting your business online, you will need to have an efficient digital marketing strategy to implement.
Digital Marketing Strategy
A marketing strategy designed to promote any business online, to gain most ROI over time is called a digital marketing strategy. It is an umbrella term that covers several online business promotions strategies, including both paid and free strategies.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO),
- Pay Per Click (PPC) or paid advertisement,
- Content Marketing,
- Email marketing,
- Social Media Marketing,
- Influencer and affiliate marketing.
The two most popular digital marketing strategies are SEO and PPC. Often e-retailers and marketers are unsure which one they should choose for their business for best results so let’s explore the topic.
SEO
Search engines rank websites on search results in relevance to keywords. Google is the most popularly used search engine around the globe and uses certain metrics to yield the best results, with the most relevant web links on the top. The ranking factor includes relevance from the keyword, page authority and domain authority.
Search engine optimization means making changes in your website so that the search engine will favour it against your competitors. SEO brings organic visibility which means your website becomes visible to potential customers without paying anything to search engines. Therefore, SEO gives you free of cost space among the top-ranking businesses. Strong organic visibility will bring credibility and trust for your business. The sustainability of the results will give you a better ROI than any paid advertisement.
You do not have to pay anything to search engines for ranking for a keyword, but SEO is a complicated and technical process which requires dedicated hours of hard work and particular skill sets. Since many businessmen do not have the technical knowledge and skillset or even time to invest in SEO, they hire paid services of experts. Experts can help you move up the Search engine rankings faster using SEO techniques.
Some unethical SEO techniques can give quick results but they are frowned upon. They are called black hat SEO techniques and they often get you penalized by search engines. The healthy and ethical SEO techniques are referred to as white hat SEO techniques.
However, white hat SEO is slow and it may take months to rank for high competition keywords, which is probably the only downside of SEO. As once you start ranking for a keyword the sustainability is good and it yields results for a very long time comparatively.
To conclude SEO brings credibility and organic visibility for your business. It is a long term game which will bring sustainable results.
PPC
Paying search engines to rank you above all your competitors is an advertisement, and you can be either charged for each click you receive or for every time someone views your advertisement.
You bid for the keywords. The more competitive keywords with higher click through rates cost you more. In return, you get highly targeted traffic which is more likely to convert into sales. For example, a person searching the words “trending shoe styles” might want to buy shoes or just need the information for a project. On the other hand, a person searching for “trendy shoes for 50$” has a budget in mind and therefore is more likely to buy. If this is a high converting keyword, more shoe brands will bid for it and it will become competitive and expensive.
You can even narrow down your targeted audience by demographics like age, gender, interests and location. It is also possible to show your advertisements only during certain hours when your target audience is more likely to be active. This means your advertisement can be time-sensitive. For example, if your targeted audience is working 9 to 5 jobs, there is no point in spending on advertising during those hours, so you set your hours and days accordingly. Smartly optimizing your advertisement, our experienced team can help you design better ads and optimize them smartly to help you spend less and earn more.
Investing in the paid advertisement will sweep you off your feet and take you to the top of search engine results instantly. As you are paying for the top position on the page, you have a lot of freedom and options to choose from in terms of how you want to present your brand. You can use visual content that is eye-catchy or experiment with what type of ad is working best for it. You can strictly control the budget you have.
SEO VS PPC
Three main differences between SEO and PPC are
- Search engine do not charge you for SEO while you set a budget to spend on PPC,
- SEO takes time to rank you on the first page for a keyword, while advertisement immediately get the top position on search engine
- Results of SEO are long-lasting while PPC will only yield any results as long as you’re spending money. The moment you stop budgeting for PPC you lose any ranking and business you gained through paid advertisement.
So for SEO you pay less for more volume and leads but it takes longer to yield results in comparison. However, the results last for a longer time. On the other hand, a relatively costly PPC gives your e-commerce business an immediate boost, which will last as long as you keep spending money on it.
Truth is both SEO and PPC should go hand in hand for any successful marketing strategy. The best digital marketing strategy would be to incorporate both SEO and PPC in your plan so you can get maximum leverage. You can give variable weightage to each strategy, or even experiment with which strategy will work best for your specific business. Once you have experimented with the keywords you can move high cost, low search volume or low converting volume from PPC to SEO and vice versa. Or you can consult from experienced service providers like Altitude. If you have any questions or are seeking consultation regarding your e-commerce store and digital marketing strategy do not hesitate in calling us. We are just a click away.
