In the 21st century, Data is one of the most integral parts of every business as it allows them to conduct various operations evaluating customer behavior.
If you are looking forward to starting an online eCommerce store and establishing yourself as a brand, we recommend you follow the data-driven marketing approach.
Now, you may have a question, What is data-driven marketing?
Data-driven marketing is a strategy to collect customer data and then make predictions.
In a nutshell, data-driven marketing is an understanding of data you possess already & you get from the customers and organize, analyze and use it for future marketing efforts.
As a leading Magento eCommerce development company, we have been delivering highly-responsive and customer-centric eCommerce apps and websites. Due to this, we are familiar with all work required to launch an eCommerce store.
Also, before you launch your eCommerce store, you should know about how much does an eCommerce website cost so you easily plan out the eCommerce store budget.
Here, we will provide some essential steps that you should consider before starting an eCommerce business.
Data-Driven Strategy to start an online eCommerce store
1. Find out the total traffic distribution of the overall idea
First of all, you need to check whether your idea is feasible in the real world or not. For this, you need to check the demand for your idea in the market. You can use the following tools to check the total traffic distribution of the concept.
Google Trends: Using this tool, you will be able to know the trend of your idea in the market.
By doing a proper analysis using the above tool, you will be able to validate your idea.
2. Select the Playground
After you have finalized your concept, you have to decide a lot of different things revolving around your niche.
For instance, if you are selling green tea online, then you have to decide a lot of things. In short, you have to make a user persona.
To create a user persona, you have to answer different questions as follows:
Which country do you want to target?
Who will be the potential customer?
What will be the price of tea for your customers?
How will the supply chain work?
By answering all the above questions, you will have a clear idea about your product development as well as a clear guideline for your marketing plan.
3. DIY or Dropshipping
After the evaluation of the playground is done, the next step is to decide how you are going to distribute your product. Here, you have two options: purchase a warehouse/ distribution and make the necessary investment in stocks or you can directly drop ship your product.
You can make this decision based on the total margin of profit, along with your ability to handle things. Here, you can either handle the entire supply chain yourself, or you can carry out effective marketing & drop ship your products on the desired location.
4. Building the Brand before launching the store
When you conduct this step, you will be amazed by the results you get. In the last few years, search engines have started giving importance to brands like never before.
Moreover, the Ex-CEO of Google stated:
“Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”
This means that, if you want to sustain yourself on the search engines for a long time, you should think of establishing yourself as a brand. With the increasing popularity of your brand, your search engine traffic will increase.
Unfortunately, there is not any magic trick to grow a brand instantly. But, there is a strategically proven method that works well with personal as well as corporate brands.
You may have a question, what is the method?
You have to take some audacious moves.
Initially, you have to establish your business in the corporate world.
5. Do Something Unique
If you want to grow your brand fastly as compared to your competitors, then you should do something unique than your competitors.
In short, if you are doing the same thing as your competitor, then people won’t prefer to switch to your brand.
Here are some of the unique things you can do to grow your brand:
Establish a Newsletter
An email newsletter is one of the best ways to do marketing for your business.
Any other form of marketing can’t be compared with email marketing. Email marketing is also referred to as a direct form of marketing because it allows you to put yourself in the customer’s inbox regularly.
Here, you have an awesome opportunity to provide various discounts and coupons, announce new deals, products, and give valuable information.
Initially, you have to choose an email marketing platform. Several leading email marketing options are MailChimp, Aweber, GetResponse, etc.
After this, you have to choose a template, customize it, and write content for your welcome mail. Also, don’t forget to add an email subscription option on your site.
You have to set up an email subscription before launching your website. If someone visits your site and wants to get updates about when your site is launching, then you have to send at least one email.
Set up a Blog
The blog is yet another essential tool for marketing products/services of your business. Various people love to read blogs, and therefore you can target such people by starting a blog. On the blog, you can notify people about when you are launching your store, how much progress you have made, offers/ discounts, etc.
You can start a blog along with your website and address the needs of the people.
List your business on Social Media platforms
When you are operating a store online, you require an excellent social media presence. Moreover, a vast number of people will discover your products there only; hence it’s necessary to create an attractive profile on these platforms.
Here, you should try to grab a same username on all social sites. For instance, the Facebook profile is (www.facebook.com/brandname) should match with (www.twitter.com/brandname).
It’s not advisable to create a page on all the social media sites available in the world. A better approach is just to focus on some leading platforms & create a sound engagement with your audience.
Reach out to Influencers
As of now, some leading platforms where a majority of influencers are present are YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Hence, you can reach out to various popular creators on these platforms and promote your products.
Influencers on these platforms will charge money to promote your products/services in their videos. By promoting your products from these influences, your brand will get exposure to a wide audience.
Create Facebook Groups & go to LinkedIn
Market your products on platforms where other people don’t.
Here, we suggest you create a Facebook group with a proper name. You should keep the group public. Here, you share important news not only about your business but also related to your overall industry.
Apart from this, you can join relevant groups on LinkedIn and promote your products in these groups. If people find your product/service interesting, then they will visit your website, and thus your traffic will increase.
A brand should be personal, human & overall evoke emotions
With your brand, you should arouse different emotions among your target audience. And how do you do that?
To achieve this, you should be able to resolve the issues of the users not at the brand level but at the industry level.
For instance, if you are selling green tea, then you should think of creating a name like Healthgenic.
Create pages on social media platforms like Twitter with the name and share unique and direct news with the audience.
You can also create a space on Quora and share different articles about your brand as well as the industry. Also, try to answer questions of people on Quora and connect with them on a personal level.
Create a YouTube Channel
One of the best ways to establish your brand is to create a YouTube channel. On this YouTube channel, you can showcase your products individually. Also, you can explain in detail all the things about the product/services your business is offering.
After the success of your brand, you can showcase testimonials of your users to attract new customers.
Grow your community by helping customers
A wide number of brands publish new content on the web; however, only a few of them spend time responding to the community.
A very few percentage of people take time out to resolve the issues of the community. When you start doing this, you will be able to grow your brand much faster than your competitors.
6. Launch your Online Store
By implementing all the above strategies, when you start to get traffic for your blog, you can launch your eCommerce store.
Before you think to release the final version of your eCommerce store, consider some of the crucial things given below:
- A straightforward Design
- Instant Search
- Quick & Effective Navigation
- Different Payment Options
- Quick Checkout options
- Add to Cart
- Add to Wishlist
- Mobile-Friendly
- High-Resolution Images and Videos
- Security and Safety
Conclusion
Lastly, by implementing the data-driven approach for starting an online eCommerce store, you will be able to get the following sets of benefits:
- Enhanced Personalization
- Better Market Reach & ROI
- Quicker Segmentation
- Personalized Marketing
- Obtain Customer Insights
