Category: Mobile Marketing Services

For retailers, having their own ecommerce store in this era is a must much like food and clothing required for the sake of surviving. Building an ecommerce mobile app or ecommerce website just won’t fulfil your purpose of expanding your business rather it would be just a vague step taken. To pull out the best out of your ecommerce store, it is mandatory to spread a word prior its launch. Most of the retailers fail all because of a weak launch plan for their ecommerce store.

Well if you are planning to start-up with your ecommerce store or create a mobile app for your ecommerce website, Try out the below 8 effective launching strategy for your ecommerce store:

1) Content Marketing: It all starts with content. Content forms an important part as what all needs to be placed in Videos, PR, Product detail page and other media needs to be decided well in advance. How you want to project your estore among your targeted audience totally depends on your content. For your content, having a strategy is essential. It should be something you plan up week wise or to be precise day wise. While deciding the content strategy, understand your target audience their interest level, their age group and how you can convince them to visit your ecommerce store.

Plan up each and every small step like planning to post contents on social media, setting your calendar for publishing the PR’s and ads or any other.

2) Email Marketing: As per a study conducted by direct marketing association, Email has an ROI of around 4,300%. Moreover,

• It has an effective reach coz 80% of people say they receive marketing messages alongside their personal emails on a daily basis.
• It has also been found that 70% of audience make use of coupons codes they receive via email.
• Also, 60% of people subscribe to an email list just to receive special offers from a particular business.

Above stats prove that email marketing would prove an effective methodology while launching your new ecommerce mobile app or website.

3)Social Media Marketing: A trending or you can say a default marketing strategy nowadays as 80% of your target audience spend around 3 hours a day on social platforms. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram are the popular ones which almost every individual uses. While Pinterest, Linked in and others are used quiet often by mid-aged group audience. You just have to analyse your set of audience and their presence on particular platform and just target that platform rather than wasting your time and money on all platforms.

4)Offline Marketing: In addition to online marketing, do explore the offline media too like Print media- Newspaper ad, Magazine ad, Leaflet, Hoardings and many more.

When to do what is very important while enabling the offline channel. It is suggested that if you are a well-established business, you can try out offline marketing as per your business requirements while for a start-up, it is advisable to go for an online channel first and at later stage when the funding or revenues are generated, offline channel can be a wise choice.

Recommended Blog: How to promote eCommerce mobile app and website using QR Code

5)Local Marketing:If your business falls under a category where you require establishing a local presence, do not forget to go for local marketing such as, if you own a brick and mortar store, reaching out to customers near your store with geo-location tools and local search engine targeting are proven to be an effective launch strategy.

6)Promote through PPC and SEO: An effective way to launch is exploring the Pay per click and SEO as 70% of people own a smartphone and uses the search option effectively. It is being advised that the Paid advertising should not always be the first option for a start-up as it requires funding therefore it can be the best way to generate sales if you have an ample amount of marketing funds or you can put your efforts in SEO strategies and grab an organic crowd.

7)Leverage PR Platforms: PR is something which gives your business an instant boost. All you need to do is list down the publicationsread by your target market/audience, segment it to different focuses with different pitch lines and there you go, results would be visible to you. Your ecommerce app and website would be spreaded at a go.

8)Bloggers & Influencers: When you are all new to your audience, Influencers and bloggers help you out in fixing your products/services on your consumers mind coz they are passionate about a particular topic and can attract followers having the same interest. You can easily amplify your reach with their help.

Now that you’ve ticked all the 8 points of the launch plan, it’s time to get the fruits out of it. If you’ve implemented everything listed above, you should surely have a healthy reach as well as following on the social media and an effective subscriber list of customer ready to visit and purchase from your ecommerce store.

A perfect app marketing plan with proper execution is only way to make your mobile commerce strategy successful. You might have come across tons of marketing guide, success mantras for increasing your mobile app downloads with all sets of suggestions like good description of products, quick checkout process, discounts and offers and many more.

Have you got successful with those guides and plans for marketing mobile app? If not, try categorizing your efforts with placing these Ps in place for your app marketing – Product, Price, Place, Promotions, Physical Evidence, Process and People.

1. Product in your app marketing plan

Mobile Commerce or for that means any online shopping medium lacks ‘touch and feel’ aspect but I would not say ‘look and feel’. Powerful and beautifully captured images can give the right look and feel touch to your products on mobile app. So keep good, high-res and properly optimized images. Since we are talking about product, special care is needed on product pages of mobile app –

• Build a catchy call-to-action
• Good and high –res images of product with 360 degree views of products
• Product Videos – A study by retailer Ariat found that visits where a product video had been viewed had a conversion rate that was 160% higher than visits where no video was viewed.
• Nicely written copy of product description
• Information about returns/exchange of product
• Colors available, Size Guide or Variants available
• User Reviews – Studies says that reviews can increase sales by 18% on average
• Stock information – This can help create urgency among customers to buy the product
• Cross-Selling and Up-selling – Adding suggested products, products users may like, Shop the look etc. gives chance of up-selling and cross-selling of products

This screenshot from Walmart app fulfils most of the aspects of a clearly defined product pages and tick most of the check-boxes for product details page.

Image Source –Amazon.com

2. Pricing in your app marketing plan

Pricing in app marketing is very important, one of the reason majorities of users prefer shopping via mobile app is reduced prices there. With app only discounts, coupon codes to use during app shopping, special sales for mobile users, setting prices over mobile app is critical decision. Mention discounts and coupon codes which can be used for specific products very specifically.

There are high chances of customers abandoning shopping carts during checkout process. So, make sure that during checkout all products in bag of customers have defined prices considering discounts and offers. Be big, bold and catchy with call-to-action buttons.

Moreover specific price break-ups like shipping charges, handling charges, gift wrap charges and many more gives customer confidence why and for what are they paying you. Keep in mind to set all these price break ups specifically.

Image Source- Jabong.com

3. Place in your app marketing plan

Place is about taking your mobile app to your customers – submitting it to android or iOS playstore and let people access it from there. Place is all about finding best place to let customers access your mobile app for shopping.

Further more in case of ecommerce mobile apps, it also involves distribution channels, logistics partner, locations you serve (national and international), managing warehouse and distribution centres, and reverse logistics. Disclosing your logistics partner can build a certain sense of transparency and trust among customers. For that matter, zip code estimator for cash on delivery help customers to know about your place of distribution.

With description and indicators like this, people will easily know what and how to manage returns and exchanges, so be generous in guiding them about place of return and exchange. Zappos quote a good example of that

4. Promotions in your app marketing plan

Promotion of app includes elements like: mobile app advertising, public relations, social media marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, video marketing and more. Remember to make each touch point of the brand uniform to provide same brand experience to your customers.

Continuous finding out creative ways of promotions in app marketing plan is very important. App battles are won not just by increasing downloads but by engaging customers to shop from mobile app continuously.

Good screenshots, catching app icon, SMS and Push Notifications, call-to-action for app download on website and social media profiles, app links in marketing collaterals and email signature all these are some ways of promoting your app in best possible way.

App Store Optimization is also one the proven technique and need to be practiced mandatory for achieving desired results. App store optimization (ASO) is, at it’s core, search engine optimization (SEO) for the Google Play and App Store. Just like search engine optimization, app store optimization focuses on keyword relevance, search relevance and the keyword density in your description. Read this article from Buildfire to optimize your app store completely.

5. Process in your app marketing plan

Design your app process to give great brand experience to customers. The checkout process in mobile app is quite an important aspect where every touch point matter.

Image Source – www.codezero.ca

While designing checkout process for your mobile app, look for these aspects and try to check most of the boxes tick there.

Speed – While surfing on mobile app loading time needs to be less. With the slow internet and heavy site, most of the users become impatient and abandon carts from checkout pages.

Stay simple with form – Too much of everything is dangerous so just ask users to fill out the necessary information. Keep option of guest checkout mandatorily. So there will be no forced registration.

Progress indicators – A progress indicator of moving from one step to another gives customers an exact idea about when the process will be over and how much is left.

Payment Security – Reassurance about no frauds, secured online payments builds a trust with customers to shop online.

Payment Options – Be generous with payment options like credit card , debit card, paypal, internet banking and others.

No distractions – As we say no distractions that doesn’t mean less content, it means relevant content to complete the process.

6. Physical Evidence

This usually applies in terms of physical stores which includes ambience, color of furniture, lighting in store, and all those which gives look and feel to your physical outlets. I prefer to keep that in mobile app because good home screen, color combination, catchy call-to-action do the same thing for app here. One more thing here to include is user reviews which are also physically evident for other users about the experience of them with the brand.

7. People

Human touch is irreplaceable and therefore you need a good customer care support over phone or chat or any other medium is necessary to handle brand touch points.

Source –
http://www.codezero.ca/blog
https://econsultancy.com/blog/65493-10-of-the-world-s-best-mobile-commerce-checkouts/
https://econsultancy.com/blog/65457-be-our-guest-a-guide-to-ecommerce-guest-checkout-best-practice#i.hryy5efudfg9x5
http://www.purelybranded.com/insights/the-four-ps-of-marketing/

Mobile might sound small but one should not underestimate the power of the conjoint terminology “Mobile Marketing”. As per a study from Deloitte, More than $500 billion in sales and nearly 20 percent of all in-store retail sales are now influenced by mobile content and in 2016, that number is expected to jump to more than 50 percent.

With the omnipresence of Smartphones today, Personnel Computers are gathering dust lying idle at home. It’s official now that in certain parts of the world, there are now more Google search queries on smartphones than on desktop computers.Retailers are losing on a great share of their potential revenue if they are ignoring the mobile front of their digital commerce. Responsive websites and mobile application are the big door entries to ocean of profit for their businesses.

In January 2015, cell phones and tablets produced 53% of an aggregate 157 million online visits to 50 retail destinations that to m-business innovation supplier Branding Brand tracks, an 18% expansion from January 2014, when cell phones and tablets created 45% of an aggregate 155 million online visits. Cell phones represented 41% of all activity. Looking at January 2014 ($355 million aggregate income) to January 2015 ($364 million aggregate income), the offer of income on cell phones took off from 8% to 12%.

Creating an effective online and mobile presence is critical for businesses to stay competitive and relevant to their customers. A huge opportunity is “up for grabs” to anyone with effective mobile marketing strategy. Many companies are yet to visualise at this moment. This will not only help to build a direct link with the customers but also to the competitor’s customers. Companies embracing mobile marketing now will surely be way ahead of their competitors. Consumers armed with their digital gadget are customising their shopping experiences and are having a deeper interaction with the stores and brands. Retailers must quickly adjust to this changing landscape and meet customers’ expectation. More the channels, more the market share. Mobile media can be used for a holistic marketing approach by retailers and attract more customers.

As the online and mobile shopping unfolds, retailers should focus on how they can better engage with the consumers via mobile marketing. Mobile being a personal device is an immense potential channel for marketers and advertiser. There is a growing connectivity with almost all important tasks being completed using smart phones. Even the third world has adopted it and is growing. Thus, more access which means more business. Accurate targeting of consumers and localisation are flavours of mobile marketing. In other words, mobile is truly being the medium for branding and direct marketing purposes. Thus, it’s time to rethink and protect ones business from suffering, if someone is treating Mobile as a secondary priority.