Online purchase became part of our life within no time. Within less than a decade people’s perspective of online purchase have changed. Many people who complained about the total idea of purchasing things online are now advocates of its benefits. Seeing the boom in online purchase many businesses jumped into e-commerce without much preparation. Those were the ones who didn’t realize the importance of digital marketing for e-commerce activities. Here we are trying to give you all an insight about one such case.
Increased demand for online shopping resulted in more and more businesses investing in e-commerce. Our client in the context is one such client who extended their electronic gadget sales to selling online. Our client had electronic gadget outlets at different locations in the city. Indeed online selling is apt for gadgets. However, in many cases lack of marketing hit back badly. Our client here is a great example for this. What they did great was with the timing. They started this venture right after the COVID outbreak owing to the huge demand. Still, the performance diminished due to various reasons.
Data security
As the number of e-commerce sites increased rapidly. The problems related to them also surface. There was a time during the pandemic when data breach of a very big company was in the discussion of almost everyone. This resulted in a reverse trend in online shopping affecting mostly the newcomers. Our client was one among them. The sales gradually reduced.
Customer experience
When the customer base was less, the service section was running smoothly. However, for our client, customer handling became difficult while the number of customers increased. Listing the items according to the preferences became difficult. Due to the inefficient data handling, identifying the favorite items of customers became a mess. This added to the gradual reduction of customer base. It was evident that customers are shifting to other platforms. However, they managed to add more online customers using their customer base from different outlets. But, this cannot be considered as a solution for the problem.
High competition
As mentioned before, the time our client stepped into e-commerce was not a very easy time. The competition was high. It only increased due to the pandemic spreading everywhere. Even the local shop owners started a version of e-commerce using messaging applications. Many others started reseller businesses individually using other social media platforms as well. This extraordinary scenario created a disadvantageous situation for our client.
Added to that other major competitors were using newer tactics. Our client also made attempts to compete with different tactics. But, most of them were traditional marketing tactics. Needless to say, the overall effect of all those did not help the business much.
Lack of one-point contact
The contact channel was scattered. For each process, different contact channels were there. This created big issues especially related to returns and refunds. Message channels and different call channels created confusion among the customers. This in turn resulted in delayed returns and refund confirmations. There was also an increase in the complaints from the customers.
Seller – customer identity issues
As the demand increased, our clients started to include other sellers as well as to the platform. With this another problem surfaced. Identification of the sellers and customers. They also faced problems with effectively connecting sellers with customers whenever necessary. Instead they tried to carry out the communications themselves. Needless to say, with their limited resources, it didn’t work well and turned contagious.
Our intervention
We, as a digital marketing agency, identified the above issues with their e-commerce system. Also, the issues were not solvable just by digital marketing. We had to involve our e-commerce experts to make things right for our client. The problems were discussed in detail by considering them individually. Then our coordinators were given the task to involve the team of e-commerce specialists. With the joint effort, we were able to produce a detailed action plan. We had another round of discussion with the client’s representatives. There we discussed the execution of the action plan, to identify the priority of actions to be done.
Following are the major activities from the action plan.
Data analysis for understanding the customer preferences
As mentioned, customer experience was a big issue. The items on display and offers fetched very less response. One of the reasons for this was the failure in identifying the customer preferences. However, with our data analysis the customer preferences were identified and marketing plans for some major items were also delivered.
Website and application revamp for better item listing
We developed a fresh looking website with additional sorting and filter options. Thus ensured easy navigation and better item discovery for customers. The same modifications were done in their mobile application as well also with extra features to point and shoot at objects to discover similar products. We also introduced a provision to display offers based on the basis of their filtered results. This turned super-helpful for sellers to take their new products to customers.
Interactive landing page for customer issues
We created a landing page exclusively for integrated customer service. We used insights from data analysis to identify the major concerns of customers. Then we classified them according to various parameters like gravity of the concern, frequency etc. With all this information, we were able to prepare an interactive landing page with all the possible issues customers can have. We also included buttons to make calls and WhatsApp communication as well. This addition was a huge hit as the customer appreciation was flowing in after the update.
Using SMM to highlight the efforts towards data security
Even though the data security was intact for our client, they failed to market that efficiently. We planned a campaign on social media to highlight this advantage of client service. We also included the data security part in all social media descriptions. We did that directly and often indirectly. This indeed created a great impact in reinstating the reputation of our client as an e-commerce venture.
SEO for offer contents
During revamp and other inclusions we made sure to include SEO contents based on the data analysis we did. We also ensured the offer posters are written in such a way that it aligns with the optimization criteria. We also made sure the product descriptions were rewritten with SEO compliance.
Integrated digital marketing for better ranking
Along with the product descriptions, we also did SEO for other general contents on the page. We ensured the compatibility of schema for SEO and created a proper and efficient site map. We also worked on implementing a backlinking strategy. With all these we were aiming for increased organic traffic.
We also conducted shopping ads campaigns with SEM and SMM, brand awareness programs and engagement campaigns on offers.
Seller database preparation and new coordination channel
After the data analysis, we modified the database of sellers and customers. We categorized sellers according to popularity. We also created a new communication channel where the customer can reach out to the seller in the minimum possible steps.
Bespoke Digital Marketing for
E-commerce by JachOOs
We were able to do all these in the least possible time since the coordination and integration of various departments was seamless. JachOOs group consist of digital marketing agency, e-commerce service providers and many more. So digital marketing for e-commerce was done by integrating the two departments. This integrated functioning brought us to the top of the business.
