How to make an online store marketing plan in 7 steps

If you are interested in making a profit from the Internet and want to start your project in e-commerce, then marketing an online store is an essential foundation for building your project in e-commerce and moving forward in this field, because marketing plays a major role in the success of any project, regardless of its type, and the quality of marketing of an online store is what distinguishes your store from others. Others, the more you are creative in marketing an online store and rely on diverse and innovative promotional strategies, the more profits you will receive. In today's article, we will share with you practical guidelines stemming from practical experiences on how to market an online store.

 

These are the most important points that we will share with you in this article:

 

Marketing strategy

What is the role of marketing strategy?

Steps to develop an online store marketing strategy

1- Real-time study of the market

2- Targeting a specific audience

3- Monitor competing online stores

4- Create a marketing formula

5- Social media platforms suitable for your online store

6- Managing the marketing budget

7- Setting clear goals in parallel with time

Marketing strategy

Marketing strategy is considered a method or several methods that try to make the audience who follows you loyal customers to the content, product, or even services that you provide, and therefore its primary role is to attract the largest number of followers, then convert them to customers, and achieve profit from e-commerce by marketing an e-store.

 

What is the role of marketing strategy?

No two people disagree about the importance of marketing and developing a marketing strategy to make your online store successful, but before developing an online store marketing strategy, it is necessary to determine the desired goals behind it. We will present to you 6 online store marketing goals that must be present in your marketing plan to achieve great profits:

 

1- A general study about the market you want to enter, then set goals that are in line with supply and demand in order to market an online store realistically.

 

2- The marketing strategy enables you to get closer to the audience you target, studying their behaviors, reactions, and needs so that you can get a clear idea of ​​what you should focus on in marketing your online store.

 

 

3- Identify the social media sites that get the most interaction from the audience so that you can rely on them to market your online store.

 

4- Work on various marketing strategies and allocate an amount of money for each strategy separately.

 

5- Based on the information that you will obtain through applying the previous stages, you will be able to make amendments to the marketing plan for your online store and your products or services as well as requested by customers.

 

6- An online store marketing strategy will help you deal well with the developments that your store will witness after promoting it and making modifications.

 

The importance of developing a solid strategy for marketing an online store becomes clear, and now we will move to the next stage, which is no less important than the previous one, which is evident in the method of creating an electronic marketing strategy.

 

Read also: Your comprehensive guide to starting profit from affiliate marketing

 

Steps to develop an online store marketing strategy

 

The process of developing an online store marketing strategy is divided into 7 basic stages:

 

1- Real-time study of the market

Take a general overview of the market and the dynamics of your competing online stores, monitor the interactions of sellers and buyers together, then make a comparison with what you offer and the behaviors of your customers. Then you will have a good idea of ​​what should be added to your store to distinguish itself from the rest of the competitors and work to consolidate your store’s identity in the mind of the public. You can use a method called SWOT for short, which consists of four main axes:

 

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats or challenges

This method, which sheds light on each of these four elements, is an accurate diagnosis that enables you to develop a successful strategy for marketing your online store, and you will become fully aware of the modifications that you must make in order to compete with other online store owners and stand out from them.

 

2- Targeting a specific audience

At this stage, you must precisely determine the customers you will target with your store’s products, according to the field you want to work on. You must study the geographic region, the common culture in that country, the age group, the products, and the needs of your target audience. All of these criteria you must adopt while marketing an online store.

You must coordinate your products with the target group for these products. For example, if you own an online store for women’s accessories, your audience in this case will be adult women.

After determining the target audience for your products, it will be easy for you to know the social media platforms most used by that group and focus on them primarily to market an online store.

 

 

If you want to work more professionally, you can create what is called a Buyer Persona, which means embodying a customer personality that is compatible with the type of products or services you provide. This will contribute greatly to the marketing of your online store.

 

3- Monitor competing online stores

Almost any e-store marketing strategy in all fields is devoid of monitoring competing e-stores that entered the field of e-commerce and marketing before you, and you will certainly have accumulated a set of experiences and corrected a group of errors. When you want to develop an e-store marketing strategy, you must see what your competitors are doing. From the types of products they market, the audiences they target, the marketing methods they adopt to make a profit from the Internet, and the social media platforms they rely on, all of this data you must be careful to study in depth to benefit from and develop it further in marketing your online store, because the goal of this process is It is not about imitating competitors, but about distinguishing yourself from them, taking advantage of their strengths, and working to develop their weaknesses to make money from the Internet.

 

4- Create a marketing formula

If you want to market an online store in a distinctive way, you must be creative in four elements:

 

The product product

Price

Place

Marketing Promotion

When these four elements are combined, we get what is called the Marketing Mix . If you choose the product carefully and display it at an appropriate price and in a way that suits your target audience and market it in a professional manner, then you will have done successful online store marketing by all standards and will achieve good profits. You can change the marketing formula data according to the specifications of the category you target with your product. The main factor in this equation is analyzing the information you collected through the previous stages, and use it to provide customers’ needs.

 

5- Social media platforms suitable for your online store

If you are an online store owner, marketing your online store will often be limited to well-known social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and other modern platforms. You should only determine which of the modern platforms suits you according to the study and analysis you previously conducted about your target audience and the rest of the competing online stores. .

 

Now, we will present to you the best methods of marketing an online store at the present time that the largest online stores rely on:

 

 

A- Social media : Marketers in all parts of

the world, regardless of the fields in which they work, do not dispense with social media platforms, because they are considered noisy online communities through which they can reach the largest number of audiences, interact with them directly, and know their needs to work on them.

 

Read also: 7 e-marketing services that entrepreneurs cannot do without

 

B - Email marketing : This type of marketing is often used after the

beginning stage and collecting data on potential customers who have been selected from the general public, and they are informed in a successive and organized manner about all developments in your online store. Previous customers are also targeted with email marketing in an attempt to convince them to buy again.

This method of marketing an online store via email contributes to increasing the number of sales and gaining new customers in your store.

 

C - Online store marketing with content :

This type of marketing is widely used by international brands and major stores, by creating valuable written content or creating videos on various social media platforms.

 

D - Using SEO to improve search engines:

You should not miss the opportunity to have your site or store appear in search engines by adopting keywords that belong to your field and have a lot of search and moderate or little competition. This will contribute to your store getting many visits from targeted customers for free.

 

6- Managing the marketing budget

You must allocate a specific budget while developing a marketing strategy for your online store. This budget must be managed rationally and thoughtfully so that you select the platforms and tools necessary to build your store. You must also avoid distributing the budget on all social media platforms at the same time in order to achieve significant results. This may happen. Quite the opposite, and you will lose your money if you do not choose the right places to put your budget, especially if it is limited.

 

7- Setting clear goals in parallel with time

 

When you implement an online store marketing strategy, it is necessary to set goals that are realistic in parallel with the time factor, which enables you to know the extent of the profitability of your store and the strategy you have adopted. You can also modify the components of the strategy that you applied according to the developments you will reach to improve the results of marketing an online store in the best possible way.

 

The stages that we explained in today’s blog constitute a clear road map for everyone who wants to enter the world of making money from the Internet, especially e-commerce. It is certain that following the stages that were explained for marketing an online store will inevitably lead to making a profit from the Internet and achieving satisfactory profits. We hope you liked today's article.

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