Ecommerce is no longer a fad so many experts predicted would eventually fade away. Over the last 20 years, it has solidified itself as a viable entrepreneurial option for people looking to make money with the internet. And along with ecommerce, we have seen the emergence of the ecommerce marketing agency.
Are you involved in ecommerce as a retailer? If so, how do you go about marketing your company, website, and products? Handling all marketing in-house may be working well for you. Perhaps it could work even better if you turned things over to an ecommerce marketing agency.
Getting Your Message to Buyers
At its core, all marketing is about one thing: getting your message to buyers. The interesting thing is that it is not just one message. It’s multiple messages that can change over time. The trick is getting the right message in front of the right people at a time when they are most likely to respond positively.
Where ecommerce is concerned, this presents some challenges:
1. Trends Come and Go
Much of what comprises successful ecommerce rests wholly on consumer trends. Operators try to capitalize on them whenever they can. Why? Because they know that trends come and go. Some of them come and go so quickly that you barely get a marketing campaign going before it’s time to end it.
2. Search Engines Dominate
Ecommerce marketing is up against a challenge not faced by traditional marketing. That challenge is the ever-present search engine. Let’s face it, search engines dominate the internet. One in particular wields an inordinate amount of power. We don’t need to tell you which one that is. The point is that successful online marketing requires playing nicely with search engines.
3. The Internet Is Evolving
On top of everything else, the internet itself is evolving. It is constantly in a state of flux. An ecommerce operator can target a specific audience with a particularly good message only to find that said message quickly outlives its usefulness. To truly succeed, the operator needs to remain nimble.
You Need Marketing Expertise
The special challenges associated with ecommerce marketing only serves to drive home the point that ecommerce operators need marketing expertise. They need a marketing team that understands the core principles of marketing – principles that have not changed in generations – and is able to incorporate those principles into the online environment.
As an ecommerce marketing agency ourselves, we know that it’s a daunting task. Again, marketing’s core principles remain true year after year. But the mechanics of applying those principles in the digital era never remain static for long. If a company’s ecommerce marketing isn’t capable of keeping up with the speed at which the internet moves, it will quickly fall behind.
You Need Knowledge and Experience
We can summarize this entire post by saying your company needs knowledge and experience to effectively manage ecommerce marketing in the digital age. You have built your business online. You sell to customers who find you online. Your marketing efforts need to be targeted to the way people use the internet to buy.
You need an ecommerce marketing agency with the knowledge and experience to take advantage of everything from search engine optimization (SEO) to paid advertising. An agency capable of analyzing marketing results so as to improve future campaigns.
If you are handling marketing in-house and it is working for you, that’s great. Keep doing what you’re doing so that your company continues to grow. But if your in-house marketing efforts continue falling short, it may be time to consider hiring an agency.