Ecommerce Marketing 101 - Part I
#googletrend #googleshopping #amazonad #advertising budget #digitalmarketing
To the New Subscribers,
A very warm welcome to my newsletter : Thinking category. These are some of the popular posts on this newsletter that will give you some ideas on why “Thinking category”.
1. Story of category building from 0 to 1:
2. On CLV, CAC
And the adventurous story of SKUs from store room to shelf
Now off to the this week post,
Dear Readers,
If history has taught us anything, it is that every world crisis has changed the way we think, we work, our relationship with money or the way we live : Black death led to the improvement in agriculture technology, Industrialization.
The role and the status of women in workforce participation changed during the world war because men were fighting away and women took on new roles - administration (Defense), healthcare services, manufacturing.
(Case in point - The imitation game - Role of Joan Clarke as a code breaker in the Enigma project)
Back to 2020 : Pandemic has changed many things for all of us including the way we shop.
Many companies have shifted their attention from in-store experience to ecommerce channels (consumer web, app) in the last one year.
So we, category leaders of tomorrow, need to learn navigating the new waters of commerce : Online advertising, ecommerce marketing. The world of online is overwhelming - There are so many advertising tools and so many platform. Too many tools. Need to have a proper ecommerce marketing strategy in the place.
Within the role of category management, either you will be working with the marketing team (which manages overall category marketing spend) or you will be responsible for your own category marketing strategy or execution depending upon the structure of your organization (legacy organization, startups).
Whoever you are, it’s good to know the basics.
The way we will be doing is - we will take a problem statement and discuss the possible tools. (Unlike going through all one by one, or how to do guide; you can easily get all these information on the Internet)
Problem statement 1 :-
I am a category leader and I sell shoes and bags online. I need to Identify which of my product categories are surging in Search results. (Chrome). It will help me in understanding the demand and developing my category plan.
Tool - Google Trend (Free tool, very easy to use)
The graph shows that in the past few months, people have searched shoes more online compared to bags (google search engine) and Mizoram, Meghalaya, Manipur, UP, Rajasthan were the top states in terms of search results for keyword - shoes.
It might not mean that people are buying more shoes online, but it gives you some idea of market trends.
You can also dig deeper what people are typing and looking for. These results will help you
1/ in understanding what kind of products people are looking for - consumer preferences
2/ in campaign management - keyword ideas, target segment, geography etc. So if you know that people are using “cute” as a search term, you should include that in your keywords list / campaigns.
So now you know, Mirraggio bags are in demand. Lets type that in your chrome. depending on the geography and other factor you can get different results. But let’s assume this is what you got (below picture).
So here comes my problem no. 2.
Problem statement 2:
I am an online retailer and sell luxury bags online. When my target segment looks for bags online, first picture that they see is of my competitor. My goal is to improve conversion and ROAS while keeping my CPA (cost per acquisition) low. I want to have image ads instead of text ads.
Tool: Google shopping campaigns
Through Google shopping ads, you can show the photo of your products, price and other details like special offers.
You can check how to set google shopping campaign here.
Problem statement 3:
I am a toy manufacturer directly selling via Online marketplaces. I make stacking multicolor rings for 1-3 years old kids. As I don’t have a dedicated website so I can’t run shopping campaigns to drive traffic to my product listing. When I type toys for kids on Amazon, my product doesn’t show up in first 5 pages. Forget the buy box, it doesn’t even appear on search results.
Tool - Amazon ad
Sponsored ad will appear on the 1st page of the search result. There are automatic targeting, manual targeting options available. There are different formats available - Video ads, Audio ads, sponsored products, sponsored brands - whichever suits your budget and your marketing goals. If you are a new unknown brand, sponsored ads will help you to improve your brand / product visibility and get you a start.
So basically there are tons of tool. And we will talk about that as and when.
Wrapping this beautiful Saturday night with the quote from the most amazing but unfortunately fictional boss Jacqueline Carlyle of the bold type :
“Here's the next great mascara—to give you bigger eyes to see the world. Here's a fabulous pair of jeans. Now go climb a mountain.”
To the pair of jeans, mascara and mountains !!
If you liked this article, Please share thinking category with your friends and colleague in ecommerce, FMCG space:
Sayonara. You can connect with me on LinkedIn :
Would be happy to know your thoughts, or your experience in FMCG, ecommerce, consumer space.
I also write about my life experiences here.