SEO stands for search engine optimization. That is the process of aligning the website content to the signals used by search engines to understand whether the underlying content is of good quality. From there, it’s possible through e-commerce SEO to build a digital funnel that leads from the store’s editorial content toward navigational pages (search page, category pages) and transactional pages (products) to build a solid online business.
SEO Tactic
Description
Benefits
Keyword Research
Identify relevant keywords and phrases
Improved search visibility and targeted traffic
On-Page Optimization
Optimize content, meta tags, and URLs
Higher search rankings and click-through rates
Mobile Optimization
Ensure a mobile-responsive design
Better user experience and search rankings
Site Speed Optimization
Improve loading times
Enhanced user experience and SEO rankings
High-Quality Content
Create informative and engaging content
Increased user engagement and backlinks
Product Descriptions
Write unique and compelling descriptions
Higher conversion rates and SEO rankings
Image Optimization
Optimize alt tags and file sizes
Improved image search rankings
User Reviews
Encourage and display customer reviews
Enhanced trust and social proof
Internal Linking
Link relevant pages within the site
Improved navigation and SEO
Schema Markup
Add structured data for rich snippets
Enhanced search results and click-throughs
Social Media Integration
Promote products on social platforms
Increased brand exposure and traffic
Secure Website (HTTPS)
Implement SSL encryption
Better security and potential SEO boost
XML Sitemap
Create and submit XML sitemaps
Improved indexation and crawlability
Local SEO
Optimize for local search
Attract local customers and foot traffic
E-commerce SEO Audits
Regularly review and optimize SEO efforts
Identify and address issues for better SEO
Backlink Building
Acquire high-quality backlinks
Improved domain authority and rankings
PPC Advertising
Use paid search to complement SEO efforts
Increased visibility and traffic
Analytics and Monitoring
Use tools to track and analyze performance
Make data-driven decisions for optimization
Table of Contents
Understanding Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Out of the entire digital marketing channels and strategies, search engine optimization is one of the most effective (even though among the least appreciated). Indeed, Search Engine Optimization is one of the biggest channels in digital marketing because people do trillions of searches yearly, often with the intent to find information about products and services they want to purchase. Search is often the primary source of digital traffic, and almost all other marketing channels are one way or the other dependent on it. Higher ranking in search results than competitors in your niche will make you more visible. It will definitely have a direct impact on your generated traffic, and SEO is tailored to do just that.
Search engine has been proven by many surveys and studies to be the biggest traffic driver to websites, even more than social media. It is also cheaper than social media because after you make the first set of payment for tools (some tools can even be gotten for free), you do not pay recurring fees; you just need to put in the effort to ensure that you remain high at the ranks. That’s the summary, cheap digital marketing with high conversion rates.
Optimizing your website means that you want to create the best possible result for your major keyword. Google and other search engines’ goal is to rank search results in a hierarchy of results that answer all of the searcher’s questions so well that they don’t need to do another search for further answers.
How to effectively utilize search engine optimization for the growth of your online business
There are a few but important steps to take, which you need to pay utmost attention to in effective utilization of SEO for boosting an e-commerce business. They are:
Keyword research
Optimizing your website architecture
On-Page Search Engine Optimization
Keyword Research
Keyword research is one of the most vital parts of SEO to ensure you target keywords that are quite easy to rank for, have a reasonable search volume, and likely have a high conversion rate.
However, choosing keywords is more than just considering how easy it is to rank or how well it is being searched. But to choose the best keywords possible, buyer intent should be factored in.
Buyer intent in simple terms is how decided an internet user is in their decision to buy. For example, internet users who search for “beautiful kicks” are probably most likely in a debate within themselves or with others; they most likely aren’t ready to buy. They could be comparing products, checking reviews, etc. Well, I’ll say you should leave those for the critic pages. But if a user searches for “Nike air vapor max plus,” they are most likely shopping around for that particular pair of shoes looking for the best prices they can get, which indicates an intention of purchase.
There are three ways to go about E-commerce keyword research to identify search volume and buyer intent. They are;
Using Amazon for keyword research
Using Competitors for keyword research
Using paid SEO tools for Keyword research
Using Amazon for keyword research
Amazon is probably the largest E-commerce business in the world, visited by hundreds of millions of people daily, and also makes hundreds of billions in dollars yearly. Which shows that it is a website having high buyer intent. People do not just go there for sightseeing, they visit to buy.
Amazon Keyword Tool helps you to generate useful keywords using the Amazon search suggest function. When you input a “seed keyword” (any product you can think of in your selected niche) in the Amazon search box, you will start seeing search suggestions predicting the best matches for the entered words. Then, Keyword Tool pulls all the keyword suggestions generated by Amazon and presents it to you in a concise manner, mark all the keywords and add them to your list, then save that list of keywords for your personal use or even download into .CSV or .txt files. One drawback of this method is that Amazon doesn’t provide search volume for keywords, which is very important in our keyword selection. However, you can use other paid SEO tools to get finer details, which we will examine shortly.
Using Competitors for keyword research
Looking at high ranking competitors in search results can be a good idea as you can use them to get keyword ideas. It goes in two directions, however. You could;
Steal your competitor’s keywords to compete for rankings in the same search results.
Find and begin targeting keywords that have not yet been targeted by competitors.
Although a competitor outranking you doesn’t necessarily mean that they have better keywords. They may have a higher domain authority than you, giving them priority in searches.
Before looking for competitor keywords, you should know what keywords you are already ranking for. A free SEO tool, e.g., Google AdWords, will help you to see what kind of pages are generating the most attention for your website. Then you can proceed to analyze competitors. Your competitors aren’t every business that sells a similar product or renders similar service to you. Instead, you’re going to be focusing on the businesses that already have a good rank in the keywords and phrases that you want to rank for.
Your research will hopefully give you a list of five to ten competitors in your industry that is ranking for the kind of terms that you want people to use when they’re searching for you. Now that you have that list, the next step is to look for keywords that those competitors are ranking for that you’re not. SEO tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush can help you discover important areas that your content does not cover. This will enable you to develop proper contents to fill up this gap with your next digital content. There’s usually a lot of keywords related to you, so there is a good chance that you won’t be able to rank very high in all, so develop a list of keywords in order of importance to create preference.
Using paid SEO tools for Keyword research
Using Pro SEO tools can help you speed up and even automate your keyword researching, making it easy for you to target keywords for your e-commerce SEO. Although you can use free SEO tools like Google keyword planner, Ubersuggest, Google search console to aid your keyword research, there are additional features you will get from pro tools. And the great deal is that majority offer free trials, so if you feel they aren’t advanced enough, you can easily opt-out.
A few examples are Keyword tool pro, SEMrush, Ahrefs, KWFinder, Jaaxy, and many more.
SEO
Some of the special functions you can get from pro SEO tools is the Quoted Search Result (QSR) tool, a function that highlights how many websites are trying to rank for a particular keyword you searched. If competition were too high, it would be advisable to use other keywords, as extremely high competition will favor the best sellers. Jaaxy offers this special function.
Keyword difficulty (KD) is another function most pro SEO tools offer. KWFinder and Ahrefs keyword research tool are some of the pro tools that offer this function. KWFinder, by default, shows a Keyword Difficulty score next to every keyword, so it absolves you of the need to click on each keyword to see the difficulty score. Although this style can be vague and not specific enough. Ahrefs, on the other hand, tells you the exact amount of backlinks you will need to rank among searches on Google’s first page.
Search Volume helps to know how many people are searching for a particular keyword; too low searches probably mean there is no market, while extremely high searches mean that the market is already oversaturated. Pro SEO tools like Jaaxy, Keyword tool pro gives data on search volume to ensure that you pick a keyword with an optimal amount of searches for good click rates.
Competitor Analysis is a very special function that can be gotten from pro SEO tools; Keyword Tool Pro especially offers you this. You basically just need to input a competitor’s website, the tool will generate a list of keywords based on the website content, and you can see what makes your competitor rank higher than you.
SEMrush also shows you keywords that top businesses related to your search already rank for, not just showing you keyword ideas; this will give you a path to focus and help you streamline the keywords to work with. You only need to enter your competitor’s domain name, and you’ll get the top 5 keywords that your competitors are ranking for; you have the option to see more, and you’ll get a list of all of the keywords that the site or URL ranks for in their order of ranking.
Some pro tools are relatively cheaper than others, and SEO at this point may seem to not be your thing, but you can always hire SEO experts to tailor your needs according to what you want. Surely, this book has opened your mind.
Optimizing your website architecture (Why modern SEO is about UX)
Site architecture represents how your website is sorted into categories and sub-pages. An optimized website is very important for search engines. A good site structure makes it easy for search engine bots and crawling spiders to navigate each page on your website.
If pages aren’t properly linked together, these bots may not index them, or if they are hidden, they may not find them, which is contrary to the ideal nature of making every single page on your website readable by search engines. If your structure is very good, in fact, your site links will regularly appear in search results.
Apart from search engines, visitors to your website will also likely stay on your page if your website has a good structure because of the ease of navigation it offers them. All pages are interlinked such that users can reach each page with the least possible amount of without having to keep going back over and over again; better user experience (UX) translates to more sales.
Website architecture is vital for e-commerce businesses due to the high number of pages on your website, ranging from hundreds to thousands, especially upon expansion – adding new products and categories; your site structure gets even complicated.
Restructuring a website can be very messy even for professionals if it doesn’t have a standard architecture from the start.
When working on your site architecture, it is important to note that:
Your structure is kept simple and scalable
No page takes more than 3 clicks away from the homepage
Have short URLs that humans can easily understand.
Use high quality and attractive images; your product photos can appear in Google image search, essentially doubling your exposure.
Website Speed
Your website speed plays a huge role in SEO because it contributes greatly to the user experience on your website. Nearly half of internet users expect a page to load in 2 seconds at most, and if it takes longer, they tend to close the page or just open a new browser tab. One of Google’s ranking metric is User experience (UX), which is your website speed is a major part of your SEO.
To optimize website speed, you need to know your current site speed. Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a good tool to see how fast your site is.
Several reasons could cause a slow website ranging from slow hosts and poor server response time to very large images, crawlers, redirect issues, and many others. You should watch out for these and ensure they aren’t affecting your website.
Mobile-Friendly Websites
Google also uses mobile-first indexing, meaning your site rankings will depend on mobile performance because more than half of all internet traffic goes through mobile devices as more sophisticated mobile devices are being manufactured. So it is important to see that users enjoy the best mobile experience to maintain a high ranking in Google searches.
On-Page Search Engine Optimization
On-page SEO refers to all the measures you can take within your website to ensure that it ranks high enough and generates higher traffic in search engines. Some of the things to watch out for on-page SEO are;
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are small text-arrow paths, usually at the top of a page; they serve as secondary navigation. It allows users to know the exact location where they are while navigating your website. Knowing where you are on a website, plus the added ability to go to a previous page or category enables a better User experience (UX). Google also loves breadcrumbs because it helps to figure out how your website is structured. Breadcrumbs can also appear in the search result.
Secure Connection
Having a secure (HTTPS) connection is very important for ranking your e-commerce site. Your site security is important to Google before directing users to ensure encrypted browsing and safe navigation, preventing hackers from stealing personal information like passwords and credit card details.
Run a full SEO audit
E-commerce websites usually suffer from technical SEO issues due to many pages on a website. These issues can hamper performance and, in the process, give a poor user experience.
Things you should check out for when running an SEO Audit
Avoid duplicate content as Google might not index such pages.
Make sure you implement redirects properly to avoid slow performance
Poor redirects can also cause indexing issues as they lead to orphaned pages (pages with no links pointing to them), making it difficult for bots and crawlers to access them for indexing.
Avoid broken links, as Google will lower your rank if you usually have “error 404” because of your unreliability for searchers and the poor user experience it brings about.
Last but not least: Work on Link building
One of the strongest pointers to how well your website is optimized is the number of external links that point to it (backlinks). Without backlinks, it’s really hard to rank in a competitive niche. Backlinks are the most difficult part of your whole strategy as they drive traffic to your website. Although many business owners just buy backlinks from sellers to rank well in search results, it is important to try and make them organically, to save cost, and because it usually lasts longer than when you buy from sellers. Also, bought links can be bad, which will harm your website instead of ranking them higher.
Key Highlights
Understanding SEO’s Significance:
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a process that aligns website content with search engine signals to improve its visibility and ranking.
SEO is a highly effective digital marketing channel, driving a significant portion of online traffic, often surpassing social media.
Higher search result rankings lead to increased visibility and traffic, making SEO crucial for online businesses.
Keyword Research:
Keyword research is a fundamental aspect of SEO, helping identify relevant keywords that have reasonable search volume and buyer intent.
Buyer intent refers to the readiness of a user to make a purchase, making keyword choices based on user intent critical for conversion.
Keyword Research Methods:
Amazon Keyword Tool: Utilize Amazon’s search suggestions to find keywords with high buyer intent.
Competitor Analysis: Analyze keywords used by top-ranking competitors to identify keyword gaps.
Paid SEO Tools: Professional SEO tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs provide advanced keyword research capabilities, including search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitor analysis.
Website Architecture and UX:
Optimizing website architecture improves user experience (UX) and search engine indexing.
A well-structured site with clear navigation enhances both user engagement and search engine crawling.
A simple and scalable structure, short URLs, and high-quality images contribute to better user experience and improved rankings.
Website Speed and Mobile-Friendliness:
Website speed is crucial for both user experience and SEO rankings.
Google’s ranking algorithms consider user experience, including page loading speed.
Mobile-friendliness is essential, given the increasing use of mobile devices; Google’s mobile-first indexing prioritizes mobile performance.
On-Page SEO:
On-page SEO involves optimizing elements within your website to improve its search engine rankings.
Elements such as breadcrumbs, secure connections (HTTPS), and running a full SEO audit contribute to better rankings and user experience.
Running an SEO Audit:
An SEO audit identifies and addresses technical issues on an e-commerce website.
Avoid duplicate content, implement proper redirects, and fix broken links to improve website performance and user experience.
Link Building:
Link building is a critical aspect of SEO, involving the acquisition of external backlinks to your website.
Organic backlinks are preferred over purchased ones for long-term SEO success.
Backlinks from reputable sources improve a website’s authority and search engine rankings.
Continuous Efforts:
SEO is an ongoing process that requires continuous monitoring, optimization, and adaptation.
Regularly updating content, keeping up with algorithm changes, and refining strategies are essential for sustained success.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy where the marketing and sales departments come together to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts. Account-based marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target high-value accounts and turn them into customers.
Ad Ops – also known as Digital Ad Operations – refers to systems and processes that support digital advertisements’ delivery and management. The concept describes any process that helps a marketing team manage, run, or optimize ad campaigns, making them an integrating part of the business operations.
Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.
Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset.
The brand essence wheel is a templated approach businesses can use to better understand their brand. The brand essence wheel has obvious implications for external brand strategy. However, it is equally important in simplifying brand strategy for employees without a strong marketing background. Although many variations of the brand essence wheel exist, a comprehensive wheel incorporates information from five categories: attributes, benefits, values, personality, brand essence.
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond.
Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.
Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data.
Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
