Creating a Marketing Strategy for eCommerce: Ultimate Check-list

Marketing strategy is a long-term, forward-looking approach to planning with the fundamental goal of achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. That’s how Wikipedia describes it. But what’s behind those words? We offer you to dive into this definition and define key steps to take while working on it.
 

Step #1 Marketing strategy: Explore your product

Become your first customer
 

Personal experience

1. Use it yourself
2. Write a short review. What did you like and disliked, what can be improved?

Independent experience

1. Ask your friends, family and their friends to use your product
2. Collect their reviews
3. Explore reviews online about products relevant to yours
4. Create a chart of review to analyze

Step #2 Marketing strategy: Explore your audience

Take an in-depth look at who your customers are and what they want
 

Define your target audience

1. Segment it by personal criteria (location, age, gender, interests, language. etc.)
2. Segment it by professional criteria (job title, income level, experience
3. Describe each segment, estimate volume and potential profit
4. Define the need of each segment and their big goal (feeling they want to reach)
5. Define the possible concerns that stop the segments from becoming your customers
6. Create a buyers persona for each segment
7. Segment your products in accordance with the needs and concerns of the audience segments
8. Create an offer for each segment

Step #3 Marketing strategy: Explore your market

Research the potential of your product and perspective of your business
 

Market overview

1. Study market volume in terms of money, items sold and potential consumers separately
2. Research production volume a year in your country
3. Estimate import/export volume
4. Segment consumers by their purchasing capabilities (how much they spend yearly)
5. Study market trends of the last years
6. Make a list of market participants and estimate their shares by items sold and revenue

Demand analysis

1. Study the trends of searches relevant to your product
2. Count the number of search queries relevant to your product
3. Split queries by location
4. Make a list of short-tail queries
5. Make a list of long-tail queries

Step #4 Marketing strategy: Explore your competitors

Competitive analysis gives you insights about what they offer and what channels they use.
 

Identify your competitors

1. Analyze SERP for your targeted keywords
2. Use analytical services to find your competitors

Study competitors’ offer

Make a list of products and special offers with prices
Segment them by geographical location (physical and coverage)
Study their USPs (unique selling proposition)
 

Analyze competitors’ outreach

1. Research which segment of the audience they target
2. Find out if they have offline stores and take part in offline events
3. Research if they are a part of a bigger company
4. Study their stores in Google Cache
5. Study your competitors mentions online
6. Estimate their marketing budgets
7. Learn their ad texts
8. Subscribe to their newsletters
9. Find out what is the most visited page of their websites
10. Follow their social media
11. Read the reviews about your competitors (products and services)
12. Make this monitoring regular

Step #5 Marketing strategy: Come up with a unique message

Review all gathered data to build up the core value of your business and product
 

Conduct SWOT profile

1. Find your strengths and build on them
2. Find your weaknesses and resolve them
3. Find opportunities and exploit them
4. Find your threats and avoid them

Come up with your USP

1. Separate one unique value of your product (or service) based on the previous analysis
2. Close one big concern of the target audience based on the previous analysis
3. Showcase your excellence which your competitors do not have
4. Back up your statements with measurable numbers

Step #6 Marketing strategy: Define channels

Sort out what channels will work best to achieve strategic goals
 

1. Research each channel from the following list and measure their effectiveness for your business
   1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
   2. Content marketing
   3. Referral Marketing
   4. Events
   5. Content Marketing
   6. Public relations (PR)
   7. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising
   8. Retargeting
   9. Media buying
   10. Email marketing
   11. Influencer marketing
   12. Social Media Marketing
   13. Affiliate marketing
   14. Community building
   15. Customer success (support)

Step #7 Marketing strategy: Set up marketing goals

Figure out is how to measure the success of every effort you or your team are putting in
 

1. Follow SMART methodology
2. Set up goals for the year, quarter, month, week
3. Create one master plan and several minor plans for each channel

Step #7 Marketing strategy: Set up a marketing budget

Your goals have to meet the budget and vice versa
 

1. Estimate how much money it will take to reach the goals
2. Separate budgets for year, months and weeks
3. Amend the goals if achieving them will force you to exceed the budget

Closing

Marketing strategy is about setting up measurable goals and achieving them within a specified timeframe. We hope you will make good use of this guide and it will help you to define the key steps of building a master plan for your success. But if you still need assistance with taking your product to the market, we’re here to help.