Marketing Guide For Small Online Retailers in 2021

In 2021, the e-commerce startups, online-only “micro-sellers”, and “solopreneurs” are booming and reshaping U.S. retail in the middle of the pandemic. A study shows a 77% YoY growth in “non-store retail” businesses in 2020, referring to the companies that sell goods online or directly to clients. Shopify’s online store creation rose 79% YoY in 2020. Many who were not selling before feel the push into entrepreneurship and opportunities as a way to adapt to the “gig economy”; others hope to compensate for the loss of job or income. Customer acquisition and conversion are the most critical to the success of an online retailer. Marketing thought-out the customer acquisition journey includes (1) driving the right traffic to the store, (2) effectively engage with visitors to convert to buyers, and (3) turn one-time customers to repeat loyal customers, and (4) retarget non-customers to convert to customers.

Google

• Google has 90.46% of the search engine market share worldwide;
• Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day, which is 5 billion+ searches each day;
• Google Shopping ads drive 75% of retail search ads spending and generate 85%+ of all clicks from google ads;
• Google’s email product has a 27% share of the global email market.

Google Free Resources (recommended by Shopify)

1. Google Places for Business is a free service that helps business owners share information about their stores, products, and locations (geographic or online) with interested shoppers when those shoppers search for products or types of businesses on various types of Google searches. To start head to Google.com/business and click ‘START NOW’ at the top right corner of the web page.
2. Google Search Console — Use free Search Console to monitor Google Search results data for your website. This tool will allow retailers to update sitemaps, submit URLs to Google. For Shopify merchants, once they sign up for a Shopify store, Google will send an email to help merchants go through each step of optimizing your site.

Search ads allow merchants to get in front of people with buyer intent. Creating a relevant search ad is the key to having a customer seeing your ad and click it.

Display ads network reaches 90% of internet users, including outside Google.com. It is a powerful retargeting tool, offering visitors more information to reconsider the purchase and finish the transactions.

Google & Shopify

The partnership between Google and Shopify allows over 1.7 million Shopify merchants to have products listed on Google Shopping for free with a few simple steps; and have products featured across Google’s 1 billion daily “shopping journeys” taking place on Search, Images, Maps, Lens, and YouTube.

Smart Shopping Ads set up automated and optimized campaigns for small Shopify merchants to get started. Google AI learns your business, pulls keywords and images from your store, runs ads through search, display, re-marketing, and youtube ads. It optimizes and automatically improves the ads’ performance based on the following 3 matrics:

a. Customer acquisition cost, e.g. $7/PB for an average $50/order;

b. Traffic conversation rate, how many UV -> 1 PB, e.g. 2% conversion rate, 50 visitors to convert to 1 PB, if CTR=5%, need 1k ads impressions to convert to 1PB;

c. Keep optimizing qualified audiences with keyword targeting, impression#, and CTR.

Smart shopping ads are also available in Google merchants center.

Shopify sellers can link to Google’s “Shopping Graph”, a new tool that uses machine learning to gather prices, reviews, and product videos from multiple brands and retailers’ websites to better inform shoppers. It is a real-time dataset, connecting “people with over 24 billion listings from merchants across the web and helps them find products available to buy right now.

Google & WooCommerce

06/09/2021, Google announced that WooCommerce’s 4.4 million merchants now have the ability to easily integrate their product inventory across Google in just a few clicks, and for free. The product is ready for WooCommerce merchants to use globally.

“Making it easier for retailers who work with partners like WooCommerce to integrate with Google shopping features across Search, Shopping, Image Search and YouTube means that retailers of all sizes will have even more ways to get discovered. And shoppers will have even more choice as they make their shopping decisions. WooCommerce merchants can upload their products to Google, create free listings and ad campaigns, and review performance metrics — all without leaving their WooCommerce dashboard.” Smart shopping ads are also available to Woo merchants.

Shopify and WooCommerce do a good job helping merchants get started with Google ads in a simple and straightforward way through seamless integration; also providing educational content (videos, instructions, links). Google is also integrating with the other Storefront partners such as Wix, BigCommerce, and more.

Once merchants grow bigger, managing Google Ads can be a full-time job. Strategizing, managing, and optimizing Google Ads are not something merchants can do on the side and expect ads to be successful. Some companies hire a PPC manager (full-time or part-time) who is in charge of all digital marketing efforts (SEO, email marketing, content development); others hire agencies; some hire freelancers on Fiverr or Upwork.

Google Ads Agencies

Reputable agencies make it a priority to understand clients’ business, industry, competitors, to be part of the clients’ marketing team; they are experts in the field, keep updated with what’s new, and Google certified. Here is the database with all certified Google agency partners.

SEO

Ecommerce SEO is generating more organic (free, natural) traffic from sites like Google, Amazon, Bing, and Yahoo. It’s all about ensuring your product pages appear among those top organic search results. The so-called “endless shelf” in eCommerce does not guarantee discovery and clicks. A study found that only 4.8% of searchers make it to the second page of search results; 1.1% to Page 3. The top result grabs 32.5% of traffic on average, the second result grabs only 17.6% and less than 5% by result six. Shopify helps merchants improve SEO with step-by-step instructions.

Keyword Research Tools such as Semrush on Google (recommended by Shopify) and Helium 10 on Amazon are helpful for improving keyword research and SEO. In addition to the basics shown above, publishing the relevant content (content) and running ads (google ads) with relevant keywords can help improve the ranking as well.

Social Media Marketing (Social Commerce)

Social commerce was an $89.4 billion market in 2020 and is projected to grow to $604.5 billion in the next few years. In the U.S., social commerce sales are forecasted to reach $36 billion in 2021, up from $26.7 billion in 2020, and $19.2 billion in 2019, according to a January report by eMarketer.

Every business is different and your ideal customer has their favorite social media channels to learn from. It is critical to understand where the customers are. When started, one to three channels are likely possible to do well, and as you grow you can expand. Here are the popular social media channels:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn (B2B professional)
• Pinterest (relatively small)
• YouTube (Google)
• Tiktok (new and hot)

The #1 best-selling clothing product on Amazon for early 2021 was a pair of high waist leggings that went viral on TikTok. “Tiktok leggings” is still one of the most searched terms on Amazon. The video was posted by Lauren Wolfe in November 2020, has more than 2.5 million views on TikTok. The hashtag #tiktokleggings has 272 million views, and #amazonleggings has 175 million. The hashtag #amazon has a total of ten billion views on TikTok.

TikTok is not only a viral marketing channel, it also added shops in 2020. Social commerce allows consumers to purchase from a store within the native social media experience. Facebook and Instagram also added Shop in 2020. Mark Zuckerberg claimed over 1 million active Shops and more than 250 million MAUs on Facebook. Pinterest released buyable Pins earlier in 2015 and added a new “Shopping List” feature in June 2021). YouTube is testing an ad feature that will recognize products in videos, then serve them directly to viewers.

Completing a purchase in a social media app is still fairly new for consumers. According to a 2020 eMarketer survey, 18.3% of U.S. adults had bought something through Facebook in the past year, 11.1% for Instagram. 70.4% of respondents said they had not purchased through any social media platform that month. There are potential opportunities to offer a social eCommerce product (a tool, solution, service, or building KOLs) to help small merchants with a primary focus on Tiktok, Facebook/Instagram.

Social Media Management Tools:

• Hootsuite — Manage all of your social media in one place (the global leader in social media management, trusted by more than 18 million customers and employees at over 80% of the Fortune 1000);
• Buffer — A simpler and easier way to schedule posts, track the performance of your content, and manage all your accounts in one place (More than 75,000+ companies trust Buffer);
• Meet Edgar — The social media scheduling tool that grows with you;
• Sprout Social — Social media management made easy (Trusted by 25,000+ world-class brands and organizations of all sizes);
• OnlyPult — helps you schedule your social media posts, blogs, and messengers;
• Linktree — connect your audience with all content with one link;
• Bitly — Create custom shortened links for social media;
• Loomly — Content and brand management platform for marketers; team collaboration, content publish, and performance measurement — all in one place. (used by 11,600+ marketing teams around the world);
• SocialPilot — social media scheduling, marketing, and analytics (loved by 5500+ brands)
• Sendible — social media management tool for agencies, brands. (Over 20,000+ agencies, marketers, and brand managers rely on Sendible to amplify their brand stories);
• Crowdfire — Social Media Management tool for brands, businesses, agencies, and individuals all around the world. (19 million+ users around the world);
• TikTok Scheduler — Self-claimed #1 Tiktok scheduling tool

Shopify & Facebook/Instagram

The Facebook app on Shopify also allows merchants to sell on Instagram and Facebook as well as market across Facebook users. There are apps and integrations that connect your inventory, marketing, customer, and sales data into a central database.

Shopify & Tiktok

“Building a successful brand means Shopify merchants need to be wherever their customers are spending time, and today that means growing their social commerce presence. The TikTok channel allows merchants to create and connect their TikTok For Business account and deploy In-Feed shoppable video ads directly within Shopify. Merchants select which product they would like to feature, and video ads are automatically generated that drive to their Shopify stores for checkout. Ready-made templates designed specifically for commerce mean merchants of any size can take advantage of the TikTok channel using their existing imagery or video.

Shopify & Pinterest

Pinterest expanded Shopify integration, allowing more than 1.7 million Shopify merchants around the world to have an easy way to bring their products to Pinterest and turn them into shoppable Product Pins that are discoverable across the platform, reaching the platform’s 459 million users. Shopify merchants advertising on Pinterest through the Shopify platform will also now have access to Dynamic Retargeting, “which will enable them to re-engage with Pinners who have already expressed interest in their products on Pinterest”.

Email Marketing

According to HubSpot, 40% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are most critical to their content marketing success; 73% of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email; 99% of consumers check their email every day and it is by far the preferred way to receive updates from brands. EDM is an effective way to create personalized content, communicate with customers, send out campaigns for self-promotion, and conduct surveys & collect feedback. Popular email marketing tools:

• HubSpot Email Marketing: HubSpot, best known as the marketing automation platform, offers a free email marketing tool that can support a lot of a small business’s transactional email needs.
• Constant Contact: All the Tools You Need to Succeed for Marketing Your Small Business. #1 email marketing tool for small businesses. Create branded emails, sell products, build a website, and make it easy for people to find you — all from a single platform.
• Sender: one of the best free email marketing tools in the market with features to ensure deliverability and robust analytics. It lets you create stunning newsletters without any HTML knowledge.
• Sendinblue: a marketing communication platform that features both email marketing tools and additional functions such as CRM and landing page creation.
• Omnisend: an ecommerce marketing platform that integrates all your communication platforms in one place. Its free plan includes only email to support the email marketing efforts of small and medium businesses.
• MailChimp: a leader in email marketing tools. The free plan provides you with basic email marketing features such as email creation and scheduling. The smart recommendations feature provides valuable audience insights to optimize marketing efforts.
• Campaign Monitor: Email marketing and automation tool. Loved by over 2 million marketers at 250,000 businesses around the world.
• Aweber: Email marketing for small businesses; also offers landing page builder and push notification.

Influencer Marketing & KOLs

Social networks like Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have their own set of influencers with different demographics. Even the largest eCommerce sites such as Amazon attracts influencers to drive external traffic to the shopping site. Amazon Influencer Program offers an affiliate fee for qualified influencers; Amazon Fashion launched the Drop, a manufacture-on-demand by popular trendy fashion designers. SHEIN.com, with its powerful influencer program on Tiktok, surpassed Amazon as the most downloaded app in the U.S. According to a 2019 survey by MediaKit:

• 80% of marketers find influencer marketing effective;
• 71% of marketers rate the quality of customers and traffic from influencer marketing as better than other marketing sources;
• 89% of marketers say influencer marketing ROI is as good or better than other marketing channels;
• 65% of marketers plan to up their influencer marketing budgets in 2019.

In addition to celebrities with massive followings, brands are increasingly tapping other key influencer types, including micro- and nano-influencers, kidfluencers, gaming influencers, and virtual (computer-generated) influencers. The rise of TikTok boosts the popularity of “everyday influencers”.

Influence.co estimated the Instagram Influencer costs in 2017 (price may be higher today), showing a network of micro/nano-influencers can be cost-effective to build authentic social content.

• The overall average price was $271 per post;
• The average price for micro-influencers with fewer than 1,000 followers was $83 per post;
• The average price for influencers with more than 100,000 followers was $763 per post

Influencer networks and agencies:

• Creator.IQ — uses an algorithm to identify the right creators for brands. Influencer marketing agencies.
• Grin — is the top Influencer Marketing Platform for fast-growing brands, connecting with the best influencers using 33 million+ recruitment suite, gain attribution, access reporting, relationship management, seamless eCommerce workflows, influencer payment, and product seeding management, and more.
• The Influencer Marketing Factory — works with brands on their influencer marketing campaigns, starting from understanding their KPIs, identifying the right influencers, working on the campaign narrative, managing the execution, and finalizing with tracking and in-depth reporting.
• Linqia — the (self-claimed) #1 Influencer Marketing Solution For Big Brands & Enterprises. We’ve Driven Successful Influencer Campaigns With 500+ Leading Organizations. Award-winning Service.
• Tagger — The (self-claimed) #1 data-driven Influencer Marketing platform, all-in-one influencer marketing platform, and social listening tool (that’s actually easy to use).
• Influence.co — a directory and portfolio site for influencers to showcase themselves. Their pricing model focuses on helping influencers promote their business, so brands like yours can use it for free to reach out to influencers. Each influencer profile features work they’ve done with brands in the past and all the channels on which they’ve built their audience.
• IZEA — The software platform used by leading brands and agencies. Find, hire, collaborate, pay and measure your influencer marketing campaigns. Search 10M+ Influencers.
• Cohley — Content platform connects brands with 110,000+ influencers & Creators. Offer Full-Service Influencer Campaigns.
• MediaKix — Full-service influencer marketing agency. Seld-claimed industry leader, we match world-class brands and top influencers to produce impactful social media campaigns.
• The Shelf — fully-managed, full-funnel influencer marketing. Run unicorn influencer campaigns shaped by data-driven insights. Tell us your marketing goals and we’ll dream up campaigns with a custom strategy to target different segments of your audience. Our campaigns will guide your customers through each stage of their decision-making process and move them along the path-to-purchase.
• Influencer Marketing Hub — Self-claimed #1 resource for Influencers, Agencies & Platforms. Influencer Marketing Platform Reviews, Tools, Templates & Case Studies.
• Viral Brands — Promote brands To 1000s of community influencers for 100% organic opt-in engagement. Specialize in making brands and campaigns go viral.

Product Reviews

The best marketers and sales reps for an online retailer are their existing customers. According to BrightLocal, 85% of consumers trust online reviews are much as personal recommendations — the single most trustworthy and credible source of “advertising”. HubSpot Research found that 60% of consumers believed customer reviews were either trustworthy or very trustworthy. Our partner Modalyst also suggested that a good number of reviews with a 4.0+ star next to the product can boost customer confidence in making a purchase of the product.

Most email marketing and CRM tools offer review management. Shopify merchants can add apps such as Product Reviews (by Shopify), Judge.me, Loox Product Reviews & Photos, Stamped.io, Yotpo. Ali Reviews and AliExpress Review Importer (by Judge.me) export reviews from AliExpress to dropshipping products.