What do you think is the most important reason for the success of an eCommerce business?
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- A wide range of products?
Yes, customers love options. - A good website?
Of course, it’s like your actual shop – you need to keep it appealing. - Excellent customer service?That’s everything! Customer service is the key to the success of any business.
- A wide range of products?
Imagine you have got all three—great customer service, website, and products, and your eCommerce store is still sinking… what could be the possible reason?
You might have the world’s best products, but how will you take them to the people who will appreciate them? The answer is marketing. While eCommerce growth and success depend upon a whole lot of factors ranging from the tools and platforms to brand reputation and customer satisfaction, the role of marketing is pivotal in taking your brand to the next level.
The world of eCommerce is evolving at a staggering pace and staying in the know of the latest trends and advancements has never been more important. Customer expectations have massively changed. Those changes necessitate businesses to be on the lookout for novel marketing approaches. However, the core of marketing always remains to win the customers’ trust which is not a mean feat. Understanding customer needs, shopping preferences, purchase trends, behavioral patterns, emotions, and psychology helps you devise a winning strategy for your e-commerce success.
This article sheds light on four important aspects of eCommerce customer psychology (often referred to as the 4 ‘P’s) and how they impact the customer experience, loyalty, and retention in the long run.
What are the 4 ‘P’s in eCommerce marketing?
It refers to the four major factors that act as the pillars of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion.
Product: It’s what you sell, provide, or offer. It might be a good, service, etc.
Price: This refers to the product price, service charges, shipment, and transaction fees if any, and how this pricing impacts the customer experience.
Place: It refers to both the location-based factors as well as the channels of distribution.
Promotion: It refers to the advertising and marketing strategies that you adopt to popularize your eCommerce store and the products it sells.
These parameters might look easy at first glance, but it requires a great eye for detail to perfect these 4 Ps and align your marketing efforts on the same page.
Let’s dive into the graphic details of each of these 4Ps and understand how you can apply this to the growth of your eCommerce store.
#1 Perfecting the first ‘P’ – ‘Product’
E-commerce is all about the products you offer and how you position them. You might sell footwear, fashion accessories, or an Ed Tech subscription service—regardless of what you sell, three major factors determine the success of your product
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- The problem solved by your product (or the purpose your product serves)
- The quality of your product
- Product content
Purpose served by your product:
To create a stunning product and make more customers buy it, it’s very important to ask yourself these questions:
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- What problem does your product solve?
- How to make your product better?
- Why should your customers buy it from you?
- What is the biggest benefit of your product?
- What’s the unique selling point of your product?
- How different is your product from that of your competitors?
Answers to these questions will not only help you to get an idea of the strengths and shortcomings of your product but will also help you define your next best steps. Your product goals directly define your marketing outcomes. Well-defined goals help you understand how to create a successful eCommerce business. If you need to accomplish your revenue goals your product should help solve your users’ problems better than your peers and competitors.
Product Quality
If you want to stand apart in the huge crowd of competition, your product quality should do all the talking for you. Your product quality not only sets your brand apart but also acts as the USP factor that boosts your eCommerce conversions and sales.
But it doesn’t stop right there; your visitors should know the quality before even they buy your product. Perhaps the quality should entice them to buy the product immediately. Wondering how to achieve this? That’s where product content comes in.
Product content
You should leverage content to clearly and vividly emphasize the quality of your product and its benefits.
Your product content can make or break your brand. Product content provides you with a chance to showcase your product quality and authenticity. You can tell your customers why they should choose your brand and why you are a perfect fit for them with the help of highly effective and well-optimized product content.
Besides being rich, the content needs to be simple and easy to understand. Guess what? A recent survey states that over 60% of online shoppers purchase a product purely because of their high-quality product content.
You need to optimize every part of your product content to drive maximum engagement and conversions.
How to optimize eCommerce product pages through content?
Here are the different parts of eCommerce product content that you need to optimize effectively to drive higher product page engagement and conversion:
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- Product image
- Specifications
- Product Description
- Product images
- CTA buttons
- Social proof
- Product recommendations
#2 ‘Price’ – The second ‘P’ of marketing
Among all the 4 ‘P’s, the most crucial one is the pricing. Fixing your product prices is tricky. It needs to be competitive, profitable, as well as advantageous for the shoppers.
In the highly competitive space, of the eCommerce world today, customers are empowered with overwhelming choices and options. If your product is high-priced, your customers will readily move on to something else that’s cheaper and affordable, irrespective of the quality.
There’s another side to the story too. If you lower your profit margins to stay ahead in the competition curve, your authenticity becomes questionable too. Thus pricing your product right gets tricky and complicated, but when done right, it can become a win-win for both you and your customers.
Here are some questions that will help you do the right pricing for your eCommerce products:
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- What’s the lowest price that you can set for your products without hurting your profits?
- On the other hand, what’s the highest price that your consumers would be willing to pay for your product?
- How do your customers react to price changes and fluctuations?
- What prices do your industry leaders offer?
- How are your prices compared to your direct competitors?
#3 Place – The third ‘P’ of eCommerce marketing:
In eCommerce marketing, place refers not only to the actual location but also to the digital channels and marketplaces where you can reach out to your potential customers.
It’s important to strengthen your online presence across all channels, social media platforms, and marketplaces. Because one customer would like to shop on Instagram, while the other would rely on Google reviews. You need to make your products available across all these platforms wherever your customers are likely to buy.
While you choose the target platforms for your omnichannel marketing campaigns, it’s important to understand the nature of the platform and its users and how you can materialize the platforms.
Platforms like LinkedIn might not be a good fit for an apparel seller and Tiktok will be a misfit for an Ed-tech product. Identify the right places where you can find your customers and engage them, rather than trying to bring your customers to your place.
Here are some questions that will help you uncover ad placement insights for your e-commerce marketing:
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- Which marketplace has the biggest base of your customers?
- Which online channels already sell your product?
- Which marketplace is worth investing your budget in?
- Which are the distribution channels that work for your competitors?
- Which online source drives the highest traffic to your eCommerce store?
Geographical location is another aspect of this attribute – ‘place’. Wondering how this impacts your online sales? Surprisingly, location-based eCommerce personalization influences a shopper’s purchase decision to a larger extent.
For example, if it’s a rainy season in a particular state and you sell umbrellas or raincoats online, it’s the best time of the year to announce additional offers to that location alone.
#4 ‘Promotion’ – The most important of the 4 ‘P’s:
The core of marketing lies in how well you promote the highlights of your product, service, or your brand overall.
Even after fulfilling all the above three items in this 4 ‘P’s checklist, you still need the 4th ‘P’ – promotion to convert all your efforts into outcomes. This is what makes promotion the most important part of your marketing strategy. Wondering how to successfully run an eCommerce business? These insights will help you.
Here’s how promotions work for your eCommerce store:
1) It’s a one-time effort. Creating a stunning eCommerce store and promoting it well will get you long-term benefits when done right.
2) Happy customers will do all the talking for you. This is a side benefit of promotions.
3) You should know how to leverage happy testimonials, reviews, and positive ratings. Highlighting them in your marketing collaterals and featuring them on your eCommerce store not only enhances the trust factor but also urges your shoppers to take action immediately.
4) Satisfying existing customers is a hidden gem that is often overlooked. That will cut the cost of acquiring a new customer drastically and act as an efficient tool for organic promotions.
5) Running ‘Refer and Earn’ campaigns is an efficient promotion technique that helps you grow your brand’s visibility. It’s a win-win-win for you, your existing customers, and the new ones!
6) Build a set of rich digital assets like customer testimonial videos, images of satisfied customers using the product happily, etc. Promote these digital assets across all the social media channels and add them to your email campaigns too.
7) Promote your competitive advantages. Draw out the differences between your competitors’ products and yours, and highlight the additional benefits of buying them from you.
8) Leverage third-party review platforms for your promotions. Submit your products to relevant review sites and rating platforms. Feature their recommendations and acknowledgment on your social media handles and eCommerce store alongside your products.
9) Promote the USPs of your products or offerings. Promoting your unique selling propositions not only helps you sell more products but also contributes to building a positive reputation for your brand in the marketplace. Over time, this USP will convert into your brand’s value, and your customers will recognize your brand by your core value.
10) Influencer marketing is the order of the day in today’s marketing. Identify relevant influencers for your offerings and reach out to them with giveaway campaign ideas. A recent study states that in 2021, more than 40% of product-based eCommerce businesses have started investing in influencer marketing.