Pre-Launch Marketing Strategies For the eCommerce Sites
Table of Contents
Building Profitable Businesses, Not Just Good Websites
eCommerce websites have one predominant goal: they need to generate business all while boosting the brand. That’s why the websites we build are designed to become lucrative retail channels, and, at the same time, feature a thoroughly engaging, branded look and feel.
Whether you are launching a new ecommerce site, re-platforming an existing one, or just looking to update your current online presence, you need a partner who understands your business and its online potential. A partner who works with you to develop a targeted online retail strategy, defines the metrics to accurately measure results, and creates a site that elegantly meets all requirements.A partner, who knows not only website design and development but also project management, business analysis, search engine marketing, information architecture, user interface, and quality control.
included vague responses, such as:
- Social Media
- SEO
- Friends & Family
- Paid Advertising
Here is why:
- Attracts New Customers: It ensures your site has a search-engine friendly architecture, which in turn rapidly generates traction and targeted traffic.
- Increases Sales: It plans for a streamlined sales process, which in turn makes conversion rates and average ticket prices soar.
- Boosts Customer Loyalty: It accounts for an enjoyable, comfortable shopping experience, which in turn leads to satisfied users who gladly return for more.
- Enhances Customer Service: It plans for the integration of innovative ecommerce tools, user communities, and online support, which in turn help keep customers engaged and satisfied.
- Reduces Costs and Increases Efficiencies: It helps to improve administration efficiency and maximize process automation, which in turn drives administration costs down.
- Supports the Brand: It provides for a professional style guide, that reflects your corporate identity and promotes your brand across all on- and offline sales channels. Plus, it plans for efficient ecommerce marketing solutions, boosting brand recognition among your most relevant target groups.
- Scales as Needed: It plans for maximum flexibility and scalability, which in turn guarantees that your site seamlessly accommodates upcoming requirements.
promote their StartUp in the pre-launch phase –
- Get involved with local blogs.
- Find power bloggers who work in the space and offer them something (doesn’t need to be money), in exchange for writing about you. Treat them nice and they can work wonders for you.
- Get an HD video done from Shakr Media – costs a tiny fraction (US$30 – US$50) of professional cost and you can do it yourself, easily. It’s designed for people like you.
- A local celebrity endorsement can work wonders. They must also be passionate about what you are doing, but you may be surprised at the response. Local translation service, Flitto, recently got a stunning endorsement from Psy, as he loved / uses their translation service.
- Speak with local PR agents – good ones will have a chat with you, before they charge. This can give you good insights and some solid leads for PR without spending anything.
- If you are asking for a favor, be sure to offer something in return – no on likes a take-take-taker!
- Make all approaches personal. Sending a bulk mail out to 500 media people will result in 1-2 posts … or none. If you do some research and make a proper / personal approach to a few top people it will pay off (trust me, I have experienced this first hand).
- Make damn sure you understand the local market. Things you take for granted could be major stumbling blocks that end in failure., if you are operating in an unfamiliar market. There will be tips on social media from locals – befriend a few who know what they are talking about – you may event stumble across your future marketing manager for that given country / region.
- Twitter / Facebook – be consistent in the message you are sending out to the world about your company / idea / service. And be responsive to questions / feedback. And – don’t spam your networks!
- YouTube / Quora / Google+ / LinkedIn / SlideShare / etc — These platforms offer good, free, options for promotion and are not all labor intensive.
- Word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing tool – make sure you are nice and professional. Think about customer service and retention from before you launch, and be ready when customer acquisition ramps up.
- You don’t get anything for free (so at some point you will have to dig into your pocket for your marketing). But, to get started you can achieve a lot on a very small budget.
Landing Page
Landing page is very important in pre-launch marketing and it plays very crucial role in all pre-launch marketing execution. We need to be very careful while designing the holding page for the site.
If you have the logo so you can create a good theme for your holding page and start marketing it . Use very good communication method here and highlight the social media profiles and some good call to action buttons on your holding page. You can use following thing for the call to action
- Use email subscription box to create the early user database and connect it with mailing software like mailchimp, vertical response etc.
- Use generate coupon option to share the coupons and discount
- Give discounts for the social media share
Social Media
Make sure you create profiles on every major social media platform like Facebook .Twitter , LinkedIn.
Social media strategy differs according to the nature of business, target audience , type of product, etc. . Make sure that you create enough buzz in the social space before you go live.
Blogging
You can start with blogging very early it will give the whole idea about the consumer behavior and will help to create a better community. Blog helps in SEO . I have seen bogs are the best and proven method for the content marketing and you can blog around your market and make them aware about your presence.
Infographics
You can create some good inforgraphics in your domain and share it to various media . You can use the pintrest for the same. Try to make some informative infographics chances of them to be the viral are more .Visual content impacts more so you can promote it through social media also.
Video / youtube
Videos play very crucial role in pre launch , create some good videos about the business you can build the introductory video about your company, talk about your products and some unique offerings .Videos are most important to make the early decision and for brand improvement also. You can use YouTube to market it .
To decide the best channel of communication while formulating the pre launch marketing strategies for the eCommerce site one should have the clear understating about their business, product & customers. You can measure the effect of these pre-launch marketing strategies with various ways like web visitors of the website, Facebook likes , twitter followers, email subscribers, etc.
There is a lot of work that goes into a full marketing plan. For entrepreneurs who are just starting out with the dream of being “the next big thing” it’s important to see what kind of planning goes into successful entry in the market.
