15 Ecommerce Marketing Trends To Plan Your 2017 Budget

1. 15 Ecommerce Marketing Trends To Plan Your 2017 Budget

2. It’s already that time of year: • Time for holidays, food, family, and new year planning. • Being so close to the new year, I think it’s appropriate to take a look at the eCommerce marketing trends that have popped up in 2016 and will be even more prevalent in 2017.

3. ECommerce Marketing Trends That Haven’t Changed Let’s face it; some things simply won’t change. You could call them “fundamentals”. Whatever your name for them, they are just as important in 2017 as they were in 2016.

4. 1 User-Generated Content

5. UGC will be a huge marketing trend in 2017 for eCommerce owners to increase their conversions.

7. Key Takeaway • 82% of shoppers say that UGC is extremely valuable to them when making a purchasing decision. • 70% of consumers trust reviews written by other customers above professionally written marketing content. • 70% of consumers consider product and brand recommendations from their social circles trustworthy and 46% trust online reviews posted by other customers. The best part about UGC is that you don’t have to create it! It takes some effort up front to encourage your customers to post it, but once you have a system in place it becomes quick and simple.

8. Key Thing Encourage your customers to take pictures of your products and share them using tactics like Instagram contests. Increase your conversions from your Instagram UGC using a tool like Photoslurp.

9. 2 Influencer Marketing

10. Influencer marketing is so effective because it’s basically free and works really well if you find the right people to work with. Why?

12. Key Takeaway • 92% of people trust recommendations from individuals (even if they don’t know them) over brands. • 74% of consumers use social media to make purchase decisions. The real challenge with influencer marketing is simply finding the right influencers. You can use tools like BuzzSumo or NinjaOutreach to help you find the best influencers for your brand.

13. Key Thing Influencer marketing can help you increase your reach and bottom line if you do it right. Create an influencer marketing strategy to get started.

14. 3 Mobile-Friendly Website

15. When you market your products on Facebook or Google, as much as 50% or more of the traffic you receive will be on a mobile device.

17. Key Takeaway • According to PewInternet.org, nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population has a mobile phone with Internet access and they use these devices to conduct the majority of their online searches. • It has to be fast – 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. That’s nearly half your traffic! • 74% of visitors were more likely to return to mobile friendly websites and 67% were more likely to buy from a mobile friendly website Making your website mobile-friendly isn’t just a good to-do. It’s a necessity to maximize your sales.

18. Key Thing If your website isn’t mobile-friendly or is slow to load, look into using a better website template or hiring a developer to work with you.

19. 4 Videos (Especially Live Ones)

20. Media has always been an important part of online marketing. Live videos, in particular, are especially effective at capturing attention.

22. Key Takeaway • People spend 3x longer watching Live video compared to video which is no longer Live. • Video posts have 135% greater organic reach than photo posts. • Unbounce (@Unbounce) reports that including video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80%. Periscope and Meerkat started the live video trend in marketing and Facebook has stolen their thunder with Facebook live, which now generates 8 billion live video views per day.

23. Key Thing Getting your face out there for people to associate with your brand is going to increase your bottom line. Get some basic video equipment and start recording live Facebook videos.

24. 5 Omni-Channel Selling

25. Omni-channel means selling your products on multiple marketplaces, or “channels”. This could mean your website, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Jet, etc.

27. Key Takeaway • Again, simply putting your products in new places may not seem like marketing – but it will certainly affect your sales. • multichannel shoppers shop more often and spend over 3 times more than single-channel shoppers.

28. Key Thing Take your products and put them on as many marketplaces as you can. Use a resource like ChannelApe to manage your inventory across these channels.

29. 6 User Experience

30. The user experience (UX) of your website is more important now than ever. If a user has a bad experience on your website, they probably won’t come back.

32. Key Takeaway • Use a strong hosting provider to ensure speed and stability. • Tell a story with your design to captivate your visitors. • Make your products easy to sort through with proper tags and better search bar functionality. • You can also post your website on various forums for others to review and provide feedback(Shopify has a section dedicated for this).

33. Key Thing Go through your website as if you were a customer, and shop like you would any other website. Notice what’s easy and what’s aggravating, and find ways to make the aggravating stuff easier.

34. 7 Content Marketing

35. Content marketing experienced its first “year of fame” in 2016, and it’s going to be even bigger in 2017. Because people hate being interrupted by ads, but love to consume content.

37. Key Takeaway • Over 200 million people have installed an ad blocker. It’s obvious people no longer want to be spammed by ads. Content gets around this. • Content marketing leaders experience 7.8 times more site traffic than non-leaders. Isn’t the point of marketing to get more traffic to your website? Content does it. • While content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing, it generates more than three times as many leads. It’s affordable and effective; what more can you ask for?

38. Key Thing Creating content is an important part of increasing traffic to your eCommerce site. Start a blog, podcast, or video series to begin establishing yourself as an authority in your niche.

39. 8 Feedback/Social Proof

40. Social proof has always been huge for marketers, and 2017 will be no different.

42. Key Takeaway • Over 70% of Americans say they look at product reviews before making a purchase. • Nearly 63% of consumers indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews. Psychology has proven that people like to go with the pack. If other people are doing it, chances are you’ll want to do it too.

43. Key Thing Social proof is going to be an important marketing trend in 2017. Start asking your customers for reviews, and give them more reasons to write one (like loyalty or rewards points, discounts, or free shipping).

44. 9 Remarketing

45. Remarketing is going to be another big eCommerce marketing trend in 2017.

47. Key Takeaway • it allows you to show your product to your customers multiple times (aka “touch points”) as they move across the internet. • Every time you see the ad pop up again is another touch point. That’s remarketing. The science says it takes, on average, 7 touch points before a consumer buys a product. Remarketing makes it easy to acquire those extra touch points.

48. Key Thing Get your products in front of your customers multiple times through remarketing.

49. 10 Customer Research

50. Knowing your audience has been a “marketing trend” since the dawn of marketing.