8 Ways a Marketing Agency Can Help an Ecommerce Business

A good marketing agency may be able to help ecommerce businesses grow more quickly and alleviate stress for the entrepreneurs who own those businesses.

Almost every business owner wants his or her company to grow — to generate more sales, to expand into new or different industry segments, and to market in new ways that, in turn, generate more sales.

Business growth comes with its share of challenges too. With more sales there are more orders to process and more customer service responsibilities. With broader product lines, there will be more inventory to track and more accounting to be done. And with expanded, sales-generating marketing there might be new or different advertising options, search engine optimization updates, and social media and content marketing complete.

In fact, business growth can sometimes be overwhelming for small business owners, who must either hire more help or get more help from the outside.

In fact, business growth can sometimes be overwhelming for small business owners, who must either hire more help or get more help from the outside.

One example of getting help from outside may be to use a marketing agency to accomplish tasks that are time consuming or unfamiliar. There will certainly be a cost associated with hiring an agency, but in many cases, it will be worth it.

What follows are eight examples of how hiring one or more marketing agencies might help your ecommerce business grow and succeed.

Advertising

Marketing agencies are often superb at creating, buying, and trafficking advertising. And they are usually good at it for at least four reasons.

• They are experienced. Marketing agencies buy advertising for many companies. They have seen dozens or even hundreds of successful campaigns. In many cases, the agency will also be experienced at measuring the advertising effectiveness.
• They are organized. Agencies will provide detailed accounts of what you spent and take care of recording, monitoring, and analyzing everything.
• They will save you time. You won’t have to create ads, manage Google AdWords, or remember to update your affiliate program. An agency can do all of these things and save you time each week.
• They will save you money. Although this is not always true, an advertising agency may actually be able to save you money even when you add their fees on top of the media spend. Because they buy a lot of advertising, they can sometimes get better rates. And for things like pay-per-click advertising, their expertise means they may do a better job of optimizing keywords and campaigns.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is the practice of producing content like articles, graphics, or videos and distributing that content with the aim of attracting, engaging, converting, and retaining customers.

In a world full of advertising and promotional messages that inundate shoppers, content marketing is seen as a way of creating value. But content marketing can be hard to execute, especially for small and growing companies.

If you have to order products, merchandise your website, and answer customer emails, it can be hard to find time to also write an article for your blog too.

Marketing agencies can most certainly help. In fact, there are many emerging agencies that specialize in content marketing. These agencies will plan, create, and even publish content right on your blog or in social media.

Email Marketing

There are very few modern marketing tactics that are, in my experience, as effective as email marketing.

In fact, often it is possible to send an email and watch hourly or daily sales increase in response.

But very few small and mid-sized ecommerce businesses use email marketing well. Often all customers or visitors are lumped together in a single contact list. Marketing messages are sent to the entire group rather than personalized and segmented. And little is done to manage the list and optimize it for sales.

A good email-marketing agency can do all of these things.

Social Media Marketing

It is common for online stores to have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, a YouTube or Google+ account, and maybe even an Instagram profile. But it is the rare small and mid-sized business that uses these to resources to their full potential.

Doing so requires regular posts, looking for opportunities to engage with customers, and generally being on social media sites a lot.

Here again, employing a marketing agency that specializes in social media can save a significant amount of time and, possibly, generate better results.

Website Design and Development

Entrepreneurs turn to ecommerce for many reasons. Some open an online store because they can — they have the technical skills. But not every online retail business has an owner or employee that is skilled at designing and developing a modern ecommerce site or even at integrating that site with other services and systems.

Here again, marketing agencies may be able to help. In fact, there are a growing number of service providers that can rapidly build sites for you.

Photography and Videography

Product presentation is vital for selling products online. If a shopper doesn’t have a grasp on what a product looks like or feels like, she might not make a purchase or might buy the item only to return it later.

Having great product pictures and video is another easy-to-outsource task. Often marketing agencies will come to your warehouse, pick up the items to be photographed, take the pictures, and return everything right back to you.

Conversion Rate Optimization

There are many marketing agencies that now offer conversion rate optimization services. CRO relies on testing and data collection to suggest changes to web content that will, in turn, increase conversions. Put another way, CRO is the art and science of making more sales with your current site traffic.

There are many marketing agencies that now include conversion rate optimization services. CRO relies on testing and data collection to suggest changes to web content that will in turn increase conversions. Put another way, CRO is the art and science of making more sales with your current site traffic.

CRO can be very technical and it almost always requires setting up A/B tests or similar.