Ecommerce and Digital Marketing: What are they and What’s the difference?

The internet has gone through major shifts over the years, with ecommerce and digital marketing proving to be central to the future of global trade. Their impact is seen across all industries and many consider them revolutionary tools for modern businesses. It’s becoming clear that they are important in our digital world and this article will explore their features to try and understand the reasons for the huge demand.

Ecommerce and Digital Marketing: Transforming Traditional Retail

Ecommerce has proven its disruptive nature, fundamentally changing the way consumers shop and businesses operate. Traditional commerce and marketing were often considered exclusive, being both expensive and slow to operate. Since the emergence of ecommerce and digital marketing, we have seen numerous improvements to operations, with countless success stories. We will go through both below to explain why they’re so important in today’s digital world.

Suggested Reading: Is Ecommerce worth it?‍

Ecommerce global growth rates

Objective of e-commerce:

The main objectives of e-commerce are best seen through comparison. Traditional businesses with standard store fronts often have limitations such as location and high overhead costs. If we attempted to expand our physical business, we can expect high investment requirements and a great deal of uncertainty to match. E-commerce on the other hand, eliminates a lot of the capital requirement and scales without the need for additional infrastructure. Not only is an e-commerce business more economical, it can also grow to be a major component to your business.

objective of e-commerce diagram

Benefits of e-commerce for customers:

Customers are central to e-commerce, there must be some sort of benefit for customer or there would be no real purpose. E-commerce is many ways is an improvement to a customers shopping experience. This list describes how customers see improvements to their shopping experience and how those benefits compare to traditional shopping.

1. Convenience: Customers can shop anytime, without any limitations created by physical store hours and with the added benefit of privacy. These merits add a great deal of flexibility to the shopping experience and also eliminate fixed hours, travel time and long in-store waits. The real advantage is for customers on tight schedules and those that are looking for unique products unavailable to them in their current locations.
2. Improved Information: Whenever customers go shopping online, they can expect clear product descriptions and reviews to support their decisions. They also have the ability to compare prices, seek out variations and find alternatives brands and qualities. Customers have all the time in the world to shop around and find the perfect store and perfect product without the unnecessary stress of making an impulse buy. Naturally, the process of improving the shopping experience demands we improve our presentation.
3. Limitless Options: Open access to countless stores around the world allow shoppers to explore their options from an endless variety of brands. This grants them access to stores that are typically unavailable in their cities and allows them to compare features like prices and delivery times. Likewise, brands can reach no customers from across the globe.
4. Personalization: When shopping offline, it’s difficult to find exactly what you’re looking for and brands do not always take your personal preferences as a priority. Ecommerce helps businesses reach their specific audience and to refine their offerings to match their unique demands. This extra layer of personalization ensures that businesses find their perfect customers and customers find what they’re looking for.
5. Complete Customer Service: Having a complete customer service function is now standard in ecommerce. Ecommerce stores are expected to have secure payment, clear refund and shipping information and honest product descriptions. If implemented correctly, ecommerce can be just as reliable and transparent as any physical business. Finding ways to earn customer trust and brand recognition is fundamental to e-commerce and can provide some much needed assurance for shoppers.

The list of benefits described above represent how customers see improvements to their shopping experience. Wherever you are, whatever your schedule is like, e-commerce is a practical and convenient solution for shoppers. It is also a brilliant way to open the world up to new and unique brands that may not be available near you. E-commerce connects customers to their favorite brands and provides a complete solution for them as well.

Benefits of ecommerce for business:

Likewise, e-commerce must be economical and financially advantageous for businesses to implement. E-commerce stores are in many ways real store that services customers in a new and improved format. We know and have seen countless claims about the growth and prevalence of e-commerce in this digital age. This list will identify those core benefits and compare them to traditional commerce.

1. Global Reach: Traditional commerce is burdened by geographical limitations even domestically. Physical expansion requires high investment and a great deal of risk. E-commerce ultimately removes geographical barriers, allowing you to service any market in the world with proper localization and shipping.
2. Low Overhead: Physical businesses are characterized as having high costs of operations with expenses such as rent, wages and utilities. In comparison, ecommerce does not require a physical location and is highly scalable with little to no further investment needed for expansion. Modern e-commerce has services available that eliminate high server costs and expensive programming teams. E-commerce also benefits businesses by having better inventory tracking, low transaction costs and lower marketing barriers.
3. Data and Customer Insight: Because all transactions have a data trail, it makes it easier to track and evaluate customer shopping patterns. In e-commerce you can monitor purchase history and analyze that information to make strategic decisions with a measurable outcome. This has implications for your product catalogs, pricing, and marketing strategy. This makes refining and optimizing your e-commerce strategy possible.
4. Efficient Order Management: E-commerce is technologically driven, which allows you to automate processes and improve operational efficiencies. This process of automating your ecommerce function has the positive benefit of reducing errors and improving your workflow. This can include inventory management, order processing and customer service.
5. Source of Income: In addition to the benefits listed above, ecommerce has the quality of being online 24/7 and serves as a new source of revenue. E-commerce is known to contribute to as high as 30% of total revenue and allows you to tap markets that were previously unreachable.

E-commerce is great opportunity for business to find new customers in a new and interactive way. It can be a complete solution or businesses and has real benefits for both business and customers. We consider e-commerce as a complete solution that brings value for businesses in many dimensions.

Suggested Reading: Ecommerce Conversion Optimization Checklist

Digital Marketing: Empowering Brands Online

Digital Marketing is an industry focused on producing business prospects through digital tools such as social media and search engines. Marketing professionals widely consider digital marketing to be the first and best tool for building dedicated marketing channels for both impact and reach. Today’s standard for growing businesses includes digital marketing in one way or another, often being central to any ecommerce strategy.

Difference between marketing and digital marketing

Traditional marketing strategies encompass any offline marketing method popularized in the past such as billboards, fliers and tv commercials. Since the prolific rise of the internet and social media platforms, traditional marketing has taken a back seat to more data driven digital methods. We see this most prominently with smaller and medium sized businesses who have been drawn towards more modern and less expensive e-marketing tools. Common problems with traditional marketing methods include; difficulty targeting specific audiences, actively converting leads and high costs of implementation. Traditional concepts such as the marketing funnel, branding and effective communication are still relevant in digital marketing but have taken a more interactive and data driven approach.

Digital marketing inforgraphic

Benefits of digital marketing

Digital marketing is a substantial and data driven improvement to traditional marketing, with accurate feedback and the ability to grow your audience with out bounds. You also have endless strategies and channels that you can alternate to meet your specific needs and budget. Digital marketing is only as effective as the quality of the leads you generate and how well you can study their behaviors, something that isn’t true with alternative marketing options. Main benefits include:

1. Flexibility and Adaptability: Digital marketing is a highly flexible tool that can be adjusted in real time, allowing businesses to engage directly with customers while remaining adaptive. This is important for keeping up with changing customer behavior and market dynamics. You have numerous platforms and channels, with numerous approaches for each.
2. Audience Targeting: In addition to being highly adaptable, digital marketing also has numerous tools and channels that can be used to reach specific audiences. These options all have their unique properties like the active user base, the purpose of platforms and the various tools respective to those platforms.
3. Cost-Effective: Digital marketing has the quality of being cost-effective, especially for smaller businesses, allowing business to leverage smaller marketing budgets for greater effect. Digital marketing is considered to be impactful at all stages of a business growth cycle and with a variety of tools available.
4. Engaging and Interactive: Digital marketing, its tools and platforms are known as being engaging and interactive. Unlike traditional methods, you are able to engage directly with customers through interactive content, comments and social media. Through these methods you are able to foster deeper connections and brand loyalty.
5. Measurable ROI and Analytics: One of the most prominent strengths of digital marketing is the ability to see a measurable outcome to all your operations. Using this data you can isolate specific user groups, which in turn improves the way you find the “right” customer. Customer data can be analyzed and leveraged to improve the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

Digital marketing is a highly interactive tool that eliminates the ambiguity encountered by alternative marketing options and allows you to grow your base with out limits. The number of digital channels available also allows you to seek the most effective platform, which is especially adavatagous when building a dedicated audience.

Marketing Channels and Platforms

Comparing ecommerce and digital marketing

Ecommerce and digital marketing are both distinct parts of the online business environment. Their synergetic principles help business to gain new revenue streams, while broadening their reach and brand strength. They compliment each other, where one drives traffic and the other process and fulfills orders.

E-commerce refers to the buy and selling of goods or services over the internet. It involves any online transaction, order processing and anything involved in the shopping experience. In short, the entire customer journey from product browsing, customer service, payment and delivery are involved in e-commerce. E-commerce serves as a virtual store front where businesses can showcase their catalogs and process customer purchases.

Digital Marketing, on the other hand, refers strategies a business would take to promote their product or services online. It involves leveraging various digital channels, such as social media, search engines, email, content creation and paid ads. Digital marketing aims to to drive targeted traffic to your e-commerce platform, increase brand awareness, and ultimately convert leads into sales.

These two modern methods of online business, allow businesses of all varieties to dynamically and actively communicate to dedicated audiences. Something that is highly beneficial and impossible with alternative physical methods.

How do ecommerce and digital marketing work together

We know that ecommerce and digital marketing have two different purposes, they are deeply linked and are far more effective when used together. Combining ecommerce and digital marketing together is crucial for optimal results. How e-commerce and digital marketing work together:

• Driving Traffic and Conversions: Digital marketing strategies, such as SEO, content marketing and social media, are vital for driving targeted traffic to your e-commerce website. Traffic generated through targeted campaigns have a much higher potential for conversion, making it simpler to identify and align with customer demand.
• Enhanced User Experience: Ecommerce and digital marketing work together to provide a greater user experience. Digital marketing involves optimizing the purchasing journey, and mediating customer expectations after purchase.
• Leveraging Customer Data: Information generated from e-commerce data is an excellent source. Marketers can analyze this data and create refined campaigns for higher engagement and conversion rates.

Ecommerce and digital marketing are deeply synergetic and deeply ingrained in all things on the internet. They are powered by evolving technologies that work to enhance your business operations and marketing.

Suggested Reading: Lead Generation for E-commerce

Conclusion

Ecommerce and digital marketing in our era represent the backbone of any growing business. The tools available when working online are farm more targetted, data centric and scalable. These three advantageous makes it possible for business to build highly targetted audiences and to reach to markets there were previously unreachable. By now you should understand how ecommerce and digital marketing compare and why you should be building a digital footprint.

This article originally appeared on Growave’ Blog.

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