To be successful online, in any business, you need multiple channels to reach new visitors and convert them into a lead or a sale. This is especially true when it comes to eCommerce. The fact of the matter is that customers live in a world that is multi-channeled. They expect seamless integration between their web browsing experience, mobile communications, brick and mortar stores, and online shopping.
The good news is that with today’s eCommerce platforms, an effective multi-channel marketing strategy is fairly simple to implement. There are many to choose from, but the easiest to start with and to customize for most people is going to be Prestashop.
The add-on modules and plugins make multi-channeling easy for eCommerce store owners of all levels. Here are four of the top add-ons to help your multi-channeling strategy to be easier to implement and more effective.
1) WordPresser
WordPresser is module, rather than a plugin, that allows for eCommerce stores to publish a blog post to a store’s WordPress blog whenever a new product is added. With the rise of content marketing as a business strategy, more and more stores are adding blogs to help them with their community building and social outreach plans.
Social media may be more effective if traffic is sent to blog posts, rather than product pages. Adding more content in the form of blog posts can also help to attract links from sites not normally inclined to give them to eCommerce stores. This helps to drive traffic, as well as boost authority and make SEO campaigns more effective.
2) Social Coupons
This module offers a coupon in exchange for user’s liking, tweeting or “+1’ing” a page. The benefit to the user is that they get a discount or some sort of free item. All they have to do is provide the “social proof”, and the coupon will unlock.
The benefit to the store owner is that their brand is advertised to a new group of people they may have never thought to target in their previous marketing campaigns. the cost is minimal, and the long term payoff is substantial if a customer loyalty program is in place.
3) Google AdWords Remarketing Code
The third and final module is the Google AdWords Remarketing Code add-on. Remarketing is the practice of advertising only to past visitors who have visited your site. Some will refine the campaign further to only target those who have abandoned a cart.
Regardless, remarketing is effective for brand awareness and is very low cost in comparison to traditional AdWords campaigns. This add-on allows for store owners to separate those who have actually made a purchase from those who have gotten to checkout and abandoned the process for whatever reason.
It also makes adding the advertising code snippets much easier by automatically adding the code to each page on the store.
4) Mailchimp
Mailchimp has two main benefits. The first is that the first two thousand subscribers to your email list are added for free. The second is that it has the ability to add extensive HTML designs to each newsletter to boost branding and effectiveness.
This module allows you to add your Mailchimp dashboard into your Prestashop backend to make creating, editing and distributing newsletters as simple as possible.
Not Just These Four
It is important to note that there are far more modules available than just these four. However, when looking at any marketing campaign, the most effort should be put into the activity likely to have the highest return. Email, remarketing, social and blogging are all likely to be high return activities.
@JulianaPayson is an associate at InMotion Hosting, a web hosting company offering fanatical tech-support for ecommerce business websites. They have webmasters that will help you with domain concierge with website hosting transfers, and easy one click install software for platforms such as prestashop.
