With the thousands of eCommerce shops out there, it can be hard to compete. There’s most likely someone in your industry with the capital and team to become a mainstay, so small to mid-size shops have to get creative with their approach. If your eCommerce shop is looking to freshen up its marketing plan, there are a few things you should be on the lookout for to maximize your efforts.

Get Your Budget In Order

Before you can begin to establish a marketing plan for your eCommerce shop, you first have to compile a budget. This can vary dramatically depending how much revenue your business is accumulating, which is why you need a set spending limit and a strong sense of the potential ROI. Web Strategies Inc states that the average marketing budget is between 5 to 15 percent of total revenue, which is a reasonable amount; however, your financial strategy really boils down to what type of growth you’re trying to see from whatever amount you can afford to invest.

While you most likely want to stay within a marketing budget reflective upon your current revenue, this could also be a time in which taking out a small loan might not be a bad thing. Depending on your personal credit and ability to land favorable terms, taking out some extra funds could potentially give your business that extra boost to drive sales, giving you the opportunity to scale. At any rate, you want to build a solid budget to give yourself some peace of mind moving forward in establishing your business.

Write down all the potential marketing avenues you might explore, including the estimated costs. Although this might be difficult to gauge, it’s better to overestimate to give yourself more breathing room to test new concepts. No matter how much you can afford, the goal isn’t to pump a bunch of money into marketing; it’s to execute your strategy in a way that gains traction.

Highlight Speciality Products

When it comes to marketing an eCommerce store, the product displays are going to be everything. This is the biggest way you’re going to showcase your offerings while building trust, so having an established system to deliver product content is vital. Whether you’re planning on selling baseball bats or lawnmowers, consistent branding and proudly featuring your niche is crucial to your shop’s growth.

While a lot of your aesthetic elements are going to be dictated by your brand, it’s important to think about the sub-sectors of your products. For example, according to WNET, approximately 90 percent of consumers judge a product on color alone, and this judgement extends not only to the product itself but also the colors with which the product is displayed. This is why you’ll notice particular color palettes or color trends tying in a series of products on many businesses’ Instagram campaigns, for example.

Start searching around for how others in your industry showcase their visual assets, as well as where your brand fits into the mix. Coming up with consistent design kits and photoshoots for every product can be a lengthy process, so instead work toward developing a formula that allows you to deliver on a regular basis. Make no mistake; getting this right is crucial to your long-term success, as it’s the bread-and-butter of your marketing material. Once you have it down pat, you’ll be set.

Look Into Paid Social Advertising

Finally, although it’s going to take a little bit of effort to learn about investing wisely, looking into paid social media advertising can be a great strategy to expand your eCommerce business. Perhaps one of the most significant benefits of using paid social is that you can accurately track metrics and outreach, allowing you to use relevant data to improve every time. The goal is to find that sweet spot between what you’re putting into your social ads and what you’re getting back out of them, as it can be easy to be wasteful when it comes to social media ad spending.

Take a look at which platforms you’ve been successful on, taking into account reasons why your ads would be effective there. This can translate to testing for new audiences as well, which is a surefire way to expand your demographics. For example, let’s say your most popular platform right now is Instagram, but you want to reach an older audience. As Pew notes, 79 percent of internet users are on Facebook, so this could be the best place to run Facebook ads geared toward an older demographic. Data points like these will help you gain more business.

What are some marketing strategies you’ve implemented in your eCommerce shop? Comment with your success story below.