Ecommerce has always been a competitive landscape. There are many factors to consider and optimise for. From what platform to chose to logistics and warehousing. One of the most important aspects to consider is how to drive visitors to your online store. There are numerous strategies and tactics for doing this and these have been covered in many articles. The bottom line though is that all of these channels and strategies cost money. We are going through a period where marketing budgets are reduced or severely restrained due to the impact of COVID-19 and the global retraction of markets. This means it is essential that whatever efforts your marketing or eCommerce team put in place, return a strong return on investment.
To ensure you are getting a strong return on investment you need detailed data. There is no way around this and too often we see a hit and miss shotgun approach to e-commerce marketing and traffic-driving efforts. This typically results in a very low return on investment.
As mentioned data is key here, with the right data we can analyse our products and identify which are strong and weak in the market and how much of the market share we have across our product offering.
Overlaying this data with competitors can give us a clear picture of where low-cost high return opportunities lie. People talk of the 80/20 rule and this resonates with this example, imagine being able to put 90 to 95% of your resources behind the 20% that works – the return would be significantly higher and carry far less wastage.
Using our Market Share Analysis software Algorithm has developed a process for doing this. We have found this approach to be highly effective in the eCommerce space. This article will talk through the process and detail how this data-led approach enables clear, competition-beating eCommerce strategies across digital channels.
Step 1 – Gather the data
The first thing we do is extensive keyword research across the entire product offering. The idea here is to pick up as many relevant keywords as possible. We need to identify how consumers search for products, what questions do they have? what keywords indicate purchase intent? Then we map search volumes against these keywords to get a sense of what the monthly demand across the product range is.
This data is then fed into the Market Share Analysis software and the current market share is calculated across the entire product offering. The software also maps competitors against each product and gives us their market share across the product range.
Step 2 – Analysis
Now that we have a clear picture of what the market size is as well as the leading competitors in the market we can start building out our strategy using the insights and data from the market share analysis.
Gap analysis
One of the ways we can use the data from the Market Share Analysis is to spot gaps in the market. In the example above we can see, there are clear gaps between market share and demand in the market. These present opportunities that we can target. We can put our marketing budget behind these specific groups rather than spreading it thinly across all of them. This maximises our exposure to markets that have a high opportunity to succeed and deliver strong returns.
Brand Visibility
Using the Market Share Analysis we are able to see how our brand is performing across various eCommerce platforms. In this example, if we were Aquafresh we could compare the performance of our brand against the other player’s in the teeth whitening space. This would allow us to identify why Dentalmate has a far larger share of the market on these platforms and to adjust our strategy accordingly.
Prioritisation
The Market Share Analysis gives us a clear breakdown across our product range and offering of where opportunities and high priority areas exist. This allows us to be laser targeted in our approach and to only spend precious marketing resources where we know there is a high opportunity. Competitors without this level of data would need to spend equally across the entire product offering leading to a lot more wastage, fewer customers and ultimately defeat in the battle for market share.
How is this data used?
Once we have this level of analysis there are numerous ways we can take action. The Market Share Analysis will dictate the content strategy, SEO strategy, Paid Media strategy and even the broader eCommerce strategy. It focuses all marketing activity to key areas that matter – saving budget and effort. We will dive into how this data can be used in each of the main digital channels in more detail in upcoming articles. In closing, this data-led approach will give a distinct advantage to any business in the eCommerce space. There are never any silver bullets but we have seen this approach deliver highly effective results in beating eCommerce competitors.
