Magento eCommerce Online merchandising – Marketing strategies
Magento eCommerce Online merchandising – Marketing strategies
This is the first bullet in the Magento Certified Solution Specialist Exam Study Guide, chapter 1.1. Online merchandising.
The Marketing strategies refer to:
- Omnichannel
- Multichannel
- Affiliate marketing
- Social marketing
- Email marketing
For an easier understanding, let’s first see what Multichannel is. Well, multichannel is exactly this, the ways the customer can use a shop. For example, a desktop PC, a tabled, a mobile phone, these represent channels.
Now that we know what Multichannel means, its much easier to understand what Omnichannel means. As we can’t limit the channels (Multichannel) the customers are using (I know, we can, but we don’t want to!), the goal is to make all the channels as similar as possible (Omnichannel) for the customer experience point of view.
We can say that Omnichannel is an evolution of the Multichannel, where all the channels have a similar look-and-feel.
From a marketing point of view, Multichannel marketing is marketing using different channels to reach the customer. The objective is to make it easy for a consumer to buy whatever channel he/she is using.
Affiliate marketing consists in rewarding affiliates for each visitor or customer they bring. This type of marketing implies four parts:
- the seller
- the network
- the affiliate
- the customer
The seller can be a retailer or a brand, the network serves the offers for the affiliates, the affiliate publishes the offers so the customer find about the offers and visit the seller. Depending on the network, the affiliate can be rewarded for visitor (no actual purchase) or for customers (visitors that buy).
Social marketing, well, I’m not so sure if that’s about social marketing or social media marketing. As far as I know, social marketing means implementing marketing methods into the society to influence the behavior of both the community and the individual. On the other hand, social media marketing aims to gain visitors / customers through social media sites. This usually consists in creating content that drives the user to share it across social networks, this resulting in a process similar with the “work of mouth”.
So, I suppose that is about Social media marketing, or attracting customers through social networks.
Email marketing is most like flyers in the mailbox. Commercial emails are sent to a group of people using email.
That’s it for now. Next time we’ll talk about basic steps of setting up a new online store, the second bullet in the Magento Certified Solution Specialist Exam Study Guide, chapter 1.1. Online merchandising.