Without a comprehensive marketing strategy, customers aren’t just going to stumble into the brand’s website. An e-commerce company often relies on its ability to market and brand well. Jean Thomas, chief marketing officer of Bangkok-headquartered fashion company, Pomelo Fashion, talks about the top three marketing strategies for e-commerce companies to watch out for.

1/Adopting a Strong Omnichannel Strategy

In order to unlock hyper-growth, brands need to set their sights on acquiring customers outside of their core group, including casual shoppers. Yet, online customer acquisition costs continue to rise as platforms seek to monetize via ads, which may limit brands’ profitability.

What brands can do is to put in place a strong omnichannel strategy that seamlessly transitions between digital and physical shopping experiences.

A brick-and-mortar or otherwise physical (e.g. pop-up) presence is a valuable touchpoint from which new customers can be acquired. However, the key here is seamlessness: an omnichannel strategy can greatly value-add to customer experience and drive acquisition because it presents all the benefits of pure-play e-commerce while mitigating its challenges, but only if offline and online features are intentionally integrated.

2/Owning Marketplace Channels to Solidify Brand Identity

E-commerce marketplaces continue to progress and change at breakneck speed. What a customer sees one day might be gone the next and their preferences are fickle as well. Marketing can be used to its full advantage – preserving a brand’s unique identity and strengthening it – when brands own their marketplace channels.

A digitally-native vertical brand that has complete control over its own manufacturing and distribution channels can respond swiftly to changes and pivot accordingly. With multiple data points about sales, demographics and sell-through rates, marketers are able to make informed, data-driven decisions to spearhead effective campaigns.

3/Providing a Stellar Last-mile Customer Experience

E-commerce brands naturally compete based on technological capabilities that allow for the provision of an optimal online user experience. However, increasingly, a true strength for digital businesses is its speed of product delivery.

Operations and last mile delivery with much shorter lead times could end up defining customer experience in the coming months. An e-commerce platform that has the ability to serve their customers with faster delivery/on-demand will have a clear advantage to win over the customer as quality/price/discounts/assortments aren’t enough.