E-commerce marketing jobs are in high demand as the e-commerce space continues to grow and expand. Let’s look at the role of an e-commerce marketer, key skill sets, and a sample job description.
The role of an e-commerce marketer is getting increasingly pivotal as the e-commerce space continues to get crowded. There are traditional, brick-and-mortar businesses that are setting up their online presence, and then there are purely online stores making their entry. And that’s not it. Various e-commerce business models such as B2B, B2C, consumer to consumer (C2C), direct to consumer (D2C), and revenue models like dropshipping, white label manufacturing and distribution, etc. make the whole e-commerce ecosystem complex.
E-commerce marketers are armed with the responsibility to help e-commerce brands stand out from the competition and drive revenue. In this article, we will look at the role of an e-commerce marketer, the skills required, and a sample job description.
The Role of an E-commerce Marketer
The role of an e-commerce marketer varies from organization to organization, depending on the business model, and the team structure. But they are directly or indirectly responsible for driving brand awareness and boosting revenue. For example, a marketing manager is expected to oversee the marketing strategy, optimize product pricing, and so on. In contrast, a promotions manager has to identify how they can incentivize purchases to drive more purchases.
Therefore, an e-commerce marketer needs to be a T-shaped marketer. They need to be an expert in at least one area of marketing while having a rudimentary knowledge of the other marketing aspects. For instance, an e-commerce marketer who is a conversion rate optimization (CRO) expert, needs to have a solid grasp of copywriting, design, and analytics as they’ll exactly know what to tweak to boost the conversion rate of the e-commerce store.
Learn More: 10 Key Roles of a Social Media Manager in 2020
10 Essential Skills Required to be a Successful E-commerce Marketer
The following ten skills will define your success as an e-commerce marketer. As mentioned earlier, you don’t need to be an expert in everything but ensure that you must have an in-depth understanding of at least two or more disciplines. Now, the good part is, these skills complement each other. For example, if you are good at content marketing, gaining essential SEO knowledge should be a cakewalk for you.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Along with on-page and off-page SEO knowledge, the marketer needs to be adept at technical SEO as well. That means they should look after the website’s schema markup, structured data, XML sitemap. Robots.txt, etc. They need to be on top of the latest search engine algorithmic developments and guidelines to avoid getting penalized. Purging low-performing pages, keeping track of the competitors’ strategy, keyword tracking should be routine activities.
2. Content Marketing and Copywriting
Content marketing and copywriting are two different things. Copywriting is an art and science that entails the marketer to write content to boost product sales. This includes writing copies for the homepage, product pages (product headline, description, features, etc.), checkout section, lead magnets, call-to-action (CTA) buttons, and any section that directly impacts the conversion rate.
Content marketing, on the other hand, pertains to creating content for the blog and other content assets. Of course, there will be some overlap between these two disciplines.
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a powerful tool to maintain customer engagement for an e-commerce store. Therefore, an e-commerce marketer needs to understand how to segment the audience based on their characteristics. The marketer should also know how to use personalization and drip marketing to retain customers and promote upselling and cross-selling offers.
Prioritizing key metrics such as the deliverability rate, open rate, click-through rate (CTR), etc. is a prerequisite when focusing on email marketing.
4. Marketing Automation
Marketing automation entails you to set up automated workflows that would trigger a sequence of events once a prospect enters the funnel. For example, once a shopper makes a purchase, the automation tool should send email updates, SMSs, and push notifications on the app. Besides this, designing landing pages, sending helpful content, addressing cart abandonment issues, integrating with e-commerce apps, etc., are some essential activities that can be facilitated through the knowledge of marketing automation platforms.
5. Affiliate Marketing
In affiliate marketing, the publisher earns a specific cut/commission by selling the advertiser’s products. Dedicated affiliate marketing software applications make this process simple for e-commerce stores. The affiliate marketer is required to manage the software or use an affiliate network(s), manage the affiliates (answer their queries, manage payouts, etc.) on behalf of the store, and track the performance of affiliates and networks on the revenue.
Influencer marketing can be as another aspect of affiliate marketing, wherein influencers promote your products via their social media platforms to their audience. Although the payout model may differ based on various criteria.
6. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
The true north of CRO is to boost the conversion rate. It’s just not enough to boost the number of conversions. You should also focus on increasing the number of conversions per hundred users. CRO involves activities like A/B testing, improving the website copy, experimenting with design, incentivizing user behavior, reducing cart abandonment, and simplifying the user experience (UX) to help marketers improve the conversion rate.
7. Digital Advertising
PPC, social media, display, native, and remarketing ads are crucial for e-commerce stores. The marketer should be able to optimize the ROI and ad spend, and reduce the customer acquisition cost through the advertising efforts.
8. Social Media Marketing
Besides content creation and ad management, providing customer service is an essential function of social media marketing. E-commerce businesses use social media to respond to customer queries and complaints. Along with this, organizing contests that follow the platform guidelines, tracking competitor activities, connecting with influencers, running partner marketing/co-branding initiatives, and tracking results are some essential activities under social media marketing.
9. Tracking and Analytics
E-commerce stores need both – quantitative and qualitative analytics data to understand user behavior. Regardless of the discipline you choose to learn, having a good understanding of analytics will help you better your activities. For example, if you are a copywriter, by viewing the click heatmap, you know what words capture the user’s attention and compel them to click on it.
10. Miscellaneous Skills
Fundamental knowledge of design and HTML/CSS will help you immensely, regardless of what you are doing. Even though you need not be an expert with the Adobe Creative Suite, basic knowledge of design principles such as typography and color theory is enough. Similarly, knowing HTML/CSS can help you make minor tweaks in landing pages, email templates, and SEO activities.
Learn More: Marketing Automation Manager: Role, Skill Set, and Job Description
E-commerce Manager: Job Description
Here’s a sample job description for the role of an e-commerce marketing manager. This would differ if you’re applying for a more specific role, such as an email marketer or social media marketer.
Responsibilities: What You’ll Do
- Develop and manage the organization’s e-commerce marketing strategy.
- Work with the development team/agency to continuously improve the website’s user/shopping experience.
- Liaise with various marketing team members to allocate tasks, track their completion, and measure their impact. Guide them wherever necessary.
- Work closely with the CRO expert to implement better ways to boost the conversion rate.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of every marketing channel and activity on revenue.
- Experiment with and introduce newer marketing channels and tools to connect with the target audience.
- Combine the best of sales, marketing, and technology to deliver a superior customer experience.
Requirements: What Companies are Looking for
- Bachelor of Arts (BA), Bachelor of Science (B.S.), or equivalent degree
- 4+ years of experience at an e-commerce organization
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Excellent project management skills
- Should know the commonly used martech tools by e-commerce companies
Learn More: Customer Experience (CX) Specialist: Key Role, Skill Set And Job Description
How to Get Started?
The median annual salary for an e-commerce marketing manager is around $80,000. Considering the growth of e-commerce companies, a career in e-commerce marketing is lucrative at the moment, and we can safely say that it will remain the same for the coming time.
You may have noticed that although the marketing channels remain the same, there is a stark difference between when it comes to marketing a SaaS product and an e-commerce store.
To become a successful e-commerce marketer, make sure that you proactively find newer martech tools (such as conversational AI, survey tools, recommendation engines, etc.) that could boost revenue.
Do you have any questions related to the role of an e-commerce marketer? Ask us on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.