So you now have a pretty functional shopping cart and you are ready to embrace the masses with a great inventory selection. You quickly realize that when searching for your products on the Googles and Yahoos of the world, your site is found right along with thousands of other online stores who sell the same stuff. Even if you come up on the top of search result pages, your competition is just a click away. How do you differentiate yourself from the crowd? This is where the innovative marketing mind comes to the rescue.

The challenge is that at times sophisticated marketing ideas are not easily matched with an adequate automation to enable them.  Take for example a popular marketing technique used by one cell phone carrier:

“If you call your friends and family between the hours of 6 AM and 8 PM during weekdays and if you have registered for the 2 year plan then you get a 20% discount but only if you are the primary contact on the account and only if your account monthly fee does not exceed $200 and only if you over the age of 18 etc…”

The above set of complex rules must be enabled by a strong rule-based engine that enable the billing system to manage the discount . In many large corporations, the IT department is often tasked with a monumental challenge to amend the billing software so that business keeps flowing while all the promotional rules are honored.

The example above just underscores one of the biggest areas of contention between marketing and IT. Marketing comes up with ideas and IT just can’t keep up.

This article will touch on some of the techniques that will make your online commerce a sophisticated and self managed Marketing Machine.

Free Shipping – Free shipping is a common mean to induce customers to buy from you. In general, customers are very sensitive to the good old “Shipping and Handling” charges. Sometimes, a good strategy may be to increase the margins on the merchandise in lieu of a reduction or complete elimination of the shipping and handling fees.

Free shipping can be associated with a specific product or a set of products. You may also exclude specific products from the promotion and you can also require a minimum order total in order to enjoy the discount.

Product Discount – Product discounts are discount that are associated with specific product or group of products. A discount can be given in a fixed dollar value deduction from the base (or list) price or as a percent off list price. In general it is highly recommended to discount the product during a predetermined date range. This will allow you to have the product “remember” to revert to the non-discounted list price automatically after the discount date expires. Another interesting permutation of discounting a product is based on quantity thresholds. For example:

This also will induce your customers to purchase larger quantity to realize greater discount.

BOGO – BOGO stands for “Buy One Get One” but truly a BOGO should allow your store to support any type of permutation of Buy One Get One combination. For example:

By 2 or more of product A and receive product B at 50% discount. Or by 2 of Product A and receive the 3^rd one for free. This is a pretty powerful method by which you can move unpopular inventory by promoting it along with more popular items.

Bundled Products - Bundled products is a feature that allows you to group multiple products and sell them as one. The idea is to discount the bundle so that it is substantially less expensive compared to buying each of the SKUs in the bundle individually. Very similar to the BOGO, this will allow you to move unpopular inventory along side the more popular items.

Refer a Friend – Refer a friend, is a great viral, self perpetuating, marketing technique. The concept is to have your customers refer their friends to buy from your site. It is done through an email form that is initiated by your customers from your site.

Once the receiving party, the referee, makes a purchase from your site, the system grants the referring customer a coupon for a discount against any future purchase.

Loyalty Points – Loyalty points is a system by which customers earn points based on their purchase history and the volume of their purchases. These points can be later redeemed as a form of payment against future purchases. We see a pretty sophisticated loyalty point system in the airline industry but the same concept is certainly adaptable to any eCommerce system.

There are obviously many more online marketing techniques and it is important for any online merchant who is considering a purchase or an upgrade of their online commerce to carefully evaluate the online promotion and marketing capabilities of their respective solutions. Promoting your products effectively may be the mere factor that will make your site shine above the rest.