With the ever-increasing importance of ecommerce for business revenue, certainly you want to hire the right manager.
That means someone who understands best marketing practices and who can grasp the best marketplace opportunities for your company.
But the key is to take a sober look at the person. You don’t want someone who will do a rush job and scuttle your potential.
The person needs to first fully understand your business situation before acting.
Seven skills are needed:
Skill No. 1
Your ecommerce manager must obviously get a handle on your overall business strategy and can align with your strategy.
Before developing a marketing approach, the person must understand the guiding principles of decision-making within your organization.
Communication is the key in order to become aligned with the business strategy.
A certain protocol needed to develop a roadmap – rules or guiding principles that characterize your priorities – what employees must and must not do in order to reach your desirable objectives.
If your company is new and hasn’t developed a strategy, hire someone who has a track record in strategic planning.
Skill No. 2
Your ecommerce manager should be able to understand your customers and your targeted audience.
The person must know your customer and why they buy. Typically, customers make emotional decisions to buy – whether your offerings tug at their heartstrings or satisfy a pragmatic, practical need.
An ecommerce manager studies customer profiles. If there are none, the person must develop them.
Skill No. 3
An inquiring mind is important. Certainly, an ecommerce manager must know your products and how to communicate, and be savvy enough to market their value.
All too often, marketing people write cute copy, but not necessarily content that sells.
In essence, the person needs effectively present your products – to know how to write persuasive product descriptions to satiate customers by simply answering the customers’ subconscious acronym, WIIFM – what’s in it for me?
Skill No. 4
Knowing marketing systems is important.
A successful ecommerce manager will be aware of all the latest software platforms and will discern what’s best for your company to sell products.
Skill No. 5
Effective communication and the ability to ask the right questions with all stakeholders are vital.
Stakeholders include your employees in purchasing, operations and customer service. Each has unique concerns.
The ideal candidate must be able to put questions to all stakeholders in order to understand their concerns and maintain continuous open communication.
In coordination with stakeholders, a strategy grid is desired to understand the customers’ buying criteria – to identify the reasons why prospective customers might decide to buy either yours or competing products.
Skill No. 6
Your ecommerce manager must know your key performance indicators and analyze them.
The person should be able to ask questions about your KPIs and voice any concerns.
Skill No. 7
Once your ecommerce manager learns your overall business strategy, understands your customers, has productive dialogues with all stakeholders and analyzes your KPIs, the person should develop a marketing plan to build on your success and to create new sales opportunities.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are related ecommerce strategies:
To Grow Your E-commerce, Select the Right Software – If you want to save time and make more profit on top of your revenue, consider fine-tuning your approach to shipping – from carrier discounts to shipping labels. That means analyzing and choosing the best software for your situation – now and down the road.
E-commerce: Shipping Practices for Customer Satisfaction – Conversions for customer satisfaction are paramount in E-commerce, which is built on the concept of prompt service. If you want to attract and keep customers, you must use best practices in shipping.
E-commerce: Strategies to Pick the Right Digital Partner – True, if you don’t have the necessary expertise, e-commerce services can be expensive. So to maximize value for profitable sales, it’s imperative to choose the right digital agency as a partner. Here’s how.
5 Tips to Rock with Your E-commerce ‘About Us Page’ – Your “About Us” page plays a crucial role in whether people will buy from you. It’s always an emotional decision. Here’s how to capitalize on it.
8 Tips to Make Your Social Media Boost Your E-commerce – Are you just starting out using social media? Well, if used well, social media is an excellent tool to accomplish two goals – connecting with your existing customers and attracting fans for new business.
“SEO for eCommerce pages is based on only a few very, very simple things. Our SEO elements here are keywords, content, engagement, links, and in some cases freshness. You hit these five and you’ve basically nailed it.”
–Rand Fishkin
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