7 Easy E-Commerce Marketing Strategies to Help You Reach More Customers and Increase Your Online Sales
Starting an e-commerce business has never been an easy job. Running a profitable one is even more difficult than you’d imagine. Although there isn’t any scarcity of tips on strengthening online sales, most of them turn out to be completely useless if you’re not following the proper strategies.
“Those who understand strategy will survive and those who don’t will perish,” precisely said by Sun Tzu.
Regardless the size of your business, boosting sales should be the main goal of most businesses. Whether you’re someone who’s running a small retail business or employed by an e-commerce giant like Google, increasing sales via online channels is like bowling a strike – not as easy as it looks.
In the world of e-commerce, each store struggles to get even the tiniest opportunity with today’s hard-hitting competition. However, when it comes to elevating the online shopping experience, most retailers halt at the ubiquitous, “Add these 3 items and take 15% off” and “Customers who bought this item also bought….”
In most cases, we see competition coming from other retailers that take advantage of the complex algorithms to track and predict the consumer needs and deliver it to them early and often. But, the majority of small e-commerce businesses have shoestring budgets. Does this mean they’re relegated to playing second fiddle forever?
Not quite.
Here are the top 7 e-commerce marketing strategies to help boost your business growth and make it reach a higher level of success.
Use Product Descriptions and High-Quality Photographs
Include attractive product images to catch the attention of the potential customer. When shopping online, customers can’t possibly touch the product and thereby making their purchasing decisions entirely based on product imagery and feedback.
Displaying good viewable thumbnails in the search results page will help customers find their desired products in just one click and get a better idea of what you’re selling. You can further use online image retouching tools to improve your image quality. However, don’t simply describe the product; consider creating a comprehensive list of benefits and features. Potential buyers want to know all the details about a purchase and how that product would benefit them beforehand. Here are some tips for writing product descriptions:
- Create accurate subheadings
- Use Bullets like this to attract attention
- Use larger font size to improve readability
- Provide real photographs and a video to your product
Build Advertising Strategies
E-commerce shop advertisements can improve your online visibility and increase sales. Most people start with Google AdWords or Facebook Ads – the most popular platforms for advertising. However, anyone new to online advertising or lacking an in-house advertising team can use Amazon PPC Management to boost the visibility of their products.
Whatever you go with, your main focus should be on analyzing and tracking the traffic to your site. For example, Google Analytics show where the visitors are coming from and what they’re doing on your website. Retargeting tactics to reach the audience and potential buyers is also a smart move to boost ads effect.
Automate Your Email Marketing
Automation is crucial to improving your email marketing strategy. Automating your email marketing game based on pre-set triggers can help you send hyper-relevant messages seamlessly, delighting your subscribers.
89% of marketers stated that email is their key channel for lead generation, according to Forrester research. This means automating your email marketing campaign will keep you more proactive and make your marketing process smoother and effective.
Manually sending email takes almost forever and requires a lot of effort. However, once you automate your email marketing with a Gmail automation tool, an email will be sent automatically as soon as someone trips the online trigger. Automated emails get 119% higher click rates than broadcast emails, according to statistics. In fact, B2C marketers that use automated emails have noticed conversion rates as high as 50%.
Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
In today’s world, it’s essential for any business to have a responsive, mobile-optimized website. A Google survey showed that 61% of people are likely to close the tab if a website isn’t mobile friendly. According to a recent study, mobile-only users now exceed the number of desktop users in America.
To maximize conversions, you need to provide the best mobile experience to your visitors. Here are a few things you can do:
- Make your website responsive
- Make sure your website loads faster
- Simplify the checkout process
- Optimize your mobile website and improve site search
Keep in mind; a mobile-friendly site is one of the ranking factors in Google’s algorithm. If your site doesn’t perform well on mobile devices, it will affect your site’s SEO. Therefore, you need to make sure your website is accessible from any device (e.g., phone, laptop, PC, etc.). Also, when you’re at it, if you’re a brand, having the right domain name will also help you target potential customers and accelerate your search engine placement. In this case, you can use a domain name generator to find the best available domain name for your website that goes with the product/service you plan to sell.
Ensure Best Customer Support
E-commerce marketplace isn’t just about selling quality products and appealing designs. Of course, these two will help you greatly, but to keep up with your competitors you need to make sure that you’re providing the best customer support. The way you’re providing services to your customer will decide how long the business will sustain.
78% of customers did not make an intended purchase due to poor customer service, according to a study. So, you might lose potential customers if you don’t provide good customer service. Luckily, if you’re running a membership site, the best way to deliver responsive customer service would be to implement a fully functional help-desk system to your website. Not only will this keep your existing members happy, but it will also help in turning more of your visitors into paid members.
Create Consistent and Unique Content
Content marketing is still relevant. In fact, it’s one of the most effective marketing strategies you can apply today. The advertising world is constantly changing. Customers are now trying to avoid ads in many ways. But, with content strategy implemented the right way, you can provide more value to your consumers.
First, you need to understand your target audience; what their interests are, their demographic data, how your product/service can help them, etc. Once you’ve done that, the next step is to make a solid plan for your posts. Publish valuable and relevant articles with easy-to-share options.
Best tips for great content is to include-
- Topical posts – relevant to something popular or trendy
- Lists – more readable from paragraphs
- Headlines with “How to” attracts more readers
Run some tests with headlines; measure how well different types of content work, which one generates the most traffic to your ecommerce store, and which of them got you the most sales.
Improve Social Media Strategy
This should be connected with your content strategy. The content you create for your website should be published and shared on social media platforms as it can boost your site visibility and introduce you to an even larger audience.
Visual social networks like Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest are usually the best options for online stores that are selling products. However, Facebook and Twitter are not to be underestimated as more than 75% of internet users are already there.
Here is a list of basic guidelines you can follow to create the best customer experience for your clients:
- Avoid spamming
- Avoid using social media for promotions only
- Engage with your customers
- Post daily and consistently
- Use an automated tool to ensure your posts are on track
- Use images while posting, even on Twitter
- Use analytics to track the engagement of your audience
But how can social media marketing strategies help your e-commerce business? Well, here are some benefits that come with a good social media campaign:
- You can create target ads based on the gathered information about your consumers online behavior
- Regular communication with your audience will help you figure out their needs and provide them with better user-experience
- Unique and relevant posts on social media will expand your brand awareness
- You can get viral by being super active on social media and answering your customers timely as more than 67% of customers use social media sites for customer support
- It’s probably the fastest and cheapest way to connect with your consumers
Wrapping Up
These were some of the easiest tips you can work on for attracting clients to your e-commerce website. All you need to do now is choose the right strategies for reaching your target audience. There’s really no need to spend millions to satisfy your customers. Instead, you should focus more on knowing their needs and choices, and then plan your strategies accordingly.
Author Bio:
Dave Schneider is the founder of LessChurn, churn reduction app. In 2012 he quit his job to travel the world, and has visited over 65 countries. In his spare time, he writes about SaaS and business at DaveSchneider.me.
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