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Top 7 Proven Ecommerce Marketing Strategies for Sales Growth

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Published: Thursday, 24 March 2022 08:55

Source: Freepik

So you have recently developed a shiny, new eCommerce website and are looking to promote and sell your excellent range of products, but where to start? Despite what a lot of blogs and e-books might tell you, building a successful eCommerce website takes plenty of time and effort, including a fair share of trial and error.

In this article, we will look at 7 proven eCommerce marketing strategies to boost sales growth, helping to make your online store a success.

An Overview of Ecommerce Marketing

Ecommerce marketing is a range of practices and techniques that can typically be broken down into three stages:

• The first step is to promote your products via numerous channels to help drive potential customers to your online store. 

• Once a new user is directed to your store, the next stage is to encourage them to purchase with the help of a strong user experience. 

• When a first-time purchase has been completed, the last step is to keep the customer as a long-term patron, resulting in repeat business.

Developing an eCommerce website is not covered by this guide, but there are many website builders out there that can simplify the process and create effective and functional online stores. 

If you prefer WordPress as your chosen content management system, Elementor, Divi and other powerful WordPress page builders might be of great interest.

7 Proven Ecommerce Marketing Strategies To Boost Sales Growth

1. Establish Your Target Audience

Knowing exactly who your target audience is and optimizing your content around their wants and needs are vital to growing a successful online business. However, identifying your key target audience requires thorough research.

Source: Freepik

Here are some useful tips to define your primary target audience:

• It is always a good start if you can be ‌part of your intended target audience, allowing you to apply your preferences to your strategy. If you have no interest in the products you are selling, then the task becomes much more difficult.

• Envisage your ideal customers, determine individual profiles for each and think about how to meet their requirements. This will help you build a targeted marketing strategy. 

• Using the profiles you have created, you can then segment your audience to create personalized campaigns. Think locations, behaviors, interests, and professions.

• Once you are up and running, it is important to understand what you are doing successfully and where you could improve. Think of ways to gather feedback and opinions from your customer base, such as a survey that offers incentives.

• Encourage referrals by offering incentives to your customers for promoting your store this can be achieved through social media shares in return for a discount or a prize.

• Conduct regular competitor analysis to stay on top of new trends and products. This can help you identify new niches that may have passed you by. If your competitor’s product is good, then it is up to you to show why yours is better.

• Finally, always be willing to change and adapt. If a campaign hasn’t produced significant results, then analyze how to improve it, or if it needs to be scrapped altogether.

2. Use Keywords To Drive Your Marketing Strategy

When building a search engine marketing strategy, you need to know what the search intent of the user is. In our case, this is likely to be for purchasing ‌or product research. 

Product research-related search terms often contain words like “cheapest”, “best” or “newest”, while customers looking to buy a product are likely to use words such as “shop”, “discount”, and “sale”, for example.

Establishing the intent of your target audience will help you identify the correct keywords to use in your content. An old-school brainstorming session is a great way to build an excellent library of potential keywords before using a keyword research tool such as Ahrefs or Uber Suggest.

3. Ensure Your Product Pages Are Optimized

Your product pages need to be optimized for both text and visual searches. This means high-quality, unique text, images, and video. You will also need a strong call-to-action (CTA) to encourage the user to place an order. 

Product reviews and ‘Social Proof’ are also fundamental to a successful eCommerce website, as a customer is more likely to purchase a product if there is a convincing testimonial from a fellow shopper.

Remember, you can create amazing product pages, but if your website does not function the way it should and impairs the user’s experience, then it might all count for nothing. Applying effective business process automation can turn a potential exit into a sale - assist the customer as much as possible without being invasive.

4. Create Sensible Re-targeting Campaigns

Annoyingly, there will be times when a customer places an item in their cart, ready to buy. Then they suddenly exit the store without making a transaction. There can be many reasons for this, and it is a common occurrence, but not all is lost.

Re-targeting should be one priority of your eCommerce marketing strategy.

Using automated processes, you can send gentle reminders to these ‘nearly customers’  trying to entice them back to your store, perhaps offering a discount or an alternative product.

5. Build a Strong Mailing List

Many unsuccessful online stores have neglected to build up their mailing list and instead have narrowed their marketing plans focusing on search engine optimization and social media. We should not underestimate the role of email marketing.

Build up your mailing list using the following methods:

• Pop-ups asking users to sign up for your newsletter

• Offer discounts for users that have opted-in to your mailing list

• Product giveaways on social media

• An opt-in option at the checkout

• Strategically placed calls-to-action across your website

Keep in mind that when asking people to sign up for your email list, you need to offer something of value.  While coupons and discounts can work, for some brands this can be educational content as well.  

For instance, if you had a golf ecommerce brand it may make sense to create an online course that explains how to get the perfect golf swing.  

The nice thing here is that your offer isn’t selling anything, it’s just educating your audience.  So, they’re much more likely to get a free resource like this and then look at you as a thought leader, which will lead to more sales in the future. 

You can build a list of subscribers with the help of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrRiWwQ3ThI

6. Stay Ahead of the Game With Automated Emails

For any form of marketing, it pays not to be reactive, eCommerce is certainly no exception. 

Automated email campaigns can help you inform your mailing list of a sale or special offer during key periods of the year, as well as entice back customers that have abandoned their shopping cart. This is a powerful tool and a great time saver.

7. Focus on Effective Social Media Campaigns
   

Source: Freepik

Establishing a brand is vital if you want to launch an online store that generates sales, and the best place to promote your brand online is via social media. 

Platforms such as Instagram allow you to develop ad campaigns that can target specific audiences, while there are also helpful tools to help you schedule Instagram posts so your page remains active - using a range of software is key to managing each aspect of your campaign without being overwhelmed.

To achieve great social media success and high conversions, we refer you back to our first point, knowing your target audience!

Final Words

We hope our insights have been both digestible and useful, and we wish you and your online store luck with your chosen strategy. 

Remember, successful eCommerce websites are not achieved overnight, and mistakes will be made along the way, the important thing is how you adapt.

5 Ways to Naturally Grow Your Business

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Published: Tuesday, 15 March 2022 06:47

Success in business is not always linear. There are times when you would hit a few bumps and roads ahead.

But, one thing is for sure, you need to keep going and keep growing.

As we progress, purchase new assets, increase employees, and acquire more customers, it is important that our strategy scales and improves as well. So in order to help you, we have listed a few tips on how you can naturally and sustainably grow your business.

Explore Different Types of Growth 

An article published on the Missouri State University website suggested different alternative growth scenarios. Rather than look at growth from a general perspective, they proposed seven different ways to grow and develop a business.

Oftentimes when we think of growth, we usually think in terms of the market and income growth of our business. But according to the mentioned article, growth can also be network growth, quality growth, product growth, volume growth, and financial growth.

Market and income growth generally refers to new market entry and an increase in profitability, respectively. Whilst network growth means additional partnerships, quality growth is for research and development, product growth means innovation, volume growth is an increase in production, and financial growth means an injection of more capital.

Once you look at growth this way, you would be able to unlock more potential and opportunities for your business.

Setup an eCommerce Store

Many startups found success by setting up their own e-commerce store. Since building customer relationships from the ground up can be difficult, most e-commerce platforms simply take away this burden from you. They already have a repository or access to customer data that you never had before. Because of this, it is much easier to target customers and generate leads for your brand. 

Remember that there are tons of ways to set up an e-commerce store. You can either create your own online store or just simply set up an account on an e-commerce platform. Most startups often opt for the latter because it is much more convenient and less costly. Given that startups are still new in the industry, it is more practical to set up an account in an eCommerce platform rather than splurge their entire budget on creating their own online store. 

Startups are able to greatly benefit from their e-commerce store because they are able to generate more leads and explore new markets without having to burn a hole in their pocket. With that said, you should consider this as one of your options to grow your business. 

Find a Niche

Look for your target market and start building from there.

Think of a niche as your starting point. Since you are still new to the industry, it is much better to build credibility and reputation in a niche market first. Quickly jumping and marketing to a more general market might just lead to unfavorable results. Keep in mind that consumers are still unfamiliar with your product and they have not fully trusted you yet.  So pandering to the general audience might just be ineffective and a waste of resources.

To maximize your growth potential, you should instead gain the trust of your niche market first. Thereafter, you can then think in terms of growth and how your brand can serve other related markets. Potential customers outside your niche would be more trusting of you if they know there are other sets of people who trust you as well.

Pander to the Community

Aside from your niche market, you should also consider your local community as a target market as well. There are different ways to pander to your local community and one of which is hosting events.

If you are planning to have an actual store, then the best way to start is to host an in-store demo. Even though e-commerce is growing increasingly popular these days, in-store demos are still an effective way to bring in more loyal customers. The great thing about this type of event is that you can also do it along with your other marketing strategies as well.

For instance, in-store demos are a great source of content for your social media campaign. You can even hire an influencer from a promotional modeling agency as well. Doing so would help generate buzz around your brand.

Besides, no matter which marketing campaign you decide on, it would certainly enhance your reputation and image within the community.

Embrace Changes

As cliché as it is, the best way to achieve sustainable growth is to adapt to changes. Keep in mind that consumers’ attitudes and behavior are ever so changing. With that, your business needs to catch up as well.

For instance, most businesses today are now switching their marketing campaign from print to digital. They have noticed that consumers are spending and dedicating more of their time online. These businesses now see digital media as a crucial element in their marketing campaign.  

And this does not only apply to the marketing aspect of the business, many companies today are now starting to embrace innovative changes in tech like AI for their day-to-day work,  FinTech for their business transactions, and e-commerce for their marketplace.

Because at the end of the day, your business needs to be agile to progress and innovation. If you fail to catch up and welcome these changes, both you and your business would not be able to overcome stagnant growth.

Ecommerce Marketing: Three Success Factors to Pay Attention To

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Published: Tuesday, 15 March 2022 06:10

An eCommerce business doesn’t happen overnight. You will have to compete with market leaders prevailing in the market over a long period of time. Nevertheless, your task is to push your business further. 

Of course, you will have to do lots of business-related things. Invest tons of money and time. However, you can't put your arms around everything. 

Hence, you need to figure out those factors that matter the most. 

What are they?

In this post, you will get familiar with three factors that play a crucial role in your eCommerce business success. 

Let's cut to the chase!

The Most Important Tasks to Consider

If you want to start a successful eCommerce business, you won't be able to figure it out right off the bat. You will need to run in-depth research. 

For example, a successful eCommerce business has a powerful social media marketing strategy. It helps drive a few million followers on Instagram. But it doesn't mean that if you have the same number of followers, you will achieve the same success. 

Nevertheless, eCommerce business practitioners have already identified a few pillar factors you should consider. These three factors can affect your eCommerce business success drastically. 

Let's review them:

• Low customer acquisition cost

• High repurchase rate

• Healthy margins

These factors may look a bit simplified at first glance. However, they have a complicated meaning for your eCommerce business success. 

Therefore, let's review these three factors more precisely. 

1. Low customer acquisition cost

Most eCommerce business owners dream about acquiring dozens of profitable customers for cheap. But it all depends on your preferred margin, lifetime value, and your main competitors. 

Besides, the biggest challenge in this game is to get new customers. 

How to do this? 

You can invest your money into making advertising, design and plan social media strategies, interact with potential customers etc. But all these ways require spending money. In other words - each new customer has a cost. 

What's more important, if you care for business success, you should think about implementing an actionable marketing strategy. Or hire a team of marketing experts who would lead your business ahead. 

This factor has a leading force that includes two elements - brand and marketing. Now, let's review them in detail. 

• Brand 

Branding is the most straightforward way to stand out and lower your acquisition cost. But the first thing you should do is ask the following questions yourself. 

1. Do people know about your brand? 

2. Does your eCommerce business differ from your competitors? 

3. Is there any specific reason why a potential customer should check your online store? 

Can you answer these questions? 

Practice shows that business owners can hardly explain why people should buy from them but not from their competitors. It is not because they lack information or knowledge. It is because the reason is hidden in the roots of your eCommerce business. 

What does it mean? 

Try to recollect what was the reason to create your store. For example, there are cases when business owners take charity as a driving force. To put it simply, you encourage people to buy from you. And their purchase helps people with a donation to fight against cancer. 

However, don't delude yourself. Charity won't be the driving force that leads to the success of your eCommerce business. 

• Measurement

On the one hand, brand building seems quite vague. On the other hand, some ways can help you measure it effectively. For example, branded search traffic works as an indicator of how well your brand awareness has increased over time. 

One more trustful indicator is brand mentions. The more mentions your brand gets, the more chances to expand the brand itself. However, brand mentions are not equal. Nevertheless, if you have consistent growth in this area, you will reach out to new potential customers. 

You might wonder how to explore the mentions of your brand without any fuzz. You can do this with the help of the Content Explorer tool from Ahrefs. 

What should you do? 

Type your brand name first. Then review those pieces of content where it has been mentioned. To get the most up-to-date results, you can filter down by date. 

Plus, for those who want to get the latest updates on brand mentions, you can use the Alerts tool. The only thing you will have to do is to point out the search inquiries you want to track. 

• Marketing

If you want to create a powerful brand, you should clearly understand who to target. And where to find these people. This should be a starting point for your marketing.  

Keep in mind that you need to set your budget tight and invest your money wisely. However, the best option here is to find ways that would cost no money but increase the number of sales. 

Are there any of these marketing tactics on the radar? 

1. You can concentrate on cheap marketing activities like email and retargeting. But remember that they are low scale and the total volume of these activities will be limited.

2. Don't go with the flow 

If you can find marketing channels that your competitors have no idea about, don't hesitate to use them. It will help you be the only player on the field and dominate. 

Unfortunately, the truth is that it is pretty hard to find such a unique channel. Instead, find a new approach to work with the existing channels. 

For example, lots of eCommerce business professionals use eCommerce SEO strategies in practice. They focus on basic tactics like - keyword research, link building, content creation, outreach, and so on. Whereas, it won't be enough to succeed. 

How to turn the table in this case?

The answer to this question is simple - don't copy these tactics but replicate the principles. Plus, add some sort of creativity. 

For instance, there will be a handful of people who would buy a jacket with the fake mud from you. Nevertheless, this unique product will attract people's eyes for sure. Eventually, people might start exploring similar unique apparel that your shop can offer. 

• Outreach

You realize that having a perfect product doesn't mean that your sales will skyrocket. That's why your goal is to find the right audience to reach out to and offer the product. 

Don't run outreach campaigns randomly. Instead, analyze the backlinks that products similar to yours have built. One of the ways to do this is by analyzing your competitors' backlink profiles. 

How to do this? 

Go to the Site Explorer tool and check the "Backlinks" report of the competitors. 

Skim through the report and figure out what sites link back to the products similar to yours. Afterwards, get your outreach campaign ready to go. Don't forget to work on creating a personalized email template.

By the way, if you post your product items across social media channels, you know how it is important to create a posting schedule. It is more effective and time-saving. Especially for those goods that people need to see with their eyes. Hence, you schedule Instagram posts and post pints on Pinterest. 

Outreach is not an exception to the rule. You should create an outreach schedule to make sure the messages are delivered to people at the right time. 

2. High repurchase rate 

Did you know that the best eCommerce companies generate more than half of their revenue with the help of repeat purchases? 

Besides, it increases the lifetime value for your customers drastically. While customer loyalty is something that is important for whatever business you run. 

You should understand that customer loyalty is a collective term that represents the following elements - customer experience, product selection, pricing, brand, and marketing. 

Yes, marketing is the last on the list. And this is for a good reason. It is because the most straightforward approach to increase customer loyalty is to get more in front of your existing customers. 

Thus, if you want to get positive results with the help of automated email campaigns, you should know one thing. Your campaign is doomed to failure if your customer had a poor experience with the first purchase. 

• Customer experience 

It is strictly important to work on improving customer experience. It will help you increase the number of customer reviews of the products. 

How to do this in the best way? 

First and foremost, think about what your potential customers see when they land on your site. To help you out, ask yourself a set of questions:

1. Is it hard to find a specific product? 

2. Is it enjoyable to navigate product sections?

3. Is your website fast?

4. Does it make any difficulties to find contact details or shipping costs?

Collect customers' feedback and analyze the information. Make the improvements.

3. Healthy margins

To make your eCommerce business move forward, you need a healthy gross margin. 

Why is it important? 

Healthy margins give you an opportunity to invest and it offers more possibilities to acquire new customers.

Any margin consists of two elements - revenue and cost. And while you are already aware of other costs (shipping cost, product cost, etc.), you don't have more detailed information about revenue yet. 

Keep on reading and you'll find out. 

• Sell higher priced products

If you believe that it would be much harder to sell a $3,000 laptop online than a $20 t-shirt, you are wrong. 

Surprised? 

The thing is that if your margin is lower, the final total profit per order will be higher on the first product. 

• Upsell and cross-sell

Cross-selling is the process of selling complementary products like a $10 juice concentrate packaging for a $1000 cocktail machine. 

Upselling is when you try to sell a cheap product for a higher price. For example, you sell t-shirts for $5.99 per item. However, a customer decided to purchase 20 t-shirts. You sell these 20 t-shirts for $80, where the price per unit is $4. The price is lower but you could earn more money selling these 20 t-shirts at once.

To Sum Up

This blog post is a wonderful guide for those eCommerce businesses who have just decided to launch their online store. And low-cost customer acquisition strategies will help you for sure. 

When your customer base starts to grow, you should focus on customer retention work. 

Finally, dive into the cost and revenue to figure out how to optimize these elements and succeed in your eCommerce business. 

If you think this post lacks some information, don't hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments. 

6 Tips For Beginners To Set Up An eCommerce Store

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Published: Thursday, 10 March 2022 09:46

Do you have an amazing product idea in your mind that can be sold but don't know how to sell it? 

If this is your current situation, your answer is "eCommerce store". You must have heard about Shopify stores, where people visit online to buy products. 

Now, being a complete beginner who doesn't know how to set up an eCommerce store and make your sales funnel template work, it’s going to be extremely tough for you to survive in this industry.

That's why we have created this post; here, we will talk about 6 tips for beginners to set up an eCommerce store. 

6 Tips To Set Up An eCommerce Store

Do you know why we are focusing a lot on the right setup of an ecommerce store? 

The reason is if you set up your ecommerce store in the right way, then you can easily make it work out and generate sales for you. 

To set it up in the right way, follow the mentioned tips:

1. Find The Right Products To Sell

The first tip is to figure out the right products to sell. Let's take an example here: Assume that you can notice an excellent smartphone cover that is not branded because it does not have that much online presence or sales. 

But you used the smartphone case, and you liked it; you got in touch with your friends and gave a green signal to the smartphone case. 

Once you notice that almost everyone likes it, you need to figure out if it will sell in your area, city, country or worldwide? 

After getting a "Yes" from your thought process, you can finalize that product for your ecommerce store. 

Quick tip: You would also have to keep in mind the competitors and the pricing at the initial stage when you haven’t generated any sales yet. Also, since the users would be seeing your product image only, not the product itself, you have to make it attractive. For the same, explore tools like face swap online free, graphic and illustration designer, etc.

2. Finding The Suppliers

Once you have finalized the product, it's time to find the suppliers. If you have a supplier, ask them how much quantity they can offer you the products and do they have the bandwidth to provide more products if you got more orders from your ecommerce store? 

If it’s a yes, then you are good to go. 

To always be sure that you have enough products to sell, you can get in touch with more suppliers.

3. Choose A Brand Name

A brand name plays a crucial role in the success of your ecommerce store. Let's take a simple example: Assume you are selling smartphone cases and name your brand "Case it up". By reading your brand name, only people would know what products you are selling. 

On the other hand, for your smartphone case ecommerce store, if you picked a brand name like "Execute", people will have no idea about your products and services. 

Hence, choosing a name that resonates with your products is essential.

4. Pick Up The Right Platform

There are several platforms with the help of which you can create an ecommerce store. You can pick the most appropriate from them based on your requirements, budget, features you need, designs and the integrations they offer. 

One of the best platforms that offer you services based on plans you select is the Shopify store; this platform's overall management and setup is also easy. 

5. Delivery

Let's come to one of the most crucial parts of an ecommerce store. You must have noticed that ecommerce stores are considering fast delivery as one of their USPs. 

This is also a good point because people expect deliveries as early as possible. Because of this, you should always select the best delivery service provider for yourself. 

You can get in touch with free delivery provider brands and a few local delivery service providers. 

Know about their guarantees, the time they will take, and the delivery charges. Based on these factors, you should select the option that fits your budget.

6. Gaining Visibility

Here comes an essential sector for an ecommerce store that most ecommerce business owners are not taking care of. Enhancing your store's visibility is a challenging task; if you have money to invest in paid campaigns, then it's going to be a bit easier. 

But here we are going to offer you a few organic strategies that can help you gain visibility without spending a single penny on marketing: 

• Start a blog within your ecommerce store and post quality content on a similar niche of your products. In this way, you would be able to generate organic traffic easily. 

• The next strategy to enhance your visibility online is by working on your social media profiles. Start creating engaging content on social media profiles; you can also talk about your products and customers. 

• One tip that has helped a lot of ecommerce stores fetch a good customer engagement is by creating giveaways and challenges online. You can also work on that for better visibility. 

Conclusion

Setting up an ecommerce store will always look complicated if you are unaware of the tips mentioned above. We have discussed several easy to implement tips that can efficiently take your new ecommerce store to great heights.