Kim Yazzi- Figured out what to sell? – Yes
- Is the Ecommerce store setup? – Yes
- Is the traffic generated? – Yes
- Do the sales begin to a plateau? – Yes
Oops! It’s discouraging. Having trouble finding the invisible friction is the selling journey, that’s making the marketing even more difficult? Besides, all the marketing efforts are useless if it won’t produce conversions. So, what to do?
Embracing and executing the best
marketing strategy is the best solution. Again, among the plethora of strategies, finding the right ecommerce marketing strategy that ensures success is extremely taxing. There cannot be a one-size-fits-all solution as one person’s meat is another one’s poison. Well, it makes the situation trickier.
Don’t lose hope. Every cloud has a silver lining. Despite, the uncertainties, some smart tactics help companies from straightforward acquisition to conversion to retention.
Here, we are sharing time-proven and tested marketing strategies that stay relevant
to your ecommerce business and bring winning upshots.
Let’s move on!
- Make the user journey plain-sailing
“We see our customers as the guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” – Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon
Do you remember the shopping experience from malls? How seamless, pleasant, and enjoyable experience it is. Isn’t it? The customers expect the same on the e-store from the comfort and convenience of the couch. When the customers found the texts difficult-to-read, navigation confusing, poor design accompanied by a large number of visuals, and lack of value proposition, they move further.
It’s a sign- there is a dire need to optimize the website design to allow the users to easily land to the page when they are looking for something in the store. Along with UI, the products must be segmented with an optimal number of products on one page so that users don’t get overwhelmed.
- Hook up the visitors via live chat
“Communication is at the heart of e-commerce and community.” – Meg Whitman, President, and CEO of Hewlett-Packard
Making the users visit the store is not as difficult as engaging and converting them while they are on-site. Communicating with the user right at every touch-point will help in resolving the misunderstandings, avoiding the probability of getting negative feedback, and saving you from the lost sales.
Read more: Types
Of E Commerce Business Models That Lets You Thrive In 2020
Interacting with the users in real-time through live chat tools is the best solution to directly connect with the users, know their concerns, and address them right at the moment they are planning to purchase.
- Embrace personalization
“Data. Data. Data. I can’t make bricks without clay.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Data is the ecommerce bible that reveals everything in detail. With digitization, the stores can capture and collect the micro-moments at an individual level, which helps them deliver an individualized experience.
Presently, personalizing the user journey cannot be an afterthought because it has become a norm for the customers. The customers expect product recommendations, emails, messages, and offers tailored to their preferences, buying habits, and purchase history. The marketing tactic not just delights the customers, but helps businesses in finding the winning horses and where they need to improve.
The leading players are using the technology to personalize the store for the customers and have experienced a marginal difference in average basket size, sales, and ROI. Don’t overlook it.
- Optimize for mobile and locales to go the extra mile
“You can’t just open a website and expect people to flood in. If you want to succeed you have to create traffic.” – Joel Anderson, CEO, Walmart
The customers are shopping from the store doesn’t mean the customers likely to continue shopping from desktop only. You need to be proactive to know the evolving shopping trends and changing customer’s expectations. Now, mobile responsiveness is the need of the hour, else potential sales turn away.
Make your website mobile-friendly from start to finish keeping mobile users’ browsing behavior in mind. For instance, the image size should be mobile-optimized, the buttons should not be large, the list should not be too long and pretty more.
Going ahead, when store targeting the global audience, it doesn’t mean the customers appear out of thin air. Taking a local approach in marketing is all-important to ramp up the sales. Identify the location where the concentration of the potential customers is high and then study the product and buying preferences. Thereafter, launch a promotion or offer more discounts. If the profit margin worries you, then jack up the base price and put higher discounts.
Studies had proven that free shipping or expedited shipping works wonder in increasing order volume and sales. The multiple warehouses in every urban or semi-urban area with high user concentration can be created, which helps in making the free shipping or speedy delivery phenomena come true.
- Loyalty must be rewarded
User acquisition costs 100 times higher than user retention. The cost-effective
marketing strategy is to make loyal customers return to the store and shop frequently. There is no point in not rewarding the patronage that the potential customers have shown in your brand.
Launch a loyalty program where each purchase can be incentivized with reward points, extra privileges such as free shipping or extra discount can be offered, free membership to unlock exclusive sales, and much more. It keeps your customers flocking to the store again and again.
- Upsell is a good idea
It’s a human instinct to look for alternate options whenever they are presented before them. Sometimes, it results in impulse buying or up-selling.
When the customers are
shopping online, they are presented with a variable of what they have chosen, they certainly browse it. If they find the premium option better than what they are looking for, they won’t give even a single thought to purchase the same at a higher price.
Read more: How Is Facebook Pay Adding A New Dimension To Ecommerce Store?
It requires building the brand credible, reliable, and trustworthy so that customers consider the recommendations and purchase instantly.
- Leverage social power
You can’t wait for customers to come to you. You have to figure out where they are, go there and drag them back to your store.” – Paul Graham, Y COMBINATOR.
Social media has taken the world by storm. If your customers have leisure time and they are not browsing the store, then they must be on one
of the social channels. It implies the presence on social platforms is vital to catch the customers where they are and bring them to the store.
Create a Facebook store where you can display the top-selling items, exclusive sales, special discounts, and more to bring the users back to the store.
Instagram integration is also popular with 500 million daily active users. The strategic use of hashtags, uploading of appealing photos, and posting it all at the right time will help in earning organic traffic, engaging the users, and building a long list of fans. Running the contest is also popular.
- Traditional email also works
Though instant messaging has become the most preferred tool for communication, age-old email marketing is still effective in generating
sales and ROI. Besides, the emails sent right to the user’s inbox is given more credence rather than social feeds. Capture the maximum email subscriptions to send emails such as blogs, newsletters, or promotional content to bring the user to the store again.
Read More: Rethink Your
Business with Ecommerce Website Development Services/Solution
The emails should not be sent haphazardly which interferes with the user experience. Instead, the right email with relevant content should be sent to the right user at the right time. For instance, a welcome email when the customers make a purchase, discount or offer-related emails at the time of weekends or holiday season, a reminder email for the items added to the wishlist, or the items added to the cart are selling at speed to stimulate them for checkout can be sent.
Epilogue
Bob Willett, former President of Best Buy International said, “The sooner we drop the ‘e’ out of ‘e-commerce’ and just call it commerce, the better.”
It signals
running an Ecommerce business is not a child’s play. To catalyze positive growth and achieve excellence in the field of ecommerce, leveraging marketing strategies is vital. But, there is no universal strategy that fits the bills.
Here, we have enlisted the marketing tactics that are tried and tested by the established retail players and keep their businesses growing. Leverage the strategy that works for your eCommerce business and increase the sales boundlessly.
Himanshu Patel
