Are you new to e-Commerce and don’t know where to start to promote your business outside your website? Or has your business hit an impasse, and you are wondering what more there is to do to revitalise it, boost sales and thrive? No matter where you find yourself in the e-Commerce terrain, you will find the following 8 tips priceless as you draft or reassess your marketing strategy.
1. Formulate a Marketing Strategy
It is demonstrably true that people who fail to plan, plan to fail. Therefore, a trial-and-error approach to eCommerce marketing is risky and offers little room for re-evaluation. What you need is a solid marketing strategy right off the bat. The first order of business should be to identify your target audience. Are you targeting males or females, or the young or the old? Then find out where you are likely to find them. Finally, determine the most effective way that you can use to tell them about your product.
2. Invest in Automated Email Marketing Software
Statistics show that email marketing is second only to search as far as eCommerce marketing strategies are concerned. This is, therefore, a top priority tool for any eCommerce company. There are several email marketing software programmes out there, and if you decide to buy one, there are many factors that you will have to consider such as cost and features.
One feature that you should look out for is automation since that is what will work best with eCommerce. You can then use this software to solicit your customers for feedback and product reviews, promote new products, follow up on cart abandonment, and reach out to dormant customers to promote sales.
3. Diversify Social Media Marketing
The number of people on social networks is massive and more and more are joining every day. If you play your cards right, you can drive up your sales exponentially through social networks. The more networks you use, the greater the reach.
To start, identify the social network(s) where your target audience hangs out, create pages, provide links to your website, and start posting quality, interesting and original content. If you are not sure about the right network(s) for you, you can experiment on all of them for a few weeks and settle on the one(s) where you make the most impact. You can also use sponsored pages for a fee to target a specific audience.
4. Build Your Public Relations (PR)
It may take you time to build good PR, but once you have it, it can take your business places. To start the journey, find out everything you can about your target audience and create a beautiful story about your products that will resonate well with them. Then sell that story to them through magazines or newspapers that they read. You can also share your story on websites with a good readership that offers guest blogging opportunities. If the work is too much for you and you have the money, you can always contract a PR company.
5. Invest in a Pay-per-click program
If you have just started your company and you are still injecting funds to stabilize it, PPC may seem unappealing since it requires cash. However, it is an excellent sales generation tool and can give you a return on investment (ROI) within a very short period. So, how does PPC advertising work? It helps you generate audience-targeted advertisements, which are posted on social networks and search listings. Each time someone clicks on any of them, they are directed to your website, and you get charged for it.
6. Tap into Affiliate Marketing
Before your company is established, it may be wise to partner with people to help you reach clients and boost sales by paying a commission. These people can be bloggers who have a substantial following that includes your target audience. The idea is to write an article about your products on their blog and put links to your website. Any sale that is made through their marketing efforts is traced using affiliate tracking software and attributed to them. The affiliate’s cut is determined beforehand and may vary depending on the product and the profile of the affiliate.
7. Make it Easy to Buy
One mistake that most eCommerce companies make is to complicate the buying process. This blunder may explain the high cart abandonment rate. It is important to note that buyers prefer a very simple buying process. Lengthy ones are a complete turn-off. Make sure that the buy button is available at every moment the customer is surveying the product. They shouldn’t have to move back a page to access it. Then, when it comes to checking out, there should be few steps involved. Make it easy for them to key in their card numbers and confirm the purchase. Also, make sure your website has an SSL certificate. EV SSL certificate helps customers trust your website, and in turn, makes the customer’s buying process quick and easy.
8. Install a Loyalty Program
9. Using AI in Email Marketing Campaigns
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been changing the world over the last few years. Across a whole host of industries, this fascinating and emerging technology has fundamentally changed the way some of us work, providing a new set of tools for many professionals. In the world of marketing, AI and automation have been game-changers. Labor-intensive tasks can now be automated, and we have access to more insights and information than ever before. Given that it’s still a relatively new technology, many marketers are still playing catch-up. With that in mind, we’ve created this ultimate guide to using AI in email marketing campaigns.
As well as looking at email marketing strategies in general, we’ll also explore exactly what AI is and how it can help your marketing efforts. We’ll also look at some tools and examples to help you get started with your own AI email marketing efforts.
Read the full article here.
Conclusion
In summary, building a customer base through eCommerce marketing is not easy. The competition is cut-throat, and it is increasingly becoming more difficult to understand and effectively engage the modern consumer. However, you can use these 8 tips to formulate a formidable marketing strategy that can catapult you to the top of the pile. To do this, identify your target customer, utilise all multiple marketing tools at your disposal, and sell your story to them in their own language. If you are not aware, it can cost up to 10 times more to get a new customer than to make a sale to a previous customer. Existing customers also account for two-thirds of all sales. These statistics are sobering and make implementing customer retention programs crucial for any eCommerce companies. To foster loyalty, you may be forced to go an extra mile and reward your loyal customers in some way. An example of a loyalty program is the point system. In this system, customers are given company cards that earn points with each purchase. They later receive rewards in the form of free merchandise when their points reach a certain level.
