A successful eCommerce business is more than just customers and purchases. The accurate measure of success is having a marketing plan in place that continues to grow your customer base, keep your current customers coming back, and steadily increases your revenue month after month and year after year.
What marketing strategies are surefire winners for your eCommerce business? Here are a few that will put your business in the best position to get noticed.
Utilize the Power of Instagram and Facebook Shopping
Screenshot via Facebook
Marketing on social media looks much different now than it did even a couple of years ago. You no longer need to rely solely on catchy Facebook ads and posts pointing your audience to a link to your product page and hoping they make a purchase. Facebook and Instagram have become completely shoppable, making it easier than ever to integrate your products into your pages, profiles, and posts.
On Facebook, you can create a Facebook Page Shop, which adds a shopping page right to your business Facebook page. Through the shoppable app, your customers can view products you add, save them for future purchases, and checkout either on your website or directly through the app if you enable that feature.
Facebook Page Shops are soon to be Facebook Shops, which will provide a shared storefront for a unified presence across Instagram and Facebook if you have a shop that’s accessible from your Instagram profile and your Facebook page.
Promote Free Shipping
Never underestimate the power of something as simple as free shipping. This little detail is a crucial one to point out in advertising, whether you create Google ads or Facebook ads or market to your newsletter subscribers.
Free shipping is almost like a reward for your customers. A study found that 63% of abandoned shopping carts stem from shipping costs being too high once a customer goes through the checkout process. Cutting off $10, $5, or even $3, can be enough to convince those customers to continue their purchase.
Get Reviewed
A mound of positive customer reviews and testimonials can work wonders for your business with customers helping others decide to buy your products. According to BrightLocal, 91% of consumers say they’re more likely to use a company that has positive reviews. The same study shows that the average customer reads at least ten reviews before deciding your business is the one that they want to buy from.
The key here is to spend your marketing time getting reviews from customers. You can do that by:
- Offering a discount on the next purchase when they leave a review and verify it with you
- Sending an email reminder to leave a review a day or two after delivery
- Making it simple to leave reviews with easy website navigation or clear links in your emails
The BrightLocal study also found that 70% of customers use reviews from multiple sites to inform their decision, so avoid focusing all your efforts on your website. You might offer a higher discount if a customer reviews your business or product on two or three sites instead of just one, for example.
A great opportunity to drive customers to leave reviews is by adding a call to action at the bottom of your receipts. You can easily customize the receipt template for your business through ReceiptMakerly.
Upsell Your Products
Cross-posting your products across your site enhances the shopping experience and suggests other products your customers might be interested in. In other words, it could trigger extra sales beyond what a customer initially planned to purchase.
On each product page, you can add a section of relevant higher-priced items or products that work together with that specific product. There are even plugins that can handle some of the hard work for you, like Related Products, which integrates with WooCommerce for WordPress. And of course, compelling product descriptions will help you seal the deal.
Scale with Email
Some customers need a bit of convincing to purchase after they visit your online store. One of the best ways to gently encourage them to buy from you is through email marketing. A strategic email marketing campaign can remind your visitors of what they were interested in and trigger them to buy with offers like free shipping, a discount code, or a price-match guarantee.
Building your email list is the first step to make email marketing work. eCommerce sites can use several tactics for this, like placing a sign-up form in the sidebar or footer or capturing emails with a popup featuring a discount when a customer signs up. You can also offer an incentive for a customer to get a discount code by entering their email when they leave something in their shopping cart without buying it.
Use a popup builder to keep track of all your subscribers, create popups, and design email campaigns for continued marketing to customers.
Send In-Stock Alerts
You might notice a lot of online stores jumping on the bandwagon with allowing customers to receive in-stock alerts on products that are temporarily out of stock. They do this by having a customer enter their email or phone number to receive email or text alerts when the product comes back in stock (there are plugins for this, too!).
The reason this is so trendy right now is that it works. In a month from now, when your product comes back in stock, your potential customer probably won’t be thinking about it. Your in-stock email or text reminds them of their interest and signals that it’s ready for purchase – which could give you an immediate sale.
Get More Traction for Your Products on Social Media
Looking for a way to get some traction for your eCommerce store with minimal effort? Add share buttons to your product pages to keep your social media marketing flowing. With these simple buttons, your customers can quickly share their favorite items with their networks, effectively giving your business free advertising across social media.
