Whether you own a brick-and-mortar business or run an online store, improving sales is always the number one priority. With the advancement in technology, there is a lot you can do to improve online sales using eCommerce marketing.
Ecommerce marketing makes use of promotional activities to increase traffic and conversions. This includes both paid and organic channels to drive results.
Many businesses have a marketing strategy but fail to effectively execute it. Because eCommerce marketing does not run on the notion, “if you build it, they will come”. Online eCommerce marketing works on the inbound marketing concept, where positive results are produced using the pull marketing strategy.
There are a number of strategies you can utilize to boost sales through eCommerce marketing, but the following 5 can easily help you improve online sales.
1. Make the Checkout Process easier
According to a study, 69.8% of shopping carts are abandoned. And this is a natural eCommerce user behavior because they find it hard to completely checkout. They are looking for coupons, or saving the product for later purchase.
The statistic is itself a staggering number of abandoned carts which shows how important it is to recover these customers. One key thing you can do to reduce abandoned carts is to create a frictionless checkout experience.
In order to make it a friendly experience you should provide a Guest Checkout that enables customers to make the purchase without a mandatory account. This eliminates one barrier in eCommerce checkout.
Secondly, you should enable Google Autofill functionality to allow prospects to save time in filling in their addresses. Because once this is set up it would start to display the address in real-time.
The right type of eCommerce optimization goes a long way in creating a loyal customer for your brand.
2. Capture Email Subscribers
Email marketing is considered to be the most effective channel even today. With the rise of automation, segmentation, mobile ready emails, and abandoned cart technology, email marketing is still a hot channel for improving online sales with eCommerce marketing.
Starting an email campaign can be a daunting task, but considering the ROI it generates, it should be your top of the list task. You can easily automate the whole process with popular tools like Constant Contact, Mail Chimp and others which come with features like email series trigger, customer journey builder, advanced segmentation and more to help you create an engaged audience.
Taking a thoughtful approach in promoting your newsletter or blog through email marketing, you can create customer loyalty and re-engagement.
3. Affiliate Marketing for Increasing Sales
If you are in the space of online marketing, you must have heard the term Affiliate Marketing a gazillion times. But have you ever wondered how you can create an affiliate program for your online store to boost sales?
Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy where a third-party promotes your product through a website, social media or influencer program in return for a commission. Affiliate marketing is worth $12 billion and experiencing a growth of 10% year on year.
You can create an affiliate program for your online store and manage it manually, or you can use affiliate networks such as ShareASale, ClickBank, and others to automate the process.
Once you have an affiliate program in place, you can promote it to get new publishers, and influencers on board to promote your product. This is a win-win strategy for both businesses, where a growth for one means an increase in sales for the other.
4. Get Help from Professionals
This might sound promotional, but a lot of eCommerce marketing agencies know the techniques and strategies that always bring positive results. They have the expertise and resources to satisfy your expectations.
Ecommerce marketing agencies have prior experience working with Social media marketing campaigns, managing Google Ads (specifically shopping Ads), creating localized search campaigns, and a wide array of other services for eCommerce marketing, to help you boost sales and brand awareness.
And on top of that it is less expensive than starting a team on your own that lacks experience.
5. Location Based Marketing
Remember when I started this post I said that even if you own a brick and mortar store, you can utilize eCommerce marketing for your local store?
Well, location based marketing is your go-to strategy as a local store. Location based marketing also known as neighborhood marketing allows you to create a digital footprint in a local area.
You should leverage the power of Search Engine Optimization and optimize your website with local keywords. Alongside this you can leverage the power of local event campaigns to boost your brand awareness.
This is quite an untapped area for a lot of stores that are struggling to drive sales, footfall or even website traffic. As a local store you can even look into customer surveys, to generate feedback about your products and the store as a whole. This can help you improvise based on customer feedback.
Conclusion
It is really important to draft a well versed eCommerce marketing strategy that not only helps you drive sales but also creates brand awareness.
All the above mentioned strategies can help you boost sales through eCommerce marketing, but there are always better options that are customized to your business requirements.
