Ecommerce is hot right now, but there is opportunity for more.
With COVID-19, more consumers are turning to ecommerce. According to recent data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. consumers spent $347.26 billion on online retailers in the first six months of 2020, an increase of 30.1% over 2019.
Digging a little deeper into the data, $1 out of every $5 spent by consumers went towards online orders during Q2 of 2020.
With a hot market and customers looking online, now is the best time to invest in marketing your online business. With so many relying on the internet, there are prospects looking for companies like yours. That means a rapid ROI for your investment and plenty of opportunity.
Let’s look at a few of the top ideas for marketing your ecommerce business.
8 Ideas for Marketing an Ecommerce Business
Every business is different. It’s important to pick and choose the tactics that will have the biggest impact for your ecommerce site. That starts by understanding your customer through a buyer persona.
Once you understand your customer, it’s time to build a strategy. Here are a few of the top marketing ideas for ecommerce.
1. Focus on Customer Experience
You can have the best marketing, driving thousands of potential customers to your site every day, but if your customer experience is lacking, you’ll lose all those prospects. Is your site easy to use? Is it mobile friendly? Are users getting all the information they need to make a buying decision?
The customer experience doesn’t stop once the customer leaves your website. Your shipping, the packaging, and even the label used on the packaging, all feed into the customer experience. Your goal should be creating the best experience possible, from start to finish, for every customer.
2. Grow Your Email Contacts
A recent study identified email marketing as a powerful digital marketing channel for ecommerce businesses, delivering great returns. For it to work, you need contacts. Email marketing is a numbers game. You need to have enough people to send an email to for it to be worth your time.
You need a strategy (better yet, multiple strategies) for growing your list. What can you offer a prospect to make it worthwhile for them to provide their address? A newsletter, blog or a discount club are sample tactics. Make sure it is easy to sign up and you are providing plenty of value. The strategy needs to center around building a relationship with the prospect.
3. Enhance the Value of Your Email Marketing
Now that you have a larger email list, what are you going to do with it? With a little time, effort and investment, you can make the most of email marketing. That means not flooding the prospect inbox with spam, but providing real value.
Look at sending a welcome email the minute someone signs up. Start segmenting the list so you can determine what people want. Send them content and information that deals with things they care about. Personalize your campaigns by anticipating future customer needs. See your business as a reliable resource for the customers on your email list.
4. Build a Digital Marketing Strategy
Rather than running random Google Ad campaigns or half-heartedly posting Facebook ads, look at developing a targeted digital marketing campaign for multiple channels. Consider how you can improve the effectiveness of all your marketing with an overall digital marketing strategy.
Start with your buyer persona. Where do they go for information and how do they make a buying decision? Once you have that information, look at how you can help them as they make their decision. What support can you provide? What information do they need? Shape your strategy around helping the customer along the buyer’s journey.
5. Jump-Start Your Content Marketing
Content marketing is an untapped resource for many ecommerce businesses. It provides the fuel for your organic search traffic and is the foundation of your email marketing. It should answer prospect questions as they are making a buying decision.
Look at creating helpful and relevant content that your prospect wants to read as they make a buying decision. Look at writing FAQs, or reviews of the different products on your site, or buying guides. Offer topical content, like a seasonal product guide or how customers can make the most of their purchases. With some useful and SEO-rich content on your site, you can drive more organic traffic and start selling more products.
6. Upsell on Your Website
Marketing doesn’t just happen before someone arrives on your website, it happens while someone is shopping by upselling. Look at linking your premium products to your lower-priced options, so that customers know there is a related product available.
Target the customer’s needs. If you have a customer purchasing one item, then provide additional options highlighting other products they need. Make it easy for customers to see all their options at once, and help them understand the advantages of the premium product. Continually test ways of upselling so you can make the most of every visitor on your site.
7. Increase Personalization
Personalization works. Studies show that personalization can boost sales as much as 10% or more. As you collect information on a customer, like their past purchases, preferences and personal information like location, you can create a custom experience for them.
For example, if you know what they were interested in in the past, then create a custom home page the next time they visit your site. Include other products they may be interested in. Or, if you know what region they live in, showcase items popular in the area. Even adding their name to the site or in your email marketing can boost conversions and make the shopping experience even better.
8. Leverage Live Chat or Chatbots
Your goal is to provide an exceptional shopping experience for customers. Get them to the products and information they need as quickly and easily as possible. Chatbots or live chat can help you sell more, create a better customer experience, and really build the relationship with the customer.
Target areas on your website where live chat can help. If there is a page where people are spending more time, or having difficulty making a decision, adding a chat box may help. Use a window that appears when someone is on the page after a long time, just so they know help is there if they need it. Use a chatbot on the home page to help direct customers to the information or products they want.
Launch Your Ecommerce Marketing Today!
Many of the ecommerce retailers we work with focus on warehouse operations and inventory, but put minimal effort into marketing. They use a few basic marketing tactics, but lack an overall strategy. This limits growth, and opportunities are lost.
When you make marketing a priority and begin exploring additional tactics, you’ll see results. Invest in new tactics, measure the results, and find what works for your business.
If you have questions or need additional help in launching new campaigns or strategies, then contact GO2 Partners today. We work with many of the largest and most successful ecommerce businesses. We provide not only full service marketing support through programs like our 20/20 marketing, but also operations and distribution services.
Our goal is to be the easiest company to partner with. Contact GO2 today to learn more.
