As you are already very well aware, the ecommerce landscape is expanding as we speak. In fact, a new online store will be created by the time you read through this introduction.
It’s not establishing an ecommerce business that is the challenge. Growing it and ensuring that it pays is the more difficult part. As less than a million sites sell more than $1000 a year, you will need to embrace every tactic you can to help yourself stand out and become a part of the smaller but more lucrative crowd.
So, with that in mind, here are eight ways you can leverage digital marketing to grow your online store.
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Understand Your Baselines
First, you should determine what your business is worth and what your current marketing tactics are resulting in.
Gather as much data as you possibly can about every single aspect of your ecommerce business. How much revenue you are seeing each month, how many visitors the store gets, what your conversion rates are, and so on. There are dozens of metrics that will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and determine what the next best investment will be.
Make sure you keep checking back in on your progress and monitor how your key KPIs are performing. If the tactic you’ve chosen isn’t working, you will want to know ASAP and pivot.
Also factor in the time certain changes will need to take effect. For instance, if you are doing some SEO-oriented work, know that you won’t be seeing results overnight. On the other hand, if your social media posts aren’t getting immediate traction, chances are they never will.
Adopt New (Sales) Platforms
A great way to grow your ecommerce business is to start branching out to other markets and channels. For example, if you are now using your website as your major storefront, you might want to consider Amazon, Etsy, or another way to market your products to a wider audience, and vice versa.
Once you establish a new sales channel, a whole host of new marketing avenues will open up to you as well. You can start promoting your products to new social media groups and communities, and you can repurpose some of your older content to work on the new audience.
Establishing a presence on new social media channels (new to you, that is) can also be a great tactic to explore. Just make sure you do more than jump on the latest trends. Aim to truly explore the possibilities the channel offers.
Sell on Social Media
While we’re on the subject of social media, it would also be wise to embrace social media selling. It’s not that complicated to set up, and it will let your customers make a purchase while they’re browsing their favorite channel, without having to visit your website.
Your competitors are probably already benefiting from the ready availability of social selling, and your target audience is probably already taking advantage of the feature, so missing out on it now can significantly cripple your business in the future.
As before, you want to choose the channel that makes the most sense for your business and ensure that you follow up your new outlet with the right marketing buzz.
Keep Your Ears Open on Socials
Another great way to leverage the power of social media is to take advantage of social listening. By identifying what’s being said about your brand, business, product, and staff, you can improve not only your digital marketing campaigns but also every single element of your business.
You will first need to set up all the relevant alerts across the platforms you want to monitor. Even if you aren’t present on, for example, Instagram, make sure you still tune in to what others are saying about you there. You may learn that you need to take advantage of this channel as well, as your products are getting a lot of positive buzz.
The most important element of social listening is, however, analysis. Don’t just blindly take everything you read to heart. Take each mention into consideration and understand where it is coming from.
Respond to all feedback, both positive and negative, but only allow the most relevant and valuable insight to alter your current marketing and business course.
Ask For and Listen to Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is an extremely underutilized way to boost your ecommerce business. And yet, strangely enough, a lot of brands don’t even take the time to ask for it. They only deal with unsolicited feedback, i.e., the comments and reviews that customers leave of their own accord.
Simply prompting customers to tell you what their experience shopping with you was can help you tap into previously undiscovered ways to market your business. However, in order for the feedback to work, you need to be quite specific about the questions you ask.
For instance, don’t just ask a vague “what did you think about the product” question. Instead, ask customers to speak about the functionalities, the price, the color range, and so on. The more specific the question and the more choices you give your customers when answering, the better you will be able to improve your tactics.
Once you gather this feedback, it will be important to act on it soon. You can use it to rewrite your product descriptions, write better ads, and highlight different aspects of the product you now know are a major attraction to your customer base.
Do More With Email
Email marketing is still an incredibly powerful digital marketing tool that can help you boost your sales in a wide range of ways.
First, there is the all-important cart abandonment email you should definitely be using. However, you don’t want to make it seem too pushy or desperate. Think of it as a gentle reminder, and perhaps incentive the purchase with a discount, other product recommendation, or free shipping.
You should also notify your customers when an item is back in stock, and you can set up email notifications that they might want to repurchase a product they’ve already tried. For example, if they’ve bought a bag of dog food, set up an automated alert that will remind them to repurchase just before they likely run out.
Make sure to personalize your email as much as possible and do more than merely address the recipient by name. The more directly you are able to speak to an individual, to more likely they are to come back.
Use User-Generated Content
User-generated content is another important tool you should be using to boost the appeal of your ecommerce website.
First, it is an invaluable way to get access to completely original, bespoke imagery or even videos that you could never have created yourself. Also, this type of content is inherently more trustworthy, as your customers rarely have the same ax to grind as you, the brand.
You can access UGC on social media, but you can also ask customers to feature it in their reviews or even reach out via email to ask them to share their photos if they have any. Always credit the author, and shout them out on socials if this tactic aligns with your overall marketing strategy.
Also, aim for a specific level of uniformity and quality with your UGC. Don’t use very grainy and low-quality images, and don’t go for the ones that would stand out on your page a little bit too much.
Make Your Content Matter
Finally, you want to make sure that the content you are creating is truly valuable. And this includes all manner of content, from your product copy and product images to your Instagram Stories and blog posts.
This means that it needs to serve a specific purpose and address a specific problem. Don’t create content, any type of content, just for the sake of mere volume.
Try to identify a goal for each piece. Do you want to help readers understand how to use a product? Do you want to share a specific update? Are you sending out a blast notifying everyone on your email list that you will have a sale next week?
Align the purpose of the content with its format and language. Always make sure you’re giving your audience what they want rather than just creating something you find easy or interesting yourself. That’s unless you are your ideal target customer, in which case, good job for identifying the perfect product-market fit!
Final Thoughts
Digital marketing can help you boost your ecommerce business in a wide variety of ways. However, you do always need to be mindful to stay on brand and to truly cater to the needs and interests of your specific audience.
Also, bear in mind that while there are plenty of marketing fads out there and smashing new campaign tactics often make headlines, it’s best to err on the side of caution. Have plenty of tried and tested tactics rolling out. That way, you will be covered in case your brand new show-stopping tactic doesn’t quite pan out as you planned.
