Marketing Tips To Increase Your eCommerce Sales

Breaking the mold is essential for small businesses who want to stand out from the rest of their competition. That's why I've decided to compile a list of 10 handy ecommerce marketing tips to help grow your brand.

1. Leverage User Experience (UX): Good UX = Increased conversion rate. It's that simple!

The old saying that you never get a second chance to make a first impression is true: your site should grab attention, quick. But if you're selling online, your first impression is even more important.

Think about it: a customer comes home to visit your website, and what do they see? They might see your homepage, which is usually the first thing they see. But what happens after that? What's the next best place for them to go?

If you're lucky, they'll click a link that directs them to a product. And that's when the colors, text size, and layout come into play. But if you're lucky, the customer will click a link that takes them to a product. And that's when your homepage becomes even more important.

Most retailers focus their homepage design on their categories, hoping to engage the customer's interest. But product pages, which are often smaller and contain less product information, offer a different challenge.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that shoppers know what they want! A lot of shoppers get confused when they visit a page. They might be looking for a specific type of product, but end up looking at a different product.

So make sure that your homepage design reflects the types of products you sell, and point shoppers to the most relevant page.

2. Offer "Real-time personalisation"

As online stores become more popular, it’s becoming harder to stand out. So, you need to give every customer the best experience when they buy from your store. One of the most effective ways to do this is by personalising content for each customer. The secret to successful online marketing is finding out what the customer really wants, and then giving it to them. In the early days, you had to get out and talk to your customers, listen to their complaints, and figure out what they were really looking for. Even then, you were taking a gamble. You had no idea if what you were doing was going to work.

Today, we have more data than ever. You can elaborate surveys, ask customers to fill out detailed questionnaires. product recommendation quiz, you can also analyse their browsing history and take advantage of all the powerful free and paid analytics tools. These days, it makes more sense to talk about data as information, and knowledge as insight. Once you know something, you can do something with it. And these days, you're no longer gambling. You're betting.

3. Reduce shopping cart abandonment and recover abandoned carts.

Reduce shopping cart abandonment: The shopping cart abandonment problem is real. According to one report, about 63% of shopping carts are abandoned, and that’s before shipping costs and taxes. When you finally have a customer ready to make a purchase, the last thing you want to hear is, “I forgot my credit card!”, “I can’t remember my password”, “I just thought it would be cheaper if I wait until I get home”, “I don’t want to pay shipping.”

How the Cart Abandonment Problem Impacts Your Ecommerce Business?

One of the most obvious ways that cart abandonment hurts your ecommerce store is the obvious, lost revenue. If a visitor loses interest in your site and leaves without buying, you’ve missed out on a sale. But there’s also reputation damage to consider. Your bounce rate will increase, and your rankings will suffer.

How You Can Prevent Your Customers from Abandoning their Carts?

The shopping cart abandonment problem is easy to correct. Here’s how:

Be transparent about all costs, shipping, taxes etc...
Include progress indicators on the checkout page, use "step by step" methodology
Include thumbnails of products throughout the checkout process.
Facilitate the navigation between cart and store, use a smooth process
Optimise page load speeds
Offer guest checkout options4. Know your customers

Recover abandoned carts: Even if a cart has been abandoned there is still hope. It's easy, launch an email recovery campaign and use web push notifications to persuade cart abandoners back to site to complete their purchase. Automate the message and you will get your sales back on track! The entire process should take less than 15 minutes to set up.

4. Customer reviews + User generated content = Trust, and Trust = Sales.

It makes sense to use the wisdom of the masses to make buying decisions. After all, we are all influenced by what people say. People love reviews, testimonials, how-to’s and all kinds of other useful information. They like to hear other people's stories and experiences.

The best user-generated content comes from customer-created products, because then the customer is acting as the marketing arm of your brand.

User-generated content also builds your brand’s social following, getting customers actively promoting your brand, and providing you with new and targeted marketing opportunities.

User-generated content can be in the form of reviews, product images, videos, blog posts, and more.

5. Step up your email marketing

Most stores should be generating at least 25 to 35% of their total revenue from email. It's not a myth, it's a fact. Email marketing is one of the best ways to communicate with your prospects and customers. It's an inexpensive way to send out newsletters, holiday cards, or special offers. Email marketing can be used at any stage of the sales cycle to deliver targeted messages to people based on the actions they take.

Consider it for customers retention: With email marketing, you can coordinate deals and promotions that keep customers engaged with your brand. It's important to send retention emails to existing customers who have shown interest in your brand, so they will continue to purchase from your business instead of leaving for a competitor.

Consider it for customers acquisition: Spend less time on acquisition with emailing, allow you to send targeted and personalised messages to all subscribers who subscribed through lead generation campaigns. Segment your database by location, device, interests etc. for accurate targeted emailing campaigns.

In addition to optimizing your email marketing strategy for customer retention and acquisition, another effective approach to boost your e-commerce business is cold emailing. Cold emailing can be a powerful tool for reaching out to potential customers, establishing connections, and promoting your products or services.

How to Write Cold Call Email:

Crafting compelling cold emails requires a strategic approach. Start by personalizing your messages, addressing the recipient by name, and clearly stating the value proposition of your e-commerce offerings. Keep the email concise and engaging, focusing on how your products or services can address the recipient's needs or challenges. Here are some tips for effective cold emailing in the e-commerce space:

Personalization is Key: Tailor your emails to each recipient based on their preferences, behaviors, or interactions with your brand. Personalized messages are more likely to capture attention and resonate with potential customers.
Clear Call-to-Action (CTA): Include a clear and compelling call-to-action in your cold emails. Whether it's directing them to your e-commerce website, offering a special discount, or inviting them to explore your product catalog, a well-defined CTA increases the likelihood of conversion.
Build Trust with Social Proof: Incorporate customer testimonials, reviews, or success stories in your cold emails. Social proof can instill confidence in your brand and encourage recipients to take the desired action.
Segmentation for Targeted Outreach: Just as with your regular email marketing campaigns, segment your cold email recipients based on relevant criteria such as location, interests, or previous interactions. This allows for more targeted and personalized outreach.
Follow Up Strategically: Don't be discouraged by initial non-responses. Implement a follow-up strategy to nurture leads and build relationships over time. A well-timed and considerate follow-up can make a significant difference in conversion rates.

By incorporating cold emailing into your overall email marketing strategy, you can expand your reach, connect with a broader audience, and potentially convert leads into loyal customers.

For more in-depth insights into crafting effective cold call emails, check out our partner's blog on how to write cold call email.

6. Reward your customers:

The formula is simple: Happy customer = New brand's advocate = Recurring sales + Recommendation to friends and family + 5 stars reviews.

One of the best ways to keep customers around is by using loyalty programs as an incentive. Rewarding your best customers with exclusive rewards, discount coupons, or free shipping can be a very effective way of increasing both repeat purchases and customer loyalty.

7. Use coupons and discounts smartly:

To encourage customers to act now, stores need to create the sense of urgency. Because these promotions tend to be short-term, a sense of urgency using a countdown clock or a ticking clock can help customers move faster. Other ways brands use discount pricing include BOGO (buy one, get one free) and volume discounts – “3 for 2”, for example.

This was tested and approved by thousands of marketers around the world, what can we say, it's human nature! people like to get offers and exclusive promotions and always have the fear of missing out.

8. Offer unforgettable customer support:

We live in an increasingly digital world. At the same time, we are becoming increasingly impatient. As a consequence, support channels are changing and evolving fast. The growth of live chat, self-service tools and automation makes it possible to offer tangible assistance while continuously improving service performance.

Today’s modern customer is looking for an omnichannel approach to support which means responding to each type of customer request across several support channels simultaneously.

9. Upsell and cross-sell products:

Both upselling and cross-selling are excellent techniques for increasing profit and reducing losses. They help you sell additional products to customers who may not have been aware that they need or want them. When properly mastered, they will result in an increase in the average spend and the lifetime value of each customer, and will often boost conversion rates.

There are plenty of online tools, apps or extensions that help with upselling and cross-selling. Take advantage of them.

10. Create High-Quality, Engaging Content

Content marketing has become more important than ever. As consumers, we are bombarded with advertisements all day long. We have an incredibly short attention span and resistance to advertising, so brands have had to develop ways of getting their messages across without being too obvious. Use blogs, videos, case studies, podcasts, infographics, think pieces, social media posts to get your messages heard.

If you create content which encourages discussion and allows your customers to voice their opinions on the latest trends in your industry, that will help you scale your business.

Running an online store is full of challenges, but try to use these tips, you can easily improve your performance.