More consumers are shopping online. In 2021, ecommerce sales will top $930 billion, a nearly 18% increase from last year. Capturing your share of the online shopping market will require using the right ecommerce strategy.
From marketing to website changes, ecommerce retailers can deploy techniques to grow their business. In this post, we’ll review some of the best ecommerce strategies for growing your online store.
Ecommerce Strategies to Grow Your Sales & Store
1. Email Marketing
There’s a reason your inbox overflows with sale notifications and other marketing emails from retailers. Email marketing works and is still a top-performing ecommerce strategy.
The main advantage of email marketing is that you own the audience. With social or other digital advertising, the platforms own the audience and will charge you to advertise. Building a proprietary email list allows you to communicate directly with your customers without paying an intermediary.
Another advantage of email marketing is that it targets existing customers. People who already purchased from your store are more likely to respond and buy again.
Tips for building your an ecommerce email marketing list:
Add an Opt-in at Checkout. Add a checkbox to your checkout form that lets customers opt-in for marketing messages.
Run a Promotion. Give people a discount on their next purchase if they sign up for your emails.
Make Product Announcements. If you’re debuting a new product or offering a limited release, ask people to sign up to get an email when the product is available.
2. Social and Digital Advertising
Paid advertising can help you reach new customers across the web and social media. To get the best return on your advertising spend, be sure to target your campaign strategically. Learn as much as you can about your current customers.
What websites do they frequently visit? What social media networks do they use?
Understanding your target customers’ demographics and user behavior will help you select the best advertising channels and targeting options.
Tip: You can also use the same audience knowledge to build the right ecommerce content strategy for boosting traffic and sales.
Types of digital advertising to use in your ecommerce strategy:
Paid Search. These ads appear at the top of search results. You bid on the keywords you want associated with your ads.
Display Ads. Also known as banner ads, you can find these image-based ads on websites and in apps and games.
Product Listings. Google and Bing offer ecommerce-specific product ads. If someone searches for blue Polo shirts, they’ll see product listings at the top of their search results.
Social Ads. You can use paid social to drive awareness of your brand or to promote specific products or promotions.
Retargeting Ads. These are a type of display or social ads. Have you ever searched for something on Amazon and started seeing ads for that product in your Facebook feed? That’s a retargeting campaign. These ads use a tracking pixel to identify people who visit your website. You can then show ads to them across websites and social media to drive them back to your site to make a purchase. Retargeting ads are a great way to try to recapture abandoned carts.
3. Personalization
How often have you bought something online because it appeared in the “recommended for you” or “people also looked at” section beneath a product listing?
Personalization is a powerful marketing technique for boosting online sales. You can develop personalized email marketing campaigns if you’re tracking your customers’ website traffic and purchase history.
For example, if you sell clothing and a customer regularly purchases children’s clothes, you could send an email with your top recommendations for back-to-school outfits.
4. Strategic Promotions
While a lot of ecommerce strategies focus on increasing the number of sales you make, you can also grow your business by increasing the average order value. For example, if your average order total is $50, how can you grow to $75 or $100? Craft your promotions around the goal of increasing the average order total.
Examples of strategic ecommerce promotional offers:
Free Shipping. Thanks to the popularity of Amazon Prime, a lot of customers expect free shipping. Still, most of them won’t complain about needing a minimum order total to qualify for free shipping. People will add $10 worth of stuff to their carts to avoid paying a $5 shipping fee. Offering free shipping with a minimum order can help increase your average order total.
Tiered Discounts. You’re likely familiar with these popular promotions, where the more you spend, the more you save. The discount structure for a tiered promotion could look like this:
Spend $50, save 10%
Spend $75, save 15%
Spend $150, save 20%
For more tips, check out all of our ecommerce blog posts.
Ecommerce Strategies for Growth
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