How to Promote Your Online Store: Marketing Strategies to Build a Robust Ecommerce Channel
With your online store, you’ll be able to reach more prospective customers than ever before — and you’ll have complete control over their shopping experience. But this isn’t an “if you build it, they will come” situation.
In this article, we’ll go over some of the best ways for you to get your new online shop in front of the people who want to buy. We’ll consider not only how to drive traffic to your website, but also how to integrate marketing between your online store and your offline businesses to make the most of all your channels.
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Driving Traffic to Your Online Store
While this is, admittedly, a simplistic way to think about it, this three-pronged approach can help you think about your different marketing activities and how to divide your time and budget.
For your first audience, people who know about you, you should have a direct line to them — either through email communications, content marketing or via social media. You can communicate with them directly and for “free” (not counting any budget you might spend on tools).
For your second audience, you’ll need to find ways for them to discover the products you have that meet their needs. This can involve search engine optimization (SEO), content creation (like blogging) and search engine marketing.
And for your third audience, you’ll need to think in terms of brand awareness. Are you offering a fix for a problem they don’t know about yet? Or is your target audience using a competitor’s solution? The answers will have an impact on how you approach your marketing.
Once your store is set up, you can start promoting your site to your existing customer base. We’ll also talk about how to make your website easy to find for new customers interested in your product and spend your advertising budget wisely to put your message in front of high-intent traffic.
53 Experts Share Their 10 Quickest Ways to Increase Ecommerce Sales
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Tactics To Improve Ecommerce Sales
1. Build your brand awareness.
Lon Safko, CEO, LonSafko.com
Jason Greenwood, Founder Greenwood Consulting & eCommerce Manager HealthPost NZ
Josh Braaten, CEO, Brandish Insights
Eric Yonge, CEO, EYStudios
Use the full force of digital marketing to get people to your site but then make sure it is VERY easy for people to add to cart – the more buttons or steps it takes to checkout, the more likely people are to abandon their cart.
2. Build email lists and use email marketing to stay engaged
Chloe Thomas, Marketing Problem Solver, eCommerce MasterPlan
Emil Kristensen, CMO & Co-founder, Sleeknote
Kaleigh Moore, freelance writer, kaleighmoore.com
Jeff Sauer, Founder, Jeffanalytics
Shayla Price, B2B Marketer
George Hartley, CEO and Co-founder, SmartrMail
3. Meet your customers where they are on social media
Rupert Cross, Digital Director, 5874
Mike Pisciotta, Co-founder, Marketing Your Purpose
Use what I call the “ad stacking method,” which is a heavy focus on segmenting every single visitor based on actions they do or don’t take on your ecommerce store and then placing the right message in front of them at the right time based on where they are in the conversation, AKA your marketing funnel.
Instead of leaning on Facebook’s algorithm for advertising success, set up your ads using custom audiences, inclusions, and exclusions, so you can show an ad based on what action they have or haven’t taken yet.
Jeremy Howie, CEO, Enlightened Marketing
When you have segmented custom audiences following events, you wield a powerful asset that you can use to generate ROI from using Facebook ads, in addition to creating cold audiences from these groups of website visitors by taking advantage of Facebook’s ability to create lookalike audiences.
4. Improve your conversion rate by testing, testing, and testing
Maddy Osman, SEO Content Strategist, The Blogsmith
Pat Petriello, Head of Marketplace Strategy, Tinuiti
Zach Heller, Marketer, zachheller.com
Casey Armstrong, CMO, ShipBob
Jason Ehmke, Senior Client Data Analyst, AddShoppers
Cory Barnes, Digital Marketing Manager, Kelty
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5. Use data analysis to improve your strategy
Jackson Jeyanayagam, CMO, Boxed
James Thomson, President, PROSPER Show
Eric Keating, VP of Marketing, Zaius
David Feng, Co-Founder and Head of Product at Re:amaze
Ryan McKenzie, CMO, My Passion Media
When you can get the ascension process optimized and performing well in your business, you can now afford to pay more per customer, making it easier to advertise, scale, and outbid your competition on ads.
6. Develop buyer personas and know who your customers are
Lianna Patch, Head Puncher, Punchline Copy
There is absolutely no replacement for following up with customers at every stage of the purchase journey (and I don’t mean just by sending a single “Please leave us a review!” email).
Catalin Zorzini, Founder, Ecommerce Platforms
Alex Birkett, Growth Marketing Manager, HubSpot
David Tendrich, CEO & Co-Founder, Reliable PSD
7. Provide excellent customer service to improve customer loyalty
Timi Garai, Marketing Manager, Antavo Loyalty Management Software
Jason Boyce, Co-founder & CEO, Dazadi
Sammy Gibson, Director, Neon Poodle
8. Use shipping to your competitive advantage
Cross-sell Your Products
Cross-selling is a process where you show a shopper items that he or she may also be interested in. Some eCommerce platforms have integrated algorithms that can determine an individual’s interests based on what products he or she views or adds to the cart.
Say that you sell golf equipment and someone adds a new golf bag to the shopping cart. The cross-sell would be to show things like golf balls and other bag accessories that the consumer may also be interested in.
This process is viewed in many online stores for the simple reason that it works. It’s like giving someone a reminder that the consumer can also pick up other items related to the purchase.
Sources:
https://www.bigcommerce.com/articles/offline-to-online/promote-online-store/
https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/increase-ecommerce-sales/
https://www.greengeeks.com/blog/13-brilliant-strategies-that-will-increase-your-online-sales/
