Last updated on February 23rd, 2023
Starting an e-commerce business is easier than to run it successfully. A major hindrance in driving customers to your site is that customers have many other online store options to buy from. Such a strong competition compels the store owners to devise innovative e-commerce marketing plans to win customers’ loyalty.
One of the concerns e-commerce store owners is to consistently come out with new marketing tactics to beat the competition.
There are already hundreds of online stores selling a wide range of products. Consumers can buy their choice of products from one site that offers attractive discounts.
Therefore, the store owners are on their toes when it comes to inventing and applying new e-commerce marketing strategies. They study rival stores’ plans to attract buyers. Then, they plan something unique and implement it aggressively.
But even the new strategies do not last long since many other stores start planning on the same lines. This makes e-commerce marketing a challenging task.
As a wise marketer, you should keep looking for innovative plans to be ahead of your competitors.
Here Are The 15 Essential E-Commerce Marketing Tactics To Drive Higher Sales
01. Ensure A User-Friendly Store
A good design of your ecommerce store is amongst the essential things to increase sales. If customers find navigating to the products and information a complex and confusing task, they will leave the site.
A bad e-commerce store design lacks a clear value proposition. Its use of fonts is also complex and hard-to-read. The navigation feature is confusing. Therefore, improve on these dimensions.
Besides these errors, you must also check if you segmented your products clearly. It may also be that you put many products on one page. That will make your page look too crowded and unpleasant to the visitors.
Moreover, ascertain that there is a good balance between text and visuals. If there are too many visuals such as product images or videos, it will become less useful due to the lack of detail in the text.
Similarly, a higher amount of content in text form will make the page less interesting and interactive. Therefore, striking the right balance is the key to retain the visitors on the site page.
It would be good to first have a look at some inspirational e-commerce websites. Then, check if your store design is up to the standards set by these sites.
02. Gather More Email Subscribers
One of the basics email marketers need to consider is to get hold of as many more email subscribers as they possibly can. Email marketing has proven its worth in enhancing the reach of any business amid its target customers.
According to a study, US retailers get 24% of their revenue share using email marketing.
This should compel you to take advantage of the ability of this marketing type to drive customers and revenue. A good reason for aggressive email marketing is that it offers you an opportunity for personal interaction with your potential customers.
But the first condition to start email marketing is to get hundreds of email addresses of people. To do that, you can adopt a host of tactics. Amongst these tactics, you should especially pay attention to blogs and newsletters.
Request people to sign up and subscribe to your blog and newsletters. While they do so, they will give you their email address.
Then, send emails to their inbox telling them about your new products, discounts, and other attractive schemes that make buying a lot more enticing and beneficial.
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03. Make Your Email Campaigns Effective
After you have a very long list of email addresses, it is now time to launch an email campaign that works. The e-commerce marketing strategy requires your dedicated time and efforts. You will send emails very often, which is a prerequisite for successful email marketing.
However, for converting your email recipients into customers, consider these tips. First, just as a customer buys from your site, send a welcome email.
That will give the message that you care for them. Then, use emails to give them free gifts and promo codes as well to entice them to make more purchasing.
Remind them of your discount offers and product tips. To do that, you should send them your newsletter, which also will contain news about any new developments in your company.
Another tactic to engage audience is that when they buy a product, send them tips on how to use it properly.
Send emails that look like a personal note to express your thanks and appreciation for your business. Additionally, engage those who visited your site but did not purchase by asking for their feedback for a better user experience.
Another thing to remember here is that each email from your end should have logo of your ecommerce store. So, create a logo that conveys your brand message effectively and put that on your emails to show your authority over the market.
04. Upsell
When a visitor selects a product for purchasing, the online store immediately shows up several upgraded products in the similar category. This gives the visitor a chance to have a look at those products for making an informed buying decision.
Chances are that instead of buying the cheaper product, the visitor may opt for the upgraded version at a bit higher prices due to new useful features. This is known as upselling.
Your e-commerce marketing plan should include upselling tactics to acquire a new customer. Note that sometimes, customers are not aware of a premium product. You can inform the buyers about the new and upgraded products available with your site.
But make sure that the upsells are regarding the original product that the buyer was looking for. In addition to that, do not show very expensive products, which are simply out of their reach.
05. Reduce Cart Abandon Rate
A majority of online visitors abandon shopping carts. According to studies around 69% of shopping carts do not turn into final buying order.
This means that e-commerce website owner is losing money every time the buyers do not place order and let the products remain in the carts. They have their own reasons for leaving the purchasing process incomplete.
An e-commerce marketing strategy to encourage visitors to compete their purchase is to remind them of it. You can entice them by offering free shipping or discounts. Highlight your discount schemes on the website page itself.
Another effective strategy is to send emails to those who abandoned carts. In your emails, convince them to come back to your site and complete the purchasing. Suggest them some additional products that you have on your site.
Sometimes customers are not aware of the alternative products from other brands. Many of them will think of making a purchasing if you show up upgraded products having new useful features.
The intention of your email should be to remind that they abandoned the cart and to give them more product options.
06. Explore Instagram To Engage Audience
Instagram has over 1 billion active users, making it the second most platform after Facebook to engage people. This is the social app that lets you connect with influencers, brands, and consumers.
You should take advantage of Instagram’s massive audience by posting stories and photos of your business as part of your e-commerce marketing tactics.
According to studies, 83% of people discover new products or services on Instagram and 80% make a purchasing decision.
Given these stats, your e-commerce marketing tactics should include exploring this platform. Make efforts to build your large following on Instagram and engage them with your site and products.
You can engage with your target audience in many ways. For example, you can run some contests for people to entice them to winning an attractive prize.
That is the way to engage them with your ecommerce site and products. Another effective strategy is to add products to your Instagram page and tell them some stories behind those products.
07. Sell From Facebook Store
Facebook is another big social platform where you can engage millions of people with your business. All you need to do is to start your Facebook store and sell your products direct from there.
However, integrate your Facebook store with your ecommerce site. People who visit the social site page and show intention of buying products will be directed to your main site. In this way, you do not have to maintain a separate inventory.
Do not forget to put your business logo of ecommerce site on your Facebook page. Make sure that your logo design is unique to make a good first impression on the visitors.
08. Optimize Your Site Pages
If your e-commerce marketing strategy is not working for some unknown reason, check if the website is optimized well for on-site conversion.
This implies that when a visitor comes to your site, it fails to convert the potential customer into a buyer. There may be some optimization related faults that developed over time and remained unnoticed.
Therefore, practice conversion rate optimization [CRO] so that you can timely detect the problematic areas on your site.
The optimization process helps in knowing the reasons for losing of sales and visitors dropping of quickly. Based on a thorough research of the site, you can then decide on the right approach that is good enough to increase sales.
09. Optimize Your Site For Mobile Users
It is now a well-known fact that most people shop online by using their mobile phones. The mobile devices enable them to shop from home or while on the move without hassles.
They do not have to drive a vehicle and spend time to shop from physical stores. Instead, just a few clicks on a mobile app are enough to buy things.
Clearly, if your ecommerce site is not optimized for mobile phone users, you will continue to use massive number of customers.
This means that your desktop store should also be optimized for mobile. The ecommerce site design should be, therefore, a responsive design that displays products and information cleanly on tiny mobile screens.
So, your add-to-cart button on the mobile screen must be bigger and it should zoom in or out. Your product images will also appear differently and they should load faster as well.
10. Add Live Chat To The Site
Another essential e-commerce marketing strategy to drive more sales is to incorporate live chat feature in your website. You can quickly engage visitors by inviting them to a chat about what they want from the site or discuss with them any other related issue. This helps in turning the conversation to conversion.
It is better to pop up the live chat box after the visitor has spent some time with your site. This allows them time to search for products and information and then they can have a conversation based on the research.
But make sure that only an efficient employee handles the live chat for an authoritative conversation and ability to answer customers’ queries.
Alternatively, you can also implement solutions that will replace live chat inquiries. For example, you can avoid people asking for their order status by automatically sharing their order status with them via email.
11. Take Advantage Of User-Generated Content
User-generated content [UGC] is the content that users contribute on a site. When people buy products from an ecommerce site, many of them share their experience.
They use the comment section or review section of a site to offer their advice to other customers. Such product reviews from users give the next customers an insight into the silent features of product.
Studies have shown that a majority of consumers trust these online recommendations from users. Therefore, encourage users to write their own reviews of products they bought and experienced.
Another effective type of UGC is to encourage customers to post their pictures with products.
This signals that they are happy buying the products. User-generated content is an excellent option to build social proof and even increase sales. You can collect the UGC and turn it into Shoppable UGC using a visual commerce platform like TaggShop.
This eCommerce marketing idea will help you improve your eCommerce conversion rate as the users will be able to engage with and then directly buy the products from this Shoppable UGC.
12. Test Your Market
One of the key email marketing tips to follow is to first test your niche market to know whether people will like a product. This will be useful to assess market demand. You can then find out if the product is worth your time and cost.
To research the demand for a product, you can do keyword research and geographic validation.
You should also create a social media page for products and request people to give their opinion about them. Another way to know the worth of a product is to pre-sell items to find out how many people are interested to place orders.
Some e-commerce sites adopt a different strategy. They label a product ‘out of stock’ to gauge customer response. If the item is popular, customers will request for back-in-stock notifications.
13. Blog Regularly
Blogging is a great way to drive attention and sales. Your ecommerce store will benefit immensely from regularly posting content about your products and e-commerce site. This is an effective way to connect with customers. Blogging also is a helpful strategy to rank better in search engine result pages.
In your blogs, give tips to help people use products in a proper way. You should anticipate their problems regarding products and offer solutions. Try to create lengthy ebook guides regarding your products.
Besides blogs, think of starting a podcast to build a strong community for your ecommerce site and business.
However, make sure that your blogging site is user-friendly, easily navigational, and loads quickly. So, hire a freelance graphic designer to build a nice blogging site for your business that is SEO-friendly.
14. Reward Big Spenders
A time-tested e-commerce marketing tip is to give rewards to the deserving customers. Some of them like to come back to a site very often. They are loyal customers who give you business and they are also big spenders. It may be that their purchasing power is more than many other customers.
Know that return customers are a huge asset to a business. According to some studies, such customers are responsible for 22% of an ecommerce retailer site’s revenue. This is despite the fact that they are usually only just above 10% of the total customer base of the sites.
To reward such loyal customers, start a loyalty program. Give them extra incentives for making purchases so that your brand is on their top of mind.
You can devise your own ways to rewards. For example, give them discounts, free shipping, and sometimes free gifts. Also, think of creating an exclusive online sales and events programs for them.
15. Identify Offline Customers
How about searching for customers offline for your ecommerce site? That may look odd but the fact is that many online retailers are using this e-commerce marketing tactic. So, not only brick and mortar businesses but your online store also can benefit from this strategy to drive more sales.
All you need to do is to research the places having large concentrations of potential customers. Then, run your business promotion campaign at the location. Find out the products they are buying more. You should also research their spending behavior.
You can also plan promotion of your business by the side of an event. A good strategy will be to distribute some promotional items free with your e-commerce site’s logo printed on them.
So, get graphic design services of a professional to design your logo or other marketing materials such as flyers. Distributes flyers, free gifts etc for offline promotion of your e-commerce site to increase sales.
So, these are the major tactics to give a boost to your e-commerce marketing plans. But these tips alone are not going to benefit until you are willing to devote time.
Also, your e-commerce website should be a great design that visitors find user-friendly. You will also need some visuals such as logos to build your identity of brand.
For that, outsource your design work to Designhill, a leading marketplace. You can source many unique design solutions from this site as per your brief.
To Sum Up…
Merely having an e-commerce site is not good enough to drive more sales. You must use some innovative e-commerce marketing tactics that work. Check that the site is user-friendly and loads quickly. Give rewards to the loyal customers and start an email marketing campaign to lure customers. Offer regular discounts and other enticing schemes. Optimize your onsite product pages and encourage users to post their product reviews.