There are always more opportunities to increase your sales as a business. The digital world, in particular, has become a popular place for many businesses to take advantage of its global reach and broad accessibility.
So digital marketing for your eCommerce store is something that you want to focus your attention on. In fact, eCommerce spending grew to $4.28 trillion in 2020, a 27.6% increase. Significant growth is expected in 2021 as the total nears $5 trillion. With so many eCommerce shops now popping up, the competition is tough and the market is becoming saturated.
Below are the top five digital marketing tips to promote your eCommerce business. Keep in mind that there are many others – we simply chose to focus on these.
1. Offer Cross-Promotions And Upsells
When it comes to marketing tactics, there are certain things that are proven, no matter the type of business that you run. Cross-selling and upselling are two examples of these.
When you have a customer on your site and they’ve put a product in their basket, this becomes an ideal opportunity to upsell and cross-promote different products. Think about what you’re selling and how that product could match up well with something else on your site. Suggesting other items the shopper can add to their basket will almost always encourage them to buy more.
Modern eCommerce platforms offer a lot of easy ways to do this. As an aggressive approach, you could have the suggestions pop up on their screen as soon as they add an item to their basket. Or as a more subtle tactic, you might add recommendations at the bottom of the product or checkout pages.
Cross-selling is something that can work for any brand. When the customer is in the mood to buy a product or service, they are likely going to be comfortable with spending more, even if they weren’t intending to.
If you haven’t already implemented this feature on your site, it’s certainly time to do so. You’re missing out on some low-hanging fruit.
2. Consider Adding Languages to Broaden Your Audience
The beauty of eCommerce is that you’ve got a lot more potential reach than a locally-operated brick-and-mortar shop. It’s not that being the latter makes it impossible to get large-scale success, it’s just a lot harder. Scaling a business with physical locations is more expensive and logistically-challenging.
If you’ve managed to reach international customers through your marketing, it’s important to connect with them on your website. Of course, language barriers are the most important obstacle to overcome. You need your visitors to understand what you sell, how they can benefit from your products, and easily get in touch with reliable support.
At the most basic level, businesses can allow their website to translate the page. Some might also benefit from a video-to-text service that automatically translates any video marketing information. Better yet, some modern eCommerce platforms offer automated translation to additional languages so businesses can seamlessly reach a larger audience.
When you have a customer base on a global scale, it’s essential to make your platform as inclusive as possible. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing customers simply because they can’t navigate the site properly.
3. Use Software For Email and Text Marketing
Email marketing is a key area of digital marketing. Though used less often than it used to be, most people still have an active email. Gaining subscribers allows businesses to send marketing emails with new products, special offers, loyalty rewards, product suggestions, and more.
The difficulty with email marketing though is that a lot of it should be pre-scheduled. Doing it all manually can involve a lot of work, especially if you have hundreds and thousands of subscribers.
Like most marketing channels, automation is a key advantage with emails. It’s worth thinking about software out there that can help. Software like Revv can help create relevant documents and forms that you might send to customers in order to get feedback on your products. Others, like Drip, can help you build a customer base and automate campaigns and broadcasts.
Text message marketing is a quickly growing tool for reaching people more directly. It has better open rates, engagement, and conversations. And it’s easier than most business owners imagine. Like email marketing, SMS marketing can be used to promote new products, remind shoppers of abandoned carts, offer loyalty rewards, and a whole lot more.
Email and message marketing can be two of the most effective ways in which to encourage new and returning customers to make a purchase. Whether you’re promoting a seasonal sale or a new product range, make sure to use these methods of marketing.
4. Improve Your Product Or Service SEO
Search engine optimization is a critical part of helping your eCommerce business stand out from the competition. It’s valuable that your customers come across your website organically through a search engine.
SEO is an essential part of any part of your digital marketing, but one area of particular importance is with your product pages. You want to ensure that each product page has been optimized enough that it performs better than before.
- Rename your images as the keywords chosen for the page.
- Add a meta description to the page using the same keywords or product title.
- Write keyword-rich product descriptions and URLs.
- Compress images to improve the page loading screen.
- Actively fix any broken links with the home page or something similar to the original link.
There is A LOT that goes into optimizing your store’s SEO. Start by making sure your website has a good framework and is optimized for good page speed. From there, set up a blog, all relevant social media channels, and any free profiles on review or list sites.
5. Set Up and Stay Active on Social Media
It’s no surprise that social media should be a part of your marketing strategy. When it comes to digital marketing, working with influencers is usually a good strategy.
However, not all influencers are going to prove fruitful in getting customers through the door. It’s important that you do your research and assess the analytics that influencers provide to make sure it’s the right fit for your products.
Influencers can review or feature the product on their social media to reach their loyal following. So if you’re able to match to the right influencer/audience, it’s worth investing some money into these outreach opportunities.
According to the Digital Marketing Institute, 49% of consumers depend on influencer ecommendations.” Whether it’s product promotions, product reviews, or general advertising, promote and repurpose their content to showcase on your own social media handles too. It’ll help make their content more genuine and reach a wider audience.
Reflect On Your Marketing Efforts
There are so many different marketing tactics that your small business can use. It might be offering discounts exclusively online, finding new ways of interacting with your customers, or reconnecting with some old shoppers. In general, the more you can do, the better.
It’s always important that whatever marketing tactic you use, you reflect on its level of success. There will be marketing drives that do better than others and so it’s good to analyze and figure out why that may be.
Digital marketing is the future of marketing and it’s something that you’ll want to continue utilizing to the fullest when it comes to your eCommerce website.
Continue Reading: How to Select the Right Digital Marketing Agency for Your Retail Business
