E-commerce is big business. And it’s getting bigger.
Global E-Commerce sales will soon top $5 trillion a year.
Small businesses and large corporations are realizing how beneficial selling online can be and are looking for ways to increase efficiency and profits through e-commerce.
Ultimately, there has never been a better or more urgent time to advertise your online store than right now.
Here at MTN Stone, we are often asked what the best strategies for success in e-commerce are. We’ve rounded up ten killer strategies that have helped our clients grow their brands and will undoubtedly help yours.
These strategies will give your business a foothold in this potentially lucrative market. They’ll help you scale your business, build brand awareness and improve profitability – all while building your customer base through the power of online marketing.
What is e-commerce marketing?
E-commerce marketing is a combination of all marketing strategies used to help grow your online brand.
E-commerce marketing involves a lot of different areas of expertise, including SEO, paid advertising, social media, and content marketing. You’ll need to understand how each of these works and how they relate to each other to build a successful online store.
Online sales are growing rapidly, but getting noticed in such a crowded space is challenging. You can’t just set up a website and wait for customers to come knocking at your virtual door. You must create a brand and establish relationships with consumers, positioning your brand top-of-mind when they’re ready to buy your products.
The best e-commerce marketing strategies use multiple channels and tactics to build awareness, generate leads, convert sales and improve customer loyalty — all cost-effectively.
Here are ten e-commerce marketing strategies you need to use to grow your e-commerce brand.
The 10 Killer Marketing Strategies for E-Commerce
1 – Use discount codes
Discount codes can be a great way to incentivize user behavior, encourage repeat visits, and increase sales. They work exceptionally well in e-commerce stores, where you can use them to increase the average order value of your customers.
Here are some ways you can use discount codes for your e-commerce brand:
Use discount codes to convert more website visitors into new customers. By offering a discount code in exchange for a customer’s email address or other information, you can get new leads into your database without spending money on advertising and promotion. You can also use these opportunities to collect additional data about who is buying from you and what they like about your products or services.
Use discount codes to incentivize repeat visits and upsell purchases. If you have an existing customer who is likely to buy again from your store, offer them a code or another incentive if they spend a certain amount of money with you. You need to treat all customers as if they were repeat customers and bring them value in your emails. Think about how your products work together and combine your offers this way. Encourage them to come back and shop more often with you while also encouraging them to spend more per visit.
2 – Use opt-in pop-up offers to build an email list.
Building your email list is one of the most critical steps in growing your e-commerce brand.
A long-term email list will allow you to communicate with your customers and run promotions at any time — not just during the holidays or when you have a new product or promotion available.
A good email marketing strategy is not only about driving sales but also about building relationships with customers and prospects. That’s why it’s essential to follow best practices for email marketing, such as sending content relevant to subscribers and providing value by providing helpful information.
Here are some tips for building an email list:
Offer a free giveaway or coupon code when people sign up for your newsletter. This will encourage more people to sign up and helps build trust with potential customers who may be unfamiliar with your brand.
Send out regular updates about new products and promotions, along with helpful how-to information related to your niche. This can help position yourself as an expert in your industry and build trust among readers.
In a healthy e-commerce store, email marketing should account for at least 30% of overall revenue.
3 – Offer free shipping (minimum order value)
One of the best ways to grow your revenue is by increasing average order value (AOV). It’s simple: if every customer spent more, you’d make more.
One of the most effective ways to increase AOV is offering free shipping on minimum order value. Free shipping can be offered with a limited-time offer or as a permanent feature.
Free shipping is one of the most effective marketing strategies for e-commerce businesses because it’s easy to implement and hard to compete with. When you offer free shipping, your customers will spend more money with you so that they don’t have to pay any extra fees for shipping.
4 – Social proof: Get video reviews for your product pages
Many e-commerce brands use video testimonials as part of their marketing strategy. They create a compelling story around their product and then share it on their website and social media.
Their customers love it because it humanizes the brand and helps potential customers see how the product can benefit them.
When it comes to e-commerce sites, one of the biggest challenges is getting visitors to buy something from you. Social proof can help you overcome this hurdle because it shows visitors that other people are buying from you successfully, which makes them more likely to do so themselves.
You can use tools such as Loox to offer promotions based on your customers leaving you a video review. We find a 15% off promo code in exchange for the video review usually does the trick.
5 – Optimize your product pages for conversions
Above-the-fold content: This is the part of the page that customers see without having to scroll down. It has to be concise and highly visual so that people can quickly understand the product and why they should buy it. Highly engaging photos are a must above the fold.
Product description: This should include all the details about your product, such as size and color options, materials used in manufacturing, etc. You also need to write a compelling value proposition so that customers can understand why they should buy from you. The better you are at telling a story, the more customers will buy your products.
At least 4 High-quality photos & 2 high-quality videos: These are essential for building trust with customers and helping them understand what they are buying before they click on the “add to cart” button. If possible, include multiple angles for each product, close-ups, and zoomed-out shots so that customers know exactly what they are getting.
Pro tip: add 3-5 user generated images in your product gallery.
6 – Use real-time personalization and dynamic content to personalize your pages to the user.
Real-time personalization and dynamic content are great ways to increase e-commerce sales. It’s important to note that this is not the same as using cookie tracking, which only tracks what someone does on their first visit to your website. To create a personalized experience for each visitor, you need to use real-time personalization or dynamic content.
Real-time personalization allows you to customize your website based on who visits your site and what they’re doing at any given moment. For example, if someone visits your online store during the holiday season, you can display different products and promotions than if they visited during the rest of the year. Or, if they’re looking at a product page on your site, you can show them related products that might interest them based on what other people like them have purchased in the past.
7 – Keep up to speed with SEO trends and implement the latest tactics on your product pages.
SEO is a big part of any e-commerce business. It’s often the first step to getting the traffic you need to grow your company.
The first thing you need to do is make sure that each page has a unique title tag. People see this when they search for your product on Google or any other search engine. If possible, the title tag should be relevant to your product and include keywords and brand name.
Next up are meta descriptions. These short blurbs appear under each URL when someone searches for products like yours. They give users an idea of what they might find if they click through your website from their results page.
You should also include relevant keywords in your meta descriptions so that when someone does click through, it’s likely that they will find what they were looking for on your site. This will help increase engagement and conversions and keep visitors around longer on your website. All these factors will help with SEO as well because Google looks at time spent on the site as an indicator of quality content
8 – Maintain an active presence on your organic social media platforms.
Online shopping is a trillion-dollar industry, and it only continues to grow. According to Shopify, worldwide retail e-commerce sales will reach $5.5 trillion in 2022, up from $1.3 trillion in 2016.
While that’s great news for e-commerce businesses, it also means that customers expect an easy shopping experience — and they want to do it on their terms.
“Consumers are becoming more demanding,” says Jason Miller, senior vice president of global strategy at American Express. “They’re expecting brands to meet them where they are.”
As an e-commerce brand or retailer, you need to be able to provide the best possible service across all channels. That includes online stores and social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
You need to keep a consistent presence online in order for prospective customers to believe you run a legitimate operation.
9 – Retarget your website visitors with ads
If you’ve ever browsed an online store only to see an ad for that same site pop up everywhere you go online, you’ve experienced retargeting firsthand. Retargeting works by serving ads to people who have visited your website or app within a set time frame after landing on your site. It’s one of the most effective e-commerce marketing strategies.
Whether browsing products or checking out the About Us section, those users have already expressed interest in what you’re selling — so why not try to get them back?
Target customers based on their behaviors rather than demographics alone. Using demographic data like age or gender can be useful, but when it comes down to it, buying decisions are often driven by emotions rather than facts (think impulse purchases). So if someone has already shown interest in your brand by visiting your website, why not target them.
10 – Drive large volumes of calculated traffic with Facebook Ads
Facebook ads will serve as an unlimited source of new customers and traffic for your brand. When run properly they will help you scale your organization beyond your wildest dreams. But in order to do so, you must run them at a profit. Create a targeted audience. Before you create ads, you need to understand your target audience. Who are they? What do they like? What do they buy? This will help you create better ads later on in the process.
Use images and videos. You don’t have to be an expert photographer or videographer to get started with Facebook Ads. Make sure that whatever images or videos you use are relevant and eye-catching with clear calls-to-action (CTAs).
Set realistic goals and KPIs. Once you’ve created your ad campaign, set reasonable goals and KPIs (key performance indicators) based on what it would take for someone in your target audience to convert into a sale — not just once but repeatedly over time as well as across multiple channels (such as social media).
We have plenty of articles that discuss the intimacies of Facebook Ads and how to run them.
Here are a few to get you started:
“Leverage Machine Learning to improve your Facebook ads ROAS by 47%.”
“The Ultimate Facebook Ads Campaign Structure [E-Commerce]”
Use these 10 Killer Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Business
While the strategies we have listed here are by no means exhaustive, they should hopefully provide you with a solid foundation for your e-commerce marketing efforts.
Of course, all brands are different, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to e-commerce marketing strategies.
The key is to tailor these strategies to your business, as opposed to forcing your business to fit these tactics.
If you want to find out how we can help you grow your business, reach out to us directly at [email protected].
