Attracting the right set of customers is the key to success in any business. The same theory applies to e-commerce as well. The percentage increase in revenue from sales in e-commerce has been rising at an exponential rate. This not only means that the pie is getting bigger but it also suggests that it will become that much harder to get hold of the crumbs. With cutthroat competition, every business will feel the heat. Attracting the right set of customers will be much tougher and albeit expensive too.
With the shopping spree of the much-awaited holiday season coming up, soon sales volume will increase. It’s high time that e-commerce businesses start plugging all the gaps and implements a full proof digital marketing strategy to take advantage of the season. Funnel specific marketing is very important. You should have clear marketing tactics to target your customers at each stage of the sales funnel. I will be sharing a few tips to boost e-commerce sales figures.
- Google Shopping Ads – Organic visibility at its best
This is a really obvious one. Google Shopping Ads is an e-commerce marketer’s best friend. With millions of search queries on Google each day it is really stupid to ignore this space. Just imagine how easy it will be to have your products displayed directly to your end customers without even attracting them to your website. With the right set of keyword targeting, shopping campaigns are the best bet that any e-commerce business can take. Customers will be able to see your products at the top of the Google search results page when they are looking for the same kind of products that you are selling. Not only that but customers can also see product photos, price details, ratings, and reviews by other customers, any special offers, and other important information that helps them in making a decision.
All you need to do is create a Google Merchant Center account and link it to your Google Ads Account. Upload your product inventory via a spreadsheet to Google Merchant Center. Now you can easily run Ads and Google will automatically show your products whenever a relevant search query is placed. A Google Shopping Campaign can help you drive quality traffic to your website in no time.
- Instagram – The Ecom Paradise
Shopping on Instagram has made life much easier for e-commerce businesses. Marketers don’t have to worry about driving traffic to their webpages from social media anymore. The audience and followers of a page can complete the whole shopping experience directly from Instagram itself. Instagram is a social media platform where photos and videos are shared. The visual appeal is the strongest here. Consumers go through a varied range of micro-moments while scrolling through Instagram. To come across a visually attractive post of a product and the urge to buy that product is a common occurrence on this platform. Marketers tap into the impulsive buying behavior of the consumers. How the product is showcased plays an important role in this process.
All one needs to do is set up a business profile on Instagram and upload their product catalog to Facebook. After this, the option to tag products in the organic feed and Stories will appear. Now the audience who used to consume organic content can directly purchase products without even visiting the website.
- Remarketing – Reeling in the lost ones
Remarketing works like a magnet in e-commerce which reels in customers who had visited your website before but didn’t purchase anything. It increases the conversion rates of an e-commerce business by a considerable percentage. Say you had checked all the boxes and spent a lot of ad revenue to attract a considerable amount of visitors to your website. Now you cannot simply expect that once those viewers land on your website they will become a paying customer, right? Some will purchase and some simply won’t. Now you just can’t let go of those who didn’t right? If you do you are simply wasting all the efforts up to this point. This is where remarketing plays its part. A cookie is placed on the system of those who have visited your site and exits without making a purchase. Now if this visitor enters another site that hosts retargeting ads then he/she will get to see ads of your products. It’s that extra layer of marketing to convince a set of consumers who are already interested in your offerings. They only need an extra nudge or two.
- Pop-ups to drive extra revenue
This is the least favorite one (especially for your viewers) because it has a bad reputation of being overtly pervasive in nature. The fun part is that it’s not only pervasive but persuasive as well and that’s the only part a marketer needs to bother about. Pop-ups are Ad windows which temporarily comes over a viewer’s display screen and showcases them additional offers or discounts. Pop-ups can be used to convince your viewers into buying something purely out of impulse. If used strategically, pop-ups can drive a huge amount of extra revenue to your business by convincing your viewers to add that one last product to their shopping cart. You can either tickle their FOMO by putting up a limited-time discount or BOGO offer or you can showcase products which the viewer is most likely to purchase.
- Power of Referral Marketing
The process of incentivizing your existing base of customers to be your brand ambassador in their individual networks just to promote your brand and spread the word is otherwise known as referral marketing. This is a really effective method if used wisely. It is a fact that the rate of success that your loyal customers will have in converting their friends and family members is much more than you will have by showing them your advertisements. It is somewhat similar to customer reviews but better, where the customer himself is convincing others. Referral Discounts, Bonus Cashbacks, and first purchase offers are some examples of methods used in referral marketing.
Well, those are some key pointers that I had to share for e-commerce businesses. Do feel free to reach out to us if you need any help with your business. Keep an eye on our Facebook and LinkedIn pages for more such updates in the future.
Check out out our last post on Points to Consider Before Starting Your Own eCommerce Business to gain valuable insights before starting your business.