Every business owner wants to see their brand flourish, and the sales curve go nowhere but up. Yet sometimes, you hit a plateau or lose momentum in your growth. With a little revamp in your sales and marketing strategy, this is nothing that can’t be overcome. There are many tools available for your assistance, such as Vendoo alternatives.
Below are some tried and true methods to boost your e-commerce sales when you want a break from your stagnant growth curve.
1. Step up your email marketing strategy
As of 2022, there are 4 billion daily email users, and 99% check their inbox daily. Imagine the potential you can tap into when you invest in email marketing. The return can be advantageous compared to the effort and time you need to put into it.
How do you master email marketing for e-commerce? First, you must build and grow your leads by creating email lists. To increase the number of sign-ups, you should offer some incentives. Be sure to provide useful organic content related to your niche and offer discounts and freebies exclusive to your email list.
When and how often you send out emails should be strategized carefully. Determine important touch points along your customers’ journey (welcome emails, purchase confirmation, special days, shopping cart drop-outs, etc.) and set up emails to accompany them.
A great feature of email marketing is that it is mostly open for automation and can be executed smoothly with minimal effort. There are tools to segment your subscribers according to purchases and demographic details, which will help you personalize the content to target each buyer persona effectively.
Nobody likes their inbox filled with spam content, and consumers usually shy away from subscribing to commercial newsletters. Businesses that don’t send more than five emails a week are rewarded with higher open and click rates.
2. Optimize your mobile experience
Nearly 55% of the global website traffic is generated from mobile devices, excluding tablets. In other words, e-commerce is currently synonymous with mcommerce, a term used for internet transactions carried out via mobile devices.
One of the best actions you can take for your e-commerce business is to optimize your store’s mobile user experience as much as possible. If you run your own store through your website, check your interface to smooth out friction points for your potential customers. Allow your visitors to make direct purchases, show the number of steps to complete, and offer multiple payment options. These minor tweaks can significantly drive down cart abandonment rates.
This one is for all e-commerce business owners–whether you are based on Amazon or running multiple platforms, focus on the visual elements. Optimize your images for mobile devices, and make sure any copy is readable. Supplement your product descriptions with video elements, and keep your copy short and sweet. You can use bullet points and formatting options to increase readability.
3. Have a solid social media presence
Whether you like it or not, we’re at the age of “social commerce,” and your e-commerce business cannot fully thrive without a thorough social media marketing strategy to match. Regardless of what your product line consists of, a strong brand image and viral marketing tactics can immensely boost your sales.
Generally, your best bet is a balanced mix of paid and organic content. You can try out all possible formats, from user-generated content (UGC) and influencer marketing (see the next tip for more) to live-streaming marketing and paid ads. When you have a social media content map and some tools to help automatize, you can repurpose your content for multiple platforms.
Regardless of which platform and format you lean towards, consistency is key to social media marketing. Test out different times and set an optimum publishing schedule, and make sure you appear before your audience regularly to establish your brand visibility.
Make use of platforms with integrated store options, such as Instagram’s shoppable gallery. Place your best-selling products there, and you should be good to go.
4. Stock up on social proof
Actions speak louder than words, and e-commerce is no exception. In this case, actions are actual people buying and using your products so that other people will be more inclined to do the same. To put it briefly–you need some social proof.
Encourage your customers to leave reviews and good ratings with small incentives. You can later use some of the best reviews as testimonials to display across marketplace platforms or your website. An important point here is not to eliminate all the negative reviews–you would want to maintain a sense of authenticity.
Another great form of social proof is user-generated content (UGC). Start dedicated hashtags and creative prompts to encourage your buyers to create content displaying your products. Or you can simply pay professionals to do that for you, which is known as influencer marketing. If you’re feeling generous, you can invest in some celebrity endorsements from renowned names relevant to your brand.
5. Create a bulletproof brand protection strategy
All of your marketing efforts would be undermined without a solid brand protection strategy. With so many third-party sellers on Amazon and different platforms, you must protect your products and overall brand image.
Brand protection covers everything from multi-platform price monitoring to ensuring compliance with MAP (minimum advertised price) to intellectual property and counterfeit protection.
Without brand protection measures and consistent monitoring, you can run into different problems and crises, from inaccurate representation and use of brand imagery to miscategorization and distribution of your products on marketplaces that conflict with your business goals.
Top platforms such as Amazon have their own brand protection policies and implement measures such as product suppression. But you would still want to get expert support to secure your brand image and offer a unified brand experience across all digital platforms.
