You can have amazing products that people need and want and the best staff and customer service in the world. However, all of this will come to nothing if your infrastructure and ecommerce marketing strategies are not equally polished.
Making these tips integral parts of the way you do business will enable you to finally get the consumer attention and profits that all of your hard work deserves.
Lay a strong foundation.
Begin with your infrastructure, the behind-the-scenes training, equipment, and protocols that form your business’s solid base. This should include forming a relationship with a company that assists you with your online payment processing.
Choose one that offers fair and transparent fees, prompt customer service, a diverse set of payment options, and easy integration with any other systems that you are already using.
Additionally, you will want a website that downloads quickly, is mobile-friendly, and is easy for customers to navigate. Ensure an optimized checkout experience by using a secure payment gateway and by making your shipping and returns policies clear and understandable.
Finally, focus on security, thoroughly training staff to spot the red flags that can signal ecommerce fraud.
Employ search engine optimization.
Augment your carefully crafted website with search engine optimization (SEO), a technique that involves finding out the keywords that your customers will be using when looking online for products like yours.
When you use targeted keywords and phrases organically in your content, you will increase the likelihood that shoppers in your target group will find out about what you have to offer.
Use content marketing strategies.
Your website and social media pages should be rich repositories of textual and visual information about your products.
Potential customers can click on a blog article to glean more in-depth details about the use or advantages of a particular item, or they can view a demo video.
Content marketing is an excellent way to educate, provide information, answer questions, and even motivate people to complete their purchases.
Furthermore, it can foster an ongoing, positive relationship with your brand that will bring shoppers back for additional purchases in the future.
Establish and maintain a social media presence.
Sites like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube give you affordable, customer-friendly ways to engage with customers and casual visitors on many levels.
It is via these sites that you can spread the word about your brand, showcase new products, feature positive testimonials, offer compelling demos, and dialogue publicly to address clients’ questions or concerns.
By taking all of these actions, you can vastly increase the visibility of your brand and can even accept online payments when shoppers click on product links that you feature on your page.
Don’t forget about email marketing.
Although it may seem a bit old-school, never overlook the benefits of tried-and-true electronic communications via email. It’s a great way to send personalized messages to anyone who has been a previous customer or who has signed up to receive communications from you.
Staying in touch is fast and affordable, and it allows you to bring your brand and any current promotions to the top of a customer’s mind. After all, most people check their inboxes several times every day.
Start and maintain a customer loyalty program.
An existing customer is worth their weight in gold, since they have already bought from you and have a positive impression of your company.
Rewarding these people for their repeat business will encourage them to keep coming back and may also inspire them to refer a friend or social contact.
A good loyalty program can collect supplementary personal details about a customer that you can use to further refine your marketing campaigns down the road.
Invest in pay-per-click advertising.
There may be times when you need to make an additional investment in order to gain customers. Pay-per-click (PPC) strategies help to ensure that your product page rises closer to the top of a search engine’s page.
An effective PPC. campaign will contain an advertisement, an offer, and a landing page that serves as a customer’s final destination.
Use retargeting.
Retargeting builds off of a PPC strategy, focusing on people who have already visited a page but did not make a purchase while there.
Retargeting allows you to deploy ads that have special relevance to these clients, incentivizing them to revisit your page and inspiring them to make that elusive purchase.
Try influencer marketing.
If you want to attract a certain audience, influencer marketing helps you to do so by piggybacking on the credibility and success of someone who already has a loyal fan base in your area of expertise.
One effective way to partner with an influencer is to send them free samples of your products to try. You can then propose a partnership in which you pay to have the person provide an authentic review of your merchandise. By doing so, their fans can become your customers thanks to their endorsement.
Getting the word out about your brand can be daunting, especially as ecommerce becomes increasingly globalized.
However, by bolstering your infrastructure and employing some or all of these highly effective strategies, you can elevate your brand and make it known to a deeper pool of interested buyers.
