When you own an offline business, you know the importance of marketing. From product/service representation, customer service to advertising and promotion, you know how precise the strategies should be. However, the process of planning to drive relevant traffic to your online eCommerce store can be a different ball game altogether.

When you own an online store, you can reach potential customers more efficiently than ever before — with complete control over their experience and action.

More often, eCommerce business owners build a website, launch their store and expect the customers to find their way to the website- it doesn’t happen like that. The motive of every online store is to increase traffic and get more sales orders, keeping in mind that you will need to export order data eventually, of course. Usually, even after putting the basic strategy together, understanding the suitable marketing tactic is still challenging.

We have compiled effective marketing tactics and eCommerce tools that will help you implement each approach.

With this, you have the smooth flow of acquisition in generating and acquiring more repeat purchases from the wide range of customer base.

You can implement each of these ways in your next plan; calculate and compare the stock; figure out which tactic has worked best in driving new sales.

If you are looking for some tips to drive traffic and action-oriented customers for your eCommerce store- you’re reading the right article. This article will help you understand the right way to drive traffic to your website and integrate marketing.

Understanding eCommerce marketing

When it comes to eCommerce marketing, it narrows down to simply two steps:

• Using promotional tactics to drive relevant traffic to the online store and convert them into paying customers and retain them for repeat orders.

• Using awareness tactics on both; website and other platforms to build a brand, drive customer loyalty, and target increasing online sales.

One can also promote their online store using eCommerce marketing tools available to target sales on specific products.

What exactly is driving traffic to the online store:

When it comes to marketing your eCommerce website, it is about targeting three niche audience:

• The base of customers who have previously shopped before in your store.
• The group of people looking for the kind of product that your eCommerce store offers.
• The group of people looking for the type of product you sell; only if they knew about it.

However, this is admittedly a primary way to think about it; this three-way approach can assist you in thinking about implementing different marketing activities in targeting all three bases; allotting your time and budget accordingly.

• For the first set, the customer base who is aware of you; create a direct line through email communication, content marketing, or social media. One can ‘FREEly’ connect with them (excluding the tool budget that you might spend).

• For the second set, you need ways for them to discover your product. This includes search engine optimisation (SEO), blogging-content creation, and PPC marketing.
• For the audience sitting in the third category, you need to work on your branding and create awareness for them. Are you offering a solution to the problem of your eCommerce store? Or is your target audience using a competitor’s solution? The answers will have an impact on how you approach your marketing. After setting up your store, it is essential to promote it to your existing customer base. Make your website more ‘easy to find’ for looking for the products you sell and spend wisely on advertising to put your message efficiently in front of the high-volume traffic. 

Top Marketing Strategy in Promoting Your Online Store

When it comes to marketing your business to the existing set of customers to acquire new ones, let us take a look at the top tactics that you can implement to drive traffic to your new eCommerce store.

#1 Use and build your email list.

Even if you own the most basic store; it’s crucial to have a solid and efficient email marketing strategy. Get as many email addresses as possible from existing customers, potential and prospective customers, to people interested. Such lists help you in launching your event or product and to whom you can send all the email, letting them know about the latest product, launch, sale and discounts.

It is an efficient way to consider promotional offers and discounts to your email list to encourage customers to take more user-oriented action of purchasing and sharing with their friends and family.

Email marketing still marks the most effective marketing tool in the eCommerce marketing toolbox; hence, ensure that you keep collecting the email addresses even if they just visit your website.

Many brands use pop-up boxes to lure users in entering their email address and “x% of discounts on registering or free shipping”. This encourages users to take action, mutually benefiting both parties.

The eCommerce store should ensure a steady flow of communication with the email list. Make a strategy on keeping the flow of communication; regular, exciting, and smooth. You can use different topics as email communication, from developing new content, promotional offers, product launch, or any other news to visit the website.

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#2 Boosting your organic-social presence

When it comes to online businesses, you want to take every digital opportunity to uplift your digital engagement. The most efficient way to engage with your audience and give them more when they visit your social profile is; stock them with vibrant, creative images and engaging videos.

For instance, look at the way H&M use their platform of the Instagram channel to portray their products in the most attractive way possible. Different ways to leveraging social media are: hosting giveaways, working with influencers, niche bloggers, and appropriate hashtags.

#3 Introducing Referral marketing

If your eCommerce store doesn’t have a referral program, it is time to introduce one.

More than 80% of the consumers have conveyed that a genuine recommendation from their friends, family and colleagues heavily influences their purchasing decision.

It doesn’t have to be elaborate.

Include a simple way for customers to view-review and recommend your brand to others. Even though it takes a tiny amount of work on the front end; but this is why it is essential for your business:

An average customer through referrals can gain around 30% of lifetime value than other customers.

For instance, Dropbox grew from 100k users to 4 million in 15 months due to its referral program strategy.

#4 Upsell your products on your store

From more minor to large-scale established eCommerce stores usually ignore the most accessible selling tool: Upselling.

Many online store owners think that it is not worth the effort, but the reality is otherwise.

The strategy of upselling drives an average of 5% more sales of your customer base; even though it isn’t much, it is a considerable number when counting your entire revenue arena.

Let’s take Amazon; they tested upselling on their platform, and their sales revenue increased by 40%.

#5 Optimise your website (SEO)

Search engine optimisation (SEO) compiles variables where optimising a website works on a deeper level than it seems.

Know these few things before you start:

• Figure out what the user is thinking and target your audience accordingly- know what and how they talk and know your product.
• On-page content: It refers to product titles, product descriptions, blogs and different types of content that you might have. Learn how you can use the content naturally as per the user’s interest when searching for the related products and try to answer their questions.
• Meta-tags: They’re essential- from title tags, headlines to content on each page; it helps define the website for the search engine. Ensure that each page has its own unique title tag; meta tags are short descriptions of each page; to inform readers what it is about when the site results on the search engine page.

#6 Know the motive of your writing

One should always write content considering the unique proportion in mind. Understanding the value proposition is what makes your business unique.

How you represent your product or service to your audience makes it unique from your competitors.

Do you know your web visitors spend 15 seconds or less on a page? As an eCommerce owner, you must reinforce those seconds on your product in which no one can.

For an instance; analysing the content on STRIPE; it portrays the importance of the product and its services to its audience leveraging the full proposition of the content.

#7 Consider and work on the speed of the website.

What is the speed of the website? Have you checked it before? How long does it take to open a specific tab?

If your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, you could lose up to 60% of the customers, and sadly, you won’t even get them back.

Around 80% of the visitors get annoyed when the website doesn’t load on time, and probably they never visit again.

#8 Partner with complementary brands.

You can do partnerships with brands to cross-promote your product. Look out for businesses with other brands that you can cross-promote with. Choose the ones with a similar target but that complements your idea and product and reach out to the relevant audience.

The process of cross-promotion varies and there are numerous ways to do it; it could be co-sponsoring any outdoor living podcast or a blog. You can offer down-funnel promotions like offering the right set of discounts on the product with the purchase.

#9 Show what you mean to the audience from your customers

More than 90% of the consumers trust recommendations from a trusted source and around 70% from a total stranger.

Social proof is precisely what it sounds like. Show the population of evidence that you’re a trusted brand.

Conclusion

With thorough analysis, you require precise strategy and not necessarily have to burn a hole in your pocket for your eCommerce store.

• With so much competition online, you’ll have to get inventive if you want to attract and retain clients without spending a lot on digital marketing.
• Know your target audience, customize your strategy and use the essential tools to implement.
• It is necessary to prioritise customers first when curating any design or writing collateral for marketing.
• Remember to check the status of your project on a regular basis.

Different strategies work for other brands, one shouldn’t get discouraged when a specific plan doesn’t work; identify the one that works best for your niche.