eCommerce Marketing Essentials: 7 Actionable Tips To Drive More Sales

Being an eCommerce brand you always need a handful of marketing strategies to retain your existing customers and obtain new ones. 

The competition in this eCommerce industry has become more fierce than ever. To stay relevant and drive conversion it’s highly essential to use the right marketing strategies and tips.

If you’re new in this industry, you might be wondering how to go about it. Don’t you worry because you’ve landed in the right place.

Today in this post, we’ll teach you how to drive traffic to your eCommerce store and bring in more sales.

All set to grow your eCommerce business? Let’s get started.

Actionable tactics to drive more sales to your eCommerce store

Understand your sales cycle

Every eCommerce business is unique in nature, so are their sales cycles. Therefore, estimating the time a customer takes to make a purchase in your store also varies. Knowing this can help you to understand how your customers move through your sales process because that will assist you in coming up with the best eCommerce marketing strategy.

If you have no clue about the time your customer takes to make a purchase in your store, it will be challenging for you to decide which platform you should choose to advertise your brand on. 

Advertising your brand on different platforms is essential if you truly want to expand your consumer base. Once you know how much time your customer is taking to make a purchase,it will be much easier for you to roll out your marketing strategies such as sending emails. 

If you’re done with this one, move to the next tactic.

Simplify the checkout process

If your eCommerce store’s checkout process is too long and complicated, then my friend you’re in hot water. When the checkout process is too time-consuming and confusing, customers often abandon the store and they look elsewhere. 

That’s why we highly recommend eCommerce merchants to try to limit the whole process to a single page. If you’re unable to do so, then add a progress bar on your checkout pages so it will be easier for customers to know where they have reached in the process and how much is left.

Also design buy buttons that are easy to locate – the more time your customer will take to locate the checkout button, the more frustrated they become.

Francesca’s is an eCommerce clothing store that has an optimized checkout process. They have included all three checkout sections in one page. The first section displays shipping information. The next section tells you about billing and the last section shows your purchase. 

They also allow you to see all the products you’ve purchased, making it easier for you to calculate the price of each product and how much shipping charges you’re paying. Plus you can also see all the information that you have provided to avoid any errors or inconvenience later on.

To recapitulate, simplifying and optimizing your checkout process will help to improve the conversion rate of your eCommerce store.

Write valuable product description

Being an eCommerce merchant you always need to bear in mind that people buy products either to improve their lifestyle or solve their problems. But here’s the catch, how will you tell this to them?

The answer is, through product description. When you’re selling a product, you need to write valuable content that defines how your product can make things easier for them or can help them. 

Telling about the features of your product isn’t sufficient. You need to highlight the benefits very clearly if you want to drive more sales. Also you need to use the right keyword to optimize your product description as it will help you to improve your search engine ranking which will ultimately drive more customers to your store.

Run email marketing campaigns

Till today, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies. First you need to build an email list by capturing the email addresses of your visitors and existing customers in exchange for discounts or coupons.

Once you have built your email list, start planning an effective email marketing strategy. Don’t forget to use automation as it allows you to set up email automation including welcome automation, cart abandonment automation, and order automation.

Sending cart abandonment emails help to retarget customers who abandon their shopping cart before completing the checkout process. This will remind them about the abandoned and they’ll probably come back to your store to complete the purchase. 

Sending friendly reminders to customers can help to improve sales conversion rate drastically. Also sending automation emails to customers will give an impression that you offer outstanding customer services. 

Also while sending reminders, watch your language. Don’t use harsh or irrelevant words.You should avoid making mistakes that can sabotage your eCommerce sales.

Offer free shipping

Humans really love it when they get something for free. This phenomena can be used as a marketing strategy to drive sales in the eCommerce sector. 

Shipping plays a significant role when it comes to making purchasing decisions. It highly influences them. Offering free shipping to customers is a way to entice and motivate them to make a purchase. 

Don’t worry if you cannot afford a free shipping offer. It’s just a psychological phenomena, one way to go about it is to add the shipping charges to the original cost of the product pre hand. 

Add ‘Continue Shopping’ button at checkout

‘Continue Shopping’ is a marketing tactic that can motivate customers to buy more products before completing the purchase. However, most of the customers will continue to the checkout process while ignoring the other available options. 

Incorporating eCommerce tactics like this isn’t as easy as it looks like. The key to success is to place the “Continue Shopping” button right next to the “Continue to checkout” button. Make sure to place both the buttons in the right place to make it easier for your prospective customers to locate them.

Offer Discounts:

As an eCommerce store, you’re going to have periods of low-sales. They’re an inevitable part of the eCommerce operation. During such periods, how can you expect to gain sales for your business? 

Well, the answer lies in the word “discount”. 30%, 50% off on all purchases, Save $20 dollars, these are all statements that you’re well aware of. If you’re looking to keep making profits during periods of low sales, then you need to offer discounts.

Now, you might be hesitant in offering discounts. After all, why would you want to lose money? In such a scenario, it’s best to think long-term. More importantly, you need to think of brand identity and how offering discount promotions can lead to brand awareness. In short, when you offer people a good product at a discounted price, chances are, they’ll come back and purchase from you again. 

Conclusion

There are other ecommerce marketing tactics available, but these 6 are among the most dependable and efficient for the majority of eCommerce enterprises.

There is a vast range of possibilities available here. They range from those that are completely free and quick to those that will take months and thousands of dollars to put in place, and everything in between. They’re all worthwhile, and they’re all capable of working independently.

That being stated, your marketing strategy should include a range of various individual strategies that make use of both outbound and inbound marketing to thoroughly target your target demographic.