Running an ecommerce business is never easy. As much as it is easy for people to visit your store, it is also very easy for your customers to move onto a new ecommerce store. Moreover, it’s extremely hard to stand out among your competitors. Acquiring new customers has never been this difficult and expensive. If you can relate to these struggles, try out these tactics below to boost your e-commerce revenue!
1. Run Paid Campaigns
Let’s face it. You have to spend money first to earn money. Paid advertisement is an inevitable part of marketing your business. Paid advertisements are a great way to raise brand awareness, bring conversions, and increase engagements.
Of course, it is important to make an advertisement that is eye-catching and aesthetically pleasing, but there are more things to do than that. Find an advertisement platform you can best reach your target audience. Before you post your advertisement, set a SMART goal. Your goal should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bounding. For example, if your goal is to get 100 new customers in a month on a $500 budget, measure your campaign at the end of the month to see if you have achieved your goal.
During your campaign, you constantly have to optimize your campaign. Make a couple of design assets or ad copies. Run A/B tests to see which ad works better. Target your audience based on their demographics, locations and active hours. If you want to reach a bigger audience, establish a lookalike audience. Your visitors didn’t purchase anything? Retarget them to encourage them to visit your website again.
2. Update Your Social Media
Every ecommerce business has a social media account. It is important for ecommerce businesses to stay active online all the time, so that your customers know that you’re a real business and that you’re available to them whenever. This doesn’t mean that you have to reply to every comment and DM.
Engage your customers through engaging posts. In order to reach new customers through social media algorithms, you’d need posts that are savable, shareable and commentable. Make funny memes for your audiences to tag their friends or to share with their friends. Ask their opinions in posts like “this or that” or quizzes. Encourage them to save your posts by stimulating their goals and wishes through aesthetically pleasing posts. Social media posts are also a good way to establish a brand image.
You can also reach a bigger audience. Run a giveaway for your customers. You can also collaborate with other brands that share similar interests with your audiences. Giveaways make your customers feel like they’re cared for, but it’s also a good way to spread words about your business. Reward your customers, but reward them in a smarter way.
3. Find an Influencer for Your Business
Since we just talked about social media marketing, we can’t skip influencer marketing. Kylie Jenner, who has 257M followers on Instagram, is the founder and the influencer of her brand Kylie Cosmetics. Every time she releases a new lip kit, it sells out within a couple of seconds. This is why influencer marketing is so important these days.
The biggest advantage of having an influencer for your business is that they have a ready-made audience you reach easily. Since the influencer explains the features of your product and tries out for their audiences, not only is it convenient for you, but it also resonates better. Even if you don’t have a lot of budget for influencer marketing, you can start with influencers with smaller audiences! Just make sure to find the right influencers whose followers match your target audience.
4. Improve SEO
If your website is well-optimized, your business name will show up on the top section of Google search results. Let’s say you sell bananas. In that case, your keyword of your website should be bananas. You can pay Google for keyword bidding to rank on the top when people search for bananas, but you can also reach audiences organically through SEO.
Google always measures your website score through their algorithm which they update almost everyday. Although we don’t know what the algorithm is, there are many things you can do to rank high on the search results. One thing you can do is to make your website look alive. One best way to do this is starting a blog on your website. Write a blog explaining why your bananas are special. Or share recipes of desserts you can make with your bananas. This way, not only you can increase your chances of being exposed on Google, if you get many views, you will also be able to show up on the top result.
Also, make sure your website is always at its best condition. If the loading time takes long, or if there’s a broken page, your website score will go down. Utilize Google Analytics to find things you can improve on or do more of!
5. Optimize Your Ecommerce Website
Optimizing your website is not just about SEO. It also affects your conversion rate. Just like how first impressions matter on the first date, the first look of your website matters a lot for conversion as well.
When updating your website, ensure the visuality. If that page will be used as a landing page, put extra effort. It is important both for the first impression and for your branding since your website is the face of your ecommerce business. Encourage purchases with visually appealing designs. Always think in your customers’ shoes. Think of what your customers would expect when they visit your website. You can also take your landing page as your opportunity to showcase top selling products. Clear CTA works better for more conversion.
Always put user experience as top priority. It’s necessary for SEO, but it also affects your customers’ experience at your store. There are many things to consider. Does the pop up that appears right away annoys your customers? Is your website mobile friendly? Does your website take long to load?
6. Send Emails
Once you’ve acquired a new customer, you wouldn’t want your customer to forget about your business. To constantly remind them of your business, build a contact list of your customers and email them!
There are many tools to build emails such as Klaviyo and Mailchimp that will help you send out emails in a convenient way. But when sending the email, be aware of this Can-Spam Act. If you break the law, you’ll have to pay the fine for the number of emails you sent.
Emails are the best way to welcome your new customer, remind your customers that they left something in their cart, send out newsletter and event offers and announce new products. If you are not sending out emails yet, you’re missing out big time! You can also send text messages for short messages.
7. Start a Loyalty Program
Another thing you can do to encourage your customers to come back is starting a loyalty program. Have you ever thought that you want a loyalty program just like Starbucks? Well, you can easily start one at btwn!
Loyal customers are especially important for ecommerce businesses as it is VERY easy for one customer to move onto another website. We already know by now that the cost of acquiring new customers is expensive since no marketing is actually free, so it’s hard for ecommerce businesses to break even on one-time customers unless they purchase expensive products. The perks of having a loyal customer is that they not only have higher lifetime value, but they also tend to have higher average order value than non-loyal customers.
Having a loyalty program can be a good differentiator in your industry especially if your competitors don’t have one. Start a loyalty program at btwn right now for free. Once you join, btwn automatically tracks your repeated customers and you can customize your rewards. Instead of spending too much money on reaching new customers, reward your existing customers only for a specific number of repeat purchases. Not only can you cut costs, but you can also build long term relationships with your customers.
8. Incentivize Referrals
The perks of having loyal customers continues! You can also reach new customers through your existing customers. Studies have shown that loyal customers are more likely to refer their friends and family to your ecommerce business. At the same time, Nielsen shows that 84% of people value recommendations from their friends and family the most.
Start a referral program at btwn again, for free. Incentivizing referrals boosts more referrals. You can also view the list of your loyal customers and see who brought who and how many referrals. By analyzing your top referrers, you can even micromanage relationships with them in order to build deep relationships.
9. Use Psychological Tricks
To give you a small tip, stimulate your customers by using small psychological tricks. Use a scarcity tactic. If there are products you want to feature, always emphasize that. Write “Only __ left in stock” or “sell out quickly” under the name of your popular products. Add “last chance” under products that are not selling well and you’re not planning to restock.
Utilize coupons to achieve outcomes you want to see. For example, if you want your customers to purchase at least $200 amount, send out discount coupons for purchases over $200. If you want to get rid of some products, send out free shipping or discount coupons for purchases including those products. If you already joined btwn, make customized coupons easily on our dashboard!
Lastly, even when customers are about to checkout, upsell right before the payment. Introduce more expensive products or complimentary products in the product description under the “add to cart” button. Or try to suggest a couple of cheap products at the checkout for “free shipping”.
10. Use Custom Packaging
As the latest statistics claim, custom packaging can help boost your e-commerce sales! Custom packaging has a huge impact on consumer behavior and buying choices. So working with a top-notch custom packaging company like Arka is a good idea. They offer custom shipping boxes and mailer boxes that ensure an amazing unboxing experience. They also have packaging options for all niches; whether you need custom cosmetic boxes or shoe boxes, Arka can help create eye-catching custom boxes for your brand!