8 Proven eCommerce Marketing Strategies to Escalate Online Sales

8 Proven eCommerce Marketing
Strategies to Escalate Online Sales
Harness the power of these Eight Proven eCommerce Marketing Strategies
and let your sales skyrocket like Captain Marvel in the eCommerce universe.
Okay, let’s get down to business…
Advancements in technology make such things possible that were
considered impossible a decade ago. Today, by tapping or clicking on certain
points on your screen in sequential order can deliver products from
anywhere globally to your doorstep. Moreover, with easy-to-use platforms
such as Shopify, BigCommerce, and Volusion, online shopping and in turn
the eCommerce industry has been greatly benefitted. In fact, eCommerce
represented 14.3% of total retail sales in 2018.
Running an eCommerce store is having an online storefront and a connected
warehouse. Running it successfully involves multiple tactics, preparations
and creating a solid eCommerce Marketing strategy. This is especially
important for small business owners who dream of gaining the best ROI for
their efforts. So, by taking a leaf from the different marketing strategies
used by online retailers, we shall highlight different eCommerce marketing
practices based on the expertise you have.
Those who are starting out
You have created an online store, connected it with your inventory
management system and started pulling in relevant traffic to your store. At
this stage, most of your visitors are not ready to make the purchase. Here,
the proven eCommerce marketing strategies would be to identify the needs
of the visitor and provide them with good user experience.

1. List out your customer journey
Not everyone that visits your storefront is going to be turning into customers,
at least not in the first few visits. They need to be gradually imparted
knowledge about your brand, products, services, how they shall be
benefited, etc at different stages before they can be capable to make a
purchase. While the customer journey for every business starts with a
prospect and completes at customers, the intermediate stage might vary.
So it is very important to chart out the customer journey and define
milestones that indicate the promotion to a different stage.
A standard customer journey with different stages are:
Prospects → Leads or Marketing Qualified Leads → Sales Qualified
Leads → Low-Value Customer → Loyal Customer → High-Value
Customer
2. Create a content marketing plan
After you have devised the different stages of the customer journey, next
comes the points of contact where you can reach out to your prospects.
Even though no one is going to make a purchase based on what they read in
a blog post, the blog post or any other form of content can at least influence
the decision in your favor. Create a content marketing plan helps you
identify which form of the content does your prospect consume more. It
could be a blog post, infographic, flash card, case studies, eBook, style guide,
or even a checklist.
Your content can revolve around the advantages of using your products,
how to use your services or how people have been benefited with your
services. Such content acts as the trust-building activity for pursuing
prospects as well as bringing over those who are still on the fence.
3. Set up an email marketing automation

Assuming that you have created your content marketing plan, now it is time
to ensure that your content reaches the target audience. Emails are a great
way to achieve this as they are easy to use, has very high investment v/s
ROI ratio, will remain in the inbox of your subscribers unless purged.
Additionally, in inbound methodology, emails are a vital part in 3 out of the
4 stages namely Convert, Close and Delight.
Moreover, thanks to USPs such as automation and personalized tags, emails
are a great way to ensure that your customers receive personalized emails
based on their online behavior without you having to manually monitor each
email. Setting up an email marketing automation doesn’t involve you
jumping through hoops; all you need is an email service provider
(MailChimp, Hubspot, Aweber, etc) a client relationship management
software (Zoho, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, etc) and the integration of
both with your storefront.
4. Invest in a good recommendation engine
It feels good when you have someone to suggest you similar products based
on your choices. A recommendation engine is a bridge between your
knowledge of your products and what your customers are looking for. The
recommendation engine monitors the products your prospects browse
and/or purchase and scours through your product list to find similar or
relevant products to be recommended. This opens up opportunities to upsell
better products or cross-sell relevant products.
Those who are comfortable with their
business
You have managed to bring in a steady flow of store visitors and
successfully managed to bring sales but you are aiming for growth.
The following eCommerce marketing strategies are to increase the
number of visitors, increasing engagement with existing customers
and reduce the number of abandonment (both cart as well as the
browser).

5. Conduct Sweepstakes or Giveaways to
increase engagement
Imagine getting a chance to grab the thing that you are planning to
buy, for a discounted price or free. Would you let such an
opportunity to go to waste? Similar is for your customers. When
you offer exclusivity or discount in the form of sweepstakes or a
giveaway, those on the fence to make the purchase would take the
bait. Sweepstakes draws in new visitors to your website and most
of such visitor would explore the rest of the website after taking
part. By experimenting with different kinds of offers, sweepstakes
and giveaway tools can help you identify what moves your
customer base better.
6. Have a Loyalty reward program
The success of a business depends on repeat orders and loyal
customers. Just as sweepstakes are a great way to draw in the new
audience, a loyalty reward program holds your customer base
together. Your products/services may be greatly helpful to the
end-customer but when you include additional rewards on every
purchase, you encourage them to return to your store every time
they plan to make a purchase. Even though what matters at the
end of the day is a good user experience but a loyalty reward
program provides an incentive for your customers to remain loyal
to your brand even in the presence of competition.
7. Invest in a display ad program
Ad monetization is a boon for marketing realm. It brings revenue
for website owners and visibility for brands who enroll in the
display ad program. Display ad marketing is a great way to bring
your brand in front of those who satisfy particular traits. How
the display advertisement works is using cookies. These cookies
are a unique identifier for different devices helps track the owner’s

online behavior. Online advertising platform such as Google
Adwords and Bing Ads! display your ads to those individuals whose
online behavior matches your customer persona based on the
stored cookie data in their devices. Display advertising has two
major benefits:
1. It can be used for acquiring new leads, contextual marketing,
and re-targeting abandoners as well as dormant customers
2. Most social media platforms support display advertisements so
greater visibility compared to other marketing channels
8. SEO and SEM
As per Retailing Today, 81% of shoppers report conducting online
research prior to making a large purchase. If you fail to be present
on the first page of their search, you might have lost a prospective
customer. You may have the best products and your store may be
the one your customers are looking for, but it is meaningless unless
visible on a search engine result. By adding relevant keywords to
specific pages and have a good SEO score, the search engine
determines that your store might be the best suit for someone’s
search query and you get a visitor.
Unfortunately, in this age of competition, relying on ranking on
specific keywords is not going to bring in visitors. search engine
marketing wherein you bid on certain keywords and based on the
bid amount, your result is shown as an ad.