It’s always the first days, months, and year in business that are the hardest. When you’re just a startup or small business, it is normally difficult to find people who would buy your products. You’ll get some inquiries and possibly an increase in website traffic. However, the number of completes sales and transactions can still be underwhelming.
Sales are important for you to start growing your business. If you’re not effectively and continuously selling your digital products, goods, or service, it would be hard to take your online store to the next level. Taking this into consideration, here are some tips and tricks that can help boost the sales of your ecommerce business.
Start by creating an email list
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There is a misconception that emails are old-fashioned and people only use them for work-related purposes. While this is partly true, using email in marketing campaigns can help target and retarget specific customers and audiences. Unknown to most entrepreneurs, email marketing is actually an effective but underutilized marketing tool for ecommerce businesses.
Compared to other platforms, emails have one of the highest click-through rates. This is because people are most likely to provide their details for goods or services they are already interested in.
Let’s say you’re a car enthusiast, then you are likely to sign up for newsletters talking about the latest car updates and upcoming events. From time to time, you receive an email that there would be a year-end sale or a special discount code for newsletter subscribers. With the same concept, having a viable email list allows ecommerce businesses to boost their sales by making their customers feel seen and valued.
But how do you get people to give their information in the first place? One of the easiest ways to do this is to incentivize email sign-ups with website discounts, incentives, and other promotions. Entice them with amazing benefits such as subscriber-first news and promos, early sale announcements, and the like.
From there, you can even take your email marketing game up a notch by sending out personalized emails with customer-specific named greetings. Having an audience-segmented email list can also help you target your newsletters to a more suitable group or market.
Promote everywhere you can
Advertising and marketing are both crucial in boosting your online store’s sales. However, marketing in the ecommerce industry is more than just telling your friends about your amazing and beautiful product with the hope that they tell other people about it.
Digital marketing shares the same concept of foot traffic in traditional businesses where location is everything. Aside from a good store location, the next best thing is to promote your business where the most people are. Whether it’s on busy streets, bustling transportation hubs, or crowded malls.
In the same sense, your marketing efforts in the world of ecommerce ideally should go on every digital platform whether it’s through a search engine, the web, or social media sites. Through this, you can engage with various audiences, create networks, boost brand awareness, and improve presence and visibility on different platforms.
Search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing are some of the most popular methods for online businesses to promote their products and boost their brand visibility. However, it is important to know how to best design your SEO and social media marketing campaigns in order to get the best possible return on your investment.
SEO focuses on relevant and valuable content. Your search engine ranking depends on your content’s relevance to what people are looking for. Understanding both keyword research and analyzing trends can help increase your online presence and boost sales.
Social media sites are some of the best places to promote your online business. Millions of people use these websites every day. However, it’s important to understand that these social media sites often do not share the same demographic. Aside from specific audiences, certain social media sites have their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to content types and other marketing tools. Make sure to promote in the right places in order to start scaling your ecommerce business.
Improve customer experience
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Business is all about giving your customers what they want. However, this involves more than just selling products or services. Instead, it entails the whole customer journey and buying experience.
The customer experience starts the moment they interact with your business. Some may start by sending a product inquiry to your social media account or customer service page. On the other hand, there will also be chances where a customer directly heads to your ecommerce website to browse through your catalog.
Regardless of where the interaction starts, it is important that your online business is ready to cater to your customer’s needs. Make sure that someone is available to provide customer support on your different platforms. Aside from that, build a website that has a good user interface and user experience design. This can help encourage potential customers to continue engaging with your online store or website.
But aside from that, there are other ways for you to enhance customer experience with your business. Establishing a valuable relationship with your customers is part of improving their overall experience.
Let’s start by building trust in your brand and your system. Just like referrals, customer reviews and testimonials are effective tools for establishing trust in your product or service. It serves as social proof and potential customers can also use it as a basis for how your product would work for their specific needs and circumstances.
To make customers trust you even harder, set up money-back guarantees. For one, this shows that you have full confidence in the quality of your products, goods, or service. On the customer’s end, this encourages them to buy as it removes possible risks or losses.
Part of improving customer experience is to always optimize your business with the latest trends and features. In order to boost your sales, it’s important to make buying from your online store easy. Always test your website’s features from start to finish and revise those that need improvements.
Pay special attention to your website’s checkout process and make sure that each step is easy to accomplish. Also, look into adding multiple payment options in order to cater to more customers. Aside from accepting different banks and digital wallets, consider adding BNPL (buy now pay later), installment, and other flexible payment options in order to encourage customers to complete their purchases.
Want to know more about effective sales and marketing strategies? Sidekicks is an on-demand virtual company and we’re eager to help visionaries and entrepreneurs like you. Get a free ebook and learn more about how we can help you by signing up for our newsletter. We also offer a free 30-minute consultation if you prefer something more personal.
