Creating marketing strategies to grow businesses in 2022 and beyond has become essential. Ecommerce is a competitive industry. In fact, it’s more competitive now than ever before. With more people shopping online and fewer people visiting physical stores, it’s important that your ecommerce store stands out from the crowd.
To do this, you must have proven marketing strategies that you can use right now to benefit from:
1 – Optimize Your SEO
When it comes to ecommerce, search engine optimization (SEO) is a critical component of a website’s success. This marketing strategy involves ensuring that your store product pages are optimized for different types of search queries.
The goal is to match the unique questions, and product searches your target customers are entering into Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. That includes any local demographics.
For example, if you sell a custom candle-making company with beeswax from Australia, then “Australian beeswax candles” is probably an important keyword.
You can use the free Google Keyword Planner tool to get started.
2 – Leverage Social Media Influencers
Social media influencers are people who have a large following on social networks, such as Instagram or YouTube. Your marketing campaign aims to get these influencers to promote your products in exchange for compensation (usually money).
Influencer marketing can be an effective way to reach a large audience and drive traffic toward your site, but it’s important to remember that not all influencers are created equal. Some may not have the same level of influence as others. Therefore, you should do some research before reaching out to them.
3 – Broaden Your Social Media Presence
Let’s face it, social media is a great way to reach new customers. You can broaden your social media presence by promoting your brand and products on existing platforms. While Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram are all great places to start, you may also want to consider newer platforms like TikTok.
The goal here is consistency. Having a regular posting schedule with engaging content your followers interact with is critical, especially to help you grow a community of loyal brand ambassadors for word-of-mouth marketing.
4 – Build Your Email Lists
If you’re not marketing to email, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. Email is still the most effective way to reach your audience, build customer relationships, and make sales. Plus, it’s incredibly cost-effective compared to other forms of online advertising.
Email marketing can be used for a variety of purposes, including:
- Promoting new products
- Promoting new content
- Building an email list
- Growing interest for lost customers
5 – Lower Your Abandoned Cart Rate
Shopping cart abandonment is a metric that measures the number of visitors who add items to their shopping cart but don’t complete the checkout process. It’s an essential indicator of how well you convert potential customers into sales. The higher your abandoned cart rate, the more likely you are to lose potential sales—and money.
If you want to reduce your overall abandoned cart rate, it helps to understand why people bail before they make a purchase. According to research conducted by Salesforce and Sprout Social, there are three main reasons:
- They don’t have time right now (34%)
- Got distracted by something else (33%)
- Changed their mind or decided not to buy anything after all (30%)
Find a way to fill in these gaps, and you’ll see your sales skyrocket.
6 – Create Demographic Targeted Ads
Creating demographically targeted ads is among one of the best marketing strategies to get the most bang for your buck. Demographic targeting ensures that you’re only advertising on websites or social media platforms where those likely to be in your market are spending their time.
For example, if you sell high-end coffee makers, it would be a waste of money and energy to try and advertise by marketing to the average user because your product costs more. Instead, you want to find coffee enthusiasts with higher purchasing power.
7 – Integrate User Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) is a great way to promote your brand, increase sales, and build customer trust. UGC can take many forms, including:
- Customer reviews, product photos, and videos.
- Customer testimonials or quotes about the products you sell.
- Photo contests where customers submit their best photos of your product in action for the chance to win a prize.
This is essentially free marketing through social proof. You are demonstrating the quality of your brand, ecommerce store, and products through the positive shared evidence of previous customers.
8 – Make Sure Everything is Mobile Friendly
In 2022, your website needs to be mobile-friendly. If you don’t know what that means, let us break it down for you:
- A website that’s easy for a user to navigate on their phone is also more accessible for them to convert on.
- Search engines like Google want their users to have an excellent experience when they visit your website, so they use things like mobile-friendliness as one of their ranking factors.
The entire experience users have with your ecommerce store needs to be seamless, no matter if on a PC or Apple iPhone.
9 – Create Loyalty & Affiliate Programs
Loyalty and affiliate programs are two of the most powerful tools in your ecommerce marketing arsenal.
They’re both easy to set up and can be used independently or together, making them incredibly flexible.
Loyal customers are more likely to buy from you again and refer others as well. Affiliates are people who market your product on your behalf for a small percentage of the profits. This is like crowdsourcing your ecommerce marketing for a tiny fraction of your expected gains.
It is All About Multichannel Leverage
You can use several different ecommerce marketing strategies to grow your online business. Each method has its pros and cons, so you need to choose the best plan for your business.
To make an informed decision, you also need to measure the results of each strategy so you can decide which one works best for your business. Capture data analytics in each strategy you use and try to blend and compliment efforts for a more multichannel marketing approach.
Take your time and test out all that you can. At OPMC we offer a variety of streamlined plugins, extensions, and apps that work with major ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce.
That way, when you do find a strategy that works, you can use our tools to automate the processes so you can focus on new product development and growing your business. Check us out today and let our experts help expand your ecommerce marketing efforts.
