The estimated number of ecommerce sites around the world is between 12-24 million.
This means many businesses are already offering the same products or services like yours, so you have many companies to compete with for customers.
If you’ve tried different strategies to get ahead of your competitors and up your ecommerce game and none seem to produce the desired results yet, then this article is for you.
Here, you will find ten practical digital marketing ideas that will boost your ecommerce business with results to show.
Let’s get right into it.
Digital marketing ideas to boost your ecommerce business
Digital marketing is essentially the strategies you use to build your business on digital platforms. Your main target is improving the way your customers see and relate with you in this space. So, your strategies must be customer-centric. See how to achieve this below.
1) Create a Facebook group
About 2.80 billion people use Facebook monthly, which cut across over 59% of social media users.
More so, over 200 million businesses use Facebook as a tool to increase their business’s visibility because they know Facebook is the king of all social media platforms.
As an ecommerce trader who wants to boost sales and grow their business, you should use Facebook to increase your visibility and connect with your audience.
One way to do this is to use Facebook groups to grow your community.
By creating a Facebook group, you will grow a community of loyal raving fans who will support and promote your business.
You can build a community on Facebook by sharing tips, initiating conversations through engaging posts, contests, and challenges.
2) Create a blog
Over 409 million people read 23.7 billion pages of blog posts every month.
This means if you don’t blog as an ecommerce trader in 2021, you are losing 8 out of 10 customers.
Creating a blog as an online business owner will help you build credibility and gain trust from your customers and potential customers, thereby increasing your sales.
You might be wondering what exactly am I supposed to post on my blog regarding my line of business?
The truth there is: there’s no limit to what you can blog about as an ecommerce trader, regardless of the type of business you do.
To do this effectively, ensure you blog about what your customers are looking for regarding your business.
You can do this by researching the problems your customers are facing regarding your product or service and provide answers through tips and FAQs.
Doing this will help you establish yourself as an authority in your field and also be the first person your target audience will come to whenever they need products or services relating to your business.
Stop losing customers, start a blog today. You can try out the popular blogging platforms like WordPress to begin.
3) Be strategic with comments
As an ecommerce trader who plans to thrive, you must be strategic about everything, down to the way you comment on social media.
Comment strategically on your target audience’s posts on social media and prove your competence.
This doesn’t mean you should be salesy; rather, offer value by bringing solutions to your target audience.
For instance, if, as a skincare vendor on Facebook, your followers post about the challenges they encounter with their skin, you can strategically comment on their posts by offering tips on how they can get rid of these skin reactions.
By doing this, you will be able to grab your audience’s attention, and prompt them to check out your social media pages and try out your products.
It is really just about strategically adding value wherever your audience is.
4) Ensure data protection
An important factor you must never leave out in your ecommerce business is protecting your companies’ data and your customers’ personal data.
What is personal data? This is one question you need to figure out if you acquire your customers’ data from running online contests and campaigns, conducting surveys, or selling online, as it varies by law.
Your inability to classify and protect your customer’s personal data will attract legal sanctions or reduce your customer’s trust in your businesses. Not only are legal charges bad for your ecommerce business rep, but they can also lead to bankruptcy and other complications.
To avoid this, you must ensure all your customers’ personal information is well protected by staying up to date about data laws and implementing data protection tools.
5) Build your email list
Many ecommerce traders ignore the power of email marketing, and right now, email marketing is the best way to generate leads. According to research, 47% of consumers prefer to receive commercial messages through email.
Emails are more likely to be read by consumers than social media posts if they are more direct and personal.
While your social media posts have to compete with thousands of posts on social media, an email goes directly to your customers’ inbox, so there’s less competition for your audience’s attention.
There are endless opportunities with email marketing, and an excellent way to make your email marketing effective regardless of the product is to make your contents personal and engaging.
Send members of your email list updates about your business, valuable tips, and ask about business milestones.
Creating an email list is necessary to get subscribers. One way to get subscribers on your email list is to use pop notifications on your website, so when your customers visit your website, they can see the notifications and subscribe to your email list.
6) Start your eBay store
Opening an eBay store is one of the most effective ways to gain visibility and reach a wider audience.
eBay has over 171 million active users, which can give your business higher visibility than you can ever imagine.
Apart from the visibility, it also comes with useful tools for the growth of your ecommerce business. With eBay, you can pick up shipments and have the local post office deliver boxes to your doorstep.
If you haven’t started an eBay store, you miss out on generating sales and visibility for your business.
7) Organize referral programs
Research shows that 65% of new customers come from referrals, and businesses that offer referral programs experience a 70% high conversio`n rate.
Word-of-mouth advertising is very effective because people tend to trust recommendations from people they know.
Therefore, organize referral programs by offering your customers incentives for bringing new customers to your business. The incentives could range from a free sample of your product to discounts and complimentary services.
8) Organize online contests
Online contests are a great way to initiate interactions and engagements for your business.
Apart from inciting engagements and interactions from your followers, online contests help increase awareness, grow your followers on social media, and generate leads and customers for your business.
It also enables you to gather your customers’ data because running online contests require participants to leave their details with you.
This will enable you to turn these participants into leads as you can follow-up them up with the details they leave behind. Running online contests have become easy with online contest software to help you manage your giveaways seamlessly.
9) Harness the power of video marketing
If you haven’t started using videos to market your ecommerce business, then, you should start now.
People respond better to videos because they are more engaging. It is also a great way to reveal your brand’s personality and connect better with your audience.
It is easier to convert your audience to customers with video marketing because video contents are more interactive.
In addition to this, more people tend to consume video content because they are often shorter and bite-sized.
When more people consume your content, it means more people will get to know more about your business and what you offer which will ultimately increase your sales.
When creating video content, ensure your videos have the following characteristics.
● Relatability
It should have a narrative your audience can connect with.
● Authenticity
People are moved by authenticity, so don’t be afraid to reveal your true personality to your audience.
● Call to Action
Your video content should be purposeful and get your audience to take the needed action.
Before you create video content, ask yourself what you want your audience to do after watching your video. Do you want them to subscribe to your email list? Buy your product? Follow your social media page?
Ensure you state this clearly at the end of your video with a compelling call to action. Video marketing tools like Vimeo can help you create professional looking videos in no time.
10. Use transcription tools
As an ecommerce trader, transcription tools are the easiest way to convert your video and audio contents to text.
With the use of transcription tools, you can get your content across all platforms without any restrictions.
A very efficient transcription tool you can use is Happyscribe.
Happyscribe is equipped with the latest transcription technology that lets you convert your MP3 to text in over 120 languages, including English, French, and Spanish.
What’s more? Happyscribe gives you various options that enable you to import your file from anywhere, either from your laptop, your Google Drive, or YouTube.
You also don’t have to worry about any transcription inadequacies as the Automatic and Professional feature gives you 85% to 99% accuracy.
Conclusion
Boosting your ecommerce game can be a bit tough in a fast, challenging market with large competition.
However, implementing the ten digital marketing ideas discussed in this article will positively change your ecommerce game and help you get ahead of your competitors in the best way possible.