Operating an eCommerce site is not easy, and marketing it is a different game altogether. It requires you to put a lot of smart work and hard work in place to make any sizable income.
But if you are aware of some robust marketing strategies that almost always deliver the results, your job can become a bit easier, and you can gain many customers easily. We know this, so we are going to share our knowledge and experience with you. In this article, we will introduce you with eight best eCommerce marketing strategies you can implement to boost your sales. Let us get started!
1. Utilize the power of Google Shopping Ads
Table of Contents
- 1 1. Utilize the power of Google Shopping Ads
- 2 2. Use SML (schema mark-up)
- 3 3. Upsell your products
- 4 4. Protect your site with an SSL certificate
- 5 5. Pay attention to site speed
- 6 6. Leverage email marketing
- 7 7. Use Trust Seals on your checkout page
- 8 8. Use videos in your product pages and marketing strategy
In today’s time, there can be no better place to get your visitors than Google. The traffic coming from it converts more than any other traffic source, and it is also quite cheaper than the traffic from other marketing channels. However, the ranking will take time in Google’s search results. If you do not have that much patience, you can harness the power of Google Shopping Ads that appear on the top of the search pages whenever someone searches for a product. They look something like this:
As you can see, these ads not only allow you to occupy the top of a search results page but also will enable you to hook your visitors by showing a price, an image, and other relevant information right there on the search page itself. So, whoever visits your site by clicking these ads is more likely to convert into a customer, and you pay only when they click – which means a very high return on investment.
2. Use SML (schema mark-up)
SML stands for Structured Mark-up Language. This language, also known popularly as Schema, helps search engines in better crawling and understanding of your site. By adding SML to your product pages, you can ensure that they are crawled and indexed correctly by Google and other search engines. While it doesn’t directly impact your search rankings, it does so indirectly by making your pages appear with information-rich snippets that entice people to click on your link instead of other links. And when that happens, it increases your Click-Through-Rate (CTR), which is an important ranking signal used by Google in its algorithms. As a result, you start moving up in search results from a steady pace.
3. Upsell your products
In case you are not aware of it, upselling refers to selling a more premium or better version of your product than the customer is willing to buy. By doing this, you can increase your revenue without necessarily acquiring new customers, and that is precisely what makes this strategy cool. The strategy works because many times; the customer is not fully aware of what options – better or worse – are available in the market other than the product that (s)he is going to buy. If you can offer a better deal on your product pages by upselling relevant products, it can become a win-win situation for both you and your customers.
4. Protect your site with an SSL certificate
Since we are about security, it is also important to discuss another security-related element that can turn visitors away from your site if it appears. If your website lacks an SSL certificate and therefore loading over default HTTP protocol instead of the more secure HTTPS, web browsers show a “Not Secure” label before your URL in the address bar. Something like this:
You can imagine what such a label appearing before your URL can do damage to your brand. The visitors to your site will feel that something is seriously wrong with the security of your website (which would also be true, given the importance of SSL) and immediately hit that dreaded Close Tab button. If you want to ensure that it does not happen, install an SSL certificate on your site. In case you are clueless about which certificate to buy, there are many SSL certificates out there in the market like Comodo certificate, DigiCert certificate, GeoTrust SSL certificates are among the best ones in the industry.
5. Pay attention to site speed
The speed of your site matters a lot when you are selling something. Nobody likes waiting nowadays – especially if they are looking to purchase something. If your site is slow to load, they will close it and want to buy from somewhere else. Do not let that happen – increase your site speed by following the steps outlined below:
Enable caching on your site.
- Eliminate unnecessary elements from your product pages (i.e., excess javascript/CSS, images/media loading from external sources, multiple widgets, etc.)
- Choose a reliable web hosting company
- Check your site with the Google Page Speed Insights tool and implement the steps suggested to boost your Page Speed score.
- These steps can help you enough in ensuring that your site loads faster.
6. Leverage email marketing
Email marketing may sound like an old technique in an all-social media-driven world. However, it still works wonders for many businesses. Especially if you are running an eCommerce business, you can leverage its power in many ways. You can start a blog that sends customers to your product pages after they’re educated enough to purchase your product, you can also use email addresses of your users to inform them about a product that was out of stock as soon as it’s back in stock. Last, but certainly not least, you can also tell your customers about various sales offers you are running through emails.
7. Use Trust Seals on your checkout page
Often when people do not buy from your site, it is not something wrong with your marketing, but with the security, elements included, or not included in your website. Security threats for an online business are among the top concerns in your mind and in the minds of your potential customers, which is why they do not purchase from sites that do not make them feel safe. If you want to make your visitors feel safe on your website, include some Trust Seals from reputed brands on your site (especially your checkout page), as shown above. You will need to purchase some security-related products from these brands to display these seals, but that is worth it because it will also boost your sales revenue.
8. Use videos in your product pages and marketing strategy
Finally, use the power of video to improve your product pages and boost your marketing. On product pages, videos can be used to provide your customers with a better understanding of the product they are buying. Off the product page, they can be used as a marketing tool to send visitors to your site through video sharing platforms like YouTube and other social media channels. It would help if you crafted a solid marketing strategy around it, and you can drive tons of traffic and sales to your eCommerce site through this one marketing medium alone.
Conclusion
So, these were eight best eCommerce marketing strategies you must implement to boost your sales. It is easy to implement them and necessary because, without these strategies, you cannot get the best ROI out of your marketing campaigns. Please share your thoughts and feedback about them in the comments below and let us know how they perform for your site.
Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash
Creator, Henny Kel: Digital marketing strategist & Brand Consultant at Designhill.