Awesome! Your online store is live… but now what?
What will help your eCommerce store navigate the waters in a constantly saturated marketplace?
With customers choosing brands like Amazon over other eCommerce stores (it grew from 900 million to 1 billion in June 2020) during the pandemic, the competition is growing pretty quickly.
Every online retailer faces the challenges of skyrocketing sales. And with people getting used to regular Facebook ads, it is important to find a strategy that actually helps your business grow.
Today, I’m going to share some insightful tips to help you grow your sales naturally. Most of them will work, provided that you are consistent.
What is customer marketing?
Don’t let the fancy phrase confuse you. Customer marketing simply refers to campaign and marketing strategies to retain an existing customer base by improving their overall experience.
You can use it for boosting growth, ROI, and retention rate.
It will also help you with advocacy and community participation.
Take advantage of the following methods to make your customer marketing sizzle.
1. Create a targeted blog
Yes, all of you have probably heard all about starting a blog.
But, there’s more to the picture!
When we talk about starting a blog, we’re generally talking about a fresh blog that publishes relevant posts so you can generate traffic and improve conversion.
However, targeted blogs focus on creating content that reaches out to the right audience.
To begin targeting, start by creating a blog. You don’t necessarily need to choose a new domain. You can also set up a blog on your online retail store (as a new category) or a sub-domain.
Next, create a list of your competitors and a list of the relevant keywords you have in mind.
Type in the relevant words on a keyword research tool like KWFinder. For instance, if you run a fashion store, you can type in fashion clothing and it will find low-competition, high search rate keywords for you.
Similarly, you can type in an entire domain into this keyword research tool and uncover some great keywords.
Creating a targeted blog will not only help you retain existing customers and improve user engagement but also grow your sales overall.
2. Use an automated platform for customer marketing
When it comes to improving customer marketing for online retailers, you cannot possibly miss out on AI-based marketing automation platforms.
This is because a big part of online retailer traffic comes from paid ads on Google and Facebook/Instagram. But, running cold campaigns increases the cost per click and reduces the ROI.
This is where ad automation platforms like ConvertedIn come into action. ConvertedIn, an AI machine automates everything from segmenting unique profiles to creating an audience and a lookalike audience for targeting and retargeting.
You can easily retain and grow your customer base and boost your ROI by using a customer marketing platform.
3. Create a referral marketing program
Should you want to hit two birds with one stone, create a referral marketing program.
A referral program retains existing customers and helps acquire new customers so you can easily grow your eCommerce store.
You can use an automated referral marketing software like ReferralCandy.
A referral program rewards the customer for every purchase made by its recommendation. There are a lot of examples for referral marketing where eCommerce stores reward customers with cash prizes, discounts, vouchers, and gifts.
It is quite similar to affiliate marketing, but is personalized towards keeping the customer experience intact. One great example of this is Healthy Paws, a pet insurance site.
Every time a referral is made, a donation will be made on your behalf.
4. Tinker the customer experience using email marketing
Email marketing is one of the most saturated marketing strategies for promoting products and services.
It is for this reason that you need to strategically optimize your email copy. Your email needs to connect with your customers and should show you care for the customer experience.
Here are a few tips to help you with that:
- Personalize your emails – In addition to using your customer’s name in the email, customize your email based on your customer’s needs. For instance, if you have a multi-niche eCommerce store and a customer buys a kids clothing item, you can suggest similar items like apparel (cross-selling). But it won’t make sense if you recommend a digital item, even if it’s your monthly best seller.
- Switch to omnichannel platforms – Another way to optimize your email campaigns is by collecting information using an omnichannel marketing automation platform. These platforms collect user info from email marketing, SMS marketing, Facebook messenger, etc. and help you create a custom email marketing strategy.
- Be mobile responsive – By this I mean customize email content for multiple devices. If most of your customers are mobile users, reduce the content size, and create shorter email templates.
5. Thank your loyal customers
Should you want to master the art of customer loyalty management, you need to understand one very important thing:
“When existing customers are buying from your store, they are choosing your business over the competitors”
And it is thus important to pat them on the back every now and then.
One great way to thank your loyal customers and collect feedback is by using a loyalty marketing platform that works with most eCommerce platforms.
You can use platforms like CandyBar for both providing small rewards on frequent purchases and auto-collecting feedback for improving the customer experience.
6. Personalize your shipments
We all know how free shipping can improve conversion rates and offer a better user experience.
However, most brands don’t do much about the post-shipment experience. It is due to this reason that most dropshipping models fail.
A post-shipment experience is as important as a good quality product. You need to help customers to keep a better eye on their orders. These platforms usually charge a very small fee but help your customers to track and be notified of the order details.
Plus, you can also get better feedback on delivery parameters to analyze your customer satisfaction level.
7. Improve the customer experience using brand aesthetics
Brand aesthetics play an important role in brand awareness and customer marketing.
While most stores take care of design just after store setup, there’s a huge difference between a beautiful theme and a conversion-friendly theme.
When designing your store for brand aesthetics and selecting a theme, remember to optimize!
Start by thinking about your business niche and create your logo accordingly. For instance, a minimal logo won’t be the best fit for a trendy clothing store. Look for a few options using AI-based tools to find the best fit.
Next, make sure that your value proposition follows the Z pattern design principle according to which a reader checks out a site from left to right in the header, then goes to the lower left corner and scans again from left to right.
Use high-quality product images for better conversions. Also, don’t forget to optimize your store for SEO.
Final words on customer marketing
Above are some tips I picked up from my experience. As a business owner, you should always look for new ways to tailor customer marketing.
Here are some bonus tips:
- Use A/B testing tools for your store
- Boost the user experience by optimizing your site speed
- Create a social community for regular visitors
- Collect feedback using survey builders
Guest author: Pulkit Bhardwaj is a WordPress blogger and an eCommerce enthusiast. When he’s not busy sharing awesome ideas, he can be found helping online stores on boutiquesetup.net or writing blogging guides on starttheblog.com