5 Marketing Ideas to Grow Your eCommerce Store

[MailMunch]

By Rukham Khan, Content Lead at MailMunch

Growth is an integral component of any business and rings just as true for online stores. You might be seeking growth from the get-go, or you may realize your store has the potential to be much greater than its current status. Either way, it’s essential to know how to grow your eCommerce business when you want to.

In this article, you will learn about five practical eCommerce marketing ideas to start growing your business.

1. Create a content marketing program

Content marketing has become a popular method for stores to increase their online traffic, rank better for target keywords, add value to customers, and become an authority in their domain.

As an eCommerce business, content marketing can help you 6x your conversion rates. And Marketers who prioritize content marketing are 13 times more likely to see positive ROI.

If you’re in the B2B sphere, you should know 71% of B2B researchers start their research with a generic search, rather than plugging in a brand name. If you want to be on these decision-makers’ radar, it’s crucial you show up for search terms relevant to your domain. This is where content marketing comes in handy. If you produce informational content, you can start ranking for keywords relevant to your domain and thus become an option in your consumer’s mind.

To start with a content marketing program, you can create a blog for your store and begin publishing articles relevant to your domain. For example, if you sell beard products, your blog can talk about:

• men’s grooming tips
• beard growing techniques
• best trimmers on the market 
• and how-to articles related to beard grooming

While these articles won’t directly talk about your product, they’ll attract the kind of people you are looking to become customers with you.

You can adopt a similar content creation approach for other media formats like videos, podcasts, and even graphics. Find what format your audience gravitates towards and become active in publishing content.

When you publish content on your website, add options for people to opt-in through emails to receive future content and updates. This way, you’ll have a direct channel to communicate with your customers and inform them regarding new products and discounts. 

2. Increase abandoned cart recoveries

The global average rate of cart abandonment is 75.6%. This statistic suggests that only 1 out of 4 people actually complete checkout after showing interest in a product. That’s a lot of money left on the table.

Thankfully, there are tactics you can use to reduce abandoned cart rates. You can:

• Send automated abandoned cart emails
• Make your checkout process simpler
• Entice customers with free shipping offers
• Deploy exit-intent popups when the customer is leaving the checkout page
• Display prices from other websites (if you offer better or similar prices)
• Simplify website navigation

The basic logic behind all these tactics is to reduce as much friction as possible for the customer so that they don’t doubt the value of whatever they’ve decided to add to their shopping cart.

Also use these opportunities to collect email addresses so even if shop visitors don’t convert, you can send them a follow-up sequence of emails and convert them into customers later.

3. Integrate Instagram with your store

With more than a billion monthly active users, Instagram as a marketing channel can help you grow your store. 

You can use Instagram to post compelling photographs, User-generated content, attractive videos, and in the process, give your brand a distinct identity that people will be attracted to and follow you.

When you start building an Instagram audience, you can engage them with contests and giveaways from your store. 

Coconut Bowls, a store that sells (you guessed it) coconut bowls, ran a viral giveaway for under a $1000 dollars and was able to generate 41,000 emails in 4 weeks. With so many new contacts, you can convert them into visitors by giving them sign-up discounts, social proof emails (showing how other customers are happy with your products), and sending exclusive offers.

You can also use your Instagram account to sell from your page directly. Instagram allows you to directly add product links to your stories and posts to make it even easier for customers to buy from you.

4. Grow your email list

It’s highly unlikely for first-time visitors to buy something from your store. Only 3% of visitors purchase something from their first visit. 

Therefore it’s crucial to create a connection with these visitors and to nurture them to become customers. If you can collect visitors’ email addresses, you can easily establish a line of connection and email them with information, new products, and offers. Couple this with the fact that 66% of customers have bought something as a result of email marketing, the importance of growing your email list becomes evident.

To grow your email list, entice people to exchange email addresses by offering lead magnets. You can place opt-in forms on your website with various offers your customers may be interested in. Some popular lead magnets are:

• ebooks
• webinars
• mini-courses
• checklists
• spreadsheets
• Planners
• newsletters
• calculators
• guides
• infographics
• videos
• podcasts
• quizzes
• free trials
• coupons
• discounts
• Giveaways

The more people you have on your email list, the better your chances of growing your store and converting subscribers into customers.

5. Upsell products

Upselling is one of the best ways to grow your business by increasing your eCommerce business’s revenue.

Upselling is when you try to sell a similar but superior/higher priced product to your customer from what they chose to buy.

In many cases, the cost of upselling is a lot less than acquiring a new customer. To upsell, you have to convince a current customer on the value of an upgrade. Other times, customers might not even know that a premium version is available, and will be naturally inclined to purchase the superior product. PredictiveIntent discovered over 4% of customers would agree on the upsell.

For your upsell pitch to work, make sure to ask yourself:

• What are my customers going to use my product for?
• What advantages will they realize from the product?
• Can I offer a product that can provide more advantages and better benefits?

When you can answer these questions, you can upsell products:

• In the shopping cart
• On pricing pages 
• After original purchase (giving the customer time to get acquainted with a product)

Let’s take Amazon’s example, a company proficient at upselling products.

If you visit the product page for Canon D60, a DSLR camera, Amazon lets you know a newer model for this item is available.

Considering the newer model (80D) is available for only an extra $50, many customers will be tempted to get the latest version.

The offer you display must make sense at the moment of purchase, and it must increase the value customers get from your product.

The 5 marketing ideas mentioned in this article are generally safe and reliable methods for eCommerce growth. Even then it’s important to know that not all may work for you. There are many other ideas outside the ones mentioned here that may be more relevant to you. The only way to find out is to test these out for yourselves.

Constant Contact and MailMunch have partnered together to share content that benefits Constant Contact users with their online marketing.