With the possible exception of the 1990’s ecommerce bubble, it has never been a better time to launch an ecommerce brand. Next year, over $450 million will be spent via ecommerce companies in the United States, and that number is only expected to grow within the next five years.
Ecommerce upstarts like Huckberry and Juul have been able to quickly grow revenues by building valuable brands.
Through a combination of outstanding customer support, innovative growth marketing techniques, and creative PR efforts, readers will be able to turn an online business idea into a well-respected ecommerce brand in a short time period.
Provide outstanding customer support across all channels
Customers share both positive and negative experiences with people in their network. One study found that on average, a customer who receives a negative customer experience will tell 16 people in their network. On the other hand, a customer who receives a positive customer experience will tell 9 people in their network.
By providing outstanding support across channels (social media, email, phone, and live chat) ecommerce brands will help to acquire new customers through word of mouth marketing. Best of all, word of mouth referral business is highly profitable, meaning that brands will be able to reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) while improving satisfaction among existing customers.
Use growth hacking techniques to increase lifetime customer value
Hubspot reports that over 80 percent of shoppers conduct online research before making a purchase online. Using growth hacking techniques, marketers can more readily convert skeptical shoppers into loyal customers.
One example of growth hacking employed at some of the world’s most successful ecommerce brands, like Amazon and Jet, is A/B or multivariate testing. Using A/B tests, ecommerce companies can test variations of ecommerce pages to determine if changes to either design or copy cause website visitors to purchase items more frequently.
By using software like Google Optimize or VWO, ecommerce brands big and small can provide prospective customers with increasingly optimized shopping experiences that help to increase revenue, and lifetime customer value over time.
Develop behavior based email workflows to drive repeat purchases
Traditional email marketing uses static triggers to send pre-written emails to various customer segments. Radicati estimates that the average professional receives nearly 85 emails per day, and that number will increase in the coming years.
Considering that your prospective customers are constantly being bombarded by email, successful ecommerce marketers will need to develop more sophisticated email marketing campaigns that react to your audience in real-time.
Whether you’re selling law school textbooks, or collectible action figures, using behavior-based automated emails is the best way to communicate with your target audience via email.
Unlike traditional automated email, the cadence and contents of behavior based emails change depending on customer actions. If an existing customer re-visits your website, you may want to send them an email that automatically offers them a menial discount for being a loyal customer.
Alternatively, prospective customers who tend not to open your marketing emails should receive less frequent emails in an effort to avoid spam penalties.
Most marketing automation and ecommerce platforms can support varying degrees of behavior based email marketing. Implementing this more natural form of email communication is a great way to ensure that your ecommerce brand stands out from the pack.
Create brand cache using social media marketing
According to Statista, there are nearly 2.5 billion people who use at least one social media platform globally. By 2021, over 3 billion people are expected to be on at least one platform. Brands interested in engaging with members of their prospective audience have a golden opportunity of building cache through clever social media marketing.
Developing a clear brand narrative, and using social media to share this narrative in novel and engaging ways has helped ecommerce companies like Brandy Melville and Anastasia Beverly Hills to grow into multi-million dollar organizations seemingly overnight.
Improve search presence through contributed content link building
Roughly 40,000 Google search queries are entered every second of the day. Many of these queries are related to prospective customers doing online research. Ecommerce marketers must ensure that their brand is highly visible for relevant search terms in order to complete against ecommerce giants who might ordinarily be top of mind among those in your target audience.
To develop a strong organic search presence, consider developing a contributed content strategy to engage in link building. The practice of link building is a critical component of improving organic search performance because Google takes the number of credible links pointing to a website into account when ordering webpages for a variety of search topics.
Conclusion
Now is a perfect time to develop an ecommerce business. Entrepreneurs have access to low-cost marketing platforms that make it possible to acquire, nurture, and serve customers to exacting standards.
By providing outstanding customer support, developing behavior-based emails, and optimizing the website experience, you’ll be able to quickly acquire new customers. Using social media marketing and SEO optimization will help your ecommerce brand to grow brand awareness by reaching new audiences.