In a nutshell, there are several eCommerce strategies for your business to adapt and leverage. However, business situations and overall goals should be taken into account carefully before implementing any strategy. So, let’s get started and take your business to the next level!
20+ Kick-ass eCommerce Strategies To Implement In 2021
The online platform seems never to make us bored. It started a century ago with so few people caring about and boom, more than 65% of the world’s population can’t live without it. Not going to lie; the more people go online, the more chances the e-Commerce industry has to develop. However, to be genuinely attracted and click the “buy” button, customers now need much more than products’ images with only some simple description. Therefore, well-planned eCommerce strategies play an essential role for any company and sellers.
1. Establish your eCommerce goals
People can not simply do things without careful planning and wishing for desirable results. A similar principle also applies to all types of business, especially e-Commerce ones. Hence, the professional manager must take the very first step before carrying out any eCommerce strategy. Clearly defined goals bring numerous benefits to e-Commerce firms, such as setting priorities, informing actions about employees, tracking progress efficiently, and so much more.
Moreover, being aware of the importance of setting goals is not enough. You have to know how to set SMART goals for an eCommerce strategy plan. In other words, you should avoid unclear and unreachable objectives by making it:
- Specific: Answer the 6 “Wh” questions, including Who, What, When, Where, Which, Why. You can also discuss these questions with superiors and subordinates.
- Measurable: Define metrics used to track progress, set specific milestones, and communicate them with your subordinates.
- Achievable: The goal is meant to inspire motivation, not discouragement. Unattainable objectives create boundaries for accomplishing given tasks.
- Realistic: Being honest with your team and your abilities and establishing goals that you are both willing and able to work towards.
- Timely: In business, the shorter time you use for finishing work, the more incredible benefits you can attain. Therefore, establishing a goal deadline is compulsory because time constraints create a sense of urgency.
2. Put the focus on the user
Basically, in today’s market environment loaded with enormous products and services, customers are those with absolute power, not the sellers. A variety of goods allow customers to have a wide range of choices according to their interest, perceived price, quality, etc. If your company can provide customers with unforgettable experiences and offer reasonable prices, they will, in return, be loyal to your enterprise. As a result, you can save the amount invested in retaining customers and even encourage brand advocacy.
Take the case of Apple for eCommerce strategy examples. CEOs of this multinational technology company always give priority to customers’ experience. So they equip retail stores with iPhones, Macbook, iPad, AppleWatch, etc., to allow customers to experience Apple’s products themselves.
Listen directly from your target customers with a combination of in-person or phone customer interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, and so much more. Develop a list of questions before interviewing to make sure it is short but informative enough. Lengthy discussions create neglect and annoyance. Besides, to encourage involvement from volunteers, promising gifts in return are required.
3. Look at your accomplishments
ECommerce strategy is not a simple one-off project. As a matter of fact, eCommerce business strategy requires regularly checking and updating. Therefore, it is better to revisit the attainments of the previous projects before moving on. Moreover, carefully detecting what your team has and has not achieved is essential.
Effective and loyal employees are the core value of a successful business. As a considerate employer, you ought to bring blockages to the forefront, discuss weaknesses with subordinates and find solutions to enhance their knowledge and skills. Accomplishments with superior results can encourage employees, while uncompleted work can give lessons.
However, life is not like a dream; even frank discussion does not work sometimes. In this case, you can recruit a new executive or hire external agents for valuable professional advice for current problems. After figuring out the matters, you must immediately fix or even change them according to the business environment. Be prepared because error problems could be anything, as a timeline, allocated resources, the CEOs, KPIs, and so on.
4. Update your goals and priorities
To adequately adapt to the continuously changing environment, professional managers must be sensitive to changes. It can be achieved through modifying the objectives and priorities of the eCommerce strategy. It is simply because the enterprise’s resources are so limited that you can not satisfy all desires. Pay attention to your eCommerce content strategy, online marketing strategy, etc., to update goals and priorities successfully.
Top 21 eCommerce strategies in 2021
1. Leverage Social Commerce
Have you ever thought about integrating your business with Social Commerce as an eCommerce strategy? If you haven’t, you should think about it now. Currently, Facebook has over 2.8 billion active users, while Instagram has more than 1 billion. The above statistics demonstrate that these platforms are lucrative markets for businesses to reach customers.
Social Commerce can be recognized as a process of advertising, selling, and facilitating transactions on social media platforms. Generally, it represents all eCommerce functions and allows customers to complete their shopping journey without being redirected to other websites. Below are some of its significant benefits:
2. Create a loyalty program
Customer loyalty is what makes business exist. Simply speaking, customer loyalty is the willingness to repurchase products, services of a specific firm. In fact, enterprises usually invest considerable resources, efforts in establishing and retaining customer loyalty. It is because customer loyalty creates enormous advantages to the firm that gaining the customers’ trust and loyalty become a must-have mission:
Although being important, loyalty programs are not difficult to conduct. First, think about three simple questions before actually starting it: What will you reward customers for? What will your rewards be? and How are rewards redeemed? After that, take your business into account and think about appealing offers:
3. Subscription Pricing
A subscription-based pricing model is a type of payment structure that companies usually apply for their eCommerce strategy that permits their customers to pay for a specific period of time using services. The example of brands successfully gaining revenue through subscription-based pricing models would be iTunes, Spotify, Netflix, etc. For a physical product company, customers will receive a box of products monthly or weekly, depending on their choices.
4. Employ user-generated content
User-generated content (UGC), also known as user-created content (UCC), is defined as any content form like pictures, text, audio, etc., that is created and posted by users on the Internet and social media. In the technology era, UGC has become the most favorite eCommerce business strategy for firms. Common reasons why firms prefer UGC may come from its remarkable influences:
5. Optimize eCommerce sites for mobile
According to the data, the current number of smartphone users in the world is 3.8 billion, which equals 48.33% of the world’s population. Therefore, optimizing eCommerce sites for mobile means online shopping will be convenient and accessible. Here are some things that you need to consider to make an efficient mobile online store:
6. Effectuate Up-Selling and Cross-Selling
Upselling and cross-selling are two great sales techniques that assist businesses in boosting profits by raising the amount of money a customer spends. Cross-selling is the practice of offering a client additional products or services that are connected to their first purchase. Meanwhile, upselling is when consumers are offered a more costly or upgraded version of the product they desired initially.
7. Utilize Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is an eCommerce strategy that leverages individuals’ voices to raise the firm’s overall profile and reputation. This approach is among the most effective ways to expand a company’s exposure. We may divide influencers into six groups in influence marketing: Mega, Macro, Micro, Advocates, Referrers, and Loyalists.
Do you want to learn more about influencer marketing or include it in your digital marketing plan? Then, continue reading for our standard tips on how to design and execute effective influencer marketing initiatives.
- Create authentic influencer content: Because artists have a real relationship with their audience, influencer marketing works. Anything that appears inauthentic to the audience will have a negative impact on the creator’s relationship with the audience and may harm your brand’s reputation.
- Choose the appropriate influences: Examine an influencer’s prior postings to see whether they’ll be a suitable fit for your company’s purpose and vision.
- Consider your brand: Consider your brand before you begin to look for influencers. Some questions you may want to answer are: What are your target audiences? What do your target audiences look like (demographics, psychographics, etc)? From that, you can choose the influencer that is the same as your target audience.
- Define your objectives and target market: To create an effective campaign, you must clearly understand your goals and who you will target.
Target the Right Customers and Market(s)
“Customer Psychology in Ecommerce” offers a phenomenal summary the various elements that go into building personas. If your customers are U.S based, I recommend using the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor’s website to gather the information. I’ve also found City-Data(dot)com to be an excellent source of quantifiable demographic information.
All of this will influence a wide range of areas in your business, including brand positioning, advertising creative, ad placement, local markets you want to penetrate and more. Being able to more clearly identify your target market will help you to “speak the language” of your prospective customers, and get a higher return on your investment for your creative assets.
You should also use this section to discuss how customers perceive your product in relation to competitor’s products or the other solutions they use to solve the same problem. What are their attitudes toward your company, and to the general product category you serve?
10 eCommerce Strategies: Increase Reach & Drive Sales
Establish SMART Goals
When establishing goals for your company or organization, be sure they’re SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. Following this framework helps to ensure that you set reasonable goals based on your circumstances and time.
Create Buyer Personas
Buyer personas are great for segmenting your audience and customizing campaigns to cater to different customers’ needs. Base your buyer personas off of your existing customers and their intentions with your brand.
Buyer personas take demographics into consideration; however, they go beyond just demographics and buyer profiles. Effective buyer personas involve individual behaviors, like how the customer uses the product, what they intend to do with it and what problem it solves for them.
Create A Content Strategy Framework
In addition to setting SMART goals and creating buyer personas, we encourage eCommerce brands to create a content strategy framework. Before creating and publishing content, conduct some keyword research to identify search volumes and competition. Then, determine topics that are relevant to your brand and optimize your SEO to rank in search results for those keywords.
Whether you sell B2B or B2C, ensure your brand voice remains consistent throughout all of your content − even if more than one person on your team posts on social media. All of your blogs and eBooks should be written with the same tone of voice to maintain a consistent brand image.
Last, make sure the file formats throughout your site are best fit for your users. For example, a large .zip file is inappropriate for mobile shoppers and will contribute to slower page load times. Rather, use smaller file formats, like .png or .jpg, to increase load time and improve the user experience.
E stablish A Social M e dia Branding Strat e gy
Increase reach and engage more users at every stage of the buyer’s journey with a strong social media presence. Remember how we said to keep your brand voice and tone the same throughout all of your content? That holds true with social media, too; however, social media is a great outlet to converse with your audience on a more personal level.
Be sure to engage with comments (both positive and negative), answer all direct messages and make your audience feel like they’re part of a larger community. A successful social media branding strategy prioritizes users, shows authenticity and remains engaged in a human-like way.
Take Advantage of Marketing Tools
To survive in the modern eCommerce landscape, many businesses benefit from leveraging marketing tools. There are so many tools available, so how do you know which is best for your business needs? We recommend doing some research before investing in a tool.
Want to improve your SEO strategy and drive more organic traffic to your website? Take advantage of any of these 18 SEO tools. Want to improve your social media strategy to engage more users and drive conversions? Check out the 4 social media marketing tools our team trusts.
Have An Optimized Email Marketing Strategy
Did you know that email marketing remains one of the highest-converting channels for eCommerce businesses? Email marketing is one of the most integral eCommerce strategies because it holds incredible potential for increasing conversions and return on investment.
It is projected that by 2021, the number of emails sent and received each day will reach 320 billion. Since building and scheduling emails can take a lot of effort, we recommend using automation to save yourself time.
Whether you want to automate sales emails or run special promotions for an upcoming holiday sale, use an email automation platform (like HubSpot) to create an automated workflow. Workflows let you send emails to active lists so that when people meet a specific criteria, they’re enrolled to receive the automated emails you’ve created.
Use Paid Media To Increase Reach
We encourage eCommerce businesses to complement their SEO efforts with a strategic paid media approach to increase revenue. There is a ton of opportunity for online advertising, and we particularly find success with Google and Facebook ads.
There are a variety of ad formats available on different platforms, so we recommend doing some research to see which ad formats and social platforms best align with your company’s goals. To help you determine the best advertising outlet for your business, take a look at this eCommerce Advertising Guide that covers Google, Gmail, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat advertising.
Use Paid Search And SEO
Paid search and SEO are some of the best eCommerce strategies for increasing reach and driving relevant traffic to your site. Utilize paid search to target highly-specific segments of your audience. Take advantage of Google Text, Shopping and Display Ads so that your brand shows up in relevant search results.
Sources:
https://blog.magezon.com/ecommerce-strategies/
https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/ecommerce-marketing-strategies
https://www.groovecommerce.com/ecommerce-blog/ecommerce-strategies/