Regardless of whether you’re a startup or a well-established business, there’s a pretty good chance that your #1 goal in 2020 is to find new ways to increase sales online. Success in modern ecommerce is directly linked to better customer experiences, which means your fastest path to scaling ultimately comes down to your ability to listen to customers and adapt your marketing strategies to meet consumer demand.
Here are five quick tips to rapidly increase e-commerce sales in 2020:
- Build a brand that instantly instills trust
Today’s consumers want to feel like they’re an essential part of their favorite brands, from the boardroom to the checkout cart. They expect complete transparency and it is essential to establish who you are, what your brand cares about and where it’s headed. Most brands will say “we have your best interests at heart,” yet so few back up that sentiment by inviting potential customers into their world and showing them what’s driving their brand.
How do you instill that kind of trust? From your homepage to social channels to item description pages, let customers know that your brand is all about them. Answer the hard questions up front, before they’re asked, and show that there’s nothing more important than a satisfied customer.
- Create sales funnels based on actual customer needs
Likewise, all of your product pages should align with one simple goal: meeting customer expectations. This is perhaps the most crucial step in the ecommerce journey because to fulfill it you must be actively engaging your customers, asking their opinions and delivering the types of products and services they actually want to see. Despite popular opinion, this doesn’t require massive amounts of market research. It simply requires you to listen.
How do you listen to your customers? There’s no secret here. Just ask them on social media and in post-transaction surveys and engage with them at every possible opportunity. Your customers are eager to tell you what they think and listening shows that you care about their opinions.
- Focus on rewarding all forms of customer loyalty
‘Customer loyalty’ is sort of a buzzword these days. With every brand trying to make their own loyalty app, however, few companies seem to stick to rewarding their customers past the initial download. There is such a massive opportunity here to build lifetime customers through incentives and feedback at all stages of the customer journey, while also boosting average tickets and repeat sales in the process. For that to happen though, customers need real reasons to keep paying attention.
How can you focus on rewarding your customers? You could use geotargeting to reward them with an exclusive perk when they’re near one of your retail stores or offer them exclusive discounts or occasional freebies just for stopping by. If you can build your loyalty program to actually promote long-term loyalty, your business is much more likely to experience rapid growth.
- Don’t waste time on second-guessing mistakes
We’ve all been there; that “genius” marketing campaign on which we worked so hard falls absolutely flat. Our first reaction is usually to double-down because, “Maybe we didn’t get our value propositions across to customers as well as we could have.” More often than not, however, a campaign that starts sluggishly will continue to underperform because we simply missed the mark. And that’s okay. There’s no shame in admitting a temporary defeat while rapidly moving forward.
Simply put, if your campaigns aren’t converting at expected levels, it’s usually because something was overlooked in the last three topics we’ve covered. So, double back, engage your customer base and ask what you could do better. It really is that simple and it allows you to become much more agile as a company.
- Incentivize customers to become brand ambassadors
If you walk away with one “aha moment” from this entire article, hopefully it will be that 21st century brands don’t just grow through marketing and sales. Instead, they rapidly expand by putting their best customers at the forefront of every decision. Because, once you take that stance and really start listening, your customer base will actually become your sales team by singing your praises across the web. Even in 2020, nothing beats “word of mouth” advertising and you should be embracing it at every possible turn.
Believe it or not, your customers want to have reasons to brag about your brand, regardless of how well their transactions went or how in love they are with your products. The way you embrace consumers as a part of your company’s journey is just as important in modern marketing, so don’t be afraid to really let them into your world. That’s really the secret to rapid growth and you can begin that journey today.
Author bio
By Scott Hirsch, a serial entrepreneur and internationally recognized expert in digital data marketing