Generating sales is the ultimate goal of every eCommerce business. But with each passing day, the competition is getting more fierce. In 2021, Amazon was estimated to account for 50% of all the eCommerce sales in the United States. The rest of the eCommerce businesses were fighting for a spot in the remaining 50%. Such high competition means your traditional marketing strategies will not be as efficient and effective as you expected them to be.In the past few years, the buying behavior of customers and how they respond to a marketing campaign has also changed completely. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, around 15% of the US residents tried grocery delivery for the first time. Almost all of them were satisfied with the service, and nearly half of them said that they would love to stick to this even after the pandemic is over. The point is that what customers wanted a few years ago and what they want now are two entirely different things.With these changes in the eCommerce industry, you might find it quite challenging to determine which marketing strategies will bring the best out of your campaigns. You’re not alone. Therefore, we have created this actionable list of marketing strategies that you need to try in 2022 for bringing the best out of your business. Read on.
eCommerce Strategies You Need to Try in 2022
Your eCommerce business will not generate sales up to its potential if you are unaware of the current marketing trends and needs. Well, say no more. Here’s our list of five of the most effective eCommerce marketing strategies for 2022:
Develop first-party data
Third-party data is becoming a harder sell. In 2021, even Google announced that third-party cookies had already packed their bags to leave. These cookies were helping marketers track user behavior and run the marketing campaigns without any friction. But relying on third-party cookies will not be possible any longer.This change will create some significant issues in the marketing industry. For example, the paid ad campaigns that were completely based on their party cookies will not be as effective as they used to be. But what’s the solution?There is only one solution, and that is to rethink the whole data collection strategy. Start collecting first-party data of your customers to tackle the tighter privacy regulations. This data will provide you with unique information about your customers that will help you understand them better. And when you understand your customers better, you’ll be more equipped to send them personalized offers.When you obtain first-person data, your marketing campaigns become more relevant and accurate, which eventually leads to a more engaging customer experience. It’s the first-party data that’ll keep you ahead of your competitors in 2022.
Help customers make informed purchase decisions
The amount of information available on the internet is quite Brobdingnagian. Over the years, customers have started to rely on this information for all the decisions they make — minor or major. This makes it quite essential for eCommerce marketers to find ways to answer the queries of their target customers.Having said that, there are only two strategies you can use to help your customers make informed purchase decisions. Let’s take a look at them.
Focus on SEO
A list of online marketing strategies is not complete if Search Engine Optimisation is not part of it. SEO is probably one of the most effective marketing tactics considering more than 40% of the product-related searches begin on search engines.Moreover, there’s another study that analyzed more than 18,000 eCommerce stores in the United States. It claims that 30.5% of the traffic to these stores was coming organically via search engines (mainly Google, Yahoo, and Bing). This clearly tells one thing, if your eCommerce store is not optimized for the search engine, you’re going to lose a large chunk of organic traffic.One of the key advantages of online crash games is the speed at which they can be played. Unlike traditional casino games, which can sometimes take hours to play, online crash game Lucky Jet are typically over in a matter of minutes. This makes Lucky Jet an attractive option for players who are looking for a quick and easy way to gamble.Now, when we talk about SEO for eCommerce, it generally involves optimizing headlines (product name), their description, metadata, the structure of internal links, and navigation for user experience. If you want to draw organic traffic from the search engine, you must ensure that all the products have their dedicated pages.Other than the product pages, you should also optimize the static and non-product-oriented pages (Homepage, About Page, FAQ Page, etc.) with a list of relevant keywords.
Content marketing
Irrespective of the product you’re selling, content must be a part of your eCommerce strategy. It goes hand-in-hand with SEO. When you create and share valuable content with your potential customers, they find it easier to trust you. You can establish yourself as an authority with this marketing strategy. More importantly, content keeps your potential customers engaged and also helps improve brand awareness.For example, Nykaa – an Indian beauty brand, boasts content marketing as one of its most effective strategies. This company offers a wide variety of content to its target audience and hence, converts them into its customers. They have their beauty blog, where blogs related to makeup, beauty, and personal care are published. They also create video content for their target audience, which revolves around DIYs, makeup tutorials, and much more.Because of its robust online presence, Nykaa receives around 15,000 orders every day from customers aged 22 to 35. When content marketing can provide you with such immense benefits, why would any business want to be a part of the minority section (6% of the B2C businesses) that doesn’t have a content marketing plan?
Campaigns that focus on psychology
Discounts have somehow lost their effectiveness. People seem to believe that they only get a discount on the inflated price. However, when it is combined with some other psychological factors, it becomes a lethal weapon for marketers to use.Talking about psychology, there’s actually a branch of it dedicated to marketing. In marketing psychology, we study the behavior of consumers towards various products and services. In simple words, it is the practice that enables marketers to predict the actions that a consumer will take and also helps determine they can make customers feel exclusive.Here are two of the many strategies based on psychology and behavioral science that can help increase the conversion rate of your eCommerce business.
Open pre-orders
You might have seen it many times on Amazon that most of the mobile phone companies put the option of pre-booking. This gives rise to the fear of missing out. Suppose you want that phone, but you are still unsure if that’s exactly the phone you want. Now that there’s a pre-booking option and you are unaware of the number of phones there are in stock, more often than not, you’ll go for it.In psychology, this relates to the scarcity heuristic principle, which states that humans place a higher value on the items that are scarce and lower on the ones that are available in abundance. When you provide customers with the pre-ordering option, they are more likely to opt-in and help you make sales even before the launch of your product.
Back in stock
Moving on to the next principle we are going to talk about — loss aversion. It is the tendency of people to prefer avoiding a loss instead of acquiring equivalent gains. People find it better to not lose $10 instead of finding $10.When customers see that a certain item that they want is getting sold out repeatedly, they’ll want to buy it the next time it appears online. It is mainly because the customers are unsure if the product is going to come again. And what if it is restocked and sold out again? The customers will be left with nothing.This is where a back-in-stock alert comes into the picture. As soon as the product is back-in-stock, the customers are notified, which allows you to win them back. You can easily set up back-in-stock alerts by using Appikon. The tool asks users to subscribe to the alert on the product page and is notified as soon as the product is live. Moreover, it also ensures that you don’t lose a customer who’s interested in your products.
Leverage multi-channel sales
One of the biggest challenges that eCommerce businesses face in their initial phase is, of course, making sales. If we look at it, there are 350 million (number consistently increasing) total products listed on Amazon, and there are 12 to 24 million companies selling their products on the internet. It’s a total traffic jam in the online selling space, and there’s only one way to counter it — multi-channel selling.In a multi-channel strategy, you use different channels to connect, communicate, and sell to your customers. Suppose you sell customized photo frames, and this product of yours can be purchased via your own website, Amazon, and Etsy. This is multi-channel sales as you’re selling on more than one platform.A Statista’s 2020 Q3 Research says that only 2.17% of visitors ended up purchasing the product. Or you can just say, 98% of the website visitors leave your website without buying a thing. However, in multi-channel sales, your website is one of the many points of contact you have with your customers. So even if they do not buy your product from your website, they’ll get it from somewhere else.Moreover, you will certainly see a boost in your sales when you start with multiple channels, as each of the channels has its own unique set of audiences. Because there are new customers present on different channels, your overall brand recognition also increases. Basically, when you have a wider net, you’ll be able to catch more fish — multi-channel selling is the bigger net you need.
Don’t hold back from partnerships
Coming to our next point, let’s see how businesses can leverage partnerships for their own growth. So when eCommerce businesses partner with other brands and influencers, it gives both partners access to shared knowledge. What one brand knows about customers can share the information with the partner and vice versa. Moreover, these partnerships also help businesses expand their reach and, in doing so, gain more customers.You can partner with others in many ways, below are just two examples.
Collaborate with other brands
People are always loyal to their favorite brands. What they love even more is when two of their favorite brands come together to develop a product. This collaboration with the other brand is on strategic, marketing, and advertising levels. In this strategy, the success of one brand is taken as the success of its partner too.Let’s see an example of collaboration between Starbucks and Spotify:
Starbucks and Spotify came together to create the first of its kind music ecosystem. On the one hand, we have Starbuck — the coffee industry giant that is famous for its premium coffee and ambience music. On the other hand, we have Spotify, a music streaming platform with 25 billion hours of playtime behind its massive success.In this collaboration, the employees of Starbuck got a free Spotify premium subscription in which they could curate playlists, and the other colleagues could join to listen throughout the day. This ecosystem made it possible for Spotify artists to get exposure to Starbucks customers.
Both micro and macro-influencers
Coming to the last bit — influencers marketing. It has become synonymous with eCommerce marketing. It not only improves brand awareness but also ensures that you enjoy an engaging community on all your social media handles.According to a study by Nielsen, 92% of the customers consider buying a product when it is suggested by someone from their connection, acquaintance, or someone they know personally. They get influenced by the people they are familiar with. This clearly means that you must target the influencer’s marketing space to get the most out of your eCommerce business.Now businesses often get confused about the type of influencer marketing they should stick to — micro or macro. It might come to your surprise, but to generate the best results, you should leverage both micro and macro influencer marketing simultaneously.This is exactly what Daniel Wellington, a Swedish watch company, did. They turned a small investment into a $230 million business. They come from one of the most competitive industries, but with the right marketing tactics, they were able to establish themselves as one of the authorities.They contacted micro-influencers in huge numbers and sent them a watch. In return, they asked for a picture of it on their profile. In no time, their hashtag started trending, and DW became a name people associate with watches. Later, they expanded their program and picked macro-influencers with one of the highest engagement (Kendall and Kylie Jenner) rates. After that, they were everywhere on social media.Strategic use of both micro and macro-influencer marketing made Daniel Wellington the brand it is today.
Ready to Implement These Strategies?
The eCommerce industry is getting more and more competitive with each passing second. We hope that you’ll find our list of strategies helpful for your eCommerce business. Implement these as soon as possible to get the most out of your eCommerce store.To get started, you can explore the Shopify apps by Appikon to one-up your marketing strategies and their impact on sales in no time.Get them here.
