There are three metrics every attentive digital marketer pays attention to.The first is customer growth. The next is the number of repeat purchases. And the third is the average order value.
However, improving these key performance indicators is only possible with great marketing – that is if you understand what great marketing achieves and the best ways to go about them.
To help, our article will demystify some of the most proven methods to acquire new customers, keep existing ones engaged and increase the average revenue per customer. Let’s begin!
Why is Marketing so Important?
Creating a functional ecommerce store involves various intricate steps, including integrating payment gateways, curating quality products, organizing product collections, investing in professional ecommerce photography, and selecting reliable fulfillment partners.
Despite having these elements in place, attracting customers isn’t guaranteed. Effective marketing is essential to continually engage potential buyers by ensuring they are consistently exposed to your products through various channels, from initial awareness to post-sale interactions. What are the most effective marketing strategies for promoting your product.
6 Best Ways To Market Your Product
Whether you need 5 sales or 50 a month to turn a profit, the following tips will help you spread awareness about your products, drive sales and encourage repeat purchases.
Use Social Media
Social media platforms give billions of users an avenue to get the latest news on their favorite businesses, celebrities and events.
There are several strategies for marketing on these platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and others, but rule number one is that you must build your presence organically.
This means creating content that isn’t meant to just sell, but rather content that engages your customers and lets them know your brand exists. However, that isn’t to say you should disregard paid ads or promotions.
Across most social media platforms, building your page organically also involves replying to comments on your posts and commenting on posts from other creators.
To make the best decision when choosing social media platforms for your business, you must know what user demographics each platform targets i.e TikTok = younger audiences and what content thrives on each platform i.e Reddit = value filled text posts, etc.
With this knowledge, you’ll then evaluate your target audience and the nature of your business to make an appropriate choice.
For example, everyone knows LinkedIn targets professionals, so if you run a corporate fashion store, you want to at least have a presence there before branching out to other platforms like Instagram, Twitter etc.
Likewise, if you want to sell merchandise like clothing, mugs etc related to political ideas, then you may consider building a presence on X (formerly Twitter) thanks to its heavy political themes.
Building your page organically presents you as trustworthy to your potential customers. If you use ads to create awareness for your product, and the customers you attract go to your page and find existing content that helps them see you as an expert, they are more likely to go ahead with their purchase.
Other ways to use social media include:
Social media influencers: Find an influencer – someone with a massive number of followers who trust their recommendations – who has an audience that fits your target audience profile, and offer them to review your product. They might ask you to pay for the service or give them free products in return. With the proper measures in place, this can bring you many new customers.
Social media ads: Most social media platforms have a service that helps you reach your target audience via ads.
When running an ad, ensure you have a detailed profile of your target customer so that you can fine-tune your targeting preferences. Also, ensure you have a sales funnel that engages those who respond to your ads.
Always ensure that the ads you run – whether through influencers or regular ads – have an option for your customers to sign up to receive content from you.
This helps you generate leads from potential customers who see your ads and want your product but are still deciding whether to buy.
Email Marketing
Emails are one of the best ways to stay in touch with your customers while encouraging repeat sales.
To successfully engage in email marketing, you must have a sign-up process that ensures your customers willingly sign up to receive your emails. You can ask them if they are open to receiving emails from you. This is best done during the purchase process when they fill out their shipping details or respond to an ad.
Once you have their permission, you can send them emails reminding them of the products available in your store, inform them when there’s a promo, and highlight the benefits of your products.
Ideally, it would help if you had a funnel for those on your email lists. This can be an automated email sequence you set up that sends out thank-you emails after the first purchase.
After 12 – 18 days, if the customer does not make another purchase, the following process on the sequence should be to activate the next email that either cross-sells, up-sells, or informs about new products.
After about 30 days, your sequence should have another email informing the customer about a promo – a 10% discount or an offer for free shipping.
If there’s no response, engage the customer by requesting a survey – this suggests you care about their input and are willing to make improvements to provide a better service.
If there’s still no response, then your next step can be to use the unsubscribe option, as you do not want leads on your mailing list that are not responsive.
The sequence described above is a sample. Ideally, however, you want to create different sequences based on the customer’s action.
Also, be sure to personalize your emails by using an automated service that lets you use each customer’s name or lets you refer to an action a customer recently took.
You can also read our article on the different kinds of emails to send to your customers.
Create a Loyalty Program
The beauty of a loyalty program is that it convinces customers to act.
A loyalty program offers exclusive offers because a customer took an action. For example, you can offer free shipping plus 4% discounts, exclusive access to new products, and priority customer care/input to customers who decide to sign up with a specific amount of money.
You can also begin a point system and offer these benefits to customers who pile up a particular number of points.
You can even decide to do a tier system for the points – At Tier Five, a customer needs to have only 70 points to qualify for free shipping. At Tier 2, a customer must have 200 points to be eligible for free shipping, 6% discounts, and exclusive access to new products.
A loyalty program is vital because it is a reward system based on specific actions that benefit your store.
For example, a customer would need to purchase more products to pile up more points, and a customer who signed up for your loyalty program with money would need to buy more products to use their benefits sufficiently.
It also presents a win-win situation for customers to get a reward for purchasing something they need.
Utilize Gift Guides
One of the best ways to reach customers is to be there when they need you. One of the times they need you is when they are unsure of what to gift their loved ones or colleagues, and they type in a search engine “Best Gifts To Get For a Fashion Forward Boss”.
The results that appear are usually gift guides curated by gathering different products alongside links to the seller’s store – and you want to make sure you are on that list.
Check the top results for all variations of “looking for gifts ideas” you can come up with that relate to your products, and then reach out to the blogger in charge to request to include your product.
Another way is to have articles on gift ideas in the blog section of your website while utilizing SEO to ensure it ranks.
Organic Marketing
Organic marketing uses non-paid avenues to generate traffic, build trust, and convert leads. One thing to know about this type of marketing is that it is not a quick fix.
Instead, it serves as the building block for other avenues of marketing. It is also the best way to build customer loyalty and get your audience to connect with your brand emotionally.
Organic marketing comes in the form of content marketing – using blogs through consistent articles, guest articles and SEO, and video and imagery to tell stories about your product and establish yourself as an expert.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is indispensable for building your brand organically. The use of keywords and backlinks ensures that your customer sees your content. However, expertly using keywords in SEO will only succeed if your content targets quality.
To build trust, you need to be able to answer your customer’s questions, show them why they need you, prove that you care for them beyond their purchase, and show them why your product is the best option.
When your content upholds these pillars, it becomes easier to convert your audience to buying customers and have loyal customers willing to vouch for your brand.
Focus on Good Customer Service
Not sure how customer service helps your marketing? Here’s how.
Your customers are humans. And humans like to be treated nicely. Furthermore, humans want an efficient system that gives them no stress and is interested in their feedback. This applies to all aspects of life and even more so to your business activities.
For one, have a payment process that is straight to the point, and make it easy for your customers to complete orders. Also have a reliable shipping partner that is speedy and guarantees little or no hassle when it comes to delivering customer packages safely and accurately. This will help you impart a positive customer experience and keep shoppers returning for repeat purchases
Furthermore, When your customers have a complaint, attend to them immediately, showing them you value their feedback and are willing to ensure they have no reason to regret their buying decision.
Also, respond to your customers quickly, practice listening to them, and incorporate valid customer suggestions into your product line.
These tips help retain your customers and ensure you are the first one they think of when they need a product you sell.
Final Thoughts
Marketing can be daunting, especially when there are no visible results at the beginning.
However, the trick is to keep at it. Keep talking about your products, Treat your customers like kings and queens, and keep sending those emails
An open secret in marketing is that it compounds and tends to produce exponential results when you least expect it. So, it is vital to stay consistent. Also, ensure you practice all tips listed in this article and have a system for measuring marketing impact so you know which works best and can focus more effort in that direction.
