5 Tricks to Successful eCommerce Marketing

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As it’s stated in the marketing “postulate” classics, if your marketing activity isn’t bringing you back the return on investment, you’re obviously doing something wrong. And in the highly competitive sphere of eCommerce, there’s just way too much that you must “juggle” in terms of used strategies and set priorities.

This is why marketers and online retail business owners are in a never-ending search for cost-effective solutions. They’re optimizing the store’s content, taking steps towards headless commerce architecture, adding on modern augmented reality and virtual try-on technology, boosting their tactics and cross-channel content plans, thinking of new ways to convert users into buyers. But what can they be missing out on?

In this article, we uncover the 5 crucial marketing points that shouldn’t be overlooked in eCommerce sales. We’ll give expert recommendations and back up our ideas with statistics and examples.

Trick 1: Start Using Client Feedback

Let’s start with the biggest “oopsie” that an eCommerce marketer can make. Opinions of clients have to be collected and showcased across all the channels via which your audience encounters your business. Period. You’ll be missing out on way too much otherwise.

Before your potential buyers make up their mind and hand you over their money, they spend time going through what other regular people just like them have to say. So, turning client feedback into a sales leverage is a vital marketing skill to master.

That said, ideally, every individual eCommerce product page should have a decent review area with as many customer opinions who’ve already bought the item from you as you can get. You can encourage people who’ve made a purchase to share their point of view by suggesting something in return (like a discount). You may do this in your emails, on your site’s order delivery confirmation page, or wherever you find this to be suitable.

Here’s a good example of a product rating block (official MAC Cosmetics site). While the block itself is neat and fitted with a wonderful overview area, we’d like you to pay attention to something else, how negative reviews are handled. Ultimately, even if you received some rough feedback, as a marketer, you must respond to it, get to the bottom of the matter, apologize if necessary, and offer compensation or some other solution. This approach won’t let your brand sink in the eyes of your potential customers and show that you really do care.

Screenshot taken on the official MAC Cosmetics website

Trick 2: Link up Your Social Media & Use UGC

The second marketing flop in eCommerce that you should avoid is ignoring social media. For starters, your marketing plan and content strategy won’t be complete if you don’t interlink and cross-post content on all your social channels.

Your audience should “see” you on those socials that they’re accustomed to apart from your website. Notify them of the latest news, promos, arrivals, contests, products, services. This is your communication channel that’s silly not to use!

The second thing that might be slipping from you is not making the most of the user-generated content that your followers and buyers make on social media. This is a way to make your acquired customers happy to see themselves featured on your account and site. This will enrich your content plan which gets hard to maintain over time. And this is a way to inspire your buyers to spend on what you’re offering and to trust you.

Take a look at the nice “Share How You Wear It” Instagram social media widget that’s placed on a product page of a sports tank top (official Reebok site). This plugin collects posts with photos and videos made by users on their personal social pages which feature them wearing this specific top. One of the terms to get featured in such a gallery is mentioning the official account. Yes, it’s as uncomplicated as that.

Screenshot taken on the official Reebok website

Trick 3: Optimize Your Images & Content

The third huge misstep a marketer can make in online retail can harm your store more than you think. Unoptimized images and page content will most likely take you to a dead-end since SEO is a major strategy to improve ongoingly.

You can keep on investing money in pay-per-click ads, of course, but in the long term, you’d prefer to have more of it for free, right? Nifty organic search results and high SERPs are reached by good on-site SEO and link-building. And did we mention the importance of page speed?

What you surely should start by is by optimizing the content of each page:

• go over your meta information;
• make sure there’s no duplicate content and copy/paste
• rework your product descriptions;
• have proper page headings and subheadings;
• use your keywords appropriately.

Your store’s site should be well-groomed. In an ideal case scenario, it must have flying page speed time and top-notch navigation. It should be easily accessible from any mobile device or browser. Such optimization is key! This is a major reason why so many eCommerce stores are getting progressive web applications for their sites in the 2020s.

Thirdly, you should give your images some thought too. While their quality must be outstanding, media size should be minimal, or else you’ll slow down your page load time. Modern image formats such as JPEG or WebP, proper alternative texts, and caching tools, can be points to note.

Below is a screenshot of a gallery image on an official Tom Tailor product page as seen in the console. We can see the JPEG format of the picture in two sizes (x1 and x2) as well as an SEO-rich Alt.

Screenshot taken on the official Tom Tailor website

Trick 4: Stop Ignoring Customer Retention

This fourth point is more than just a mistake in online retail, it’s a big-time marketing failure. Having clients return to you to make more purchases should be among your ultimate marketing and business goals.

This should already ring the alarm of how important it is not to ignore the segment of your acquired customers. Constant communication, reminders, holiday cards, and any other methods you use to catch up and put them right back into your funnel are worth the effort.

One of such “moves” is running a smashing loyalty or reward program. Some companies even pitch them as “Clubs” like the “The Hilfiger Club” on the official Tommy Hilfiger site. As seen on the screenshot below, apart from a generous 20% discount for the first purchase after sign up, users can get a hold of a welcome offer, special offers that are available only to members, birthday bonuses, among other perks.

Screenshot taken on the official Tommy Hilfiger website

Trick 5: Begin Running Limited-Time Promos

Finally, the fifth marketing oversight in online sales that you shouldn’t fall prey to deals with missed special deal opportunities. The truth is that we all like to lay hold of bargains and money-saving offers. This is why motivating your customers and site users by giving them access to promo codes or other discounts is a neat “hook”.

But for such promotional marketing to be catchy, there must be a sense of urgency. This is why proposing limited-time offers and coupons from time to time is such a viable method. 

Also, the discount offer should be visible. For example, below we can see a screenshot of the homepage of the official Sephora website. The very top stripe of the page (and all the others) are fitted with information about an additional 20% discount that can be applied by using the code “MAJORSALE”. Did you notice that it ended on 1/1? The deadline should be stated very clearly so that the buyer gets an extra “push” to “buy now or regret missing out on the discount later”.

Screenshot taken on the official Sephora website

To Conclude

There are many marketing errors that an online retail business can encounter and then suffer from. But the five marketing tricks described on this page can lead an eCommerce store to success!

Make sure to have a well-optimized site in terms of content, page speed, and navigation, or your users might leave your store too fast or not find you at all! Make use of various forms of UGC, including customer reviews and social media posts (this will do your content plan, social presence, website, and sales only good). Lastly, don’t forget to retain your clients and interest them in coming back to you for more great shopping experiences!