Every idea, skill, or business needs a strategy on how to win or make it work.
If you need to strategize to win a game. You definitely need to plan on how to win existing competitors in the e-commerce game you want to play.
No matter how new an idea is to you, there will always be someone who is doing something similar.
How then do you want to gain customers with existing competitors who have an advantage over you in terms of sales and customers?
How can you compete and gain sales for your Shopify store?
Shopify ensured that every store owner on its platform has access to marketing tools that can help them grow their stores and also manage sales activities. With over a million active stores on Shopify, you need to have a marketing plan that will help you reach and retain potential customers. This way you will be able to grow a profitable online store.
This guide will help with the basics for boosting sales for your store using efficient marketing strategies in the e-commerce space.
To see these strategies work so well for your store. You might need to tweak them to fit the kind of customers you want to reach. Know that not all ideas can work the same for every store. You just need to find one that works for you.
Let’s begin with what a marketing strategy is in e-commerce.
Why Do You Need A Marketing Strategy?
A marketing strategy is a well-formulated plan to grow and achieve a business goal with considerations about the peculiarity of the business, its target audience, the cost of making the idea happen, and how to create a distinct business that can attract customers.
For Shopify store owners, a marketing strategy will be necessary to build a profitable e-commerce business. And the primary goal of every e-commerce store is to gain customers that can be converted into sales.
One of the several reasons why you need a workable strategy is for customers to patronize your store. When you are aiming at making your Shopify store visible to potential customers then you need to strategize how to achieve this goal.
Having the plan to work with can give your store a brand reputation that increases customers’ trust and also drive traffic which can be converted into sales.
Marketing Strategies To Boost Shopify Sales
While there is a ton of ideas to use to grow your store, it would be unrealistic to want to use them all. What you need to do is to choose one to work within a time frame based on the peculiarity of your store.
The marketing strategy needed for a newbie Shopify seller might be quite different from what an existing seller might need to boost sales. Don’t just follow the wagon, study and analyze what strategy will fit your goals.
1. Email campaign
While this is the most popular marketing scheme in e-commerce. The popularity is for a reason.
Email marketing was incredibly effective for driving sales with an 8.17% sales conversion rate in 2022 according to Barilliance. This shows that you have a tool with verifiable results to your advantage.
Not only do email campaigns increase your sales conversion rate, but it also gives you an open line of communication with your customers which can be your channel for building brand trust.
An edge of email marketing is that it can cover different customers at different sales funnel. Welcome emails for new visitors, abandonment emails to nudge customers who have abandoned their carts to complete the process, order confirmation emails, and lots more.
All these will help you boost customers’ trust and relationships which will result in increased sales for your store.
Personalized emails are popular for increased sales conversion because it meets each customer’s needs based on their interaction with your store. As much as you can use automated channels to send emails, having them personalized can give you a more effective result.
2. Active and interactive pop-ups
Pop-ups help you reach out to customers you might not be able to capture via email. It is also the starting point for any marketing strategy, the first point of contact with any customer
Pop-ups are of different use. For some, it is used to capture leads such as email addresses, customers, details, customers’ birthdays, etc. While at times it can be used for promotional purposes.
Depending on what your goal for the time is, you need to create an attractive and actionable pop-up bar that can help you reach your goal. If the aim is to collect customers’ email addresses to keep in touch with them, you can use the lead capture pop-up.
If it is to nudge customers to buy or buy more, you can use the promotional pop-up stating the offer they get when they buy or what product you are trying to market.
Interactive pop-ups send a signal to customers that your store is alive and running. With an offer attached, you can boost sales and convert more visitors into buying customers.
With the Pop-up Bar app on StoreBundle, you can seamlessly create and display an interactive pop-up on your storefront.
Top 5 Shopify Marketing Apps To Grow Your Store
3. Discounts, offers, and promotions
Online buyers do not care if you have factored in the discount issued in a product’s price. What they need to see to jump on an item is that 50% off discount tag.
Customers can seemingly be attracted and converted to sales with an offer or discount. Sometimes, these offers might not come in the form of a discount but as free gift for an order or free shipping.
In e-commerce, there are multiple sales seasons that store owners use as a chance to have promotional offers that can gain them more customers and sales. Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM), Christmas, New Year, and Thanksgiving, are peak sales seasons around the globe.
You can prepare your store to partake in the sales wave during these periods.
4. Product upselling and cross-selling
Upselling and cross-selling are sales strategies where sellers market a product to customers and nudge them to buy. For upselling, the seller is most likely trying to market a slow-moving item or a popular item to the customer.
Usually, it is an item that might be quite different from the line of products ordered but could still be of interest to the customer.
6 Benefits Of Adding Post-Purchase Upsells To Your Thank You Page
Cross-sell happens when sellers promote complementary or frequently bought together items to customers who have bought a certain product. The goal is to help customers know that they need item A to effectively use item B.
This also is a sales booster that can be activated at several spots in your store. You can have it in the customer’s cart or on the order status page (also known as thank you page).
Upsells and cross-sells not only increase sales but also increase customers’ average order value which is also a good key index performance for your store.
5. Social media engagement and promotion
Social media has a well of potential customers that you can drive to your Shopify store. Especially when you are just starting out with no customer base. You can use promotional ads to reach customers within your target audience and convert them into sales.
You can also create a community or an online presence for your store. This continually helps you stay on the minds of potential customers and get engagements from them as well.
One of the rules of social media is how often people get to see or hear from your page determines how much of an impression of your products they will have on their minds. And the more often they are able to interact with your posts, the chances that they will be converted to sales in due time.
Retargeting promotional ads can also help you boost sales because with that you will be sending a reminder to people who have interacted with your brand before. It can also help you reach new audiences as well.
This type of ad can help you nudge customers who are yet to decide on making a purchase to do so.
Wrap
As the goal is to get as many sales as possible for your Shopify store, having a guide or plan helps you to stay on course.
Your chosen strategy might not give instant results. It does not work like magic. However, in the long run, you will see the effect of any of the five marketing strategies discussed above on your sales and customer conversion rate.
