If you’re marketing an online store, a SAAS company, or pretty much anything that involves selling online, then you need to stay on top of the latest marketing trends to win customers.
Your competitors will be trying new things, keeping what works, and ditching the rest … and you need to do the same to stay competitive.
Here are five key things you can do to not only master the basics of small business marketing but also to stay on top of the latest e-commerce marketing trends.
1. Use Remarketing to Target Customers Who Left Without Buying
Did a customer visit your site, look at a product, then leave? It happens all the time. Perhaps they weren’t quite ready to buy, or maybe they got interrupted.
A fantastic way to win that sale back is to remarket to that customer. Online, this is known as retargeting.
One way to do this is to show your potential customer an ad for your product when they’re on another site like Facebook or YouTube. That way, you can entice them to come back and finish purchasing.
There are other ways to retarget prospective customers, too. For example, you could build an email list and retarget by segmenting and emailing leads who’ve visited a specific page on your site.
2. Get to Grips with Machine Learning and AI (Artificial Intelligence)
While AI might sound like science fiction, the reality is that machine learning and artificial intelligence are becoming much more sophisticated all the time. For several years now, marketers have been looking at ways to use machine learning to deliver excellent customer service without needing a huge team.
Many companies are using automated chatbots to handle common customer queries – or even to sell directly through apps like Facebook Messenger.
If you’re not already making use of machine learning in your marketing, you’re already behind the curve. You may even want to study machine learning to better understand how it’s likely to change e-Commerce marketing over the next decade.
3. Decrease Cart Abandonment on Your E-Commerce Site
Another huge area that marketers are becoming more and more focused on is cart abandonment.
Cart abandonment happens when someone adds a product, or perhaps several products, to their shopping cart … and then leaves without buying.
It can be tricky to figure out why exactly a potential customer abandoned their cart. Some common reasons are:
- High shipping costs, especially if these aren’t calculated until partway through the checkout process.
- A long or complicated checkout process.
- Needing to create an account, rather than having the option to checkout as a guest.
- Finding a better deal somewhere else.
Reducing cart abandonment even slightly could result in far more sales. This could mean experimenting with free shipping (or more transparent shipping prices), streamlining your checkout process, or allowing more flexible ways to pay
You could even pop up a message when a potential customer is about to leave your site with products still left in their cart.
4. Create Interactive Content for Your Website
Interactive content can help engage your site’s visitors and can also play an important role in capturing email addresses. It could also help you point visitors to the best product for them.
For instance, if you sell diet supplements online, you might add a BMI calculator to your site. You can email users their results as well as showing them on screen, and you can also then point your users to the most useful resources in your store based on their details.
Other types of interactive content include quizzes, surveys, raffles, and contests. These can be a great way to grow your social media presence and to encourage more people to check out your products, videos, blog posts, or other content.
Even tiny businesses can create interactive content using simple online tools – and doing so can have a big impact on the amount of traffic your e-Commerce store gets.
While 2021 will bring challenges for many businesses, there are also lots of opportunities ahead with more people than ever shopping online. By staying on top of critical e-Commerce marketing trends, you can ensure that your business is in a strong position to compete and to win customers.
