Grow your eCommerce business quickly following these Shortcuts

Running an online store is all about immense trust that your customers have when they buy from you. All the e-commerce players are always exploring for the best possible way to achieve success in their business. But that doesn’t mean you have to cheat or take the unethical path.

Yes, there are some ‘shortcuts’ (ethical one) which may help your e-commerce site grow rapidly. However, rapidly doesn’t mean that you’ll compromise on the product’s quality or service.

Do you know, presently there are 1.79 billion online buyers worldwide. And it is expected to reach 2.14 billion by 2021. With such a huge crowd, you definitely need some tricks or hacks by which you can target your niche audience.

In today’s modern marketplace, there are NO shortcuts to success, all you need is to follow some simple yet efficient way to make your online journey smooth. So, let’s look at some of the shortcuts which can grow your e-commerce.

 

Work on Your Online Presence

1) Viral Social media Campaigns

The power of social media can not be denied. With the introduction of digital marketing and promoting business, the use of social media has been a game-changer, as it can help obscure brands become known, in a short period of time. So what you need to do for making your e-commerce site viral on social media?

• Evoke Emotions: One of the best ways to gain interests of human’s on social media is by evoking emotions that they can relate to. It is studied that people rely more on emotions than information.

Out of 1,400 successful advertising campaigns, the content those were purely emotional, performed 2x better than the rational one. Thus for making your content viral on social media, you need to know your audience well and know which emotions would urge them to take desired actions.

Example: The best examples for this would be all the LIC firms which evoke emotions by targeting the pain point (i.e. our family after we die). It advertises in such a way that, how your family would still be financially stable, after your source of income stops.

• Strong/Appealing Visual Content: When it comes to digital marketing – everything is dependent on how good or appealing your visual content is. Images, Gif’s, Infographics, and Videos are the key which can make online visitors fall for your brand.
  

To make your e-commerce site go viral on social media, your visual content needs to be interesting, informative and contain some element of intrigue, such as humor or desire. Just think of your favorite marketing campaign… the first thing that hit your mind is a visual content, isn’t it?

This above Nike ad shows a new idea by making the audience think that by wearing “The Sneaker” that makes someone “The Man”

• Don’t Overlook Timings: What if you’re hanging out with friends, watching a horror movie, or having a delicious dinner with your loved ones during weekends and for a random case you go through your social media accounts (just to have a look, if you’ve got any important/urgent notification). Do you think, you would even spend a millisecond for any marketing or advertising content? It’s big NO right.

That’s why, to make your content go viral, you need your viewers to be totally free, where they’ve enough time (weekends) to go through your e-commerce (brand’s) content and click the share button without hesitation.

Examples: Many online food delivery companies carry out their marketing or sales campaigns on weekends to attract and reach maximum consumers.

 

2) Influencer Marketing

With the rise in social media usage, the demand for social-media influencer has also grown eventually. According to study by Influencer Marketing Hub 2017, term “influencer marketing” increased by 325 % in Google search result over 2017. It is even expected that marketers would invest an average budget of $25,000 to $50,000 this year for marketing through influencers.

An influencer is a person, who has a huge amount of engaged and dedicated followers. The right influencer is one, who will reach your target audience, build trust, and drive engagement. They’ll produce original, engaging content that’s in line with their own brand or image (rather than following a guide of advertising provided by a brand).

‘Influencer marketing’ can be your shortcut to e-commerce growth because, by relaying your message or content to an influencer – they’ll promote it to their network, which is a quick and effective way to reach a broader audience.

Example: Pick an influencer or influencers who gel well with your brand communication or image. Choosing famous ‘athlete’ as an influencer for promoting a sports shoe is cool, rather than promoting an electronic gadget.

 

3) Referral makes it easy…

Affiliation is not only for the marketers or publishers. You can even start the affiliation with your loyal customers as well. But, How?

It’s just as simple as asking your existing (happy) customers to promote your product.

What’s in it for them?

Give them all you can, because of this golden chain process you can’t even imagine the growth that you’ll get in a very short period.

Uber, Airbnb, Evernote, Dropbox, Zomato…etc these all famous and well-established brands are leveraging this strategy for getting new customers by incentivizing their existing one.

Your online store sells all types of Clothing or Apparel. Now, you can select some of the best loyal buyers who’re wearing your brand’s cloth on daily basis. So, you may call or Mail them regarding- your store has started a limited time offer, where if they invite their friends to buy anything from your store, then a discount voucher of flat 60% on next 3 purchase will be offered to them and their friends.

Just imagine yourself at the place of buyers. Won’t you get excited by the above scheme?

This referring strategy works very well when you know who your target audience is, and what is the thing that (exciting deals, offers, coupons…) would encourage them to share it with their friends.

 

Automate Your Ecommerce

Automation increases the efficiency of your online store’s performance. Hard work or Manual work certainly helps in growth but at some point, you need to step back and think of optimizing the process further.

Good news is that you’re living in the 21st century, lol. Thus you don’t need to worry much,  as tons of tools are waiting to get your e-commerce business on auto-pilot mode.

Let’s see what are the things you can automate:

 

Whole Inventory process

If not you, then your competitors are already using inventory management tools to automate their whole order fulfillment process. Because it increases efficiency, optimizes back-end processes, and is scalable with the company’s growth. It has proven to be effective for many organizations whatever be the size.

If you decide to be one of those business people who are not willing to track their inventory, then you only will be the victim, held for customers ordering out-of-stock items.

There are a number of software available for multiple e-commerce platforms, that allow business owners to track inventory and even notify for when items are out of stock or running low. You can order the inventory accordingly so that customers aren’t ordering something that you can’t fulfill.

 

Your website using Chatbots

Do you know having chatbots on your e-commerce site can save up to 10% of the overall time? Well, the truth is, it’s impossible to be available 24/7 physically for customer support, even if you mention it on your site with big and bold fonts.

Your customers may get query when you’re sleeping, eating, spending time with family/friends .. thus you need someone to get that queries solved without delay.

Everyone is leveraging the technology for getting their business process smooth and easy. A survey by Business Insiders studied that, 80% of the businesses are willing to use chatbots by 2020.

 

Advantages

• Chatbots have more than two hands and brain! It can handle thousands of people at the same time – no matter what time of day/night it is.
• You’ll save money, as implementing chatbot is only a one-time investment, which would also help you reduce down the manpower required.
• What do you need more when your customers are satisfied. They’ll always treat your customer in the most gentle and perfect way, no matter how harsh the person is.
• Chatbots can record data, trends, and metrics to monitor interactions and adjust their processes of response respectively. This would eventually help you know what your customers are looking for what is their core query and likely, you can offer your product by marketing it that way.
• Personalization is always admired. And your chatbots are good at giving the conversation personal touch by always greeting customers with their names, wishing them on their birthdays, asking about their experience with the last product bought..etc.

 

In Conclusion

E-commerce sites are changing their way of doing business, which has although proved to be more efficient than ever. Thus with the evolvement in this tech-savvy environment, it has become essential to effectively use the technology and tools for growth.

You’ll have many paths to choose for getting your e-commerce site a grand success, but choosing the right (shortcut) would surely help you reach the desired goal swiftly.