17 Ecommerce Marketing Strategies To Follow In 2022

What is Ecommerce Marketing?

Ecommerce marketing, as the name suggests, is a process of attracting customers to your website, and encouraging them to buy your products or services. But wait, eCommerce marketing doesn’t end here, it also aims at retaining your customers and convincing them to keep shopping from your store and stay loyal to your business.

It is important to note that eCommerce marketing is far beyond gaining high volumes of traffic to a website. Instead, you need to work on your business as a whole and optimise the complete shopping experience so that the customers keep coming to your store again and again. This can include working on social media selling, building mobile-optimised applications, improving the checkout experience, and so on. In short, your overall goal should be to gain traction in the eCommerce market while providing a hassle-free and laid back shopping experience to your customers.

Benefits of Ecommerce Marketing For Your Business

When we say that eCommerce marketing is a necessity more than an option, we mean it. If you still think that you can ignore the marketing aspect of your eCommerce business and still keep it up and running, then be aware! This can soon turn into a costly mistake that can affect the overall performance of your eCommerce business.

On the other hand, when done in the right way, eCommerce marketing can bring endless benefits and new business opportunities to your door. Below are some of the ways you can benefit your business from the right eCommerce marketing strategies:

Enjoy More Sales & Conversions

Perhaps the biggest reason why online retailers keep searching for the best online marketing strategies is to gain more sales and generate higher revenue. Online marketing strategies comprise the necessary business plans and techniques that can help you generate more profits and income.

Gain New Customers & Retain The Existing Ones

No doubt, you can gain large volumes of traffic by working on your SEO and other advertising techniques. But the truth is, not everyone coming to your site becomes your customer. In fact, converting your visitor into a loyal customer is a completely different story. But don’t worry, this is where the right eCommerce marketing strategies can help you. Using them, you can not only gain new customers but also keep them engaged and loyal to your brand. If you are not much familiar with SEO and online advertising, you can get the services from digital marketing company for gaining more customers.

Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment

Shopping cart abandonment is no less than a nightmare for eCommerce businesses. It badly impacts the overall performance and revenue generation process of the eCommerce businesses. According to stats, nearly £18bn sales are lost every year in the UK. This means one thing – if you don’t try to minimize your shopping cart abandonment rate, you will eventually lose a lot of customers and business opportunities. Ecommerce marketing strategies help you gain the trust of your audience and provide them with a smooth shopping experience, which motivates them to purchase from you again and again.

Minimize Operational Cost

When you run an eCommerce store, you can utilize the power of efficient management systems that help you automate your business processes, which saves a lot of time as well as operational costs. Ecommerce marketing strategies include leveraging the best technology and techniques that help you maximize your profits while avoiding additional operational charges.

Increase Brand Value

By using the right eCommerce marketing strategies, you can turn your business into a well-known and loved brand. There are many techniques that make the transition of an eCommerce business to an international brand easy and friction less. Social media marketing and influencer marketing are two of the hottest eCommerce marketing strategies for 2022.

Gain Traction In Global Marketplaces

Every eCommerce business owner wants to grow and thrive in the global markets. However, it is not as easy as it sounds. There are many critical challenges one has to face when planning a global expansion. But this doesn’t mean it is impossible. By combining the right business and marketing strategies, you can target the global customers and scale your business at minimum cost and effort.

These are just a handful of ways eCommerce marketing can help your business. There are a lot more perks you can enjoy by utilising the right marketing strategies. So, let’s now discuss the top eCommerce business booster tips to try in 2021-22.

17 Essential Ecommerce Marketing Strategies To Try In 2022

Starting an online business will be pointless if you’re not aware of the current marketing trends. But say no more, here is a list of 17 fool-proof eCommerce marketing trends for you to try out:

1. Plan and Devise Upselling & Cross-Selling

Cross-sell and upsell are two of the major eCommerce marketing strategies employed greatly by the
eCommerce business owners to boost their sales and revenue generation. The eCommerce giant Amazon itself accepted that upselling and cross-selling makes a whopping 35% of their overall revenue.

If you don’t know how these two types of “selling” techniques work, then here is an example:

Upselling is a type of selling strategy that involves selling a superior version of a product the customer is buying or planning to buy. The superior version of the product increases the overall value of the product.

Cross-selling on the other hand is a strategy that involves selling a product that is related to the product a customer already owns or is planning to buy. Such products belong to a different category but are complementary, for example, a pair of batteries with a clock, matching socks with shoes, etc.

2. Build A Mobile Application And Direct Push Notifications

Having an easy to use and responsive mobile application is an excellent way to stay on the top of your customer’s mind. The reason is simple, a customer may or may not visit a particular website for shopping, but he checks his phone umpteen times, looking for something, maybe notifications, social media posts, and so on.

A simple mobile application can make a considerable difference in your conversions, so if you haven’t got one developed for your business, then you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

Whether your mobile app enhances the shopping experience with one tap purchases or purchase recommendations, make sure it has push notifications features on. It will help you gain the attention of your customers. The best part about push notifications is, they not only pop on the other mobile apps your customer might be using, but also appear on smart devices such as smartwatches, speakers, etc.

3. Optimise Your Site For Voice Search

We are moving into 2022, where almost everything has incorporated voice search. Be it Siri or Alexa, voice searches have become an integral part of our lives. In such a scenario, if you’re avoiding optimising your site for voice search, you’re making a huge mistake.

According to stats, voice search is expected to account for a whopping $40 billion in retail sales in the UK, by 2022. Keeping this fact in mind, don’t forget to optimise your ecommerce website if you want to match the pace of the fast-growing eCommerce market.

Below are some tips for improving your site’s voice search:

• Include low-competition long-tail keywords that emphasise the general talking sense of your customers.
• Include short and straightforward answers to the search queries.
• Avoid using complicated words that might confuse the voice assistants software.
• Make sure that your page loading speed is apt otherwise Google won’t prioritise them.

4. Invest in Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is undoubtedly one of the most powerful eCommerce advertising methods because it allows you to target a specific audience through someone who is trusted and followed by them. Influencers on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc. have a good following. These followers blindly follow and trust them. They prefer purchasing the things or products recommended by their favourite influencer. In fact, these social media influencers play a great role in making the purchase decision of their followers.

Most business owners believe that influencer marketing is only useful for selling/promoting lifestyle products. However, it is not true. There are influencers in almost every industry, so you can collaborate with them to sell just any product or service you want. From health & wellness products, apparel, to cars and pets and whatnot. These people can help you expose your offerings to an established set of audiences.

5. Don’t Forget To Include User Generated Content (UGC)

Ecommerce definitely provides the customers with the ease and convenience of shopping online. But you can’t ignore the fact that many customers are still reluctant to shop online because of their trust issues. This is especially true in the case of new brands. And this is exactly where high-quality user generated content becomes a powerful tool to entice online shoppers and gain their trust. It helps in convincing your shoppers that your products are being used and loved by many. The deal is, your customers may not always listen to what you say, but they definitely get influenced by the views of fellow customers.

So, how can you make UGC as a powerful eCommerce advertising method? Here are some tips:

• Request your customers to share product reviews via pictures and videos of your products.
• Create the hashtags of your products and ask your customers to use them while using your products.
• Encourage customers to tag your business or brand on social media platforms.
• Repost the positive comments of your shoppers. Meanwhile, eliminate the negative /fake comments.
• Organise a UGC competition and encourage your audience to participate in it

Generating and featuring UGC content are two different sides of the same coin. While you can easily generate the content, featuring it in a smart way is what you need to work on. If your featured UGC comes out to be braggy, it will have a negative impact on your audience and they might lose their interest.
So, do it in a way so that it doesn’t look self-appreciating.

Wayfair, a popular eCommerce store in the UK has adapted UGC by combining it with social media marketing. They’ve created their hashtag “WayfairAtHome” and encouraged customers to use it whenever they bring their product home. From this hashtag only, they have selected more than 1,000 photos and added them to their website.

6. Leverage The Power Of Social Media Marketing

Social media has become an irreplaceable part of today’s life. That’s why it is very hard to believe if someone says that they don’t use the mainstream social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. With millions and millions of social media users, it is the best area for conducting social media marketing campaigns.

The first step while doing so is identifying the right platform. This means you need to choose a social media platform that is used by most of your target customers.

The secret to achieving success with social media marketing is establishing healthy relationships with your customers. But how to do that? It’s simple. By creating your social media accounts and making strong connections with your followers by posting interesting stories, photos, and other content.

Remember, social media is like a two-way street. So, don’t simply keep dropping new posts without caring about the engagement. Instead, prepare an interesting and product-relevant post, drop it, and use it to engage with your customers. Reply to their comments, respond to their queries, entertain them, solve their problems, and so on.

You may ask, which brands are reaping the benefits of effective social media marketing? Then, head on to your Instagram handle and observe the social media strategies of Nike, H&M, Chanel, etc.

7. Re-target Your Customers

Shopping cart abandonment is like a slow poison to eCommerce. It hurts the overall performance of your business if not taken care of. If you’re still ignoring the shopping cart abandonment rate of your website, then you’re letting a huge chunk of revenue slip from your hands.

A shopper who was going through the checkout process and just about to make the payment suddenly abandons your cart (due to any number of reasons). Now, the best thing you can do is nudge him with a well-designed shopping cart abandonment email sequence. And this is how you re-target your customers.

The best cart abandonment strategy is to use a personalised email sequence. Data shows that personalised abandoned cart emails have a great impact on shoppers. Customers receiving such notifications are 2.4 times more likely to complete their purchase than those receiving normal emails.

Here is a great email sequence you can consider for reducing your online cart abandonment rate:

• 1-2 Hours After Abandonment — Remind them to finish their purchase before the product runs out of stock.
• 1 Day After Abandonment — Remind them to buy before the cart gets cancelled.
• 2 Days After Abandonment — Offer a social proof
• 4 Days After Abandonment — Offer an exclusive discount or limited period deals on the same products.
• 5 Days After Abandonment — Last chance to grab the deal.

This is just an example, you can become more creative here. The only goal is to try your best to engage with your targets and make them finish their purchase. Apart from following this sequence, it is very important to prevent the cart abandonment rate from increasing in the first place. You can do this by offering a smooth checkout experience to your shoppers. This includes providing them with their favourite payment options, quick checkout, deals and discounts, etc.

For more info, check out our article on how to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

8. Add Optimised Product Videos To Your Website

The downside of online shopping is, you can’t feel or touch the product to check its quality before buying. And this is one of the reasons why shoppers don’t easily trust the new eCommerce businesses. This uncertainty can be removed by providing real product videos to your customers.

Products videos make a great eCommerce marketing strategy to entice your customers. These videos help your customers to know your products in a better way and make informed purchase decisions.

Therefore, record high-quality and optimised product videos and add them to your website. A good idea is to include a product review video by popular social media influencers. Apart from adding high definition videos, you can also include a short but straightforward FAQ section on your product page itself.

9. Work on Your Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

Make one thing crystal clear, if you’re ignoring your CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation), then you’re hurting your revenue generation!

By boosting your conversion rates, you can generate more profits and extract more revenue from the same traffic. You can reinvest this revenue for driving more traffic, which will again increase your conversion rate and profits. In short, CRO is like a multiplier to your profits and income.

For instance, if your website gets around 10 million visitors and you’ve an average conversion rate of about 4% with a monthly income of £20 million. So, if you optimise and increase your conversion rate just by 1%, your annual income will increase to £300 million, an impressive increment of £60 million.

10. Develop Powerful Personalised Email Marketing Strategies

You can make a huge difference in the performance of your business simply by launching a personalised ecommerce email marketing campaign. Statistically, more than 91% of customers are likely to purchase from brands that communicate using personalised messages.

The science behind this is simple, customers want to feel more familiar and comfortable with the companies they are purchasing. They prefer being treated like a partner or family and personalised messages does exactly the same to them. They make them feel like an important part of the company they are shopping from. With this matter in light, work on your email marketing personalisation.

Here are some tips to do the same:

• Address your customers with their names or nicknames… Maybe!!
• Offer meaningful product recommendations based on their previous behaviour.
• Offer special discounts/deals/freebies
• Offer occasional discounts on your customers special occasions such as birthdays, wedding anniversaries.
• Use a well-segmented and customised email list from a trusted subscriber.
• Send messages according to their mood and shopping behaviour.

11. Allow Your Customers To Shop Directly From Instagram

Believe it or not, Instagram is the hottest eCommerce marketing strategy that is helping thousands of brands and businesses to amplify their sales and revenue generation.

It is perhaps the most used social media platform at this moment. Its visual mechanism is the main reason why you can use it as a powerful ecommerce advertising method. Because it puts entire emphasis on photos and videos, you can use it to sell your products directly to the target audience.

Make the most out of your social media marketing by allowing your customers to shop directly from Instagram. The reason is pretty simple, shoppers might not readily check out the websites and shopping apps due to their busy schedules, but they check their Instagram every 10 minutes. Thus, by making your Instagram shoppable, you can increase your chances of getting positive sales.

12.Target AR & VR Technologies

We are in the digital era, where everything around us has become more advanced and smart. Thus, it is very necessary to target futuristic technologies like Virtual Reality(VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Although the former technology lets you target a very specific audience, the latter can work wonders for eCommerce marketing. Below are some examples of eCommerce businesses using Augmented Reality:

An online cosmetics store that allows you to upload or click your pictures to try different lipstick shades or foundations matching your skin tone. Sephora is a great example of an eCommerce business running this strategy.
Asos offers a “see my fit” feature using which customers can virtually try out the outfits before making the final purchase. It’s like a virtual changing room.

13.Engage Customers In Online Contests

If you’re struggling to get enough traffic on your online store, then there is no better eCommerce advertising method than running an online contest. It helps in bringing new customers to your site and engaging the existing ones.

When you run a contest, make sure to choose a prize that is relevant to your target audience. Otherwise, you’ll end up dealing with irrelevant users who participate only to win prizes and have no interest in your products. But when you run the content in the right way, you can experience a considerable difference in your sales.

Now, the question is, how to run an online contest? Don’t worry, it’s pretty simple!

There are many plug-ins, websites, and software that allows you to execute contests on your eCommerce websites. RafflePress is one such giveaway builder that helps you create and launch online contests and giveaways.

Not just on websites, you can also run giveaways on your social media pages. It is an excellent way of gaining new followers and turning them into your customers.

14. Leverage Referral or Word-of-mouth (WOM) Marketing

Referral or Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most popular yet underrated eCommerce advertising methods. When done correctly, it is a powerful and cost-effective eCommerce strategy. This reason is pretty clear — human beings are very social. We love sharing our shopping experiences and recommending new products to our friends and family. We do so to avoid bad shopping experiences and support the best businesses and brands out there.

But keep one thing in mind, your customers are going to talk about your products with their family and friends – sooner or later. So, it’s up to you, what do you want them to say about your brand or products!

When you deliberately encourage people to share their positive responses about your products, it’s called referral marketing. Plan it in the right way and you’ll surely see a notable difference in your conversion rates and brand value. Not just that, word-of-mouth marketing is a powerful way to increase your online reputation.

15. Use Personalisation

Before we get to the point, here are a few stats:

• Personalisation facilitates repeat purchases to nearly 44% of customers.
• Lack of personalisation can generate 83% less response rates in marketing and sales campaigns.
• Nearly 77% of consumers prefer shopping from brands that offer personalisation.

Need we say more…?

Be it personalised emails, check-out experience or personalised product selection, you can establish a great bond with your consumers by addressing them personally. This ecommerce strategy allows you to make your customers more familiar and comfortable with your brand.

16. Showcase Case Studies

Many successful eCommerce businesses prefer adding impressive case studies to their websites. It allows you to showcase your capabilities to your target audience. Having a couple of impactful success stories of your customers using your products can lead to a much better response rate.

17. Leverage The Power of Affiliate Marketing

Around 16% of the total online orders comes from affiliate marketing. And more than 81% of eCommerce businesses use it as their marketing strategy.

Trust us, affiliate marketing can be a game-changer for your business. Not only it gives a much-needed boost to your conversion rates, but also improves the credibility of your brand. It is one of the best eCommerce strategies for budding eCommerce businesses.

BONUS – Have a Responsive Website

Last but definitely not least, have a responsive website!

Many of you may argue that it is not an eCommerce marketing strategy, which is true to some extent. However, without a well-optimised and responsive website, you can not expect any ecommerce strategy to work and show results. So, before anything else, make sure that your website is highly responsive and offers an excellent user experience.

Conclusion

And there you have it!!

These are the most lucrative eCommerce marketing strategies to get bumper sales and conversions in 2022. All of the above-mentioned points are tried and tested by thousands of businesses. So, you can stay assured of their effectiveness. But we understand that implementing all of these eCommerce advertising techniques can be very challenging, especially if you’re a beginner. This is why we are always ready to offer a helping hand to you. At RVS Media, we have been revolutionising the performance of eCommerce businesses by implementing the most powerful eCommerce marketing strategies. If you wish the same for your business, contact our team today!