Mastering your eCommerce marketing strategy can take some time, but implementing the right combination of techniques will expand your brand’s influence and ensure that your business continues to grow. Summer is the perfect time to begin strategizing for the coming months. Though winter may seem like a distant memory when you’re spending your weekends at the beach, the holiday shopping season approaches quicker than you think.
The most well-prepared and successful eCommerce businesses begin preparing for the holiday shopping season mid-summer. To maximize your revenue this season and get an early start on your holiday strategy, follow these eCommerce marketing tips.
1. Plan Sales Around Major Summer Holidays
Holidays are a great time to run promotional sales for your eCommerce business. During the summer, many businesses promote discounts and product sales for the Fourth of July, Labor Day or back-to-school shopping season.
Depending on the type of products your company sells, you may want to select specific summer holidays that work better for your industry. If you sell clothing or electronics that students may need before schools re-open, you should definitely plan to run back-to-school specials and begin promoting these early in the season.
You can offer a discount on particular products, bundled items at a reduced price or a free back-to-school gift with every purchase. Consider which holiday you’re planning to run a special for and create an email marketing campaign to promote it.
2. Incentivize Shoppers with Promotional Offers
Running holiday-specific sales is a useful eCommerce marketing tip, but you can also implement other types of incentives at any time to grab the attention of your target market and increase revenue. Unexpected shipping charges are one of the top reasons for cart abandonment, and with the widespread use of Amazon Prime and its two-day shipping perk, most online shoppers expect quick and free shipping. Offering this promotion can help lower cart abandonment rates and attract new consumers.
Another popular eCommerce incentive can be to create an exclusive discount code. Many eCommerce companies opt to provide new email subscribers with a promotional discount as a way of saying thank you. Sending free gifts or discounts to email subscribers on their birthday is another useful incentive.
3. Run a Themed Social Media Contest or Giveaway
Social media is vital to your brand as it can help spread awareness and create a consistent voice that conveys your brand identity. Through social media, you can announce special promotions and sales, post about new products and run contests or giveaways.
Tons of eCommerce companies use Instagram as the top social media platform for contests. Offer some type of incentive, typically a free product, and ask users to follow your account and tag friends to be entered in the competition. This is one of the best eCommerce marketing tips if you’re looking to expose your brand to new customers and encourage your followers to engage with your brand.
4. Test Out Influencer Marketing
Another type of social media marketing, influencer marketing is a strategy for companies to partner with social media users who have a large follower base and use this platform to introduce products to a new audience. With the rapid growth of social media, influencers can be found in every industry from beauty products to outdoor adventure gear. Do your research and find influencers who are likely engaging with your target market and then reach out to inquire about partnerships.
5. Optimize Your Site for the Mobile User Experience
Mobile commerce rates are quickly catching up and even surpassing regular eCommerce shopping from desktop computers and laptops. In a world where we have the internet at the tips of our fingers at every moment, why wouldn’t more people do their shopping from their smartphone? eMarketer estimates that by 2021, 72.9 percent of all online shopping will be done from a mobile device.
To help boost your conversion rates and keep your business looking towards the future, it’s essential to optimize your site for the mobile experience. This includes ensuring that the design is intuitive and attractive, and the checkout process is quick and simple. Adding a digital wallet payment option (such as Apple Pay, PayPal or Samsung Pay) can greatly improve your mobile conversions as many users consider it a much easier form of payment.
6. Tease Upcoming Holiday Shopping Season
To maximize your marketing efforts, summer is the season to start planning for the upcoming holiday shopping. As September approaches, companies will begin to run back-to-school sales, followed by Halloween promotions, culminating in the wave of Black Friday and Cyber Monday holiday deals.
Get your customers excited about the many deals to come by offering sneak peeks into these major sales. You can use your email list to display exclusive information about the upcoming discounts or preview new products that will be coming in just in time for the holidays.
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