Are you an eCommerce business looking to gain exposure for your site, grow your customer base, and ultimately increase sales? There are many eCommerce marketing strategies that can help you reach your goals, and you are probably familiar with some of them. Of course there is social media marketing and ad campaigns, but marketing expands far beyond such tactics. There are certain strategies that you may not be familiar with or that you have not considered. These forms of eCommerce marketing may be exactly what you need to take your business to the next level. Here are three sure-fire ways to expand your eCommerce customer base:
1. Better Appeal to an International Audience
In opening your business to international buyers, you are expanding your customer base greatly. But appealing to international consumers in the world of eCommerce can be tricky. One can try to create international eCommerce marketing campaigns in an attempt to appeal to such customers, but what it comes down to for a majority of consumers is where your products were manufactured. In a survey conducted globally, 55% of people stated that they prefer to buy products manufactured in their home country. With this being said, if your product is made locally then potential customers in other countries that come across your eCommerce site may be wary of purchasing such products. So, how do you get these international consumers interested in your products? First, do not look at this consumer preference as a disadvantage. And especially do not limit your reach to only national customers. Make international customers overlook the product’s country of origin. Focus on other aspects of your business that will persuade them to buy.
In order to make customers comfortable with buying your products, you must focus on other elements of your eCommerce business to convince customers of the quality of your business. Make sure you offer competitive pricing to attract buyers. Focus on security and efficiency to further satisfy. Most importantly, assure consumers of the quality of your product. Do so through detailed descriptions, customer testimonials, and videos that convince those wary of buying. Perhaps the best form of eCommerce marketing is transparency and honesty. Make the consumer feel comfortable in trusting your business. Address any concerns that consumers may have, especially international ones. To further appeal to international buyers, consider using Shopify Plus. This service allows you to create up to 10 clone stores so that you can run different stores for different languages and currencies. So if you’re serious about international selling, Shopify Plus is the perfect fit.
2. Don’t Fear Amazon, Utilize It
When consumers think of buying online, most think of Amazon first. Therefore, some eCommerce business owners may view the size and reach of Amazon as detrimental to their own business. As an eCommerce powerhouse, Amazon is responsible for more than half of last year’s eCommerce growth in America. So smaller eCommerce business owners may be looking at Amazon as a threat. Some try to make their website stand out through marketing techniques in an attempt to get consumers to come to them rather than Amazon. In reality, it’s impossible to steer all potential customers away from the daunting eCommerce mass that is Amazon. But, this shouldn’t be a problem. eCommerce business owners should instead be looking at Amazon as an additional selling platform rather than as a competitor.
In addition to selling your products through your eCommerce site, make the products available for purchase through Amazon as well. Having your products available on Amazon is a very important marketing strategy as it will gain exposure for your company and increase sales. If you have a Magento or Volusion store, selling through Amazon is now possible through integration technology. BigCommerce has also added Amazon integration, but it is currently only for certain categories as it is a new addition to their service. Integrating your Magento, Volusion, or BigCommerce shop with Amazon is possible, but can be a hassle to handle while you continue to sell through your own website simultaneously. Luckily 1Digital Agency is a full-service Magento, Volusion, and BigCommerce development company that can assist any eCommerce business in such integration and, ultimately, in selling through Amazon.
3. Get Your Site Seen with SEO Marketing
Let’s say that your eCommerce business sells vape pens. Potential customers searching for such items will be bombarded with different websites, your competitors, for them to choose from. Just a simple search of “vape pens for sale” on Google will generate over 8 million results. And, realistically, consumers are not likely to stray further than the first or, less often, the second page of results. If your eCommerce site isn’t on one of these first two pages, there’s a very slim chance that new potential customers will ever even come across your website. These potential customers will end up buying from a competitor. Fortunately, one can increase their results-page position through a strategy of eCommerce marketing known as SEO marketing.
SEO marketing focuses on driving users to your website by increasing your placement on results pages through specific techniques. One of the best ways to utilize this technique is by connecting a blog to your eCommerce site and using certain keywords in your blog posts to drive traffic to the site. If the keyword is used enough, this will increase your website’s visibility on results page when such keywords are searched on Google, Bing, etc. Of course this takes a lot of time, but luckily, 1Digital Agency specializes in SEO marketing.
Here at 1Digital Agency, we can assist you with all of your eCommerce marketing needs. We can help you create a blog and produce high quality articles pertaining to your specific industry with keywords that will increase your eCommerce business’s search engine results position. Let us help you push past your competitors! Give us a call at 888-982-8869 or contact us for a quote.
4. Build Channels You Own Before You Rent More
International selling, marketplaces, and SEO all expand reach, but each has a catch the original article only touches on: two of the three put your customer relationship in someone else’s hands. The fourth sure-fire move is to convert the audience those channels send you into an audience you own. Every order — whether it came from Amazon, an international shopper, or organic search — is an opportunity to capture an email or SMS opt-in and bring that customer into flows you control: welcome, post-purchase, replenishment, and win-back. Owned-audience revenue does not depend on a marketplace’s fees, an ad platform’s pricing, or a search algorithm’s mood, which makes it the most defensible part of a growing customer base.
Make the Marketplace Strategy Pay After Fees
Selling on Amazon (and integrating it with Magento, Volusion, or BigCommerce as the article describes) genuinely expands reach — but reach is not profit. Before scaling marketplace volume, model the unit economics with referral and fulfillment fees included; a product that is healthily profitable on your own store can be break-even or worse on a marketplace once fees are subtracted. The disciplined approach is to use the marketplace deliberately: list the products whose margins survive its fees, treat it as a customer-acquisition channel, and then work to move repeat buyers onto your owned channels where the margin is yours.
International Expansion: Trust Signals That Travel
The article’s point about country-of-origin preference is well taken; the practical extension is that international conversion is won on localized trust signals. Show prices in the visitor’s currency, surface realistic landed shipping cost and delivery time before checkout (unexpected duties are a leading cause of international cart abandonment), offer locally familiar payment methods, and make returns policy unambiguous. These reduce the perceived risk of buying from a foreign store far more than generic marketing copy does, and they are within reach of any store willing to configure them.
Sequence, Don’t Scatter
Trying all four expansion paths at once usually means doing none of them well. A pragmatic order for most stores: get SEO and owned-audience capture running first because they compound and lower long-run acquisition cost, layer in a single well-modeled marketplace next, and pursue international expansion once the storefront and logistics are proven domestically. Reach grows fastest when each channel is established before the next is added. The team at 1Digital Agency can help prioritize and execute this sequence for your specific catalog — get in touch for a quote.