7 Growth Marketing Strategies for E-Commerce Businesses
The average annual growth rate of an ecommerce business is 137%. Of course, most marketers would be happy with this, but the truth is that it takes an average of 5 years to achieve it.
Ecommerce marketing has changed rapidly over the last few years. Marketing is no longer a one-time event — it’s an ongoing process.
As customers’ expectations increase, we have to do a much better job of connecting with their audiences.
To be a competitive, successful e-commerce entrepreneur in today’s challenging market, integrating your marketing strategy with other aspects of your business and focusing on specific KPI goals is essential.
This article covers growth marketing strategies brands are using to acquire new customers, retain existing ones, increase revenue, and decrease acquisition costs.
1. Define what to measure
Setting realistic goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) can help determine your business’s most appropriate growth marketing strategies.
The best way to choose your KPIs is to make sure they align with the goals of your business. Consider making up an initial set of metrics that will help you determine if your growth strategy is being effective.
For example, a clothing retailer wanting to increase value from their email list could set up a KPI for sales directly attributed to email campaigns. This could be measured by establishing which metrics provide answers to the following questions:
- How many orders are being generated from email?
- What is the average order value from our VIP list versus other channels?
- What is the average lifetime value of an email subscriber?
- What is the return rate for email subscribers?
Once you’ve identified the metrics you’ll be tracking, you can then optimize your growth strategy to achieve those specific goals.
2. Monitor trends in your industry
It can be tempting to rush into growth marketing. When you do that, you may spend too much time on a product or promotion before determining if it’s worth it.
The best ecommerce growth marketing strategies are often refining your current strategy with better tools and sharper analysis.
Today, there are so many ways to gauge the pulse of consumers. From traditional surveys to social media analysis and even live product testing, ecommerce businesses have access to more information than ever before.
When you’re constantly monitoring the trends in your industry, you can quickly determine what’s hot and what’s not. It gives you the power to predict what’s coming next.
Anticipating potential shifts in consumer interests will guide you toward the right products and promotions.
In short, the more you know your customers, the better you’ll be at anticipating what they want.
When you deliver what they want, when they need it, in a way that fits into their lives. Then you become the most viable (or the only) option.
3. Understand your audience
And this brings us to the third strategy: understanding your audience. Creating personas for all your major audience groups can help you determine what they’re thinking at every step of the customer buying process.
Each persona will have its unique combination of interests, worries, and motivations, and aligning messaging to these factors can help you stand out from your competitors.
A strong understanding of your audience is also important if you want to gain insight into the channels they use. If you know which social networks are most popular with your target market, you can focus on that platform for sharing news and updates and monitoring feedback.
The most powerful, and overlooked, way to learn about your customers is through surveys.
Integrating a survey tool into your website and using it at key points in the buying process will give you insight into your customers’ priorities. It will also help you build up a picture of how they feel about their purchase, what problems they’re facing, and how satisfied they are with the results.
Armed with this information, you can tailor your sales funnel to address any concerns to provide a better customer experience.
The result? A personalized service that is responsive to your customers' needs and you’ll have a better conversion rate as a result.
4. Bring the whole business on board
Growth marketing is not just about top-of-funnel metrics. When done right, it is a holistic approach to business that touches every aspect of the company.
This means that all business resources, including designers, developers, writers, customer support representatives, and even product buyers must be involved in the process.
The whole team has to be aligned around a single vision.
The whole team has to understand the impact of their work.
The whole team should have a role in driving growth, and the metrics they need to track that success with.
This is where many businesses stumble, however.
Even though everyone is on board with the growth vision, their day-to-day work isn’t helping to achieve it.
Their role in driving growth may be limited to what they can accomplish within their departments and teams.
When implementing a growth strategy for your ecommerce business, you need to create a system that ensures every team member is not only aware of the strategy but participates in achieving its goals.
This means educating relevant stakeholders about goals and KPIs is, how they’ll impact the business and what is expected of them.
It also means linking the department’s work to the success of your growth efforts.
5. Find the channels your customers are in
Growth marketing is about focus and testing. It makes sense to start with a small list of channels and then test your ability to attract customers on each channel.
When it comes to growth marketing, it’s equally important that you identify what doesn’t work as what does. The mission is to identify the best channels to help you achieve your goals while avoiding those channels that drain your time and resources.
It’s OK to select a small number of channels to test that makes sense for your business. Then test measure, improve and test some more.
The key is to get in front of your customers where they are most engaged and acquire people into your sales funnel.
A successful strategy must personalize its presentation for the audience by finding where your customers are spending most of their time and then maximizing that platform.
6. Expand your digital tactics
After identifying the most successful channels for your ecommerce growth strategy, you need to go beyond the basics of just having a website and posting a few updates on your social media profiles.
To help you create a competitive advantage and increase the returns for your growth marketing strategy.
Automation tools like Zapier and Integromat can help you with marketing automation so that your social media, blog, and email updates can all be automated.
This will allow you to be more efficient with your time and ensure a more consistent customer experience.
You can also test retargeting campaigns for informational content, in which you show ads to visitors who have already visited your website. Giving them a sense that your business is everywhere, for a relatively low investment.
This way, they will be more likely to turn to you with their questions and for advice on which product is best suited to their needs (instead of competitors).
7. Experiment with new growth tactics every quarter
If you want different results than what you’re getting, you have to try different approaches.
To drive real change in your business’ growth, you need to try new tactics and strategies every quarter.
This will give you a chance to evaluate the ROI of each tactic against your primary growth goals.
It doesn’t mean that you switch off existing tactics, but you should constantly be looking to tweak them or add in newer ones.
Beyond hacks
While it may seem overwhelming to try new things all the time, I can assure you that this is the best way to drive growth in your ecommerce business.
To be a competitive, successful e-commerce business in today’s challenging market, integrating your marketing strategy with other aspects of your business and focusing on specific KPI goals is essential.
With extensive knowledge of what customers want and a whole team committed to helping you, you’ll find ways to provide exceptional service.
As long as you have a strategy for what you’re trying and how success will be measured (both short-term and long-term), then the odds are in your favor.
