It’s 2022 and for most brands globally, this is a year for scaling. After two extremely tough years, where businesses had to focus on business continuation, most are now focussing their effort on growth and expansion. In the last two years, the growth of eCommerce has accelerated beyond what most anticipated.
So, whether you have an established eCommerce business, have recently pivoted your operations to include more online retailing, or are kicking off a brand new venture, you might need a helping hand.
With this in mind, we thought that we would take a look at a few ways that you can start growing your eCommerce sales by unpacking what some of the top brands are doing. Is 2022 the year of growth for you? Well, if it is, this is how you can achieve it.
Set a Budget Aside for Marketing
This is something that we have witnessed time and time again. Small businesses will spend time and money developing the website, establishing various marketing channels, and start creating content.
But, that’s where they stop. They don’t take it further and actually put money behind all of these really important marketing aspects. And it is here that they fall short.
While it is absolutely vital to get the basics in place: SEO, keywords, regular social posts, and blog posts, they are not really going to go anywhere without a budget. Let’s take a look at Google Ads. These are actually critical for your business to be found on search engines.
Taking out paid ads ensures that your business is shifted to the top of the page in search. This means a higher amount of organic traffic, more eyes are on your brand, and more conversions will be made.
Social media posts will also need a bit of a budget. If you are posing regular content to Facebook and Instagram, for example, you are off to a good start. But, when you sponsor a post or put a budget behind it, you will be extending its visibility beyond just your followers.
You can target an audience that you want to reach, and really expand on who sees it. Once again, this will drive more traffic to your site, and because it is qualified traffic, it will increase conversions.
Re-Focus on Your Customer
During the last two years, many companies have been preoccupied with keeping the business running. Attention has been focused on operational issues, strategies, and keeping the doors open. In 2022, more attention will be paid to the customer and the customer journey.
Key concepts like personalization and CXM are once again going to take center stage for eCommerce brands. And, as mentioned in the previous point, this is going to focus on expanding the business on what the customer wants.
Brands are going to have to take a deep dive into their companies and figure out what their customer experience journeys look like. What do they see and experience from the minute they enter the site? Is it tailored to their needs and wants?
Personalization is also going to be a prominent topic. Targeted content, ads, and campaigns are going to be the key money makers in 2022. So, it is critical to know enough about your customer to be able to target them correctly.
What are their interests? What are their behaviors? With this knowledge in hand, you can create the right ads that will convert them to paying customers.
Create an Effective Measuring Strategy
It is one thing to have great content, regular campaigns, and amazing social posts. But do you know how they are doing? Do you know how much traffic is coming into your site? Or where it is coming from.
This is where we have seen a lot of companies fall short. They simply have no data to have a firm grasp of what is happening with all of their efforts.
The fact is, it is actually really simple to gather this information and track it. The first tool you want to look at is Google Analytics. This helps you keep an eye on the traffic coming into the site and know where it is coming from.
So, you can tell if traffic is organic, or coming from a social post or email. You are then able to establish how it behaves on your site. Does the traffic start bouncing at a certain page, or is it going all the way through the sales funnel?
Your social platforms and email tools will also provide you with key data. You are able to track campaign successes. How many clicks did each get? Did they click through to your site? What was the engagement like?
Using this, together with the data on Google Analytics, you can establish what works for your customers and what doesn’t. Future marketing strategies can be planned based on this key data.
The Bottom Line
Your customer has evolved incredibly over the last two years. If you are not keeping up with their requirements and needs, you will be falling short. It is important for brands to keep a finger on the pulse of what is happening around them.
What are your competitors doing? What new trends are popping up? Without this insight, you could find yourself becoming irrelevant in a very dynamic, and ever-changing landscape.
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