Do you know that the average cart abandonment rate is a whopping 69.2% according to the eCommerce statistics?
Engaging customers is never easy, especially in a POD business. Businesses need strong marketing strategies to cope with the heavy competition in profitable niches. Experimenting with varied tactics and keeping yourself updated with trends help increase conversions. However, it’s not simply enough to increase your awareness. Using a better eCommerce marketing strategy for an online store will boost engagement and revenue.
Today, we will talk about three key marketing strategies that focus on growing your POD business. Let’s begin with the most important channel of communication—social media.
1. Boost Social Media Presence
Do you know that people spend an average of 2.5 hours every day on social media? Your target audience will most likely spend hours scrolling through their Instagram and Facebook feeds.
What if your competitors outrun you solely based on a strong social presence?
To avoid the same, here are a few things you must keep in mind:
Brainstorm And Experiment With Content Ideas
Spend time brainstorming new and engaging content ideas. Conduct research regarding the type of content your audience interacts with the most. Are they more drawn towards long videos or short reels? Make a list of content ideas to begin experimenting.
Give Your Audience A Strong Reason To Take Action
It’s easy to ask people to like, comment, or share a post. But why would they take an action? Give them a strong reason to initiate the desired action. For instance, conduct frequent giveaways. As we know the hoodie season is near, look at how Dumbclub organized a giveaway of their best-selling product in return for engagement.
Look at the number of likes and comments to recognize people’s love for freebies.
Make The Most Use Of Instagram Reels
Instagram reels work great in creatively presenting your product. Use them to convey a short yet compelling message to your target audience. Invest in creating high-quality images and videos depicting your products. It’s a great time to connect with influencers for doing the same. Moreover, visually compelling content works exceptionally well in garnering attention.
Dumbclub also makes excellent use of the reel section. Instead of talking about their product’s greatness, they organize exciting challenges. Their recent video showed they were engaging with people on the street and offering free hoodies to anyone who will do a backflip. Now that’s what we call an out-of-box marketing tactic.
Write A Creative And Engaging Bio
Your profile’s bio might seem a basic part but plays an important role in growing your presence. The most compelling bios often have a blend of creativity, social proof, and vital information about your brand.
Look at how Janina Rossiter, an artist who sells ocean-themed merchandise took a creative approach.
The bio represents her work creatively along with depicting her accomplishment and core information like links to her shop.
2. User Generated Content Strategy
User-generated content includes product testimonials, reviews, feature articles, unboxing videos, etc. In layman’s terms, the content created by a customer regarding their product’s opinion.
Firstly, UGC reduces your burden of brainstorming new content regularly. Secondly, it helps enhance your current content strategy across multiple channels. Most importantly, UGC involves the opinions of past customers. Your ideal customer will likely believe their views more than your benefit-rich content.
Now that we are aware of the benefits of adding UGC to your ecommerce marketing strategy, let’s understand the ways of inculcating the same.
Ask For UGC In Return For Something Exciting
Do you often receive products from an eCommerce store with a little note inside?
The note might claim a 10% off on another product if you upload a picture tagging the brand’s social media account. Running a personalized hashtag also helps improve visibility.
Providing something exciting in return motivate customers to take instant action. Remind your brand to keep up with customers a few days after delivering the product. For instance, an automated email reaching their inbox a week later asking for an honest review on credible platforms.
A shopping platform Nuji saw a 167% increase in sales after providing discounts as an incentive to share its content. Remember that people love receiving discounts on items they love. Use it to your advantage and notice a heavy increase in conversions.
Takeaway Tip: Follow-up with your customers a week after the delivery to ask for their honest feedback.
Market Your Brand With A Branded Hashtag Challenge
Hashtags work exceptionally well in garnering engagement. A branded hashtag helps brands in separating their identity from the masses. Firstly, you don’t have the pressure of dealing with competition as it’s unique to your brand. Secondly, brands can successfully track engagement to modify their strategies as required. Lastly, it helps develop brand awareness and persuade prospective customers to take action.
Many businesses market their brand with a branded hashtag challenge. It remains highly effective in generating a heavy amount of UGC.
For example, Disney started a branded hashtag campaign called #DisneyPlusVoices on the app’s (Disney Plus) second anniversary. Disney collaborated with TikTok to unlock the voices of their most-loved Disney characters. Users used them as text-to-speech audio on posts, resulting in a massive success with 18.3 billion views on TikTok. Many famous voice actors like Daniel Ross shared their hacks to unlock the voices.
Advice For Newbies: if starting a challenge seems overwhelming, initiate by launching a specific brand hashtag and asking users to review the products.
Additional Tips:
- Engage with your audience frequently before asking them for content. Share conversational captions, be fluent in responding to their comments or queries, etc.
- Focus on your specific brand values and connect with like-minded individuals. For instance, if you use environmentally friendly raw materials then connect with people who stand up for the cause
- Keep an eye on the content shared organically by your customers. Find their motivation behind sharing the content and use it to your advantage.
- Organize an exciting contest that customers participate in and share on their social media. People love talking about creative events all over their social channels. Experiment with contests if simply sending a mail regarding reviews fail to work.
3. eCommerce Marketing Strategy
Personalization became crucial with a consistent increase in eCommerce businesses. Reaching out to your ideal customers with the message they will likely respond to is not easy.
Databox recently surveyed 51 eCommerce businesses and agencies. Around 56.86% of businesses believe that eCommerce businesses are successful only with increased personalization. Moreover, 43.14% believe that customers are used to and expect a great degree of personalization to initiate action.
Now that we know the importance of personalization in Print on Demand eCommerce businesses, let’s look at some widely successful practices:
Introduce Upsell To Your Marketing Strategy
Let’s say a customer purchased a printed t-shirt from your store. During checkout, he comes across a highly similar product (let’s say a jogger) at a 20% discount.
Now initially he came to your store to purchase a printed t-shirt. But offering joggers or shoes that go well with the purchased item increases the chances of conversion. Normally he might not look for these products but considering the product becomes higher with an added discount.
Amazon is a great example of product bundle creation. It presents you with highly relevant products every time you make a purchase instead of showing random recommendations.
Presenting Dynamic Offers Based On Past Behaviour
Keeping track of customers’ previous purchases help in presenting compelling deals. It gives customers a feeling of recognition and persuades them to buy. Remember that a relevant pop-up deal presented on the homepage compels users to click. After all, it’s all about the first thing a prospect sees after vising your website or store.
Run Personalised Email Campaigns
Email marketing strategy for eCommerce plays a huge role in impacting conversions for as long as we can remember. Almost all eCommerce businesses engage in email marketing. However, 70% of brands fail to use personalized emails.
You can get an edge over these businesses by inculcating heavily personalized email campaigns. Personalizing emails remains crucial in increasing email open rates and driving repeated sales. For instance, 82% of marketers experienced a drastic increase in email open rate post personalization. Two of the most crucial tactics of email personalization are:
- Segmenting email lists based on demographics, psychographics, purchase history or buying behaviour, etc.
- Replacing the traditional outbound email campaigns with tactics like emails with personalised videos.
Let’s say you are promoting your products through email marketing. Customers will likely respond to emails with product promotions of their choice. Who wouldn’t want an additional discount on things they love? Run campaigns based on abandoned carts, purchase history, recommendations, etc. to increase conversions.
Conclusion
Building a social media presence, increasing your UGC, and personalizing your campaigns remain crucial to growing your POD business. If you are confused then start by observing your competitors and their marketing strategy. A highly competitive niche market often requires consistent efforts to increase engagement and conversions. Keep experimenting with several eCommerce marketing strategies and modify them as required.