With the emergence of Shopify and the Amazon FBA businesses, the eCommerce space has boomed in the last few years.
This post is going to give you 7 ideas that you can use to stay ahead of all that competition and do the one thing that matters to all eCommerce business owners: Grow your revenue!
The ideas range from things you can do every day which just require a bit of elbow grease, right through to scalable systems that you can put in place and rely on to do the work over time.
Here are the 7 ideas we are going to be exploring, so you can skip to the ones that interest you if you’d like:
- Organic content
- Answer Quora questions
- Reddit engagement
- Implement Email Marketing
- Use Pinterest
- Do a Giveaway Collaboration
- Use Your Facebook Pixel
Ready? Let’s go!
Idea 1: Organic Content
Organic content is a great – almost free (especially if you’re producing the content yourself) – way to attract more inbound leads.
The beauty of organic content is it’s scalability and high potential for return. You can write a blog post today and post it on your website, and it will bring in ‘free’ traffic for as long as it’s relevant (or Google deems it to be).
The tricks with attracting new customers include:
- Picking long tail keywords which are relevant to your products
- Picking keywords with a low enough search difficulty, but high enough search volume to warrant the effort
- Creating content that engages readers and keeps them on the page for a while
- Having calls to action which drives users from your blog post to a product page (converting readers into buyers)
- Building backlinks over time to improve the your Domain Authority
Idea 2: Answer Quora Questions
Quora is a question and answer site where users can ask questions and get answers from people with relevant experience and knowledge.
Quora is a great way to demonstrate your expertise, and use that distribution to get in front of potential customers.
Make sure you’re creating your bio properly to include your website brand and link, so that people know where to go if they want more.
Idea 3: Reddit Engagement
Reddit is a social media platform that allows users to post and share content, and comment on the content of others.
You can share your content on Reddit in two ways:
- Create a subreddit for your product and share your content there
- Comment on other people’s content about relevant topics
Here’s the catch with Reddit: You’ll need to become an active member of the Reddit community. The people of Reddit hate shameless self-promotion. You have to give value before asking for it.
There are two main ways to grow a Reddit following:
- Be an active member in different topics
- Share relevant content from other community members and give them credit (called ‘upvoting’)
Reddit has a really cool and unique feature called ‘karma’. Karma is the total number of upvotes you have received minus the total number of downvotes you have received. It’s a great way to gauge the amount of relevant content you are sharing.
Just by engaging on Reddit and becoming an expert in your product or store’s niche, there will be a natural interest in your profile and people will often ask you specifically for a link to your site. When that’s happening, you know you’ve nailed Reddit!
Idea 4: Email Marketing
One of the most important tools you can use when starting an eCommerce business is email marketing.
Email is the most powerful way to stay in contact with your customers, and more importantly, it’s the most effective way to convert them from prospects to paying customers.
Email marketing is a great way to nurture leads, keep your revenue growing, and reduce the amount of time you need to spend on selling.
The best ways to implement email marketing are:
- Create a welcome email that converts your prospects into customers
- Send an email just after a purchase to say thanks, and offer a discount or some sort of incentive for making a future purchase
- Send out periodic email marketing campaigns that your readers like to read.
Perhaps the best example of email marketing done right is Huckberry. Check their emails out for a great strategy to work off.
Idea 5: Pinterest
Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool which allows users to share and curate content.
The best way to use Pinterest is to create a profile for your eCommerce business and create a separate board for each of your products.
Pinterest is great for driving traffic to your eCommerce store, but it should also be used to grow your email list.
To get Pinterest right, you have to create very visually appealing content. Images and infographics that look great on the eye will likely succeed.
PS: Remember to create a ‘follow me on Pinterest’ CTA on your website
Idea 6: Do a Giveaway Collaboration
Giveaways are a great way to build buzz around your eCommerce store. The beauty of giveaways, when done correctly, is the increased exposure and distribution that you get.
Here’s a rundown of the steps you should take when planning a giveaway:
- Ideally, find a partner brand who has a following larger than your business on social media.
- Ask them to collaborate on a giveaway and pool some products together to giveaway.
- Create a landing page for the giveaway, and drive traffic to it
- Create a spreadsheet and keep track of all the entrants, including their email address
- Reward users with more entries into the giveaway by sharing the giveaway link on their social profiles
Idea 7: Use Your Facebook Pixel
A Facebook pixel is a way for eCommerce business owners to retarget customers, measure conversions, and track the success of their ads.
The Facebook pixel allows you to create an audience of users who have visited your website, and serves them ads about your products. If you’re running giveaways, as explained above, it’s a great way to be able to retarget the people who have shown an initial interest in your product, but not taken action yet.
The Facebook pixel can be implemented on your website by following these steps:
- Create a Facebook ad account for your business
- Add the Facebook pixels code to your website
- Create an ad which targets users who have visited your website
And that’s it! Those were 7 ways to grow your eCommerce business’s revenue.