9 Ecommerce Marketing Tips To Survive In Amazon’s Jungle

It’s a jungle out there online. The modus operandi: the fittest survive. Therefore, you need to embrace your online existence much like a lion pride would. It’s kill or be killed; and if you don’t catch your prey, you starve.

In relation to your online store, there are an ample array of things that you can do to get your revenue line moving upwards in the positive direction on your weekly graphs. Knowing how to do this is the secret ingredient in the success pudding.

We’ll share with you our nine favorite ecommerce marketing tips that we’ve utilized over the past decade that have enable us to cement our brand as an ecommerce powerhouse. You can use these very same methods to add some secret sauce to your recipe too.

Social marketing is one of the most powerful, personal and direct methods that you can use to reach your target demographic. Just take a look at these eye-opening social media ecommerce statistics that we’ve compiled that definitively demonstrate its might and muster for your marketing plan.

• The average Facebook users spends 30 minutes per day of screen time.
• Mobile sales account for over 20% of all online sales.
• A Shopify study found that 37 million social media visits resulted in 529,000 orders.
• 71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase that is based upon a social media referral.
• Facebook drives 30.8% of all socially driven purchases; YouTube drives 27%; Linkedin drives 27%; Pinterest drives 12%; Twitter drives 8%.
• 78% of consumers are influenced by a Facebook brand page.
• 50% of social purchases take place within 7 days of exposure and saturation.

Here’s the thing: social media PPC is really cheap and really easy. Each social engine that offers advertising basically walks you through the entire process using baby steps and while providing full support. So why are you not using this to drive more sales to your online store?

You’ve spent all of this time, money and effort on driving traffic to your online store. But that traffic will not always convert. When this happens, SEO experts tag the visitors as “bounced” traffic. It’s traffic that visited your site but never converted. Instead of just viewing this as “lost” traffic, there’s a far superior method that you can use called “retargeting.”

But what is retargeting and how can it help you attract more traffic to your online store? Simple. Using a service like Ad Roll, you can easily track visitors to your site by using what is called a “cookie.” If they bounce away, they now see your ad across thousands of other web pages, offering them a greater value that improves conversions exponentially.

But by how much? Take a look at these amazing retargeting statistics we’ve compiled. They are telling for sure.

• Users who are retargeted to are 70% more likely to convert.
• Display ads get a click-through rate of 0.07%; retargeted ads get a click-through of 0.7%.
• Retargeted ads have the potential to increase branded search exposure by more than 1,000%.
• 46% of online marketers believe that retargeting is grossly underused.
• 49% of major brands have now set aside specific budgets just for retargeting.

Sure, it’s great to have nested products, but you also want to do more to make your brand really shine and stand out. That’s why we advise in our write-up of 15 ecommerce marketing tips that you tell a story with your content. Be sure to keep your story brief and concise; but something that is both efficacious and that is also attractive to the visitor, too.

What’s more, merge this story with effective branding and make your pages truly stand out by doing the following 10 incremental things.

1. Use collage slideshows to showcase your products.
2. Be brief, succinct and to the point with your story.
3. State shipping options clearly for customers.
4. Make your sales stand out with defined sections and banner headlines.
5. Create a “best-sellers” section so you can grab shoppers’ attention and create conversions.
6. Use high-definition imagery with multiple angles for all of your products.
7. Deter cart abandoners with a last-minute special offer or discount code.
8. Use quick pop-up shops to improve sales.
9. Make it easy for customers to filter products when surfing.
10. Rely on email pop-ups to increase your newsletter mailing list.

What the heck are longtail keywords and how can they help you rank your store online so you can get more traffic and conversions? Look at it this way: the web has been around for quite some time. With trillions of pages and keywords, you have to think outside of the box when optimizing your online store for SEO.

Since most shorter keywords – those consisting of two words or less – would be nearly impossible to rank, it makes little sense to spend your time and effort trying to rank shorter keywords that are in higher competition.

Instead, use some keyword research tools, like those provide in the Moz Keyword Planner Tool, so you can finder longtail keywords – keywords that consist of three words or longer – that you can easily rank with some meaty content.

Here’s how you accomplish this to get keyword after keyword on page one of Google, as is outlined our guide: 7 Tips for Optimizing Your Online Store for SEO.

• Research and delegate the easy-to-rank longtail keywords that you want to use.
• Create standalone landing pages that have at least 500 words of content and that are properly optimized for SEO.
• Rely on SEO plugins and software like Moz to help you track and optimize your pages.
• Create social signals and bookmarks for each page that you create.
• Track each page until you see that it’s ranking.
• Search for quality linking opportunities for any pages that take too long to rank.
• Rinse and repeat as often as you can; because each page will drive traffic, which will ultimately equate to more conversions for your online store.

Sometimes, something as simple as making a small change to your online store can result in increased sales. In this case, it’s a little thingy called the free shipping threshold. But what is a free shipping threshold and just how can it help you attract more sales and conversions at your online store?

A free shipping threshold is a way to attract more customers by setting a minimum order value that qualifies them for free shipping. In Amazon’s case, this is $35 with an annual Prime subscription. In most cases, however, this is usually about $50.

In a recent eConsultancy survey that polled more than 5,000 people, four out of five consumers stated that free shipping is integral with online shopping. Furthermore, 58% said they’d respond to a free shipping threshold in a positive way.

Considering that a vast majority of shopping cart abandonment rates are intrinsically linked to shipping charges, you can’t really afford to not offer a free shipping threshold these days. Why lose out on the sale just because you make less profit? In the end, profits are profits. Period.

One of the very best ecommerce marketing tips that we can offer is this: use product videos to increase conversion rates across the board. Now you don’t have to spend a fortune just to do this. A small investment in a quality HD camera and a lightbox or drop-back screen and some time spent filming and editing on your own can enable you to make impressive product videos.

So how do product videos improve your conversion rates? Take a look at these impressive statistics.

• Videos have a 16.85% conversion rate as compared to standard banners (2.14%) and mobile (1.62%). (eMarketer)
• 58% of consumers trust brands with videos more. (Retail Touch Point)
• 59% of consumers will watch a video that is part of your website content. (Reach Engine)
• 96% of shoppers rely on product videos when making a buying decision. (Animoto)
• 92.6% of shoppers rely on visuals when making a buying decision. (VoucherCloud)
• Consumers who watch a product video are 1.7 times likelier to convert. (Invodo)
• 12% of consumers will watch a video on an ecommerce site. (MediaPost)
• 57% of shoppers will return less and buy in confidence when product videos are offered. (MediaPost)

Consumers love being offered a screaming deal on something, hence the popularity of juggernaut deal sites like Groupon and Living Social. The same mantra can easily apply to your online store, too. When taking a quick look at the most current digital coupon statistics, they are telling of just how much consumers are in love with being offered a bargain on the products they want to buy.

But what do the recent statistics tell us and why should you offer digital coupons?

• 70% of mobile shoppers use mobile coupons to find the best deal.
• Between 2014 and 2015, digital coupon usage increased by a whopping 26%.
• 2.9 billion digital coupons were generated in 2013 alone by retailers.
• An annual average of 66 digital coupons are redeemed online in the U.S.
• Emails and newsletters that feature digital coupons increase open rates by at least 14%.
• Revenue increases by at least 48% when digital coupons are added to emails and newsletters.
• Digital coupons improve transactions rates by at least 27% across the board.

In parting, we’ll save the best for last; the most important of all ecommerce marketing tips that we can offer: What your return policy says about your online business.

Were you aware that two out of three online shoppers takes the time to read your return policy before doing business with you? What’s more, if your return policy comprises a wall of text or is inconvenient, most shoppers will just take their business somewhere else that makes returns easier.

To effectively compete in the Amazon jungle these days, you have to assure that your return policy truly stacks up to the competition. This means that you are making returns simple, easy and hassle-free. It also means that you are automating the process so that customers don’t have to run through hoops just to send back a product.

Why is this important? Here are some statistics we culled from a related white paper we authored called: Ecommerce Returns No Longer a Nightmare – Why Convenient Returns Improve Profits

• Over 63% of consumers read the online product returns policy before making a purchase (comScore).
• 81% of consumers want a convenient returns policy that is hassle-free with no return shipping cost (UPS).
• About one-third of all products ordered online are returned by consumers (WSJ), so understanding that returns are part of the buying process is important.
• When free returns are offered, purchases can be increased by up to 357% (CNBC).
• When return shipping fees are charged, 81% of consumers are less likely to make a future purchase (Upstream Commerce).
• Zappos gets 75% improved customer loyalty, repeat buyers from free returns, even though they charge more for their products (eCommerce Digest).

Need even more ecommerce marketing tips? We’ve got you covered in this guide: 17 Ecommerce Marketing Tips & Tools You Need Now.