Ecommerce is on a meteoric growth path right now; COVID-19 has shifted shopping activity from malls to online stores, creating a perfect storm of opportunity for ecommerce businesses.
In the Philippines, ecommerce enterprises are predicted to keep growing at 17% CAGR through 2025.
Even as we come out of the pandemic, this growth is only expected to continue. But that doesn’t mean you should relax — as an ecommerce business owner, how can you ride the present trends to even greater growth?
How to grow your ecommerce business
Follow the tips below, and we’ll show you how to leverage today’s encouraging environment for your ecommerce business’ continuing success.
1. Start with an ecommerce strategy
You’re doing all the things your competitors are doing: buying ad space, boosting your social media content, working with influencers. But your best isn’t good enough; you don’t seem to be going anywhere. Anyare?
If that’s the case, you may be lacking an overall strategy. While individual marketing tactics may go some way in creating positive results, they can’t be effective on their own without an overall strategy guiding them.
A well-thought-out strategy can coordinate individual efforts to better deliver results. Take the following steps to formulate a strategy of your own:
- Outline your goals: This can be as simple as laying out in writing what you’re trying to accomplish within a year. For example, you may want to focus on boosting traffic to your site, or you can try to reach new customers.
- Identify your target market: Picture your ideal customer. How old are they? Are they single, married, with children? How much do they make in a month? These questions will help you identify your core customer base, then tailor your marketing to focus on that core market.
- Research your competitors: Study their strengths and weaknesses; purchase their products regularly so that you will really get a feel of what they’re doing and how they’re improving.
- Determine pricing and positioning: All these prior steps should give you a better idea of what customers want to spend money on and how much they’re willing to pay. Use this information to price and position your products.
#NinjaTip:
Focus on getting your delivery strategy right! Good delivery execution will increase conversion rates on your website and encourage repeat purchases. Your delivery strategy should include the price you charge for shipping, the look and feel of your packaging and your choice of courier partner.
2. Bring your ecommerce squad together
The best ecommerce solutions always draw strength from a solid team. Analyze your internal capabilities and identify the talent you need to hire to supercharge your ecommerce team and operations.
- Web design: find talent that can design, build and maintain your ecommerce website. They will do a lot of thinking about the user experience on your website, including how you will deliver the after-sales service.
- Digital marketing: they will be responsible for capturing and analyzing customer data. They also need to know how to derive insights from the data and make sense of them, creating the basis for your digital marketing efforts.
- Logistics: they should help you build a system that can manage quick shipping, easy returns and ensure inventory availability. This can be an internal team or an outsourced 3PL logistics company that will handle fulfilment, shipping and inventory management.
#NinjaTip:
Building an ecommerce team may sound daunting, but as long as you know what you’re doing, you can automate most marketing tasks using tools such as Salesforce and HubSpot. Additionally, NinjaVan is a good choice to help you handle all your logistics. This will free up your resources to focus on what matters: your community.
3. Use brand values to build an avid community
As brand equity and brand values become a major differentiator against the competition, these values will allow customers to connect to your brand on a more personal level.
Think of how brands like Nike are doing this: their slogan “Just do it,” combined with imagery of athletes striving hard to achieve impossible goals, conveys their values of relentless hard work and perseverance. If this is how successful big brands develop their following, there is a lesson to learn for smaller brands, too.
Your brand values should orient all of your activities, especially what you communicate in your marketing activities. Not only will this make your brand image more consistent, but it will also allow you to nurture an online community of people with shared values — Facebook groups, social media followers, Discord servers, subreddits, whichever might work for you.
Eventually, your community will help refer your brand to others or even become evangelists of your brand.
#NinjaTip:
Joining your competitor’s online community can be a great way to identify the strength and weaknesses of their customer experience. Don’t be too proud to join their community, and you can learn how yours might do better.
4. Use online reviews and feedback to improve your product
Criticism can be a difficult pill to swallow. It’s easier to just gloss over negative reviews and focus on the positives. But you might miss out on the productive insights hidden in your customers’ less-than-avid reviews.
Critical reviews offer open-minded entrepreneurs ways to resolve customers’ problems as well as improve business practices. Look out for reviews that suggest better ways to do things, or new products you might be able to offer!
Of course, you will need to learn how to respond to these criticisms. If you’re in the wrong, own up to your mistake and apologise. Don’t get defensive, even if you feel like you haven’t done anything wrong! Instead, explain how you will make it right and offer your contact details for further assistance.
Good reviews can also work wonders for your bottom line. They can improve search engine results that point to your business, as well as increase your social proof. Spiegel Research Center found that a product with five or more positive and believable reviews increased the purchase likelihood by 270%!
#NinjaTip: Remember that customer feedback is also a key part of the customer experience! Make it easy for your customers to leave reviews and you will have a win-win situation on your hands.
Planning for ecommerce growth
As we move forward into the post-pandemic world, the ecommerce industry will only grow bigger. More and more people will get in the game, which also means competition is expected to get even fiercer.
But this should not deter you from entering the game. Having a strong strategy, developing a capable team, being in touch with your values and listening to your customers will be key to staying ahead.
With a thorough understanding of these aspects, your ecommerce business will be set for greater success.
Featured image by A stockphoto via Getty Images
