5 Powerful Marketing Strategies to Grow Ecomm Sales

If you’re reading this post, you’re probably looking for recommended, powerful marketing strategies to grow your ecommerce sales.

We can relate to your desire to succeed, and we’re here to help.

In this post, we’ll explain how consumer behavior has changed and what this means for the online side of your business. We’ll then walk through 5 powerful marketing strategies you can use to grow your ecommerce sales in 2023 and beyond.

How Marketing Strategies Drive Ecommerce Sales in 2023

According to eMarketer’s Global Retail E-commerce Forecast report, global retail ecommerce sales are estimated at 20.2% this year and are projected to reach 21.2% in 2024:

In other words: you can count on ecommerce to keep growing well into the future. Online sales will continue to make up a large percentage of overall sales.

But figure this – according to McKinsey & Company, three-quarters of online consumers have changed their shopping behavior since the COVID-19 pandemic.

What does this mean?

It means the old ecommerce marketing strategies aren’t as effective as they were a couple of years ago.

New consumer behavior means new marketing campaigns are needed to keep up with the trends. But what – and how?

With updated marketing strategies designed to grow your ecommerce sales in 2023 and beyond.

Let’s get started.

1. Optimize Your Ecommerce Store For SEO

What does it take to achieve top rankings on search engines like Google? 

A well-optimized ecommerce website, of course. And there’s good reason to aim for top SERP rankings, too (SERPs are those information boxes and FAQs that often show up with the top search results).

According to a recent SISTRIX survey, the average click-through rates for the top Google ranking positions are as follows

• Position #1: 34.2%
• Position #2: 17.1%
• Position #3: 11.4%

According to recent survey results, ecommerce brands that partnered with a reputable web design company experienced a 30% increase in website traffic and a 20% rise in conversion rates. This highlights the significance of optimizing your website design and functionality to attract more visitors and convert them into loyal customers.

Whether you contract a web designer or do it in house, here are 8 practical tips to optimize your ecommerce website for SEO:

1. Conduct thorough keyword research
2. Optimize product pages to improve rankings
3. Ensure your ecommerce site is user-friendly
4. Improve your website speed
5. Use a simple URL structure
6. Create compelling title tags and meta descriptions
7. Optimize your site’s CTAs (calls to action)
8. Publish useful content consistently 

To ace your SEO game, it’s a good idea to use a comprehensive tool like Semrush. This Semrush review by Attrock will help you understand what the tool offers and how it can help optimize your ecommerce store for SEO.

However, you can still use other link building tools and monitor all your SEO activities online which will save much time and effort.

2. Leverage the Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Model

E-commerce marketing consultants leveraged the Direct-to-Consumer model even before the pandemic. 

However, when the pandemic caused a drastic shift in consumer buying behavior, the DTC model experienced a huge boom.

According to eMarketer, DTC e-commerce sales are estimated to be at $175 billion currently:

DTC is an ecommerce marketing model where manufacturers sell their goods directly to customers instead of using intermediaries like online retailers or department store chains.

This gives brands more control over consumer engagement and can help them gain valuable customer data.

An excellent example of a DTC brand is NIKE Direct, which generated about $18.7 billion of revenue in 2022 alone. 

There are many benefits of the DTC model including:

• Higher profits
• Better customer experience
• Easy to set up

Here are 9 tips to leverage the DTC model effectively:

1. Focus on a single niche
2. Create a compelling brand story
3. Develop a killer marketing strategy
4. Create high-quality product detail pages
5. Leverage various social media platforms
6. Partner with influencers
7. Leverage first-party data to boost customer experience
8. Utilize referral marketing
9. Offer multiple shipping and payment methods

3. Leverage Social Commerce

Social commerce is an ecommerce business model where brands sell products to consumers directly through social media platforms.

According to Statista, global social commerce sales are estimated to reach $2.9 trillion by 2026:

Traditionally, consumers have used social media to discover and learn more about brands, products, or services.

These days, new social commerce features and platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and others have made it simple for consumers to discover products and buy them directly on the app.

Do you know that now you can sell on LinkedIn too, just like other platforms?

But before you start down that route, it’s important to gain quality knowledge about LinkedIn sales prospecting to build an effective sales strategy. By making yourself familiar with the most popular sales prospecting tools, you will be able to take the sales a step further.

Once you’re familiar with how these tools work, social commerce is beneficial to brands in the following ways:

• Enables brands to provide customers with an innovative channel to purchase goods
• Helps to create a strong connection between brands and customers
• Enables brands to target customers with precision
• Enables brands to target the new generation of customers who spend more time on social media—Gen Z and Millennials

An example of a brand that leverages social commerce is Chubbies, a lifestyle apparel brand:

Here are 6 proven tactics to increase social commerce sales:

1. Identify the most popular and relevant social media channels
2. Create shoppable posts
3. Leverage social proof and user-generated content
4. Create a seamless customer service experience
5. Personalize the customer experience
6. Partner with influencers

4. Personalize The Online Shopping Experience

Today’s customers want marketing messages, offers, and products that are tailored to them. In fact, customers will buy more from brands that personalize the experience.

Here is the proof:

According to a recent McKinsey & Company survey report, 76% of consumers say they will likely purchase brands that personalize. Further, 76% are more likely to buy again:

Like in a physical store, where sales representatives know what customers want and their purchasing behaviors, brands should provide similar personalized experiences online.

Ecommerce personalization helps to:

• Increase brand loyalty
• Increase ecommerce sales
• Build a profitable ecommerce brand
• Offer tailored customer service to improve engagement

Here are 9 handy ecommerce personalization strategies to increase your sales:

1. Segment email list – Leverage a newsletter builder to create engaging emails and send them to targeted subscribers
2. Personalize product pages using location data
3. Personalize exit offers
4. Use popups
5. Offer special offers to first-time visitors
6. Offer recommended searches to narrow options
7. Suggest popular as well as complementary products
8. Utilize email personalization
9. Leverage retargeting 

5. Leverage Strategic Upselling and Cross-Selling

If you want your customers to buy high-value products or add more products to their cart, you should develop a cross-selling and upselling strategy.

The two are powerful marketing strategies in that one promises a higher-level product, and the other increases revenue by suggesting more products.

Here is how to leverage these strategies to grow your ecommerce sales:

• When the shopper adds an item to the cart, recommend a value pack of other relevant items they can purchase with what they have already added to their cart by sending them an instant chat message.
• When the shopper adds an item to the cart, suggest a new, high-level version via a popup.
• When the shopper has added items to the cart worth a certain amount, remind them of discounts and offers only if they increase the items to a certain amount.

Leverage tools and automation to successfully implement these strategies.

Conclusion

Since consumers have changed their shopping behavior since the pandemic’s beginning, brands need to leverage the latest practical strategies to grow ecommerce sales.

The actionable strategies discussed above are bound to deliver outstanding results when implemented right.

Start small and experiment with each to see what works best for your brand.

About the Author

Reena Aggarwal is Director of Operations and Sales at Attrock, a results-driven digital marketing company. With 10+ years of sales and operations experience in the field of ecommerce and digital marketing, she is an industry expert and considers people to be the most valuable asset of a company. You can find her on LinkedIn and Twitter.