5 Smart E-commerce selling strategies you may not use

Reading time: 5 min

The answer is simple: make every interaction with your online store simple and enjoyable. And to achieve this result, take a closer look at these ideas.

Chat bot

If after the phrase “please stay on the line” no one answers the customer, your deal will end before it starts. Blaming sales people for everything is unreasonable: their possibilities are not endless and they can serve not so many customers in a day. True, customers are hardly tuned in to objective reflections – they came with money and the intention to buy what they need. And, since it does not work out in this place, they will find another.

What can you do with all this? The simplest and most effective solution is to connect a chatbot. This is a virtual assistant who communicates with customers according to a prescribed script and can answer many questions, redirect to the necessary links, select products of interest – in general, everything that an ordinary person does. But at the same time, it does not get tired, does not have lunch and does not go on vacation.

Read more: Native Advertising in Content Marketing

Pros of this method:

• Handles routine requests, which greatly assists managers and helps them respond only to important customer requests;
• Automates sales through round-the-clock and year-round work;
• Serves hundreds of customers at the same time and is, of course, much faster than a living person.

Cons: 

• Cannot solve problems that are not written in the script;
• Not able to joke, catch irony, select answers to tricky questions – therefore, it is suitable only for online stores with fairly predictable customers. 

Free delivery

Surprisingly, nothing makes a customer so much doubtful about their actions as viewing the cart before placing an order. In these seconds, the person finally decides “yes / no” and in order for the scales to tilt towards “yes”, they need additional incentives. And free shipping is a very serious argument.

Pros of this method:

• This is a really great way to get a potential customer to buy. And this logically leads to an increase in the number of orders, the size of the average check, the number of new customers and the level of loyalty.

Cons: 

• Nothing just happens: if it is not the customer who pays for the delivery, then you pay for it. In order not to go into the red, it is necessary to carry out serious calculations taking into account the margins of the goods, the profitability of orders and the actual cost of transporting parcels.

Influence marketing

Influence marketing is based on cooperation with so-called “opinion leaders” – bloggers, vloggers, tick-tokers – in general, creators of various content who already have their own loyal audience and whose opinion they can influence. Working with them consists of co-creating content to promote the brand.

The best part is that talented influencers can advertise even the most unexpected products and services. Therefore, both a youth cosmetic brand and a serious fulfillment company developing logistics software can apply to them.

Pros of this method:

• Builds brand awareness very quickly. This is especially useful if you are launching a new company or product or simply decided to scale. Traditional advertising methods are much less effective in such cases.
• More affordable compared to most other marketing activities (unless, of course, you are going to advertise on the Instagram of the Kardashian clan). By the way, a life hack: advertising with influencers with a large audience is not effective for all types of business. For example, if you have a chain of small baby food stores, take a look at nanoinfluencers – these are opinion leaders with an audience of up to 10 thousand subscribers.
• Influencers know exactly what, how and when to tell their audience to win over them. Therefore, the advertising they create, more often than not, does not even look like advertising, but is perceived as friendly advice. 

Cons: 

• Sometimes things do not go so simply “because.” You may have a great strategy, the right influencer, but the post does not resonate with the public  and that is it. Of course, at the beginning of cooperation, you sign an agreement in which the opinion leader undertakes to provide you with concrete results, but if this does not happen, all that remains is to defend your interests in court. And in most cases, it will cost more than a failed marketing budget.
• Cancel culture. Any influencer, first of all, is a person who can make a mistake at any time and cause the anger of their audience. This usually poses little threat to advertisers. But if you have a fairly prominent brand, or you have long been collaborating with a goofy influencer, the public’s discontent can spill over to you.

Product reviews

It is much easier for a person to decide on a purchase if they are able to see the product “in person”. Or at least learn about it from other daredevils who have already risked spending their money and are now ready to share their experience of use. So reviews are still a very powerful marketing tool. Even taking into account the fact that most users are well aware that not all reviews are written by real customers.

Pros of this method:

• An effective argument for most doubters as well as a plus to the prestige of the online store in general.

Cons: 

• Not everyone likes to share their experiences. Most often, reviews are left if everything was very bad or because of the great love for the brand that still needs to be earned. To encourage customers to share their experiences, try offering them good bonuses, discounts, or pleasant surprises in return.

Video marketing

Video content shows the product in 3D, which means it makes it possible to sort of hold it in your hands. If done right, video marketing can become a powerful word of mouth, which will inevitably strengthen the company’s popularity and radically increase sales.

Here are some tips for organizing your video marketing properly:

• If you cannot get the word out about your products quickly, create a YouTube channel. Only there you will be able to clearly and orderly reveal the advantages and disadvantages of each position.
• If you are trading something that you can place creatively and, most importantly, quickly, your option is TikTok. At the moment, you can upload videos up to 3 minutes there. But, given the specifics of the social network, the shorter the better.
• The content should be useful. It goes without saying that this will take a lot of time, money, creative and strategic efforts. Unfortunately, it is extremely rare to gain an audience from the first seconds, so get ready that at first your channel will resemble a black hole.
• Take your time to monetize your content. For example, YouTube often shows ads before the start of a video and with monetization enabled, it does it three times more often. What viewer wants to endure 3 minutes of ads for 5 minutes of content itself?
• Create collaborations. There are enough popular accounts on YouTube and TikTok, so for every business task there is an influencer with the appropriate level of fame and influence on the audience. 

Conclusion

Perhaps the most important thing to do in marketing is not to be afraid to experiment. There is no sure way to achieve success, so try to combine different promotion methods and track what results they bring.

In the end, those who do not take risks do not reach a new level of sales. Good luck!