According to data from eMarketer and Statista, online retail sales are expected to reach $6.51 trillion by 2023, with eCommerce websites covering 22.3% of total retail sales.
Because eCommerce is a booming industry, competition is fierce. As an eCommerce business owner, you have to adapt, or else you’ll fail miserably. For this reason, you should always think about the future, keep track of current trends, and look for growth prospects whenever possible.
You must always be proactive in finding potential customers, motivating them to buy items from your store, and making sure that they will be compelled to return for repeat visits.
In the article below, we help you map out ways to grow and scale your eCommerce business in 2023 and take advantage of the industry’s growth.
Identify Your Target Audience
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Your target audience is the people who can become potential customers, so it’s extremely important that you find the right target group for your business. The target group can be defined as individuals who need your products or services and who will benefit from what you sell.
Correctly identifying your target group is essential if you want to be able to target them specifically and stand apart from the competition. If possible, categorize your target audience into different demographic categories such as gender, age, interests, education, occupation, and so on. You can reach them more easily this way.
Are you about to sell something new and unique and have no idea who your potential customers are? Then do a target group analysis through surveys and interviews, and create buyer personas. It’s an effective method that will help you find out more about who might consider shopping at your particular online store.
Improve Customer Support
Customer service is an area in which you should be highly involved when running an eCommerce business. Good customer service will help make customers return and spread the good word about your brand. You want your customers to feel cared for and valued. So you must think about how you are engaging with your customers, how you are using their feedback, and what strategies you are using to improve customer support in the company.
The first way to ensure that customers are satisfied is by integrating real-time solutions into your website. Every customer has different needs and even though many want to speak directly to an employee, others prefer online communication instead. Chatbots have grown very popular in recent years and they are extremely helpful when managing customer support and engagement. They are easy to integrate and can even be set up to send automated messages for certain conversations.
Some customers, however, might prefer to contact you through email. In such cases, you can implement a ticketing system, which allows you to handle customer inquiries from a central hub. For instance, if you are using WordPress, you can integrate a WordPress support ticketing system to quickly manage individual customer support issues, solve problems faster and more efficiently, collaborate with other support agents on your team, and keep track of all of your support cases from a single interface.
Consider Using LinkedIn
Although LinkedIn is usually not the first thing you think of when looking to boost eCommerce sales, you can still use it to expand your business. Marketing is crucial for business success today and LinkedIn can be the perfect space for creating strong ground for your brand.
By being active on this platform, you can get more positive reviews and customer engagement, and increased sales. Even more importantly, using LinkedIn for eCommerce can help you attract new clients from all over the world. This tool can bring you thousands of contacts with just one click and you can automatically send them messages. It will help you grow your connections, find potential clients and turn them into loyal customers.
Consider Content Marketing
Content marketing is a common marketing technique today and has become an important way for brands to differentiate themselves from the competition.
By creating content that revolves around your target group’s interest and problem area, as an eCommerce business owner, you can capture potential customers early in the sales funnel.
Creating content takes time. It’s not enough to write texts to succeed with your marketing. Successful content marketing requires a content strategy. Focus on the most suitable channels for your target group and connect these to selected social networks to spread the content. Be sure to follow up on the content marketing and measure the results it produces. Many focus on the traffic and scale but fail to measure the actual ROI.
Final Thoughts
eCommerce is a flourishing industry but it can be difficult to manage. If you wish to see your eCommerce business succeed, then you should be ready to take some action. Simple tactics such as identifying your target audience, improving customer support, using LinkedIn, and writing good content can help you achieve tremendous growth and scale your eCommerce business to its utmost potential.