What do successful online stores do right, what do they do better, and what can you learn from their successes (and mistakes)? To achieve your marketing goals, keep the bounce rate low and increase the conversion rate, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Learn from the experiences of the best - we have compiled the approaches of successful online stores for you in this overview.
Know your marketing goals
More, better, bigger - in digital marketing, it's easy to fall into a mindset that measures itself primarily in superlatives and quantifiable values. But that doesn't necessarily make sense. After all, just because you reach more people doesn't mean your marketing works better.
Finding potential customers and offering them Send the right message, means more than just great reach. After all, you want to work with high efficiency, not great effectiveness. The former guarantees you the highest possible yield with the lowest possible input.
However, for this you need to change your Marketing goals of your online store first of all. This can be lead generation, maybe you want to increase sales first and foremost or your first goal is, attract new customers. All these are valid goals, but each of them requires a different strategy. To understand this precisely and to be able to turn planning into reality with your team and the right software, you need to be especially precise. So divide the big goals of your online store into many small steps.
Step by step to the big goal
After all, these small sub-steps make it much easier and simpler for you to get to your desired goal. At the same time, they give you the opportunity to work your way forward step by step and make your success specifically measurable.
If you want to attract new customers, for example, you could work to improve your Google Rankings to improve. At the same time you could create new Generate leadsby offering a guide to your services and/or products on your blog. You can also keep potential customers informed with a relevant mailing list. And then, of course, there is also the work in the social networksinteract with your fans there, generate interactions and show your followers exactly what your brand is all about.
So all of this may be subordinate to the typical marketing goal in the company. But still, the individual sub-goals are fundamentally different and not all directly related to more sales. This step of abstraction is also important. Because only if you treat your different goals as such, you will reach more sales via many small goals.
As an example, you can see Amazon and their affiliate program. Because of course online stores like Amazon not rely on the additional income of affiliates, but more important is marketing awareness. So accompany your potential customers leisurely on the Customer Journey and work with a lot of patience and tact to turn contacts into leads and ultimately customers.
Do not lose sight of the goals
This includes the sales, the acquisition of new customers and the retention of existing customers and associated with the right strategy for your reach. This includes search engine optimization on-page and off-page, but also search engine marketing to increase your reach for a fee.
But marketing goals can also be substantially different goals, for example if you want to rebrand yourself and communicate to your customers that the quality of your products will be even higher in the future, that you will manufacture sustainably in the future, or simply that you will become more international.
Whatever your marketing needs, be aware of your goals and develop a detailed strategy to achieve them.
The right tools - from search and find
Whether you run a large online store or serve a charming niche, every customer has to find you first. To do this as efficiently as possible, you need the right monitoring tools to really understand the background. Google Analytics is the key to drawing the right conclusions from your campaigns.
Which target group do you reach on which channel and where is there in your Online Marketing Mix still need improvement? All this can be summed up in the acronym SMART - your goals should be specific, measurably accepted, realistic and scheduled. Thanks to modern analytics tools, you can monitor this for every campaign and on every channel in real time. This is still relatively easy with quantitative values, because at these points you can compare numbers. Were you able to get more fans on your Facebook page gain and your interactions on Instagram increase? Does this result in unique impressions in your online store and, in turn, higher sales?
Clearly measurable values, however, are not the only key factors you need to consider when talking about newly formulated marketing goals. Especially when you think in terms of more abstract points such as a better image or a higher level of awareness, the actual measurable points become rarer. At such points you need to Key Performance Indicators that make the abstract tangible. A rather simple means for this are for example Surveys.
One of the most important key factors from the SMART marketing goalOne thing that online stores tend to overlook is realism. In many areas, growth and popularity can be hacked, but not in all. Above all, you can only badly push sales with hair-pull actions, if this does not correspond to the regular growth of your company.
Tune your online marketing mix
Even though the most important part of your online business happens on your site, you shouldn't disregard the opportunities that social media opens up for you.
Because for a long time now you can use Facebook or Instagram not only banner ads, but link directly to your products in the store with shopping ads. Take advantage of this opportunity and save customers the detours.
You can see an example on the Instagram page of IKEA take. This serves the specific clientele of the medium with aesthetic images. At the same time, all the images show the products depicted with only two clicks Buy. This is just one example of the depth of integration between social media marketing and measurable sales, but social media is more closely tied to your company's reputation than perhaps any other marketing tool. So go ahead and be bold, deliver exciting content, and tie potential customers to your company's image as well.
Be everywhere
To do this, you should not shy away from modern channels and take advantage of all the possibilities of an omni-channel presence that make financial sense for you. Messenger marketing The use of bots can be a useful addition to customer service and shows that your online store is always available. You still don't have the personal 24-hour service of global players like Amazon, but at least you're playing in the same league.
At the same time you should also use classic Affiliate marketing or the tried-and-true email distribution list out of sight. Every single tool in the marketing mix has its own purpose and benefits.
Depending on which marketing goals you want to achieve with your online store, you also need to assign the right weight to the corresponding channels. Keep this in mind already when strategically planning your goals and setting up all the efforts you make. But thanks to modern Analysis tools you also have all the possibilities to compose your marketing precisely and scalable to infinity, down to the last detail.