Four Strategies to Scale Your E-commerce Business
Are you struggling to grow your e-commerce business? Do you want to increase your sales and reach more customers? If so, you're in luck! In this article, we'll be sharing four effective strategies that can help you scale your e-commerce business. From AI tools to user-generated content, we'll cover everything you need to know to take your business to the next level.
📝 Table of Contents
- **Strategy 1: Run More Ads**
- Volume is Key
- Amazon Ads
- Cost Types
- Image and Video Creative Features
- **Strategy 2: Retention Marketing**
- The Importance of Email
- Nurturing Long-Term Customers
- Outsourcing Design Work
- **Strategy 3: User-Generated Content**
- Authenticity is Key
- Micro-Influencers
- Free Products for Content
- **Strategy 4: AI Tools**
- Supercharge Your Output
- AI Chat Bots
- Competitor Data
- AI Video Editors
Strategy 1: Run More Ads
The first strategy we'll be discussing is running more ads. The more ads you run, the more eyeballs will land on your product, which can increase sales and scale your e-commerce business. While most people are familiar with TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook ads, not many know about Amazon ads. Amazon ads were typically just for business owners who sold on Amazon, but they've recently started allowing businesses like restaurants, hotels, and bed and breakfasts to run ads on their platform. Even if you don't currently sell on Amazon, you can still run ads on their platform. By using sponsor display campaigns, you can increase visibility for your business. Amazon is always looking at data based on what customers are shopping for, what content they consume, what they've bought in the past, and even what important events are going on in their lives. This means that potentially thousands of people are seeing your ads that have purchased something before that is similar to your product or are looking for it right now.
Volume is Key
The key to this strategy is volume. The more ads you run, the more likely you are to reach potential customers. Amazon ads have two cost types: cost per click (CPC) and cost per thousand views (vCPM). CPC is what you'll pay when optimizing for page visits, while vCPM is what you'll pay when optimizing for reach. Depending on whether you want to drive traffic or awareness to your product, you can choose the cost type that works best for you.
Amazon Ads
Amazon ads are a great opportunity to reach a ton of customers on Amazon. If you're trying to get into e-commerce or if you already have an online store, using Amazon ads can increase visibility for your business. If your business qualifies, you can get $500 worth of ad credits to start advertising on Amazon with no minimum spending requirement.
Image and Video Creative Features
To make your ads stand out, Amazon is adding image and video creative features. They'll give you access to over 390 million high-quality pictures on Shutterstock for free. This is a super great opportunity to take advantage of if you're a small e-commerce business owner.
Strategy 2: Retention Marketing
The second strategy we'll be discussing is retention marketing. This is all about how loyal your customers are to your products and your brand. Email is one of the strongest methods you can use to market your stuff and get more sales. The key to email retention marketing is that when people go on your website and you capture their email, you might not be able to sell to them right now, but you can almost always sell to them in the future.
The Importance of Email
Email retention marketing is really important because it's a way to nurture long-term customers. Your job as an e-commerce business owner isn't just to get more customers by running more ads. What you really need to do to further scale your business is to get systems set up that will nurture that new customer to stay long-term and continue to buy your product. That way, you just have the cost of acquiring your customer once, and after that, the lifetime value of that customer can keep going up.
Nurturing Long-Term Customers
To nurture long-term customers, you need to have a system in place. Once you get a customer's email, they should be put on a campaign that is consistent and effective. The copy you write is extremely important, as are the graphics you use and the frequency in which you send emails.
Outsourcing Design Work
To make your emails look professional, you should outsource design work to designers overseas. This is a great way to save money and get high-quality work done. Most people will save 80 to 90% on their payroll costs if they hire from overseas.
Strategy 3: User-Generated Content
The third strategy we'll be discussing is user-generated content (UGC). When you do UGC correctly, it can be one of the biggest ROIs when it comes to scaling your e-commerce brand. UGC is all about authenticity, and there are lots of creators out there who have an audience that really trusts them.
Authenticity is Key
Consumer behavior is much different now, with the majority of purchases being influenced by social media. To take advantage of this, you should reach out to smaller micro-influencers on Instagram and TikTok. While these people have smaller audiences, they tend to be much higher quality, and as a result, the conversions are just going to be a lot better.
Micro-Influencers
A creator with 10 to 20,000 followers can give you a much higher ROI than a creator with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. You want to make sure that whatever influencers you use genuinely believe in your product, and you also want to make sure that their audience makes sense for your type of product.
Free Products for Content
To get more UGC, you can send free products to micro-influencers in exchange for a video. If that video is good, you can pay them or ask them if you can use it as an ad. There are also a lot of creators out there that don't post on their own accounts. Rather, they're just really good at creating these short-form videos for you, and you can use those videos and run them as ads.
Strategy 4: AI Tools
The fourth and final strategy we'll be discussing is using AI tools. AI can save you so much time, allowing you to focus on activities that actually grow your business.
Supercharge Your Output
If you combine AI tools with talent overseas, you can supercharge how much output can get done by your team. AI can help you write better emails, write better landing pages, act as your virtual assistant, write professional responses for customer service, write better product descriptions, and even help you plan out your social media and ad strategy.
AI Chat Bots
You can even have an AI chatbot for customers. When they go to your website, there's basically that AI chatbot that's ready to talk to them.
Competitor Data
There are also a lot of AI platforms out there that can help you with competitor data. They can help you monitor competitors' prices, which can help with strategic pricing decisions.
AI Video Editors
Finally, there are AI video editors that can help you create creatives, create long-form videos, and generate a ton of output for your social media channels.
🌟 Highlights
- Running more ads can increase visibility for your business.
- Email retention marketing is a way to nurture long-term customers.
- User-generated content is all about authenticity.
- AI tools can save you time and supercharge your output.
🤔 FAQ
Q: How much does it cost to run Amazon ads?
A: Amazon ads have two cost types: cost per click (CPC) and cost per thousand views (vCPM). Depending on whether you want to drive traffic or awareness to your product, you can choose the cost type that works best for you.
Q: How can I get more UGC?
A: To get more UGC, you can send free products to micro-influencers in exchange for a video. If that video is good, you can pay them or ask them if you can use it as an ad.
Q: What AI tools should I use?
A: There are a lot of AI tools out there that can help you with e-commerce store data, e-commerce reporting, marketing analytics, and even organizing customer data.
📚 Resources
- [Amazon Ads](https://advertising.amazon.com/)
- [Redwood](https://www.redwoodagencygroup.com/)
- [Shutterstock](https://www.shutterstock.com/)
- [AI Video Editors](https://www.vidnami.com/)
- [AI Chat Bots](https://www.tars.com/)
- [Competitor Data](https://www.pricefx.com/)
- [Micro-Influencers](https://www.grin.co/)
- [Overseas Talent](https://www.onlinejobs.ph/)
