Do you know what makes an eCommerce business so appealing that everyone wants to ride the wave?
Probably you know if you’re running an eCommerce business, but still, let me rephrase it for you – because eCommerce leads close faster than any other businesses. The conversion of a lead to a customer is so fast that it will probably take just 60 seconds.
But how to find leads might be your question.
Every business struggle with this challenge and eCommerce business are no different here. In fact, eCommerce businesses struggle more – because of the higher level of competition.
And that’s why we have compiled 15 effective ways for you so that you can get the most out of your leads and, ultimately, get the most out of your eCommerce business.
Now, if you are unaware of what leads are, this brief overview will help you;
A lead is simply someone who is interested in your products and services. And when it comes to eCommerce businesses, you must target your leads based on who they are and where they come from (source) – as targeted leads lead to more sales. So, let’s see how you can make your lead generation effective.
1. Create Content That Provides Value to Prospects
Content marketing is well-known among marketers for lead generation. According to CMI, 72% of marketers say content marketing increased the number of leads for them.
Here’s how it works;
Step 1: A user plans to buy a grinder and move to Google to research the product before buying.
Step 2: He landed on a guide informing the user about how the motor’s power affects its grinding power and all.
Step 3: He found a few grinders along with links on the blog post.
Step 4: He clicked on one of the products, compared them, and bought one as per convenience.
And that’s why you must also create content even if you’re an eCommerce company. You can also publish valuable content on other industrial websites that accept guest posts as it also helps in your brand awareness and lead generation.
2. Build an Email List
Building an email list is one of the old-school lead generation strategies that still work well. 42% of companies believe email is one of their most important lead generation channels.
Consider giving a promo code in exchange for your user’s mail. Once they become a part of your email list, you can target them with different promotional offers, sales, discounts to expect sales from them.
You can even remind them via emails when your users leave something in their cart.
3. Use Discounts and Other Offers
Users visit your site for a reason – to make a purchase. And if you aren’t pulling strings with discounts, sales, and other attractive offers like free shipping on the first order, then you’re losing the game.
A study revealed that customers are four to five times more likely to purchase when you offer free shipping. By offering such offers, you push your users off the edge and make them customers.
4. Leverage SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
If you’re thinking that you can only optimize your educational content like blogs and buying guides for SEO, then you’re losing leads.
You must optimize your sales page for SEO. Other than working on On-Page SEO of your sales page, add product descriptions to your pages too. Consider adding the keywords in the product descriptions so that your sales page can appear in search results for those keywords.
You can also add semantic keywords in your copy as it will bring more chances for your pages to appear in the search results.
5. Leverage FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
According to trust pulse, FOMO triggers 60% of people to make purchases – mostly within 24 hours.
You can create limited period deals on your website in order to trigger people to make purchases. You can also couple the trick with your emails to expect even better results.
6. Use PPC Advertising
Optimizing your sales pages, articles, and buying guides for Google’s ranking is definitely a great move to generate leads. However, SEO takes time. You can expect at least six or more months to see its results, which is also not confirmed.
With PPC advertising (considering Google Ads), you can fill the gap. Imagine a user searching for white jeans, and your Google ad appears at the top of the search results. You can expect a click there.
However, even though your SEO efforts start paying off, you must not give up on your PPC campaigns. It improves trust among users when your Google ads and search rankings both appear at the top of the search results.
7. Enable Cookies
If we talk about the same white jeans example, imagine you search the same and click on a search result and then drop it. Now, you visit another site and see the ad for that same white jeans.
That’s how eCommerce companies retarget their leads with the help of cookies. According to stats, retargeting can improve ad engagement rates up to 400%.
8. Utilize Push Notifications to their Best
Push notifications are also one of the game changers when it comes to lead generation for your eCommerce business.
When users subscribe to your push notifications, they allow you to share updates on their mobiles or browsers. You can share news about the latest collection arrivals, upcoming sales, and promotional offers to bring users in.
According to e-goi, push notifications tend to have higher opening rates – 50% higher than email marketing.
9. Leverage Personalization
Not every user that will come to your site will be new. And when you use your website to communicate with those new users, you somewhere ignore the users who re-visit you.
Personalization can be a help here. Personalized marketing enables you to specifically target users via ads or other relevant offers, depending on their past activities on your website (it will expand more in the next point).
10. Identify User Behavior & Make Adjustments
As soon as visitors land on your website, your website must start recording their activities like where they clicked first, what product they looked interested in, did they put the product in a cart, etc.
Once you get the information, you can personalize and retarget the user accordingly. Personalization with retargeting, coupled with users’ activities, creates an excellent strategy to generate leads.
Moreover, you can also work on your website’s design based on these data points and make the user experience more welcoming.
11. Live Chats
A poll by Anderson Consulting showed that 62% of online customers would like to make more purchases if live chat and support were available.
Moreover, live chats are also responsible for boosting conversions. Live chats don’t only offer assistance to visitors when needed but also act as a means of survey for your business to identify what users couldn’t find in your landing page’s copy.
12. Use Educational Webinars
It is believed that webinars can help B2B lead generation if used effectively in a content strategy.
87% of surveyed marketers found webinars effective. However, 20-40% of webinar attendees become leads, and 2-5% of them make a purchase.
13. Utilize Social Media
Social media is not just to socialize anymore; it is one of the richest lead generation channels irrespective of your business.
For eCommerce businesses, giveaways are likely to work out well on social media. Such activities create a networking effect for your product. And mathematically, you get the benefit in the expense of your product’s shipping cost when conducting give away.
You can also plan contests and create UGC(user-generated content) campaigns to generate leads and brand awareness.
14. Social Media Advertising
Fortunately, you can do more on social media than just arranging giveaways and contests. To take things on another level, you must leverage social media advertising.
Social media channels like Facebook allow you to target your customers precisely. If you’re willing to target users that specifically live in a particular location, come under a specific age range, are females, and are interested in cosmetics, then you can target them via social media ad targeting.
Moreover, you can also boost your content like blog posts, buying guides, and ebooks among your target users and generate leads.
15. Optimize Your Site for Mobile
According to Statista, 60.9 of the US population counts as mobile buyers. Moreover, the age group that prefers mobile shopping ranges from 18 to 64 years.
The fact is people prefer mobiles to access sites and research on Google. And in the upcoming years, the numbers are likely to improve. Setting your site for mobile is like building a lead generation mechanism as visitors have high chances of becoming a lead when they research on mobile.
And that’s it!
Conclusion
So, these were the 15 effective ways that can help you generate leads for your eCommerce business. However, creativity has no limits. We’ll suggest you keep an eye on what’s trending too.
Ecommerce is expanding like never before. And when there is such intense competition lies, you must keep experimenting with what’s working and eliminate what’s not. Not every visitor that will land on your site, will convert or become a lead, and that’s fine too. You just need to make sure that you’re getting the most out of your effort.