How to Attract Online Customers to Your eCommerce Store in Five Steps
Now that you’ve entered the online marketplace, you’ll need to attract customers to your e-commerce store. This is the foundation of your new sales and marketing strategy, so approach it with care.
To make this process simple, we’ve refined it down to five key steps.
Step #1 - Understand Who Your Online Customer Is
The first, most basic step toward securing an online customer base is understanding who your target customer is. In order to best serve the needs of your online clientele, you will need to pinpoint exactly what subset of the public you are looking to sell to.
To get a clear picture, map out a buyer’s persona that captures key traits that the majority of consumers in your market share. A persona is the foundation of any effective marketing strategy, so it’s important to think critically while writing it.
Your marketing persona should highlight specifically the influential traits of each of your market segments. Evaluate the lifestyles, buying processes, and decision-making factors within each segment as they relate to interacting with your brand.
Then, assess the buyer’s persona from a sales perspective. What benefits do you have to offer your online persona? Assess the problems your online customers are encountering at this time and explore specific ways that your products and services could be of use. Simulate the buying process for your persona and analyze the factors that might be considered in making a final purchase decision.
The completed persona will provide a framework for resonating with your market and act as the basis for communication with your online audience.
Step #2 - Write a Letter to Your Online Customer
Once you understand who it is you’re speaking to, you can craft a message that will resonate with this online persona. In a carefully written letter, connect with your audience to show that you understand their current situation and their changing needs. You should address any fears and challenges they are facing and let them know what you are doing to make it easier. What would you tell them about how you can help if they were beside you?
This is where it’s important to make use of the persona you drafted in step one. Think carefully about how your online customers are expecting to be approached given the results of your critical thinking. What are their priorities and what solutions can you offer that are feasible and will resonate with where they’re at?
In closing, remind them again that you understand their struggles, that you are doing everything you can to help, and that you have the perfect solution for them available on your website-Commerce store.
Step #3 – Design Your eCommerce Store
Design the main page of your e-commerce store to reiterate the words communicated in your letter. When your audience reaches your online store, they should immediately know they are in a place that is meant for them. Reinforce right away that you understand their situation and that you are there to help.
The more your online customers can identify with your brand, the more likely they are to connect and trust.
This same approach flows through to the products that you decide to offer online. You won’t need to include all of your products in your e-commerce store, only those that can be optimized for effective sales, delivery and customer satisfaction in an online store. These products should be useful to your persona, scaleable from an inventory perspective, easy to deliver, and already generating a high rate of customer satisfaction to minimize returns and other unnecessary headaches.
Step #4 – Introduce Existing Clientele
When you invite your existing customers to visit your online store, make sure you’re prepared to offer them an exceptional experience. You can achieve this by providing usability tools, volume discounts, and other incentives to bring friends and family to your e-commerce store, such as coupons and referral bonuses.
Reach out to your existing clientele using any of the channels available to you. Whether it be through email, social media, telephone, or even snail mail, let them know what you’re doing and that you want them to be a part of it. Your message should be consistent with your online customer letter and newly designed digital storefront, including an acknowledgement of revised product and service offerings.
Step #5 – Generate Creative Content
After you’ve introduced your existing clientele to your store, you’ll want to look at getting found online a little more comprehensively. For you, this might mean utilizing a blog to generate web traffic or building a social media community around your brand. Maybe you’ve heard the success stories and want to leverage pay-per-click ad campaigns on Google and Facebook.
No matter your game plan, you’ll need to start creating digital content that is useful to your persona and embedded with the keywords that your online customer is looking for. Bring in a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert here to help you pick keywords that will rank well in online searches.
Remember, your online marketing strategy doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be in motion. If you’re ready to get the wheels in motion, get in touch with me using the app below and we’ll devise effective digital solutions for attracting new customers to your online store.