Starting an E-commerce site is an incredible amount of work with an endless amount of variables to consider for every step of your business. We took a look at some of the most common tactics that we have implemented for clients and then sat down with E-commerce consultant Kirk Hunter from Another Digital Masterpiece.
In this episode, we will discuss the essential things an e-commerce owner must do to create a successful brand such as:
- Email Marketing
- Promotions, Discount, and Deals
- Abandoned Cart Recovery
- Ad retargeting
- and the psychology behind why people buy
Intro Speaker 0:01
Welcome to the Social Linus podcast, helping you take your business from idea to momentum and beyond. Now, here’s your host Natalie Gallagher.
Natalie 0:11
Hi, I’m Natalie Gallagher with Social Linus, joining me today is Kirk Hunter of Another Digital Masterpiece. Kirk is a professional e-commerce consultant. My background is digital marketing. Today, we’re going to talk about the three most important things that e-commerce business owners must do to make their businesses successful.
Kirk 0:31
Some would call it the essential
Natalie 0:33
the essential you need to
Kirk 0:34
do absolutely.
Natalie 0:36
So Kurt, what is the first essential marketing thing that all e-commerce business owners must do?
Kirk 0:42
I think the Genesis has to start with email marketing. I mean, that is essentially everybody is building their brand out on sending you something to let you know; we are here and we are offering you something it could be a discount, it could be a product, whatever the case is.
Natalie 0:59
It seems kind of crazy because everybody’s, you know, spam filters are flooded people get, you know, hundreds of emails a day, I have some brands that email me every single day. Is it really that effective?
Kirk 1:10
It is effective for people who are looking for your particular products or psychologically need that discount. We’ve been trained since view that if we’ve gotten a deal, we’ve got something to brag about. So not only was it something I want, or maybe I didn’t want, but I got an amazing deal on it. It’s normally $50 and I got it for 10 or $15. You know, businesses like Marshalls and TJ Maxx have built entire empires on this exact concept Who among us hasn’t been to Burlington Coat Factory at least once or twice in their lives?
Natalie 1:44
So if you’re an e-commerce company and this kind of links to one of the other essentials, emails are a critical way to connect with your customer, and it’s not just limited to promotions or discounts, of course, you know, welcome emails abandoned cart emails, new product emails, if you have a blog, which you should Well, that’s for another episode. And if you have a blog, you know, emailing those blog posts to your customers are all critical marketing components.
Kirk 2:11
Yeah, people hate to be sold, but they love to buy. So if they’re getting a cart abandonment email, they’re more likely to actually spend 58% more than if they just went to the shopping cart themselves. And that’s just one example of the power of using that particular component.
Natalie 2:27
That’s huge. Alright, so during the emails, you talk about promotions, which if you’re a business owner, the idea of giving deep discounts, free shipping, free items. I mean, that can make you cringe a little because you’re looking at the bottom line, but we know that’s important, right? Why?
Kirk 2:43
Well, you have to think as a business owner, anybody who’s an entrepreneur understands that. Your Business never ends. You can have a great month, you can have a great quarter, you can have a great year, you still have to focus on the following year, the following day, the following month. It’s a 24-hour cycle. It never ends. Therefore, you have to make sure that your business is on a consistent cycle, you know, you’re never going to rest on your laurels, oh, this project did really good. So I’m just gonna sit on the couch and not do anything else. You’ve got those wheels turning, you’re trying to figure out how you can increase your customer base, increase your revenue base. And the way to do that is to make sure that you’re engaged, that you’ve got promotions that you’re offering that carried to all the people who have already engaged with you, or the people who are thinking about it.
Natalie 3:27
You know, and we’ve talked before about making sure that your pricing structure accommodates that. So if you have a razor-thin profit margin, it’s not going to be as easy for you to do promotions. But you know, one of my favorite examples about this is the JC Penney example, you know, a few years ago, their big Renaissance was going to be offering consistently low prices all the time, but with no discounts or promotions, and in theory should work really well like, oh, we’ll go to JC Penney, we know it’s going to cost less. In practice, though. We’re so trained to look for the sales and we feel like we’re getting a good deal. Completely bombed. So if you’re a business owner, that’s number two, number one, email marketing, number two promotions, discounts, deals, make them feel like they’re getting a heck of a deal from you.
Kirk 4:13
Yeah, and it comes back to kind of the list price situation, people are always going to assume that there’s a little bit more leeway, there’s a little better deal that they can get. So he never want to put all your cards on the table at the very beginning, he always want to make sure that you have a buffer, see, even go back to your razor-thin margin. If you have razor-thin margins, it’s probably time to reevaluate what your pricing structure is, if you can squeeze more money out of it. You have to kind of evaluate “Why am I doing this?” Nobody wants to operate on a situation where if something doesn’t sell or if it does sell, I don’t have the resources, the profit to justify keep going. You always want to make sure that that’s a consideration as well.
Natalie 4:54
Absolutely. Now the last piece and I think this is to some extent one of the most controversial is ads that automatically retarget so ads and retargeting so just to break it down retargeting is when let’s say you go to Gap, calm, you look at a pair of jeans, you leave the website, you don’t buy them. But everywhere you go on the internet now Instagram, Facebook, just general Google searches, there’s an ad featuring those exact same jeans. Why is this important?
Kirk 5:24
It’s definitely a nuisance. I’m not going to say that people love it. But believe it or not, it works to your advantage that we’ve been trained to expect this type of thing. We know that kind of there’s a big brother component to it. We know that when we go to sites, they’re going to come back and follow us. And as a society, we’re basically okay with that. So you have to use it to your advantage. Maybe they don’t need those jeans tomorrow. Maybe they don’t need them two weeks from now, but that party is coming up. And they’re going to spend that little bit of extra and they’re gonna click on that ad so you just have to keep it’s even though it’s prevalent, it’s not necessarily invasive, in the fact that you can kind of scroll past it. It’s not taking up your entire screen. It’s just part of your journey as you scroll up or down. There it is. If you’re not interested, keep going. If you are and it works, then you click on it.
Natalie 6:15
I actually love this. You know, I remember being in high school, I would go shopping, there’d be an item I liked. I wasn’t sure to really spend the money. You go home it’s done right. Maybe you think about it, maybe Daydream would it be like to wear it? But with ad retargeting, they don’t have to just dream about it at night. It is there ever-present. And it’s really a powerful tool for business owners. Yeah,
Kirk 6:38
absolutely. And, you know, we’ve been accustomed that we’re going to see products like that. We know that, you know, when we click on things, it’s already coming back to us. So it’s not going to damage your brand to have that. If anything, it makes you more prevalent, like oh, okay, this is a brand that has something and they have enough money to keep placing it into my face. So if you make that investment Right, you’re saying, Hey, I’m a big boy company, big girl company, I’ve got these products and go ahead and purchase with me because I have the bandwidth to put it in front of your face on several instances.
Natalie 7:12
So for the business owners, here’s the key takeaway. Think about the psychology behind why people purchase. When you send them emails, you’re constantly reminding them, when you’re giving them promotions, you’re making them feel special like they got a great deal. And when the ads, follow them around, it’s hard to forget about that product that you maybe want, but now really want because you cannot get away from it.
Kirk 7:34
And I would say also, that people have experiences where, like you said, when you go into a store, and they weren’t sure that they want us to make the purchase, and they didn’t. And then they were like, Oh man, I really wish that I had that product. Now you’re putting it back in front of them. You can look at it as you’re giving that customer a second or third chance to make that purchase. Maybe they were just browsing maybe they weren’t sure, but then they’ve come to that decision point where your product works best for them.
Natalie 8:00
Excellent. Well Kirk, thank you so much for letting us pick your brain and share your knowledge tell the business owners we help this. We hope this helps you make the best decisions about how to market your product and get in front of as many eyes as possible. Best of luck.
Unknown Speaker 8:14
Thank you. This has been the Social Linus podcast. For more information about Social Linus, head over to sociallinus.com
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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