Hey there, Catherine here, and welcome to today’s episode of the Productpreneur Success podcast!
Not getting enough sales through your eCommerce store? Whether this is a sudden thing or a long term issue, you may be keen to boost your eCommerce sales – FAST!
Unfortunately, all businesses go through periods of time when their sales slow down or decline.
I remember that feeling.
Sometimes it was just a crap time of year for sales. Like, February and school holidays were always horrible for me in terms of sales in my online store.
Sometimes sales would dip because I’d run out of stock, or sold out of most popular products.
And of course, sometimes it was because times were just tough. Like I said in my last podcast episode, I managed to grow my business through the 2008 GFC, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t sometimes really tough.
The journey from here to success is never a smooth, upward line! If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it, right?
So if you feel like you’re the guy wearing the sandwich board standing outside the empty café spruiking a meal deal while the joint across the road is absolutely pumping – this is for you.
Here are my 12 best ways to boost eCommerce sales FAST!
#1. Run a clearance sale
If you have a pile of slow moving or old stock that’s sitting on the shelf, a Clearance Sale is a good idea.
All this means is – offer a generous discount to encourage people to buy.
I recommend only running a big sale like this twice a year though (such as end of financial year and Black Friday/Cyber Monday).
If you run big discount offers too frequently, you’ll train your customers to wait for the next discount and that just erodes your profitability.
I’ve written a blog post about how to run an End Of Financial Year Sale, so I’ll link to that on the show notes if you’re unsure how to do this one properly.
#2. Hold a Facebook “garage” sale event
Similar to a clearance sale, but held as a Facebook event. I’m sure you’ve seen these types of thing before?
How it works is: the business owner posts photos and details of the product with a generous low-price offer, and the first person to comment ‘BUY’ gets the deal.
Another effective way to shift slow-moving stock, OR if you have odd bits and pieces (like one or two left in the size/colour).
#3. Do a Facebook Live video to demonstrate a product
Facebook Live videos get fantastic organic reach at the moment, so take advantage of that to show your audience a product in detail.
You don’t always have to get in front of your camera yourself either if you’re shy! Just show off the product and talk your audience through the features and benefits of that product.
And make sure you remember to tell them how they can buy it!
#4. Do a paid collaboration with an Influencer
I have clients who experience up to 30% spike in sales in a month when they run a paid promotion with an Influencer!
It’s widely talked about in digital marketing that your customers need to trust you before they will buy from you.
And working with influencers who already have an established audience can be a way to build trust and rapport with your potential customers.
Influencers are also a way to build brand awareness, get traffic to your website and convert those visitors to sales.
Plus, you can also build up a library of great images by working with influencers. You get to use these images in your own content marketing (to post on social media, include in email campaigns and feature on the product pages of my website).
How do you choose the “right” influencers to work with?
The most important thing is that the influencer shares the same target market as yours.
Secondly, you want to look closely at the engagement rate of every influencer you consider working with, paid or unpaid.
By that I mean that I look at the level of engagement (likes and comments) on their social media posts as a percentage of their total following.
Any influencer who works in return for financial remuneration should have a media kit that includes all their metrics like audience numbers, engagement and so on.
This gives you a sense of if their following is authentic and is likely to generate authentic followers and customers for your brand.
Paid influencers will often generate the greatest amount of website traffic and sales of the featured product.
This is because an influencer who is running a business, vs an individual who works for free, is more likely to approach a campaign with you from a commercial perspective. They’ll (a) have a bigger audience, and (b) understand how to communicate with that audience in a way that leads to action (traffic and sales).
Or, you can run a collaboration with one or more other brands or online stores whose products are complimentary to your own (not in competition), and who share the same ideal customer as yours.
#5. Run a themed promotion
There are numerous important ‘Days’ during the year – from Easter to Mothers Day to World Environment Day to Christmas (and plenty more in between).
Run your own promotion that is themed around one of these days. Essentially, you’re using the special day of the year as a good excuse to make your audience a really great offer to buy from you.
For example, I once sold green and gold baby swim nappies as an Australia Day promotion.
#6. Run a ‘Buy X Get 1 Free’ promotion
This offer depends on the price point of your product and the quantity customers usually buy.
I’ve had clients run a ‘buy 4 get 1 free’ and others run a ‘buy 1 get 1 free’ (and other variations).
#7. Offer free shipping (express is better!)
People hate to pay for shipping, so a fairly reliable way to encourage customers to buy is to offer free shipping.
I see big ecommerce retailers do this frequently on a weekend during a slow-sales period, or at the end of month when you need to make budget.
#8. Remind loyalty point holders of soon-to-expire points
This is a great idea for those of you who run a loyalty point program on your online store.
On a monthly basis – send an email to the contacts whose points are due to expire next month.
This works best if you can email personally (rather than using an automated email campaign). That way you can include the specific number of points that are due to expire for each contact.
#9. Do a product launch campaign
Making a big song and dance about a new product is an awesome way to drum up sales!
Equally, this works well for stores who have a top seller – do a ‘launch’ once a year and you’ll find your sales to new customers spike!
#10. Run a giveaway (yes this can boost sales!)
Run a giveaway to win a prize with a pretty big value.
To enter the giveaway – customers need to spend over a certain $ in your store within the month of the giveaway.
The deal is, if the winner has already bought the item you’re giving away, you would refund them their purchase amount.
I’ve had clients run this promo and boost sales with great success!
#11. Use scarcity!
With all your offers and promotions – make sure you have a clear expiry date on the offer!
Don’t ever run an offer that is valid indefinitely.
The reason is – ‘fear of missing out’ is the best incentive that gets customers over the line with buying.
That means – always email your list multiple times about each offer, with the last email emphasising that it’s about to end!
#12. Use targeted Facebook ads
When you need a hit of sales quickly, your best bet is NOT to boost a Facebook post and NOT to run ads to a cold audience. (A cold audience is people who don’t know your business or brand and have never been to your website before.)
Instead, run Facebook ads to your warm audiences. I like to use a custom audience of email subscribers, engaged social media followers and a custom audience of people who’ve viewed products in your online store.
Bonus: Use Email Marketing
Email marketing has to be one of, if not THE lowest cost marketing channel AND gives you probably the highest ROI of any marketing strategy at 3800%.
So as we find ourselves in some tight economic times, I advise everyone to use email marketing as much as you can to drive sales in your online store.
Grab my free campaign planning guide!
When it comes to promoting your online store, you might want a bit more help with how to plan and execute.
So I invite you to download my free promotional campaign planning guide and template to help you ensure that your next giveaway is a profitable sales success!
Before we go, don’t forget that we also have a free Facebook group to support this podcast, which is called Rockstar Productpreneur.
I’ll link to it in the show notes, and encourage you to join if you haven’t already.
It’s a group of experts and like-minded peeps who totally understand your dreams!
People who can answer questions, give feedback and provide support.
People who are here to talk you off the ledge if you feel like giving up.
And most importantly, this group is for Productpreneurs who are hell-bent on commercialising their brilliant idea and building up a lucrative, profitable business to sell it to the world!
Last but not least – if YOU have a burning question that you’d love to have answered on this Podcast, please email us at hello@productpreneurmarketing.com with the subject line ‘PODCAST QUESTION’.