Building an e-store relies heavily on the products you’re selling and the financial elements of the business. However, there’s another feature that can help you master the former two bits of your eCommerce business – customer awareness. This concept refers to the degree to which your potential buyers are aware of the existence of your eCommerce brand.
This is a two-way relationship.
On the one hand, eCommerce entrepreneurs are aiming at spreading the word about their brand and increasing their sales.
On the other, customers are looking for the best value for their money. Therefore, e-store owners need to take into account both sides of the medal and work hard to both meet their own goals and fulfill their customers’ expectations.
In the next few paragraphs we’re going to show new e-store owners how to increase the customer awareness of their brands.
The skill of precise targeting is an important prerequisite of successful marketing. Since the process of increasing customer awareness can determine the course their business will take, it’s vital for a new e-store owner to make the most of audience targeting.
When you’ve directed your energy towards the right people for your offer, you’ll have more time at your disposal to work on other aspects of your e-store.
In line with that, you should take one goal at a time at the beginning of your eCommerce quest. This means that driving along too many lanes at the same time isn’t recommended when you’re still trying to be noticed out there, in the realm of online trade.
This refers both to your products and to your customers. So, the wisest path to take, for starters, is the one that includes a few products and a meticulously chosen target audience. If you decide to fit different groups of buyers into one template, it won’t yield the most efficient results in terms of your sales and e-store popularity.
Because of that, you should create a buyer persona, i.e. set a few common characteristics that will cover a range of people with similar interests. Some of these features are gender, age, education, social status, monthly income and many others. When you narrow down these options, you’ll be able to direct your marketing efforts in a more specific way.
E-store owners need to engage their own experience if they want to stand out from the crowd. Interestingly enough, if every eCommerce entrepreneur includes their own experience in their business strategy, there wouldn’t be any crowd. If so, every business would fly on the wings of that unique set of events their owner wants to use to propel the business.
Translated to the eCommerce environment – tell your customers how your life is reflected in your e-store. For instance, if you’ve won any awards in trade shows or competitions, include that experience in your marketing strategy. Supporting the chosen commercial goals with your professional success is a great recipe for a fast lane to raising the customer awareness of your e-business. Instead of paying a renowned individual to promote your brand and attract new customers, you can be your own brand promoter.
That way, an experienced and successful musician who launches an online music store is highly likely to increase the customer awareness of that eCommerce brand. Of course, you don’t have to be famous on a global scale. Sometimes only the fact that a niche professional runs the store will suffice to convince customers to stay on that website and buy something on it. The examples of success stories on the Forbes website can help you start weaving your own business story.
Although it’s not easy at the beginning, every e-store owner should make their e-store organization work for them. In other words, the more user-friendly features you manage to place on your eCommerce website, the more likely it is to perform a sort of self-promotion.
This is where we get to the issue of the underlying structure of your e-store.
If you place your e-store on one of the mainstream eCommerce platforms, you can count on their long experience and some deep-rooted procedures. For eCommerce rookies, these are two important features that should improve user experience on their websites.
When your customers can perform their purchases in a smooth and fast way, you’re already half way there when it comes to improved customer awareness. The other half of the way is to make them pleased with the performances of the goods you sell.
Apart from that, it’s important to pay attention to customers who buy goods in bulk. For them, you need to have various payment options available at the click of a mouse.
Further, preparing different invoice templates for such occasions can help you grasp the opportunity to sell more products when you come across a customer who is ready to buy them.
Social media is omnipresent in everything we do, so e-store owners can use various social media strategies to increase the customer awareness of their eCommerce brand.
However, regardless of the number of social media users, your eCommerce brand won’t be noticed unless you work actively on its promotion.
By this we don’t only mean the usual advertising tactics, like posting links to your e-store to your Facebook or Instagram page, but some more personal strategies, as well. For instance, you can use the benefits of Facebook ads and focus on the target audience that’s more likely to buy your products. By making them aware of your e-store, you can inspire them to become your customers.
E-store owners should also make an effort to get familiar with the advantages that Instagram can bring them in terms of customer awareness. The results of research show that about 68% of Instagram users tend to engage with brands. As such, they’re all potential leads for your e-store. If you manage to draw their attention to your online business and the stuff you sell, your popularity on this network will grow at lightning speed.
Also, since Instagram is a visual network, it’s a perfect choice for eCommerce entrepreneurs, since they can easily prepare the photos of their products for Instagram promotion.
Apart from this B2C solutions, social media can yield various benefits in the B2B environment. As you keep building your relationships with customers, you should keep using social networks to connect with your business fellows, as well.
LinkedIn is the most powerful medium for networking at the moment. You can make contact with e-store owners from different parts of the world and try to establish an eCommerce collaboration with them. For instance, you might come across some reliable and affordable suppliers that will improve your business efficiency and boost your sales.
People generally like original things. That’s why creative artists are so popular – they come up with one-of-a-kind works that have a specific value.
When we apply this way of thinking on eCommerce, it’s clear that every e-store owner needs to be a sort of artist in what they do. In other words, you need to highlight what makes you different from other similar online stores. If you manage to convince your customers that the unique selling proposition you’re promoting will solve their problems, your e-store will skyrocket.
This special feature that makes your e-store unique should be set before you make the website available for customers.
One path that you can take is the original production process. If you realize that you have the market for such a move, you can offer hand-made products, as opposed to the ones made on an assembly line. Making and selling wooden toys is a good example of such manufacture uniqueness.
The other path you can pursue is to offer some ordinary products, but fine tune the financial side of the business. In a nutshell, you can offer your customers special discounts, coupons and freebies for the most loyal customers, so as to nudge them to become repeat buyers and spread the word about your business.
Another feature that can contribute to your uniqueness is the customer-is-always right refund policy. If your customers are satisfied with how you resolve their issues with your products, they’ll speak in favor of your brand. As opposed to that, those e-store owners who are too unforgiving with their refund policy could get negative publicity, which is the last thing you need.
Launching an e-store is a great choice for people who want to gradually build a successful online business. The strategies presented in this article will help you increase the customer awareness of your brand. Also, they should improve your sales and provide a better perspective for your business. If you come up with the products that are different from the usual stuff and/or offer some better financial conditions, you’ll engage new customers to learn more about your e-store and buy the goods you sell. All these actions will result in increased popularity and improved sales of your eCommerce business.
AuthorBio: Mark is a biz-dev hero at Invoicebus - a simple invoicing service that gets your invoices paid faster. He passionately blogs on topics that help small biz owners succeed in their business. He is also a lifelong learner who practices mindfulness and enjoys long walks in nature more than anything else.
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