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How much are you spending on your marketing? One hundred dollars? One thousand dollars? One million dollars? No matter how much, this is hard-earned money that shouldn’t be spent on the wrong channels or strategies.
Every successful eCommerce business always has a marketing plan in action. But quite often, marketers make mistakes that may cause your business to lose money, time, and customers.
To help you spend your budget in the right way and become the number one online store, in this blog, we will shed light on the 9 most common eCommerce marketing mistakes and how can your business avoid them.
Table of Contents:
9 most common eCommerce marketing mistakes:- Selling to everyone
- Forgetting about mobile phones
- Having one-sided conversations
- Abandoning abandoned carts
- Forgetting your most important assets
- Ignoring search engines
- Expecting customers to take your word for it
- Operating from the stone age (marketing automation)
- Calling it a day too early (not analyzing results)
9 most common eCommerce marketing mistakes
Learning from your mistakes is one of the most important factors you need to focus on when building a successful business. So before we go into the details about the most common eCommerce marketing mistakes you are probably making, it’s important to note that this is a part of the process.
In other words, it's completely fine to make mistakes in your marketing plans. But to grow your eCommerce business, you have to turn these mistakes into lessons!
Now, get your pens ready, and let’s take a look at the nine most common eCommerce mistakes out there.
1- Selling to everyone
No product can ever serve the masses. Failing to identify your target audience means that your marketing efforts will never hit a home run. This may be a hard thing to hear, but not everyone is interested in what you are selling, so targeting everyone will result in way fewer sales than focusing all your efforts on segments that can actually be interested in your products.
How to avoid: The first thing you must do in your marketing plan is to identify your targeted audience. Even if you are providing a generic product that can be used by everyone, you have to create different messages and different marketing techniques for each segment you are targeting.
2- Forgetting about mobile phones
Did you know that around 3 out of every 4 dollars spent on online purchases come from mobiles? That number means that if your online store is not optimized for mobile phones, you might be losing thousands of dollars!
How to avoid: This one is fairly easy; optimize your online store and any other marketing channel (like email) for mobile phones and all other devices including tablets.
The optimization process includes ensuring that all texts, images, and elements are clear and have a quick loading time.
3- Having one-sided conversations
One of the most common eCommerce marketing mistakes is talking at your customers instead of with your customers. Like any business, customers are your bread and butter, so having one-sided conversations can show a lack of interest in what they have to say.
How to avoid: Ensure you always open a dialogue with your customers, reply to all comments (even negative ones), and give them easy ways to contact your support team. It also helps to avoid writing in an overly self-promotional tone.
Learn more about Conversational Marketing For eCommerce Business
4- Abandoning abandoned carts
Almost 70% of online carts are abandoned. This may be a shocking number to you, but don’t worry; there are simple ways to return many of those lost sales!
How to avoid: Have an abandoned cart automated email campaign that sends emails within seconds of customers leaving your website. If they still didn’t return for their cart, don’t get discouraged and follow up with them again.
You can even go the extra mile and offer a discount or a coupon that gives them that extra nudge.
5- Forgetting your most important assets (loyal customers & products)
As previously noted, customers are every eCommerce business's bread and butter. But to be more precise loyal customers are even more important! You probably know that retaining a customer is 5x cheaper than acquiring a new one. So by ignoring your loyal customers and just focusing on acquiring new ones, you can lose most of your sales.
In addition to loyal customers, your other vital asset is, of course, the products themselves. No matter how much you spend on your marketing efforts, if you start putting products not up to par, people will quickly catch on and turn into one of your competitors.
How to avoid: This one is also a no-brainer, always focus on increasing customer retention rate by introducing loyalty programs and other methods that show you actually care.
As for the products, all you got to do is ensure you are providing consistently good quality. Even if you send out a product with slightly bad quality, own up to it, apologize, and make it up to the customer. This comes a long way with customers and humanizes your brand.
6- Ignoring search engines
Nowadays, when someone wants to purchase a product, they simply google it. This shows how important it is for your online store and your marketing campaigns to be optimized for search engines or customers might never hear about you.
How to avoid: Do keyword research to learn what your customers are looking for. Then use these keywords to optimize your website pages and marketing campaigns.
Giving up on your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts quickly is also one of the most common eCommerce marketing mistakes. So always remember that SEO is a long process that might take time, and you have to be patient as in the long run, it can benefit you greatly.
7- Expecting customers to take your word for it
Customers expect you to say that you have the best products out there, but that doesn’t mean that they will magically take your word for it! This is one of the most common eCommerce marketing mistakes, just for the lack of effort.
How to avoid: To avoid this mistake, you have to showcase customers' testimonials and user-generated content on all your platforms and marketing channels.
8- Operating from the stone age (marketing automation)
If your eCommerce business is not using marketing automation, then it's safe to say you are operating from the stone age! Automating your marketing efforts can help you decrease costs, increase sales, and generally run a more successful eCommerce business.
How to avoid: Invest in a marketing operating tool that automates ads, emails, and SMS. There are tools that can also personalize your customers’ experience and recommend personalized products.
9- Calling it a day too early (not analyzing results)
The last pitfall to make our list of the most common eCommerce marketing mistakes is the lack of analysis. As we emphasized before, you have to make mistakes in order to learn from them.
However, if you are not analyzing your marketing efforts and adjusting them as you go, then you are not actually learning anything.
How to avoid: During and after every marketing campaign you run, track all data, and compare them with your previous numbers as well as industry benchmarks.
Some of the most important metrics you can track are conversion rate, engagement rate, CTR, and ROI.
In the end, if you are making some or even all of the most common eCommerce marketing mistakes, don’t worry ConvertedIn can help you out! Our marketing operating system can help you avoid many of these common pitfalls and automate all your marketing efforts.
Book a demo now with one of our experts and uplevel your eCommerce marketing game!
