Guest Post: Essential E-Commerce Marketing Tips for Summer
Summer is back, bringing with it warm, relaxing days spent outdoors soaking up the sunshine.
The reality, though, is far less bright for many businesses. E-commerce metrics indicate that summertime heralds decreased revenues for most e-commerce sites, with gross sales declining compared to peak sales months like December. Customers are out and about on vacation or at the beach, which means less screen time on their devices and fewer purchases in general.
If you want to keep your sales hot during the summer season, you'll have to work hard and come up with new strategies to promote your products during these typically slow months.
It will take time to perfect your marketing strategy, but using the right blend of techniques and marketing spend optimization will increase your brand's appeal and guarantee that your business grows. Summer is an excellent opportunity to start planning for the months ahead.
One of the strategies that you may consider using to help with your e-commerce marketing is the use of email forms. These can be added to various sections of your website to collect visitors' names and email addresses, allowing you to generate more leads. Integrating an email verification API into your forms can verify that the email addresses gathered are legitimate and accurate, enhancing the effectiveness of your lead generation efforts.
While you're wasting your weekends at the seaside, winter may feel like a blip on the radar, but the holiday shopping season is approaching faster than you think.
Mid-summer is when the smartest—and often most successful—e-commerce retailers start planning for the holiday season. Follow these e-commerce marketing tips to boost your earnings this season and get a head start on your Christmas marketing.
Ultimate E-commerce Marketing Tips to Survive the Summer Heat
If summer is typically a slow season for you, business-wise, you should make the most of it.
To plan ahead for your peak season, whenever that is, focus on developing fresh content, strengthening relationships with existing customers, and optimizing your website.
Take advantage of this opportunity to give your existing customers some attention while simultaneously strategizing how to bring your top-of-the-funnel leads much farther down the sales funnel.
Experiment with big data resources by exploring solutions like the Hadoop ecosystem diagram. With customer behavior analytics, big data helps e-commerce businesses to gain deeper insight into their customers.
Supply chain management, logistics, and operational processes can all benefit from big data resources. It contributes to improved performance and significant cost savings.
Here are some ways to keep your e-commerce business prospering and your sales surging over the summer:
Entice Shoppers With Promotions and Exclusive Offers
Shoppers should be enticed with exclusive offers. Creating a summer discount code is a valuable e-commerce incentive. To thank customers for their patronage, you can offer new email subscribers a promotional discount.
Launching holiday-specific promotions is a good e-commerce marketing strategy, but you can also apply different types of incentives at all times to catch your target market's attention and boost revenue.
Offering delivery discounts is a great example of these types of incentives.
One of the most common reasons for cart abandonment is unexpected delivery charges, and with the widespread adoption of Amazon Prime and its two-day shipping benefit, most online buyers expect fast and free delivery. This promotion can help you reduce cart abandonment and bring in new clients.
Improve the Mobile User Experience on Your Website
Mobile shopping is catching up to and even overtaking traditional e-commerce shopping on desktop PCs and laptops. A study by SaleCycle on the fashion industry demonstrates this fact.
(Image Source: Sale Cycle)
Most people do their shopping from their smartphones because we live in a world that prioritizes easy access to technology. This makes it critical to optimize your site for mobile users in order to increase conversion rates and keep your business moving forward.
This includes making sure the design is user-friendly and appealing. The checkout system should be fast and straightforward. Providing digital wallet payment options such as PayPal can boost your mobile conversions significantly, as many customers prefer transactions with simpler payment methods.
Expand Your Reach
This summer, your customers shouldn't be the only ones on the road. By growing your consumer base and automating e-commerce shipping, you can take your firm global. Keep in mind that it's winter on the opposite side of the globe. This is especially useful if you need to sell a lot of winter stock.
Just make sure to perform international market research before going global. For additional information about foreign markets for American products, contact the Department of Commerce. You should also devise a strategy for distributing your product internationally.
Will you establish a foreign branch or form a partnership with local representatives? Marketing is also an important factor to consider. Just because something works in the United States doesn't guarantee it will work somewhere else.
To guarantee that your methods can effectively reach and engage with that market, you'll want to customize them to cultural differences and traditions.
Adjust Sales to Coincide With Popular Summertime Holidays
The holidays are an excellent time to offer promotional sales for your online store. Many businesses offer discounts and product sales over the summer in preparation for the Fourth of July, the back-to-school buying season, and Labor Day.
You can choose summer holidays that have a strong connection to your industry based on the type of products your business offers. If you provide apparel or devices that students might want before school reopens, you should absolutely plan back-to-school specials and start promoting them as early as possible in the season.
You can give a discount on specific items, discounted bundles, or a free back-to-school item with every transaction. Consider which holiday you'd like to set up a promotion for and launch an email marketing campaign to advertise it.
Offer Free Delivery
For many e-commerce companies, offering free shipping is a no-brainer. Even the most cynical budget shopper will be enticed to make a purchase if there is free shipping. Especially if they are new to your store and need some extra persuading.
Enhance Your User Experience
Your user experience should be consistently improved. Customers will go for sites that are easier to use and allow them to make purchases quickly without tedious transactions or loading delays, especially during this season, when they are likely to be traveling.
Double-check that everything is in order. Loading times should be kept to a minimum, and the shopping cart process should be quick and clean.
The general navigation of your website should be faultless and simple to use. You should also be looking into improving fraud detection and securing transactions by asking questions like “what is an ML pipeline?”
These points, however, must be addressed throughout the year, not only now that competition is high and clients are scarce.
Promote Your Online Store via a New Channel
Is there a content channel you've been meaning to try or expand but haven't had the opportunity? The slow season is an excellent opportunity to try out social or advertising channels.
It's no secret that, behind Google, YouTube is the second-largest search engine. You should consider setting up a YouTube channel and cross-optimizing it on your website.
(Image Source: Oberlo)
There is an endless supply of social media outlets to discover and advertising opportunities to pursue. Consider joining Facebook groups for your industry or using Instagram to run social media ads to boost sales.
Adopt the Remarketing Strategy
Remarketing should be a vital part of your marketing over the summer season to improve sales. With remarketing, you'll be able to target your audience at the right time.
You'll not only present your summer promotion to clients who have previously connected with your company, but you can also reach them when they are actively searching for summer season offers somewhere else.
Your prospects of increasing sales conversion rates are significant with such targeted advertising and by showing adverts to the most relevant consumers.
Introduce Summer Products
Customers love to see new products while shopping. Introduce items that are relevant to the season to get your customers excited.
(Image Source: Oberlo)
In the summer, some products practically jump off the shelves themselves. Sunglasses are popular buys, but leisure gear, athletics, backpacks, and watches are also in demand.
You can survive the sweltering heat of summer by thinking about which products will perform well during the summer months and shelving others for other periods.
Make Use of a Chatbot
Chatbots are useful all year, but they can be especially handy during the summer months. Your chatbots can easily respond to the majority of your frequent customer support questions if you have a solid strategy in place. Even better, they won't need time off during the summer.
Test execution software like TestRail API can help you ensure that the chatbot is properly integrated into your website with maximum functionality.
Send Summer Postcards to Your Most Valuable B2B Clients
Sending goodies to VIP customers is one of the most effective customer retention strategies. Most businesses focus their B2B marketing efforts around the holidays. Surprise them with a summer postcard, and their loyalty will soar to new heights.
Increase Your Social Media Activity
To remain firmly placed in your audience's mind and be the first pick when they want to buy, publish more content on your social media accounts.
People spend more time online over the summer, especially when they have days off to enjoy the sunshine. As a result, your target audience is there, sharing photographs and tales, as well as going to places. As a result, having a strong internet presence is certain to deliver significant benefits.
Create viral content by starting a dialogue and experimenting with multiple content types (video critiques, images, text, and guides). For example, utilizing impressive drone shots at Videvo can also bring a unique and visually appealing aspect to your content.
Another excellent idea is to use gaming mechanics. It provides users with a compelling means to interact with your business in a non-gaming scenario but also encourages them to return for more. You can also collect identifiable data using integrated entry forms.
This will assist you in connecting with your customers, gaining a better understanding of your target market, and establishing your brand.
Personalize Your Email Marketing
Consider personalizing your website and email marketing campaign for seasonal promotions that will inspire visitors to shop cheerfully while also enjoying the summer ambiance.
Group subscribers on your newsletter list and send targeted messages and offers. Even if your inventory isn't generally centered around summer products, offering just one season-themed product, especially if it's offered as a gift with a purchase, can go a long way.
Build anticipation for the summer sales deals by hinting at them before launching the promotion. Allowing your subscribers to get a sneak glimpse at new seasonal arrivals or discounts will pique their interest and encourage them to order their favorites.
Customers will feel special, your relationship will improve, and you can grow your mailing list if you send personalized messages to current customers or loyal members. You can send a link to the upcoming summer collection to your customers.
Make Your Homepage More Appealing
Your website is often the first point of contact between you and your customers. Small details like using the right domain name, for instance, make a strong first impression. E-commerce businesses in New Zealand, for instance, fall in the “domain names nz” zone and will have a domain name ending with .nz.
(Image Source: Oberlo)
The way we connect with people and items is heavily influenced by first impressions. Websites are no different. Users will continue to browse the site if their first impression is a good one.
You might decide to go all out with your summertime marketing as an online store owner by using a pitch maker to create ads that captivate the audience. It's critical, however, to indicate that you're conducting a seasonal promotion from the time your website visitors arrive on your page.
You can add a banner that displays the impending sales promotion to make it visible, or employ more discretion and differentiate seasonal offerings in the navigation bar by color or text size.
Add summer phrasings such as "stay cool in the summer with our new line of...". The right phrases trigger a reaction in the reader and promote the transaction in focus.
In your summer design, use bright and vibrant colors with bold contrast. It will make your page look new and relevant, delighting your visitors.
Get Ready for the Summer Season
Throughout the year, discounts and special offers continue to be an efficient strategy to increase sales. You can drive conversions on your site by offering exclusive promotions or discounts on categories that are appropriate for the summer season.
Finally, make the most of your free time by getting ready for the impending busy season. Learn new tricks like AutoML definition, and how it’s influencing businesses, particularly those without extensive expertise, to use machine learning to boost sales.
Try planning a product launch, setting up new promos, beefing up your ad strategy, or striving to reinforce your existing customer relationships. Stay busy and strategize at this time.
Summer can be a bit slower, but that doesn't mean your business needs to shut down. You can boost sales and use your time productively over the summer months if you follow the above tips. In the end, downtime isn’t an issue if you are productive with your time.
About the Author
Pohan Lin is the Senior Web Marketing and Localizations Manager at Databricks, a global Data and AI provider connecting the features of data warehouses and data lakes to create lakehouse architecture. With over 18 years of experience in cybersecurity data analytics, web marketing, online SaaS business, and e-commerce growth. Pohan is passionate about innovation and is dedicated to communicating the significant impact data has in marketing. Pohan Lin also published articles for domains such as BigCommerce.
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