As an ecommerce shop, you always need to come up with new ways to increase your revenue. But with that said, it's a common misconception that you need to find new customers to generate more sales. That's simply not the case. In fact, there are plenty of ways to increase revenue without acquiring new customers. Rather than trying to get more transactions on your ecommerce site, you should be focusing on tactics that increase the amount of each transaction. Don't get me wrong. Obviously, new customers and more transactions are great news for your business. But it's not the only way to make more money. What's the average order value on your platform? This is a metric that you should be tracking at all times. If you're unfamiliar with average order value, abbreviated as AOV, it's really easy to calculate. Tactics that improve your AOV work for new customers and existing customers alike. It's all about how you display information on your website. I know what some of you might be thinking. Your current average order value is adequate. Do you really need to make any changes? Absolutely. When it comes to what's acceptable as an AOV, the sky's the limit. Don't settle for anything less. There is always room for improvement. Use this guide as a reference for increasing your AOV. Once you apply these strategies, your ecommerce revenue will increase as a result. Set a minimum for free deliveryFree delivery has a major impact on ecommerce conversions. In fact, 60% of consumers will abandon their shopping carts during the checkout process if they're presented with extra costs, like shipping. So I'm definitely a big advocate of not placing those shipping costs on your customers. But with that said, you don't need to offer free shipping for every order. Here's what I mean. At the end of the day, someone has to pay for the shipping. It's either going to be you or the customer. So those shipping costs should be included in the base cost of your products. That way, shipping is perceived as free to the customer, but you'll still be able to cover those costs with their purchase. If you want to increase the average order value, set a minimum purchase amount for free shipping eligibility. REI uses this strategy on their website. Take a look at this shopping cart. The total cost of the of the cart is $22. But this total isn't enough to be eligible for free shipping. REI reminds their customers in two places on this page that they ship orders over $50 for free. As a result, people will be more inclined to add additional items to their cart. Why pay for shipping if they don't have to? Assuming the customer in this scenario takes the bait, REI was able to increase the purchase amount of this transaction by more than double the initial value. Upsell on the checkout pageThe most successful ecommerce shops find ways to upsell their customers right before they finalize the purchase process. However, you need to be careful if you decide to implement this strategy. Here's why. Upsells shouldn't take away from the initial purchase intent. By the time your customers reach your checkout page, they already added items to their cart and want to convert. Don't let your upsell be a distraction that eventually hinders them from completing the purchase process. The buying process needs to be as fluid as possible with minimal friction. So don't make the upsell be an extra step. Let me show you a great example of an upsell from Jetties Bracelets that conveys what I'm talking about. Based on what the customer added to their shopping cart, the website automatically generated an upsell of other items that are frequently purchased together. If the customer wants to add these upsells to their cart, all they need to do is click one button. This takes the value of this order from $9 to $27. As you can see, a simple upsell on the checkout page can triple the order amount. Just make sure that it isn't too distracting or forced upon the customer. You still want them to convert, even if they don't go for the upsell. Offer package discountsBundle or package discounts provide an incentive for customers to spend more money. The concept behind this tactic is simple. You can generate more profits by focusing on your pricing strategy. Most pricing models make it more expensive to buy a singular item. But if the customer is willing to buy higher quantities of that item, they'll receive a discount depending on how much they're willing to spend. It's the basic strategy behind “buying in bulk,” which is common for B2B companies. However, you can apply the same method to your B2C ecommerce shop. Customers shouldn't have to buy thousands of an item to get a quantity discount. Look at how MeUndies accomplishes this. They use this strategy all over their ecommerce site. For starters, they advertise that customers can save up to 35% off items by purchasing packs. Then, if you look at their navigation menu, “packs” is one of the five options for segmenting products. They reinforce these discounts when a customer clicks on a pack to purchase. For this pack of underwear, MeUndies offers a discount for buying three as opposed to just one. However, if they buy a 6-pack, the cost per pair goes down even less. Customers will benefit from additional savings if they buy a 10-pack. The price of one pair of underwear is $20. But if they buy a 10-pack, it's $15 per pair. This strategy encourages people to spend more money because it makes them feel like they're getting a better value. Customers can get a 25% discount by spending more money. As a result, you'll benefit from getting a higher average order value. Include a gift wrap optionAnother way to increase the AOV of your ecommerce shop is by enhancing the value of your products. What can you do to make your products more valuable? One strategy that I like is the gift wrap option. During the holidays, 82% of shoppers plan to buy gifts online. But holidays aren't the only time of the year when people buy gifts. People get gifts for birthdays, weddings, graduations, and retirements, as well as other milestones and accomplishments. So your gift wrapping feature should be available 365 days per year. Look at how Target uses this strategy on their ecommerce store to increase their AOV. On the checkout page, there is an option for shoppers to select if their order includes a gift. If the buyer wants gifts wrapped, it's going to cost them an additional $5.99 per item. So an order with three gifts adds roughly $18 to the shopping cart. At this point, it's all about convenience for the customer. Without this option, the customer would have to get the gift sent to their house, then wrap it themselves before delivering it or re-shipping to the final recipient. There is nothing convenient about that. But the gift wrap option eliminates these steps and ultimately improves the customer experience. So they'll be happy to spend more money. Charge more for personalized itemsLet's continue talking about ways to enhance the value of whatever you're selling. If you can figure out how to apply this concept to your business, it can result in a major increase in revenue. That's because consumers say that they are willing to pay 20% more for personalized products. You need to recognize this fact, and adjust your personalization strategy accordingly. Check out how The Perfume Shop does this on their ecommerce site. They give their customers a chance to get custom engravings on certain bottles. However, this upgrade comes with at an additional cost. But as we saw, customers are willing and able to pay more for customization. It would be unreasonable for them to expect a premium feature like this to be available at no additional cost. Incentivize minimum spending thresholdsWe talked about minimum spending thresholds earlier. Having a minimum order amount for free shipping eligibility is an example of this strategy. But with that said, free shipping isn't the only way to encourage higher spending with thresholds. You can set up a discount based on spending amounts. Here's an example from the Rue21 ecommerce website. Customers can take advantage of getting 30% off of their order, which is a significant amount. However, there is a catch. In order to get the 30% discount, they must spend a minimum of $40. This strategy works well because it also has a deadline. As you can see, they have a running clock for when this promotion expires. So customers will feel as though they need to act fast to get this discount before it's too late. By combining these two strategies, Rue21 is able to increase their conversion rates while increasing their AOV at the same time. Use BOGOHave you heard of BOGO? BOGO stands for “buy one, get one.” It's up to you to decide how you want to fill in the sentence after that. Buy one, get one free. Buy one, get one half off. You've got lots of options to choose from. The reason why BOGO works so well is because psychologically, it encourages people to spend more money. After all, how could they pass on such a good deal? Here's what I mean. If you have a buy one, get one free sale, then that implies that if someone buys two items, they'll get two free. If they buy three, they'll get three free, and so on. Maurices uses this strategy on their website. It's the first thing that you see when you navigate to their ecommerce homepage. Don't let BOGO limit your creativity here. You can run other promotions based on the same concept. For example, buy two, get one free would encourage people to spend even more money. Either way, this strategy can help you increase your average order value. Give cash backIf you create a cash back system on your ecommerce site, it gives people an incentive to spend more money. The more money they spend, the more cash back they'll receive. Ultimately, they'll benefit from these rewards as much as you will. So it's a win-win scenario for everyone. The Kohl's cash system is a great example. For every $25 that a customer spends, they'll receive $5 in Kohl's cash. This promotion is valid on their ecommerce shop, as well as in their physical store locations. So for those of you who have brick and mortar shops in addition to your ecommerce platform, you may want to consider a similar structure. Once customers spend money, they receive Kohl's cash in the form of a coupon. These coupons are automatically stored on their customer profiles. Kohl's doesn't have any limit on this spending. So if a customer spends $1,000 on a transaction, they'll get $200 in Kohl's cash as a reward. I know what some of you are thinking. If the cash back eventually gets redeemed, wouldn't it lower your average order value for those future purchases? Not necessarily. It's unlikely that people will spend only the amount of their reward for those future purchases. Plus, you can set dates for when the cash back can be redeemed, which is what Kohl's does. So there's a chance not all of these rewards will even be used. Recommend products to your customers58% of consumers are more likely to buy from online retailers that recommend products based on their purchase history. In addition to their previous purchases, you can also recommend products based on what your customers are browsing for. For this strategy to be effective, it works best if you encourage people to create a customer profile. Then it's easier for you to monitor their behavior. It's also effective for those of you who have a mobile app. In fact, personalized recommendations made my list of the top 10 features of a successful mobile commerce app. When you recommend products to your customers, it speaks to them. We talked about this earlier when we discussed upselling. But you don't need to wait until the customer reaches their shopping cart to offer recommendations. Here's an example from Sephora's website. In addition to recommending and showcasing their bestsellers, they also have a “recommended for you section” on their homepage. The items displayed will vary depending on who is browsing. For example, let's say your ecommerce shop sells sports equipment. One of your customers recently purchased a new set of golf clubs on your website. The next time they visit your site, you could recommend golf balls, tees, golf spikes, and other similar accessories. These recommendations will ultimately help you increase your AOV. Create a loyalty program based on spending tiersLoyal customers spend more money. 82% of consumers are more likely to shop from businesses that offer loyalty programs. Plus, repeat customers spend 67% more money than new customers. That's why you need to learn how to increase sales by implementing a customer loyalty program. However, there are so many different types of loyalty programs out there. One of my favorite options is to create a program based on spending tiers. This is the best way to get your existing customers to spend more money each time they shop. Here's a look at the Nordy Club benefits, which is a loyalty program from Nordstrom. As you can see, the benefits get better as customers reach each spending level within a calendar year. These loyalty programs reward your customers that spend the most money. For the most part, people probably won't spend $500 or $2,000 in one purchase. However, they may be willing to spend an extra $50 or so on each transaction to get them one-step closer to the next rewards tier. By encouraging them to spend more, your average order value will increase. ConclusionWhile new customers are always great for company growth, they are necessarily a requirement for increasing your revenue. Instead of prioritizing customer acquisition, you should focus on strategies that encourage both your existing customers and prospective customers to spend more money on your ecommerce site. The average order value is a metric that you should be tracking. Regardless of your current AOV, I'm confident that you can improve that number. Not sure where to start? Use this guide as a reference. If you implement the strategies that I've outlined above, you'll notice a significant boost in your ecommerce average order value. How is your ecommerce shop taking steps to increase your AOV?
0 Comments
Are you frustrated that no one will link to you? Have you tried all of the basic link building methods like email outreach to find out that none of them are working for you? Don't worry, we've all been there. Everyone says you need to write amazing content to build links. And although that helps, what if I told you it isn't a requirement. Yes, link building is hard, but not impossible. And if you are struggling to build links, here are the tactics you need to follow… even if your website, product, or content aren't as good as your competition, these tactics will work. Tactic #1: Link IntersectIf you email a site asking for a link, the chances are they are going to ignore it. I get these requests all the time… and I ignore them too. But on the flip side, if you emailed someone that linked to 3 or 4 of your competitors there is a good chance they will also link to you. When someone links to a few of your competitors, this tells you that they don't mind linking to sites within your industry and that they are more open to linking to more sites as they already link to 3 competitors. So how do you find sites who link to at least 3 of your competitors? The way you do this is by heading over to Ahrefs and selecting their “Link Intersect” feature (it is under the “more” navigation menu option). You'll want to enter your 3 closest competitors and then your domain at the bottom. This will generate a report of sites that link to your competition but not you. From there you'll want to drill down to specific pages to see what pages are linking to your competition. As you find common sites that link to a few of your competitors, you'll have to dig in to figure out in what context they are linking out. For example, if someone is linking to all of your competitors' blogs in a resource page, you have to make sure you have a blog before hitting them up. Because if you don't, why would they add you to the list? Once you find a handful of sites that are a good fit, you should email the site owner, build a conversation, and then ask for a link. Here's an example that my team used for a site that I own: And here was the response we got: We use this tactic at scale. For every 100 websites that we emailed we picked up 9.7 links. We got this ratio for sites in a competitive niche and we aren't using my name. Tactic #2: Image link buildingPeople love images… just look at social networks like Instagram. They've built a multi-billion-dollar company by encouraging people to take more photos. As you're blogging, you should consider using custom images on your site. If you aren't a great designer, no worries, you can just use tools like Canva. Or if you have a bit of money to spend, you can always head to Fiverr and spend a few bucks paying someone to create custom images. A good example of this is how I created a handful of custom graphs about Facebook for this blog post. The graphs look something like this: Over time, you'll notice that other sites will take your images without linking to you. This may sound bad, but in reality, it is great because you can reach out to each of those sites and tell them to give you credit and link back. Note, I am not telling you to “ask,” I am telling you to enforce that they need to link back to you. Here's how you find all of the people who have taken your images. First, head over to Google Image Search. Once you land there, click on the camera icon. Once you click it, you'll see a box that looks like this: From there you will either want to paste in the URL with your custom image or upload it. And once you hit search you'll see a list of sites who have taken your image. Some of these sites will have linked to you while others may have not. For the ones that have not linked to you, email them something that goes like this…
Out of all of the link tactics mentioned in this post, this one has the highest success rate. It's close to 100%. If you email someone and they don't link back, try them a few more times. As your site grows in popularity, more people will steal your images, which will make it easier to build backlinks. Tactic #3: Link reclamationAs your website gets older, you'll notice that people will naturally mention you and your company. But when they mention your company name they won't always link to you. So why not email all of these people and ask them to turn the mention into a link? It's a simple strategy, and it works really well. Just think of it this way, if someone has mentioned you or your company without you having to convince them, it typically means they already like what they see. So, when you email them, not only will they feel flattered, but there is a high probability they will respond as well. This means it will be easy for you to convince them to link to you. But when you shoot off the email, I highly recommend that you also share the content that mentions you on the social web and let them know that you did this. Here's an example email:
Your success rate should be well over 50%. For me, my rate is close to 83%, but again a lot of people in marketing know who I am, so your success rate will be lower. The key to leveraging this tactic is to email people right when they publish a post that mentions your site but doesn't contain a link. If you ask people to add a link to a post that is older than 6 months, you'll find yourself generating only 1 link for every 5 or 6 emails you send. In other words, if you want a high success rate, you need to be on top of it. The easiest way is to create alerts using Buzzsumo. Just sign in and click on “monitoring.” Then click on “create new alert.” Then click “brand mentions.” Fill out the name of your site or company. Make sure you also add any misspellings. Select how you want to be notified anytime someone mentions you. Click finish, and you'll then see see a report that shows you how many mentions there are over the last week, month or even 2 months. As well as a list of sites that mentioned you. Again, I can't emphasize this enough, but you should try and email people within 24 hours of having a brand mention. That'll give you the highest chance of generating a link. Tactic #4: Performance-based pressDo you want mentions on sites like TechCrunch and Entrepreneur? And no, I am not talking about guest posts. Well, of course, you want to be mentioned on those sites. But how? There are companies like PRserve that offer performance-based press. If they get you press, then you pay. If they don't, you won't spend a dollar. The cool part about PRserve is that it is a real legitimate PR agency. They don't sell links, they aren't familiar with link building, and they don't leverage author accounts or guest posts. They pitch editors to write about you and your company. These editors will either say yes or no. If they say no, again, you don't pay a dollar. If they say yes, PRserve charges you a performance-based fee that ranges depending on the site (you'll negotiate this rate with them in advance). Now, there is one big thing to note about PRserve. There is no guarantee that when they get you an article there will be a link to your company. For example, if they convince TechCrunch to blog about you, there is no guarantee that TechCrunch will link to your site. They will mention you, but again there is no guarantee of a link. But if you take this strategy and combine it with tactic 3, you should easily be able to turn that mention into a link. As for all of the tactics, this one is my favorite. The reason being is that it drives revenue. When sites like Venture Beat and TechCrunch cover you, expect to get more leads, sales, and traffic. The guy I've dealt with at PRserve is named Chris. He typically knows before taking on a project what he can produce and how long it will take. As a heads up, things move a bit slow, but that is because he is actually pitching editors of big publications who tend to have busy schedules. Tactic #5: InfographicsYou've heard me talk about infographics before, but this tactic has a slight spin. See, whenever you create content (whether it is blog posts, videos, podcasts) there is no guarantee that it will do well. Here's a screenshot of some my latest blog posts… As you can see from the image above, some posts have done much better than others. You can tell by the number of comments on each post (the higher the comment count, in general, the more popular the post was). Can you guess why some posts have done better than others? I put in a lot of time to each of my posts, so that's not it. To be honest, no one really knows the answer. Content marketing tends to be a hit or miss, in which some of your content will do really well and others won't. You are going to have many more misses than hits, which is why I am about to explain a strategy that will only produce hits (at least from a link perspective). I want you to go to Ahrefs, click on “content explorer,” and type in keywords related to your space. Ahrefs will show you all of the popular articles based off of social shares and links. Look for articles that contain at least 100 backlinks. Here's an article I found in the content marketing vertical that has over 3,600 backlinks. What'll you'll want to do is read that post and turn it into an infographic. You'll need to cite the original source. You can easily do this by adding their logo to the footer of the infographic and include the text “data provided by.” If you don't know how to create an infographic, you can pay people on Fiverr or you can use tools like Infogram. Once you create the infographic, publish it on your blog and, of course, link to the original source. Now you'll want to email each of the sites that linked to the original article and mention how you have turned it into an infographic. You'll even want to give them the embed code. The email would go something like this…
Is your pricing page designed to drive conversions? There are some common problems I see all the time when I'm analyzing these landing pages. It's a tricky situation for businesses. On the one hand, you want your pricing page to be informative, useful, and beneficial to your prospective customers. But at the same time, you want to make sure it's designed to make people spend as much money as possible. All too often, I see pricing pages that are either on one end of the spectrum or the other. You need to find that middle ground. You've spent a lot of time learning how to generate more profits by focusing on your pricing strategy. Now you need to learn how to properly display those prices. What types of pricing pages will encourage website visitors to convert? Pages that are transparent and build trust will ultimately be your best bet. Here's why. If your pricing page is honest and doesn't withhold any information from prospective customers, you can still implement tactics that encourage people to spend more money. In fact, 73% of consumers are willing to pay more for products and services that promise complete transparency. Furthermore, 39% of consumers say they're willing to switch brands to pursue transparency. Both you and the customer will benefit from trustworthy and transparent pricing pages. Those of you who need help increasing conversions on your ecommerce platforms will learn how to create profitable pricing pages by reading this guide. Here's what you need to know. Create a comparison tableThe best way to show customers their options is by displaying a comparison table. This makes it easy for them to make a decision without having to navigate to different pages or do too much scrolling. Ideally, your comparison table can be displayed on one screen. Here's an example of how Netflix uses this strategy on its pricing page: As you can see, this is an extremely simple yet effective design. Netflix offers three different subscriptions:
The first line of the table shows the price. It's obvious and transparent how much each option will cost. There are no surprises or secrets here. After that, it lists seven features. The comparison table shows whether each price point has the listed feature. This is the perfect size for a comparison table. According to research on short-term memory, the brain can store only about seven items at a time. Most adults have the capacity to store five to nine pieces of information in their short-term memory bank. If your comparison table has 30 lines, you'll need to cut that down significantly. It's just too much for people to process, and you'll struggle to get conversions. Plus, if they have to keep scrolling to see information, it'll be difficult for them to keep track of which option is the most appealing to them. If you don't know how to shorten your comparison table, here's what I recommend. Only include line items that are different for each price point. For example, if all your options come with a 30-day free trial, don't add that to your table. Instead, find another spot on your pricing page to showcase that feature. Showcase your value propositionFor your business to be successful, you need to create a highly effective value proposition. Your value proposition will explain how your brand, products, or services will benefit your customers. Highlight what makes your company better than your competitors. Here's a look at how Constant Contact displays these benefits on its pricing page: The platform offers a 60-day free trial. Nothing says trust and transparency like the offer of two free months. This gives customers a chance to get to know the software without having to pay for anything. It shows that this company stands behind its product. Constant Contact also gives its customers the option to cancel any time. It doesn't make anyone commit to long-term contracts, and it doesn't charge cancelation fees. In addition to the 60-day trial period, Constant Contact will refund customers 100% of their payments if they cancel within 30 days of signing up. The company guarantees satisfaction. As you continue to scroll down this page, you'll find the pricing options. But the website visitor is already primed to convert after reviewing the company's value proposition. If your value proposition isn't on your pricing page, you need to put it there right away. This will help you build trust with your customers and increase their chances of converting. Highlight the top optionTell your customers what to buy. There are a few different ways to approach this. If you look at the Netflix comparison table above, you'll see the highlighted top choice. The premium service was red, while the other options were grey. The red color jumps out at the customer more than grey. Plus, the premium subscription was the most expensive. Obviously, you want your customers to spend as much money as possible. I know what some of you are thinking. Is this strategy trust-building? Yes. Your most expensive option will likely still be the most beneficial to your customers. Continuing with the Netflix example, spending the most money gives people the option for ultra HD and the ability to stream videos on four devices simultaneously. These features aren't available with the other subscriptions. Let's take a look at another example. GoDaddy highlighted its top option by referring to it as the best value: Obviously, everyone wants a bargain. As you can see, the best value choice is also the most expensive. But again, this gives its customers the most bang for their buck. But your top option doesn't always have to be your most expensive. A great way to get your customers to convert is by putting your top option next to a choice that's significantly more expensive. This will make it look even more appealing. You can also entice consumers to select a certain option by telling them it's your best seller or most popular choice. Implementing this strategy helps create social proof, which I'll discuss in greater detail shortly. Encourage people to spend more moneyYour top option likely won't be the cheapest. But you can still encourage your customers to spend. Here's an example from the Litmus pricing page that illustrates my point: As you can see, this comparison table shows customers what's not included in each plan. It conveys this message by listing those features in a light grey color with a line going through the text. Litmus is being completely transparent here. Now its customers won't expect those features in a particular plan since it was clearly shown that certain options aren't included in the selection. If people want certain features, they'll be encouraged to spend more money. Take a closer look at this pricing page. Litmus also highlighted its top option by calling it the best value selection. By positioning it between the least expensive and most expensive option, the value choice seems more appealing. Offer free trials based on costYou already saw a couple of examples of free trials so far in this guide. Netflix offers a free trial period to all new customers. Constant Contact has a 60-day free trial for new customers as well. Including a free trial establishes trust with your customers. But how long should your free trial last? I like the idea of increasing the free trial length based on the cost. For example, let's say you offer a service that costs $10 per month and another one that costs $100 per month. Setting both of these trials at 14 days would be ineffective. For a customer to dish out $100 per month, they need to be absolutely certain that the cost is worth it to them. Give those people an extended trial. Pandora uses this strategy on its pricing page: By offering a free trial, Pandora doesn't force customers to pay for its services without testing them out first. Customers who sign up for the $4.99 monthly service get their first 30 days free. If someone signs up for the service that's double the price, their free listening period is double the length as well. Consider using this strategy on your pricing page. You may not be initially thrilled about offering your service free, but it will pay off in the long run. In fact, research shows that the overall conversion rate for monthly and annual plans is roughly 60%. That's pretty good if you ask me. Don't hesitate to offer extended trials. Understand the paradox of choiceLess is more. That's the paradox of choice. The more options you give your customers, the less likely they will convert. Look back at all the examples I showed you so far. All these pages have three options for customers to consider, with the exception of Litmus, which had four. However, that fourth option from the Litmus pricing page was for enterprises that need custom pricing. Basically, it offered three choices to most people. If you have five, six, or seven different plans for people to select, it's hurting your conversion rates. Researchers conducted a study on this concept. When customers in a grocery store had the option to sample six flavors of a product, the conversion rate was 30%. However, when they had the choice to sample 24 flavors of the same product, only 3% converted. Another study found that decreasing the availability of product choices resulted in a 10% increase in revenue. Limiting choices also helps build trust and transparency. It shows people that everything your company has to offer can be found in just a few different options. They won't have to sift through dozens of choices to find what they're looking for. Create social proofWhen designing your pricing page, you need to learn how to effectively use social proof to increase conversions. The concept behind social proof is simple. If other people are doing something, it must be right. That's what you want your prospective customers to think. Take a look at how Pipedrive creates social proof at the bottom of its pricing page: After people have a chance to review the pricing options for Pipedrive, they'll see this screen as they continue scrolling. More than 75,000 sales teams use this service. Pipedrive has customers all over the world. The product must be good if more than 75,000 people are using it, right? That's the idea behind social proof. Furthermore, the company features customer testimonials on its pricing page. It lists the name, company, and position and includes a photograph for each testimonial. For a more in-depth analysis of this, review my guide on how to correctly manage customer testimonials to increase your brand credibility. This will help you build trust with your customers. Here's something else to consider. Take a look at the bottom right corner of this pricing page. Do you see the little message box? This gives the company's customers a chance to communicate via live chat. I'll discuss this tactic in greater detail next. Add a live chat featureYou need to communicate effectively with your customers. As you just saw in the Pipedrive example, adding a live chat feature to your pricing page shows that your brand is available to assist prospective customers on demand. This will help you build trust and show how transparent your pricing is. If a customer has any questions or needs clarification, your live chat support team can offer solutions. Let's look at another example. Here's the HubSpot pricing page: It has a chatbot that automatically pops up. The note encourages visitors of the page to write a message if they need help understanding any of the pricing options. In addition to the live chat function, HubSpot also includes its phone number on the page. This adds more credibility to the website and improves its customer service. Having both live chat and phone support available will appeal to a wider range of customers based on their preferences for customer service communication. Justify your pricingDepending on your business, some of you may have high prices for your services. If your most expensive option is only $5 per month, you may not need to justify that price. However, if you're charging hundreds or thousands of dollars for your products or services, some justification may be necessary. This is important for B2B companies. Unlike the average consumer, businesses need to see a return on their investments. Spending money on your service is an investment for them. What will they get in return? Show them. Buffer added case studies to its pricing page to justify its pricing: These case studies explain how other companies benefited from the product. Business Insider reached 1 million Facebook fans. The Seattle Times increased its traffic by 150%. In addition to justifying the prices for the company's services, this strategy also creates social proof, which I previously discussed. Build an interactive estimation toolThis isn't applicable to all of you, but it's a useful strategy for some brands. Depending on your pricing model, the cost of your service may not be the same for everyone for each billing cycle. Some businesses base their prices on usage and other metrics. However, this strategy can sometimes appear untrustworthy since the prices aren't set in stone. Adding an interactive estimation tool to your pricing page helps with transparency. For example, MailChimp has prices that fluctuate based on the number of subscribers their customers have. Its pricing tool gives people a chance to see how much they'll get charged if they add subscribers to their mailing lists. As you update the number of subscribers, the prices for the plan change accordingly. Prioritize securitySecurity needs to be a top priority for your business. Why? Research shows that 69% of consumers say they are concerned about their privacy and security. And 68% of people do not trust brands to appropriately protect their personal information. With so many people concerned about security, use your pricing page to showcase how you protect your customers' information. Check out how Highrise accomplishes this on its pricing page: The pricing page features the words “safe and secure” all over it. Highrise goes above and beyond to explain to prospective customers that it prioritizes security. This strategy will help you establish trust with your customers and ultimately increase the chances of them converting. ConclusionIf you want the conversion rates on your pricing page to increase, you need to make sure your page promotes trust and transparency. Build a comparison table that lets customers view all their options on one screen. Leverage your value proposition. Tell your customers what to buy by highlighting your top option. Use this strategy and other tactics to encourage people to spend more money. Offer a free trial. The more expensive the service, the longer the trial should be. Limit choices on your pricing page. Fewer options will result in higher conversions. Create social proof and justify your prices. Make sure your customers know their security is a top priority for you. If you follow the tips I've outlined above, you'll be able to increase conversions on your pricing page. How does your company's pricing page promote trust and transparency? Why content #marketing is more than #blogging. https://t.co/OxH2wAgtri By @WeAreArticulate10/21/2018
In today's competitive landscape, your business needs to leverage as many distribution channels as possible to increase sales. By now, I'm sure you understand the basic concepts of applying a social media marketing strategy. You've created business profiles on the most popular networks. You're sharing content on a regular basis. Your efforts have helped you get more followers. But you've got to elevate your game and learn how to convert your social media followers into customers. According to research, 74% of consumers use social media to guide their buying decisions. And 71% of people are more likely to buy something based on a social media recommendation. Simply put, consumers are eager and willing to use social platforms to find new brands, conduct research, and aid the purchase process. As a marketer, you need to recognize the latest social media trends and use them to your advantage. Instagram is the fastest growing social media platform. This social network makes it very easy, friendly, and appealing for brands to reach their target audiences. Take advantage of everything Instagram has to offer. I'll show you the top 11 ways to drive sales on Instagram. 1. Run contests and giveawaysPromotional contests and giveaways are two of my favorite strategies for brands to engage with their audiences on social media. If you can learn how to run a profitable giveaway, your efforts will result in more sales. I know what some of you are thinking. How can you make money by just giving away your products? Let's review an example to show you what I mean. Here's a look at how Lander used this strategy on a recent Instagram post: The company is giving away a smart lantern, power bank, phone case, and lightning cable. Doing this increases the exposure of its page. It gives people a reason to follow its profile and engage with the brand. As you can see, this giveaway is a bit different from the ones you may have seen in the past. Lander partnered with other brands to sponsor this giveaway. Again, this strategy will drive more users to its page. These other accounts will post information about the giveaway and direct users to follow Lander's profile to win. Here's a look at the caption from one of the other accounts it partnered with: There are plenty of other ways to get creative with this marketing tactic. Instead of giving away items at random to your followers simply for liking a post and following your account, you could run a more structured contest that requires skill. Contests that encourage user-generated content are the most effective. To enter, ask your followers to upload a picture and tag your brand. This strategy will expose your company to anyone who follows the users who enter. If someone sees that their friend is promoting a brand, they'll be more inclined to follow your profile and potentially enter the contest as well. Now that you've got these users interested in your products, you can use other strategies to get them to buy. Even if they didn't win the contest, the product you were giving away is still on their minds. 2. Take advantage of the “swipe up” featureThe swipe up feature is a game-changer for businesses. For years, you probably had some trouble getting users on Instagram to navigate to your website from a specific link. You would post content and then direct people to click a link in your bio. But that strategy has lots of faults. First, it's an extra step for the user. They have to navigate to your profile page and then make another click. People don't want to go through that hassle. Plus, what if you want to promote two different landing pages? Or maybe three? or four? You will not have multiple links in your bio. That's too confusing. The swipe up feature eliminates this problem. Now you can use your Instagram story to drive traffic directly to specific landing pages. Here are a couple of examples: Once your business profile reaches 10k followers, you'll have access to this feature. Just promote a product or service on your story, and add the swipe up function with a link to a landing page about your promotion. If you're advertising a specific product, a logical landing page would be to the product description on your site. There, the user can look at additional photos and add the product to their shopping cart. These lead magnets are a great way for you to drive more traffic to your website and ultimately increase conversions. 3. Use shoppable postsIf you have an ecommerce brand, you need to take advantage of shoppable posts. This strategy allows you to sell products directly through the Instagram platform. The reason why I love this feature so much is because it increases the chances of getting your current and prospective customers to buy something. Here's why. Right now, you're relying on consumers navigating to your website to buy your products. This can be from organic traffic, paid ads, or direct navigation. The problem is that people probably won't do this every day. But they're active on Instagram daily. In fact, 500 million people use Instagram on a daily basis. So there's a great chance your target market falls into this category. Here's an example of a shoppable post from Patara Shoes: It's simple. This post is just a regular image that includes one of the brand's products. You also see a tag of the product by name, the price, and a link to purchase it. All someone has to do is click on the tag, and they'll be directed to the website. This is much easier than having to manually search for the product by opening a web browser. Shoppable posts increase conversions. Check out the caption. It's creating FOMO-the fear of missing out. I've discussed this strategy in the past. Telling users they have only a few pairs of these shoes left nudges them to buy right now. If you've never sold products on Instagram before and don't know where to start, check out my complete guide on how to increase your ecommerce product sales with shoppable posts on Instagram. 4. Post the same product more than onceIf you post a product once and then never promote it again, people may forget about it. Think about the way users behave on Instagram. They quickly scroll through their feeds. The first time they see your product, they may not have a reason to buy it. But if they see it more than once, it may start to pique their interest. According to a study from Sprout Social, more than 60% of people need to see something on social media between two and four times before they buy it: I'm not saying you should post the exact same image four different times on your Instagram page. That's boring and might even cause people to unfollow you. Get creative. Start with a post of just the product. A few days later, you can share another image of the product on your Instagram story. The following week, run a contest to promote the same product. Weeks later, you can share a video of the same item being used in a demonstration. Posting the same product multiple times increases the chances of people buying it. 5. Partner with social influencersUsing social influencers to promote your brand, products, and services is an extremely efficient tactic. In fact, 94% of marketers say their social influencer strategy was effective for their companies. That's because social influencer followers trust them. We know that 82% of people are likely to follow recommendations made by micro influencers. And 94% of consumers believe these influencers are highly knowledgeable. Basically, if you can get an influencer to promote your brand, you will get sales. Instagram is the primary social platform for influencers across the globe. This is a cost-effective marketing strategy. Most influencers will charge only a few hundred dollars or so for a post. However, if you'd rather work with celebrity influencers, be prepared to spend significantly more. But for the most part, that's not necessary. I recommend looking for influencers who have between 10k and 50k followers. These people have more authentic interactions with their followers and higher engagement rates. Plus, the cost per post will be less. If you're struggling to find the right influencer to promote your brand, review the top 10 platforms for effectively managing social influencers. 6. Respond to comments and messagesI know it may seem like a time-consuming and tedious task, but you need to respond to your followers on Instagram. By responding directly to comments on your post, you will add a human element and personal feel to your brand, which people really appreciate. This strategy is especially important if people are asking questions or voicing complaints about your business. Respond to these comments as fast as possible to come up with a resolution. It shows other users who see your responses on social media that your brand values customer service. Consumers are willing to pay more for good service. You can expect to see an increase in sales by communicating with your customers effectively on social media. 7. Go liveThe majority of the strategies I've discussed so far focus on Instagram posts. But that's not the only way you can reach users and drive sales. Like other social networks, Instagram has a live broadcast feature. This is your chance to engage with your audience in real time. Users can comment on your broadcast. Acknowledge those comments. Answer their questions. Show them you're listening. Social media users love watching live videos. What's a good reason to go live? That decision is yours. But there are lots of different ways to get creative with these streams. Give your followers a tour around your office. Introduce them to your employees. Show them how products get made at your manufacturing facility. If your company is at an event, give your followers exclusive access to what happens behind the scenes. This type of content will keep your audience engaged, get them excited about your brand, and ultimately increase the chances they'll make a purchase. 8. Run targeted adsHow can you reach people on Instagram who don't follow your account? Some of the strategies, such as location tagging, running contests, and working with social influencers can accomplish this. However, those strategies don't always expose your brand to people within your target market. Running targeted advertisements will do this. Instagram has been acquired by Facebook. You can set up your ads the same way on both networks. You can use parameters such as age, gender, and location to select your ad audience. You can even take that one step further and target users based on their interests. Here's an example of a targeted Instagram ad from Tentree: As you can see, this post looks like any other post on Instagram. The only difference is that it says “sponsored” where the location tag would normally be, and there is a CTA button at the bottom. But when a user is scrolling through their feed, this post blends in with the rest of the content they're consuming. It's not invasive or annoying. Yes, you'll have to pay if you want to run Instagram ads. Those of you who don't have the funds in your marketing budget for this right now would want to stick with the free strategies on this list. However, if you can afford it, I recommend at least trying it out to see how it works for you. This can be a great way to drive sales by reaching a new audience. 9. Use your story to showcase productsEarlier I mentioned examples of posting content to your Instagram story. But now you can use your Instagram story to sell your products the same way you did with shoppable posts. As of June 12, 2018, Instagram brought the shopping feature to stories. Here's a look at an example from Madewell: As you can see, the post is promoting a silk button-down cami. Since the shopping feature on stories is new, the post features additional text as a way to tell the users the post is clickable. If you tap on the button as instructed, you'll be redirected to the brand's website. From here, you'll have an option to buy the product displayed in the story: Use this strategy if you're running an ecommerce shop. As I said before, people need to see a product multiple times on social media before they decide to buy it. Add shoppable stories to the list of ways to showcase your products. 10. Connect your followers to your Facebook pageIf your company has an Instagram profile, it probably also has a Facebook page. Since Instagram was acquired by Facebook, these two platforms have lots of features that work together. I mentioned this earlier when I talked about running targeted ads. Now you can sync your Instagram followers with your Facebook business page. Once this process is complete, you can use messenger bots to nurture those users. There are more than 300,000 active monthly bots on Facebook messenger. Clearly, other businesses are taking advantage of this strategy already. Jump on board now before your competitors' bots steal your customers. 11. Offer discounts to your followersEveryone loves a good deal. Share discounts with your followers on Instagram to encourage them to buy. Instagram is a great platform for running flash sales. Since your story disappears after 24 hours, you can use that type of post to share a promo code. This will make your followers feel as if they're getting an offer other people don't know about. That feeling of exclusivity will also encourage them to buy. Look at how J. Crew offered a discount in this post: Notice anything different about this post? The reason why I used this as an example is because it also uses another strategy I discussed on this list. This is a targeted advertisement. Don't think your promo codes should be limited to just your profile posts and stories. Combining that deal with a targeted ad can be extremely effective. That's because your ads will have CTA buttons bringing users directly to your website. If someone clicks on the “shop now” button in the J. Crew ad, they'll be able to use the promo code right away. This is much easier than having to navigate to a new window. ConclusionYou can't rely on website traffic alone to sell products. Take advantage of other distribution channels as well. Social media influences consumers' purchasing decisions. Since Instagram is growing at such a rapid rate, it makes sense to use this platform as a primary method of driving sales. Plus, as you've seen from this list, Instagram has features that allow businesses to sell items directly through its platform. If your Instagram marketing strategy needs improvement, refer to this guide. Once you implement these strategies, it will be easier to generate sales from Instagram users. How is your business using Instagram to drive sales? |
ABOUT USTargeted Laser SEO provides SEO for surgeons, lawyers, and medical entrepeneurs, medspas, and spas. With an emphasis on local SEO and affordable SEO service packages for our clients, we are able to combine cutting-edge and innovative strategies to help our clients get ranked online in the most advantageous positions. Archives
June 2019
Categories |