10 Ways to Optimize Your eCommerce Promotional Strategies

1. Set Micro Conversion Targets

A macro conversion on an eCommerce site is a completed purchase, which means a micro conversion is a small step toward the purchase. Micro conversions include things like visiting your website, looking up a coupon code and adding items to the cart.

Tracking these micro conversions can help you see where customers fall out of the sales funnel. You can also break them apart by channel and campaign to better understand the effectiveness of each tactic. Looking at your sales and macro conversion rates is the first step toward understanding your business.

2. Calibrate Your Cost-Per-Acquisition and ROI Goals

Cost-per-acquisition refers to how much you’re willing to spend per customer purchase. For example, if you spend $300 on Google Ads, which results in 10 purchases that month, your CPA is $30.

CPAs are likely to change based on the campaign and channel, but it helps to review them every few months to make sure your campaigns are held accountable to your set standards and drive profits.

For example, if the average purchase from Google Ad campaigns is $90, you will have a positive ROI. However, if customers only spend $35, you need to reconsider your promotion efforts and CPA targets.

3. Improve Your Website Speed and Performance

Your eCommerce promotional strategies are only as effective as your website. It’s not uncommon for marketers to create highly-optimized campaigns that perform poorly because of the website they drive traffic to. Remember, it takes 0.05 seconds for users to form an opinion of your website and determine whether they want to stay or bounce. Plus, 88% of customers are unlikely to return to a website that provided a bad experience.

Work with your design team to ensure your website performs at its best, with optimal speed performance and functionality.

4. Create Landing Pages for a Better Site Experience

Landing pages should be at the top of your list to improve your eCommerce promotional strategies. If you’re using a few catch-all landing pages for all of your content, then you need to take steps to grow your web footprint.

Companies see an average 50% increase in leads when they boost the number of landing pages from 10 to 15. Of course, there are other effective ways to push leads through the funnel, like drip marketing. This increase spikes even higher when the number of landing pages exceeds 40.

More landing pages mean you can micro-target customers and create more efficient campaigns, so you will spend less and convert more buyers.

5. Update Your Copy, Graphics and Branding

Digital marketers and eCommerce professionals tend to get caught up in the numbers of their campaigns to the point where they lose sight of the softer aspects of your promotions. Review your ad copy, graphics and overall branding to ensure it keeps up with other graphics and content on the website.

6. Banish Vanity Metrics From Your Reporting

Vanity metrics are impressive insights that tell you nothing about your campaigns. These metrics rarely change or don’t indicate anything that reflects your performance. Potential reach and potential impressions are two common examples. Your potential doesn’t matter; look at how many people actually saw your message and how many people cared.

You can also remove charts and tables in your reporting that no one looks at. If your team spends hours compiling reports that most people brush off, remove the information that no one cares about so you can focus on the most critical metrics.

7. Review Campaign Performance Across the Sales Funnel

As you review your eCommerce promotional strategies, don’t focus exclusively on the bottom of the sales funnel. The customer journey isn’t linear; customers do not see your ad and immediately buy your products. They touch your website multiple times, and many factors influence their decision.

Map out the customer journey and what it looks like for each marketing tactic. This will help you identify weaknesses in your promotional efforts that you can improve upon in the new fiscal year.

8. Look for Wasted Spend Across the Board

Digital marketing involves growing and pruning your campaigns. You expand campaigns, channels and keywords throughout the year, and it’s easy for these channels to get out of control after a few months.

Set aside time to look at what’s not working from a high level in your marketing efforts. Trim the fat where you’re not getting the desired results or create a plan to change weaker campaigns to improve upon them ASAP.

9. Identify New eCommerce Promotional Strategies You Want to Explore

From customer engagement activities to personalization, successful marketers always learn and try new things. Whether you pick up new ideas at a conference or follow the latest updates through top publications, always keep learning and exploring new things.

The top eCommerce companies create an “experiment budget” each year to try new things. This budget isn’t tied to a direct ROI but allows teams to do something new to see if it pays off. This reduces their fear of failure and lets your company stay current on the latest trends.

10. Evaluate Your Contractors and Agencies

Your marketing agency, service providers and contractors need performance evaluations along with your employees. Review the costs of working with various people against the benefits they provide your company. If you have worked with a particular agency for a few years, check their prices and services against others in the industry. You may find you’re overpaying and not getting the desired results.

Need Better Promotional Strategies? OuterBox Can Help

Partner with OuterBox and start optimizing your digital campaigns. We’ll review all of your eCommerce promotional strategies and look for ways to trim the fat, take advantage of new strategies and grow your business. Request your free estimate today!