The Ecommerce Marketing Funnel and How to Use it to Grow Sales
The Ecommerce Marketing Funnel and How to Use it to Grow Sales
The business world is slowly but surely transitioning from a world where most of the business is transacted in brick and mortar stores, to one where most of the business is transacted online, which is basically what ecommerce entails. As is explained by the subject matter experts over at mtglion.com, it takes a majority of the buyers more than one visit to a website before they make a purchase. With this in mind it is important to be able to have a good understanding of the ecommerce marketing funnel and how you can be able to use it make better and more astute strategic decisions and therefore be able to boost sales while at the same time being cost effective. A better understanding of the ecommerce marketing funnel will also help you as you come up with your expectations as far as your marketing strategies go, both in the long and short-term. This article will therefore look to explore more what the ecommerce marketing funnel is and how one can use it to grow sales.
The ecommerce marketing funnel basically tracks the journey and explains how folks find your business and then tracks their journey from that point up to when they make a purchase hence becoming a customer. The reason why this journey is described using the funnel, the experts over at mtglion.com, argue is because the number of people who go through to each of the four stages reduces as they head down the funnel. At the very top of the funnel is the awareness stage which basically involves making people aware of your products and the existence of your brand. It is important to connect with the right people as far as your products are concerned if you are to stand a chance of retaining them as you head further down the funnel. It is also equally important that you have a substantial amount of people at this stage to account for the fact that as far as drop offs of folks from one stage to the next go, this one will have the biggest. Strategies you can engage during this stage involve email signups, content marketing using avenues such as blogs, influencer marketing, advertising on social media among others. The next stage after awareness is the interest stage in which the consumer is in the process of deciding whether or not they are interested or need your products. If you are to boost sales at this stage it is important to provide consumers with more information on your products so that they can begin imagining themselves using your product. The main aim at this stage is to ensure that you create a desire for your product among consumers in this stage of the funnel.
The next stage is the purchase stage which basically involves those consumers who have definitely made up their mind that they want to buy the type of products like the one you are offering. It is your job to convince them that they should buy from you and not your competitors. The ways through which you can do this is through positive store and product reviews as well as through influencers who are so important in the modern era of social media. As is covered over at mtglion.com, having a trustworthy business is key here as things such as shipping and return policies play an important role in convincing them to go with you or not. The fourth and final stage of the ecommerce marketing funnel has to do with repeat purchases. Repeat customers are very important as far as your business goes as they not only add to your Lifetime Customer Value, they are also likely to bring referrals with them, who convert at a high rate and cost significantly less to acquire. Useful strategies to employ here to ensure that you get repeat customers include setting up loyalty programs, referral programs, having excellent customer services among others.
As far as the ecommerce marketing funnel goes, if you are to make it as effective for your business as possible and consequently use it to grow sales, it is important to get then budgeting for each of the stages spot on. The subject matter experts over at mtglion.com are adamant that it is recommended that one focuses their budget in the entire funnel uniformly rather than focusing most of one’s budget on the bottom of the funnel. Uniformly spreading finances works to ensure that there is consistent traffic of consumers throughout your tunnel as opposed to focusing only on the bottom end, a strategy which is usually very expensive to maintain. Bottom line is that, for success, it is important that none of this stages are ignored.
From the above discussion it is clear that if you are to use the ecommerce marketing funnel to grow sales, you are going to require awareness-driving content, interest-driving offers, conversion-focused product pages as well as loyalty programs to drive repeat purchases, with more on this and then some to be found over at the ever reliable mtglion.com.
