In this day and age, where everyone can start their businesses, growing eCommerce startups can be difficult. The business landscape is very competitive today, and a lot of new businesses fail due to intense competition. But for those with the grit and fearless energy matched with an eye for taking advantage of various ‘hacks’ that can help them attain growth faster, great rewards await. If these hacks work according to your favor, you will reap more extensive results that will lead to your startup’s immediate success.
Now, these can be in the form of “growth hacking” strategies that many startups use today to market their businesses.
What is Growth Hacking?
In 2010, Sean Ellis coined the term “growth hacking” and defined it as an unusual method of marketing. It is an unconventional approach that utilizes creativity, analytics, and innovation to achieve a big return quickly.
Presently, growth strategies for eCommerce are very popular for creators of startups since it allows them to rise above their competitors quickly and grow their startups quickly and efficiently. A slow and steady approach does not guarantee a stable and successful business. Startup founders must now find other means to grow their respective companies faster and exponentially, even when it means taking risks.
Now, if you have a startup or planning to start one, this article is perfect for you. Below are effective growth hacking tips and strategies to kick off your eCommerce startups!
But First, a Few Reminders:
You might get excited knowing that you now have an opportunity to significantly grow your eCommerce business in a short amount of time. That’s the main purpose of this article. But at the same time, we don’t want to give you an illusion that results will just come magically before you or that every strategy will work for you. As an owner or a manager of a startup eCommerce, you must be reminded of the following:
First, business growth is a defined process.
There are stages to business growth. You must be able to define which stage you are in to employ strategies that will lead you efficiently to success. So if your business is still fighting for survival, use strategies that will help increase your brand awareness and visibility and one that will bring you more traffic to your website.
Second, you must grow in alignment with your purpose.
Many startups fail due to not having a clear purpose or vision and by being everything to everyone.
For example, KMart, which used to be one of the popular brands in the US known for its low prices, failed for not having a clear purpose and for trying to be everything for everyone. For the desire to grow, it embraced designer brands to attract wealthier clients while still offering discounted prices for its patrons. The mixed messages only ended up getting customers confused.
As a startup business, you must clearly define your objectives, purpose, vision, and goals and stick to them. If your competitors are interestingly doing something for their growth that you don’t, take some time to revisit what you decided for your business to be when you built it. You don’t need to follow everything they do, especially if it doesn’t coincide with your purpose and goals.
Lastly, nurture your growth.
In order to grow, you need to nurture what you sow. But in this case, you need to nurture growth itself. That means that you let a working strategy produce more results. If you do that, you don’t need a hack, but you get to be the hacker. You can create more optimized strategies that work better than when you last learned them.
Growth Hacking Strategies for ECommerce
1. Capitalize on SEO
Knowing what SEO or Search Engine Optimization is, is not enough. In order to get optimal results, you need to know what to optimize and how to do it.
You’ll surely have many products for eCommerce websites, right? After intensive research for keywords with a nice amount of search volume, build and write your product titles, descriptions, meta descriptions, and meta titles with and around those keywords. Organize and assign your keywords well so your pages do not compete with or cannibalize each other.
After that, organize, optimize, and assign alt texts to your product images. If you can see from the Google Search Engine, there are also results for images. So optimizing them to rank high in SERPs will also give you a lot of advantages. To back this up, according to Search Engine Journal, a trusted and expert website that tackles SEO, 26% of the overall search in google is shared by Google images. This means that the more you get your images at the top ranks of Google images, the more chances you’ll get more traffic and conversions.
Taking advantage of SEO or search engine optimization is a popular growth hacking technique. This tip involves making your website become the first result when a user uses search engines to find a product like yours. With the right keywords, your website will be the first one or be part of the first results when users search for your service. Startups can utilize this by making articles, publishing authoritative content, and updating them regularly.
Check out this awesome example of eCommerce SEO case study by Matthew Woodward, and learn how to hack your way to get more organic traffic and revenue!
2. Make Use of Referral Marketing
One way to increase clicks or customers for your startup quickly is through referral marketing. This strategy involves making existing customers refer your product or service to their friends or other people. In turn, you will give them some sort of reward to make sure they refer your product. This method is effective as people who want to try a new product would instead follow the recommendation of people they know and trust. Moreover, customers you acquire from these referrals have a higher retention rate.
Find out how Branch Basics generated millions of revenue through referral marketing.
3. Collaborate with Influencers
Another excellent growth hack technique is using influencers to promote your products. Social media is ever-present in today’s world. Hence, there is a proliferation of influencers you can tap to market your new business. This way, you can compete with companies with enormous marketing spendings than you.
You can utilize social media influencers’ reach and followers as a possible consumer base. When they promote your products, their followers will most likely be curious about it and will click the link on their posts which leads to your landing page. Moreover, you must not forget that influencers cater to niche markets. Choosing the right influencer that matches your startup’s target audience will give you a bigger chance to attract and acquire new customers.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective growth hack strategies for eCommerce. This tip involves utilizing email services to communicate with your possible customers. Having email lists is hugely advantageous when you build your startup. Using these carefully curated lists, you can send your announcements and updates to your prospective consumers, which will make and keep them informed about your business. This growth hack serves as a pre-launch promo for a product or event that you are planning to start. Furthermore, it gives you a higher chance of acquiring leads and increasing conversions.
5. Partner with Other Brands
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Partnering with an established brand can give you several benefits! This growth hack involves business partnerships and collaborations. This strategy will generate buzz for your new startup, making people curious about your product or service. It will heighten brand awareness among both parties, giving each other opportunities. When you partner with other brands, you get to reintroduce yourself to their existing customers, making you acquire new leads. This is a win-win situation, especially if your brand complements the other.
6. Create a Community in Social Media
There is no doubt that social media can make your new business go viral and easily acquire new customers. This growth hack strategy entails that you build a community within social media through an official page or group. Having a social media presence allows you to introduce yourselves to billions of users of various social media platforms today. You can get your customers’ feedback and engage with them easily. Moreover, you can promote yourself quickly and for free so long as you have engaging posts! Just make sure that your page is up to date and that you have new content regularly. Another great advantage of social media is you can create a private community of your customers through it, for example, a Facebook group. Through this private community, you can communicate with your customers, make them invite their friends to join the private group, and quickly get feedback and suggestions. Lastly, you can give announcements easily with the assurance that they reach your intended audience!
7. Content Marketing
This growth hacking tip recommends that you develop a strategy for content marketing for your startup. This strategy means that you write and publish content that talks about and promotes your product. It will help your customer better understand your product without needing to spend a lot of budgets. You can utilize blogs or video tutorials and make sure that they drive leads to your startup’s landing page.
8. Run A/B Tests
Running A/B tests is very significant in growth hacking since it allows you to learn and get your desired results. You must never forget that if something does not work, you will know the reason why it did not unless you test it against another variation. This growth hacking strategy suggests that you test everything on your page. Concentrate on one area of your page at one time to not affect your results.
9. Make Videos for Video Content Platforms
Videos are currently the preferred content format of online users. According to Cisco (2020), 75% of Internet traffic streams video content. This is why several companies today shift to creating video content for their brands. Making video content for your startup is a great way to grow your startup quickly. With video content having its golden age, you can take advantage of it by creating engaging videos that will drive users to your new business. You may utilize video content platforms such as YouTube and start uploading content that will promote your products. You can also partner with different YouTubers to review or talk about your product on their own channel. This strategy will surely give you several fresh leads!
10. Optimize Your Product Images
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Last on this list is optimizing your product images. This growth hacking technique means that you boost the images of your products. Upload high-quality photos and use editing software to perfect the face of your startup and make it appealing to your customers. You can use Background remover for free to do this!
Additional Tips
1. Make use of automation tools
An automation tool is a software that enables you to define software testing tasks that are run with the most minor human interaction possible afterward. There are different types of test automation tools that you can use for your startup’s website so make sure you pick the one that matches your objective.
2. Always set achievable goals
Starting a new business can place you under a lot of pressure. You get to envision bigger things for your business, but in the end, you must always set achievable goals. Focus on what you know you can achieve. This way, you can prevent disappointments on your end. Setting achievable goals allows you to reach them efficiently once you start working on them. In today’s highly-competitive business landscape, you must learn to be realistic and know what you can and cannot do. Concentrate on your strengths and work on your weaknesses. Focus on what is attainable and set aside unrealistic goals.
3. Be patient
After following all these growth hacking tips, you most probably would want to get your desired results as quickly as possible. But that is not always assured in this world, so you must always learn to be patient. Learn to wait because some things take time to get, and some things are made out of luck. Be patient with whatever results that you may get, and always remember that if you want to succeed, you must never give up. Just try and try until you succeed. Patience and perseverance are the keys. Continue on your objective and take every setback as a learning opportunity for you to grow and better your startup.
Image from Vecteezy
Conclusion
All in all, despite the fact that growth hacking is an unconventional way to grow your eCommerce startups, it is still highly worth it to try since it can give you huge benefits. Growth hacking strategies are adequate as they are used by successful brands today like Gmail, Paypal, Dropbox, and more. It can increase your brand awareness, get new customers, generate revenue, and grow your startup quickly.
In this article, you have learned ten growth hacking tips to kick off your startups. Now, you can try all these and hope for the best! For more guidance, you can use these eCommerce tools for your startups.
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