Give Your Customers the Right Tools

One of the most important things you can do is give your customers/supporters more power to help you achieve your initiatives. Remember, you need to give them as much as you get from them. This is very important because each side is equally important. Some things you need to do is give them a special affiliate link to help promote the product, banners, social media messages, and even email templates so that their prospects can find the right landing page. These are all helpful methods to ensure their success. You want to make this as easy as possible so they won’t have to do so much work on their end.

Make Sure There’s Great Customer Service

In any niche company, customer service is going to reign supreme. If you have someone promoting your product, the prospect is trusting in that person’s co-sign. You need to go above and beyond by being responsive to emails and concerns. Your store should also have a great user experience. Everything from the site speed, the ease it is to put things into carts, the checkout, and even coming back to purchase an accessory should all be easy. Remember, when you make it easy on your clientele, it’s more feasible to gain a sale. You can gauge for yourself by looking and testing the site to see if it’s something worth buying an item. Better yet, is it even worth the time to browse? That’s what you need to ask before you begin getting your referrals together.

What is Your Target Audience?

One of the main things you need to do before going into referral marketing is identify your target audience. What are you going to send to the core that will help you expand your brand? You need a good strategy to help satisfy their wants and needs so that you can use this information to build longevity in your company. Come up with a plan to ask this core audience to get on board with your program. You may want to release a beta program to see who bites the bait first. Maybe you can give them an incentive like a free product to try so they can see first hand if they enjoy it. Maybe you can give a monetary credit towards something else. Some people pride themselves on being the first because they want to be in on the action before everyone realizes that your product is great. It’s a good way to weed out who supported you before the brand became a hot commodity.

Analytics Don’t Lie

It’s very important to gauge what works and the things that are stalemate. You can see this through your referrals and find out what products actually sell and those that continue to be high and dry like clothes out on the hanger in summertime. Sometimes, it may not be the product itself but how and when you promote it. For example, if you have a pumpkin shirt, it might not do very well because it’s spring or summertime. However, once it gets to late September, it’s a top seller. Good referrals and data will show you exactly what’s needed so you can remove unnecessary inventory.

Additionally, it’ll tell you what products pop. Maybe you’ve been testing the waters on a new product and you find it sells like hotcakes for 5 months straight. This might be an evergreen product that could be a staple in your company. No matter the demographic, you can use this stabilize sales while you try out new product. It’s always good to have a fallback in your company. Remember, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. A referral system is not something to just set and leave alone. You need to constantly tweak things and test experiences out so that you can find patterns and trends that prove flawless over time. You want this pattern to really be the basis of creating stable income for your brand.

Give Your Supporters the Right Incentive

Supporters will promote your brand for a while if they genuinely agree with your message. However, you want these supporters to build a long term relationship with you so that you can create longevity in your business. Whether it’s monetary, a trip somewhere, a gift, or another item of your choosing, you need to show that you care. It gives them more reason to go even bigger for your business. Also, it creates a great dynamic between those that are willing to go an extra mile or be complacent in how they promote your business.

One key way you can tell who’s your supporter is by implementing a contest. It’s a good way to get data on those that take that extra step in pushing product. Also, you’ll see what your customers gravitate toward in a particular season. Remember, the prize shouldn’t be solely up to you. Give your supporters a choice in the matter so that they are more included in the bottom line. Set a date, a schedule, and some key banners to help them properly promote your product. At the end of the contest, you can declare a grand prize, 2nd place, and 3rd place winner. This adds to the competition level in the company. It’s creative and exciting which makes things much more interesting.

Referral marketing is very effective with the right product, audience, and support system. What kind of tactics do you use in your referral marketing campaign? Post a note below.

The post What is Referral Marketing? appeared first on Omnistar Etools.

Honey

Instead of having to look at your items and see what the best coupon or deal should be for the time, this app helps you automatically set this price. Honey automatically applies and finds coupon codes when you shop. For an ecommerce marketer, it would be great to add your own coupon code and promote it through Honey because it gets a lot of traffic. People that are already on the site can find your deals instantaneously. Not only will this drive tons of traffic to your site during peak hours, but you can get more upsells this way. You can set timers for exclusive deals so there’s more of an enticement to buy. Having that F.O.M.O. (fear of missing out) on a great sale will give your site more authority. In turn, you’ll find that this traction will help you rank better.

Keepa

There’s no better teacher than a big ecommerce store that you can learn from. Let’s say you’re an Amazon fanatic and you want to keep a gauge on how their products sell. It’s a good way to compare and contrast how you sell your own items. What Keepa does is actually look at the price history of all the charts for Amazon through different versions, sizes, and colors of products. They go to track and watch directly from the product page and see if any of them dropped below your desired price. If you are looking to sell certain items on Amazon or even on your own store, this is an excellent way to keep tabs on their data. When it comes to buying an item for a specific season, you want to make sure you can compete with the majors as well. This is great research to help you take your brand to another level.

Sniply

You still need a way to drive more conversions to your store. Sniply is great at maximizing your conversion rate. With each link you share, they add a call-to-action to help you promote yourself more efficiently. You can embed your own call-to-action by embedding custom messages into your content. It automatically detects when you type or paste a link and will ask if you want to embed a message on that page. It converts these into powerful links that will increase your conversions. It integrates with different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Hootsuite. Get more leads, signups, and overall exposure to your brand. You can keep track of this data by seeing the engagement of your content and how many clicks you get with each link.

Ahrefs

Sometimes it’s about finding the hot trend in the market before you can increase your sales. The key with Ahrefs is you’ll know trends of hot button keywords and phrases from a week, a month, 6 months, and a year ago. This will help you come up with even better content so that you can get more targeted traffic on your site. You’ll also be able to trace where different backlinks fall so you can easily see the void in your competition. You can fill this empty place and start exploiting it to your advantage. Getting these kind of metrics will help you find out a good course of action for promoting content and engaging with your audience. This in turn will help you drive more sales because you’ll fill in the gap with valuable information that you can use to help market your content and products. This is very important to help you sustain a long-term business.

MailChimp Stats

Being aware of your email stats is very important. You could be juggling a number of things and on a desktop. However, you might want to take a quick look at how your emails are performing. This is a great plugin to help you keep track of your stats in the latest campaign you promoted. This saves a lot of time of having to sign in an app or service on the web. Get a gauge of the clickthrough rate and the open rate. This will help you stay afloat on what email messages work and what doesn’t. The benefit of this plugin is you’ll be able to set the time of how often this service checks your campaign. It could be once every 5 minutes to an hour. You’ll be able to multi-task in other aspects of your business without being bogged down on constantly checking email stats.

When it comes to gaining more ecommerce sales, you need some good tools in the shed to help you breakthrough. It’s important that you have good stats to help you develop content and see if actually works so you can give customers better value. Also, you want have a leg up on your competition and exploit their weakness by finding out price ranges and the things they haven’t tapped into that you can easily fulfill. These are just 5 great sources to help you build longevity for your brand. What are some Chrome plugins you use to help increase your sales volume? Post a note in the comments.

The post 5 Best Google Chrome Apps to Get More eCommerce Sales appeared first on Omnistar Etools.

WP eCommerce

When it comes to hosting your website, this is the plugin you need to help you take your brand to another level. This plugin will help you convert your visitors at a faster rate and create a more secure cart for them to checkout. With over 36,186 stores made as a result of WP eCommerce, it continues to be one of the best open-source solutions for business owners. You’ll be able to add products to your catalog, monitor sales and reports, configure taxes and shipping, etc. This is the type of tool you need on your side to help you jumpstart your ecommerce store through WordPress. This kind of compatibility and ease of use will create a great avenue for your staying power. With constant updates in this plugin, you’ll stay afloat in an evolving place of business.

eShop Shipping Extension

Having the right shipping program in effect will help you get to your bottomline. The product could be great but the shipping maybe horrible, and it doesn’t do any good if someone can’t get a handle on their purchase. This extension helps to secure more shipping across places like Canada. You want your product to be shipped to the customer in a fair amount of time, so that they can trust you with more purchases. You want to make sure that this relationship has a steady stream of trust. The authenticity and dependability of your brand is very important in sustaining a long-term partnership with you and your customer. You’ll be able to see in real -time shipping rates and services. This interaction will help you make better decisions of what services to use from UPS, FedEx, and USPS. If you can find the right shipping express to send out your product, then having an online business goes null and void. At the end of the day, you need to find the most efficient way of sending your product out to the target audience.  This plugin is a good tool in creating an easier shipping method.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is great for creating your own customizable platform. With WooThemes, you can select a good ecommerce template and not have to worry about starting completely from scratch. They already have a storefront to help you get good integration with WooCommerce. This will save you the trouble of any crashes or any problems when you get a new theme or plugin during your WooCommerce updates. You have a choice of setting up taxes depending on where things are shipped or the base address. Whether you have a particular service or product, you’ll be in good hands because you can sell anything, anywhere. You don’t have to be limited by just a few selection options when this plugin gives you the platform to create your own lane in the ecommerce universe. All the while, you’ll take advantage of the functionality of WordPress as a great host for your online store.

Cart 66

When it comes down to it, the most important part ends up being the experience at the shopping cart. It’s difficult to get sales when your shopping cart is dysfunctional. It’s the difference between someone clicking to another site or staying with your brand because the experience was that stellar. Cart 66 is a solid plugin that will help you in selling digital downloads, physical product, publish your magazine, and even setup a donation center on your site. It’s much more than building an ecommerce site because you have the right cart to engage your customers. There are different payment gateway integrations to help your customers to find the right method to make their final transaction. Also, you’ll have the right security in place so that this is safe bet for you and your customer. This will ensure a smoother transaction so there’s a lower risk for any phishing on your network.

iThemes Exchange

This makes the process of purchasing much simpler. You don’t have to go through unnecessary verbatim to get what you want. For example, if you wanted to buy an item at a discounted price, you’ll  be taken to a screen where you can directly apply a coupon code and make your purchase. This whole system is based on a simple yet extendable kind of mechanism. Remember, the easier it is for your customer to use, the more sales you’ll gain because it’s comfortable. On your side, you can easily add flat rate or shipping options to any products you choose. Maybe you want to create a free shipping option when your customer meets a certain buying threshold. The key is in making the interface simple and accessible so your buyers get straight to the point when it comes time to make a purchase decision.

WordPress is a great tool when it comes to setting up plugins to create more value on your ecommerce store. There are a lot of options available but pick the ones that relates more to your business strategy. What are some plugins you use to help you gain more traffic and sales? Leave your thoughts in the comment section.

The post 5 Best eCommerce WordPress Plugins appeared first on Omnistar Etools.

Test a Few Products on Your Site

While you may have a wide range of products on your page, this might be the problem. Why? There’s no focus on a select few so it makes the buying decision a lot harder. That’s not to say that diversity is a bad thing. However, you should place a few products in the focal position. This way you can actually test them out and see what results come up. If you find these products sell very well, maybe you need those products as your focus group. These can be your staple products that get you the most sales. Also, this will help you realize what out of your inventory can you disregard or keep online. You can push the other products through emails, promotions, and special causes.

Upsell Your Product Through Promotion

One of the best things to do after someone’s bought an item is to do some upselling. Remember, it’s a lot easier to get a person that bought something interested in buying more. Marketing to a new prospect is a lot harder. When someone buys something from you, it’s your job to follow up. Look at what the person purchased and find out something that coincides. Maybe if they bought a t-shirt, there’s a vest or scarf that goes with the ensemble. This is important because the small details count. Instead of getting one single buy, you build into multiple sales. This creates a longer lasting relationship and interest level than just going to the next one who may have no desire to buy anything in the first place.

Whether you have a coupon off the next purchase, a buy one/get one free, or spend $40 and get shipping free promotion –these are all great ways to help boost your sales and keep the flow going without being too invasive. You have to strike the iron while it’s hot so things don’t get cold when you have their attention.

Ask Them What They Prefer

Even if you have a great variety, that doesn’t always guarantee a sale. Let’s say you have some shirts for sell in specific colors, you can have your customers or prospects vote to see which one they like the best. This will help you reduce your inventory costs and keep your customers in the loop of what items they can purchase. Remember, you have to give the customers what they value. If they like a doggy shirt in red for Christmas, don’t fight their rhythm because you personally like the orange one best. There’s always a compromise so you can meet in the middle. The more engaged and more you personally ask what they want, the better off you are in predicting things they like best on direct data. This gives you an idea of how to diversify your items in a way that’s not an empty trial and error method.

Post More Content

All of your content doesn’t have to be directly tied into gaining sale. You might want to keep a blog or a social media site updated so that you can engage with others. Maybe you have a charity or there’s an issue that you support. People like the human factor of your brand. When they see you might have the same interests they care about, it’s a lot easier to get on board with what you have to say. Diversify it with funny blurbs of the day, vlogs, and more to build traction to your site. You can always promote your links and even wear or do product placement to get major views outside of just your site. This is a subtle but effective way of marketing your brand. It’ll also help with sales because the retention rate is a lot higher. You’re in a place where everything doesn’t have to be so dry and to the book. Use your creative outlet to your advantage to give value, to provide a laugh, or some kind of emotional connection for the day.

Post Up Personal Reviews of Your Site

There’s no better promotion than the experience of someone else’s. If you have  Facebook page, Yelp, or some other review site, this can help your business. Sometimes even the negative experiences can be positive. Let’s say something didn’t work out and a person writes a bad review of the customer experience. However, you tried to compromise and show care. The person could write an update of how you handled the situation and tried to make it better. Not every transaction is going to be perfect. This shows some character. It’s a good idea and it’ll give prospective clients a look into the integrity of your business. Trust is everything.

When you start building more positive reviews, it does wonders for your reputation. This is a great asset to your business because you want this feedback to essentially promote your brand. The people that wanted to find out more can see how you take care of customers even when things aren’t squeaky clean. This will help you build more longevity in traffic and sales for your brand.

It can be an uphill battle for most to sustain a business online. However, there are tools and strategies to make this doable. Be creative in how you engage with your customers and make them aware of your presence without being too invasive. What are some tactics you use to increase your sales? Comment below with a strategy that helps you bring in more revenue.

The post 5 Strategies to Get More Sales for Your Store appeared first on Omnistar Etools.

They will probably also eat up a lot of your time since referrals involve creating and constantly nurturing meaningful relationships. Not the most convenient strategy, now is it? The good news is that all your efforts will eventually pay off because, unlike other marketing strategies, referral is all about understanding your audience and catering to its needs.

Some of the most successful businesses have acknowledged that, in order to create a sustainable business model, one most obtain constant referrals. Arguably the most relevant example for this type of marketing is DropBox which managed to permanently increase subscription percentage by 60% by offering extra storage to new users that register with friends.

After having spent most of your time networking you probably have a basic understanding of how online relationships work. You also know that the process is tedious rather than difficult. The only thing to do now is to see what makes people tick when it comes to referring products. For things to run smoothly, you must understand what are the “do’s and don’ts” of referral marketing.

1. DON’T: Use your Friends

Word of mouth is extremely powerful, especially when the person doing the talking is someone you trust. While it is OK to ask your friends and acquaintances for an honest opinion about your products, you should never use them to create membership lists or falsely promote a product. It’s hard for someone close to say no when he is put on the spot so you should avoid uncomfortable situations.

If you really want to market your products with the help of your friends you should ask them to promote them only if they truly enjoyed using them. Sincere referrals are more likely to bring new customers. Another thing to be considered is the fact that friendships can actually influence a potential customer’s perception negatively. They might think “Oh, it’s only this guy’s friends who are referring products. That’s suspicious.” The same rule applies for social media.

2. DO: Explain your Referral Process

Transparency is key when it comes to referral marketing. Most people will refuse to submit their personal information and contact details simply because they have no idea what you’re going to do with it.  In order to avoid uncomfortable situations for your prospective customers you should make sure that the referral process is correctly explained to them.

After all, your reputation is on the line as well. Before you begin your referral campaign there are a few questions that you must find an answer to:

• Who will you be targeting with your referral campaign?
• What type of incentive will you be using?
• How will your referrers know if the lead is progression?
• Are your rewards appetizing enough to inspire action?
• How will you contact the people that are referred?
• How will your referrers be able to track the progress of their referred customers?

These are only a few things that you should consider while devising your referral marketing strategy. The more information you offer, the better, so make sure that everything is crystal clear. You should also set up a customer service line dedicated to this segment of the market to resolve unexpected situations.

3. DON’T: Start with the Sales Pitch

As we already mentioned, referral marketing is all about building trust and nurturing relationships. The last thing you want to do is to bombard your new-fond customer with a sales pitch in the first message. Your prospect has probably never heard of your company before so you must provide a little friction by sharing interesting information about it.

What type of services/products are you offering? How will they benefit the new customer? What is your company’s philosophy? Etc. Another idea would be to introduce yourself and your experience in an original way before jumping to the sales pitch. First impressions count.

4. DO: Build Trust

Trust is probably the most important factor of a referral marketing campaign. When it comes to convincing people to take action, the best person to do the convincing is someone he/she trusts. Do you remember those strange sales-people who pop up at our front door from time to time? I never trusted them, and probably never will. You don’t want to come across as some sort of stranger with no authenticity.

As far as referral marketing is concerned, the sales pitch can only come from someone that the prospect trusts. This could be a friend, family, someone from work, a colleague etc. It could also come from the person’s favorite blogger or celebrity. Countless of online studies have shown that the number one source that people trust is people they know.

5. DON’T: Try to Rush People

Patience is the key for referral marketing. You can’t expect to send out a few messages and have people lining up to purchase your product. The typical referral cycle takes a few weeks to complete. In addition to this, a successful conversion might require between three and ten referral sources. Moreover, referral marketing is an ongoing process. You can’t stop after 10 successful referrals. The best course of action would be to include this strategy in your future marketing efforts.

Rushing a prospect usually results in abandonment. To increase the chances of success we advise you to take time to get to know him. Find out more about his interests, hobbies and personality. What is he more likely to spend money on? How can you be of help to him? Show the prospect that you are genuinely interested in him. This will not only secure a purchase but also increase the chances of getting a referral from him.

6. DO: Create Products that are Easy to Market

It doesn’t matter if a customer knows what he’s going to get in his package. The excitement of unboxing a package is equal to that of opening a Christmas present. While it may require some extra investment on your part, creating an interesting package is definitely worth it. There are plenty of people and bloggers who film themselves while unboxing a product. Let’s take Oculus’s Development Kit as an example. The DK1 came in a sleek collector’s case.

The kit was also sent out to tech enthusiasts, game developers and prominent writers. It had such a huge impact that most of them actually mentioned it while reviewing the second developers kit, which can in a regular box. Some even referred to the DK1 package as a “deal-breaker”.

Oculus’s packaging strategy example proves just how important it is to go the extra-mile. Were they to create an even better looking case for the DK2, reviews would have been even more persuasive. Since not many people have access to high-end virtual reality gear, marketing techniques are vital to propel the product to the right audience.

In other words, you should incorporate sweet extras to increase the impact of your products. A personalized thank you note with instructions about your referral marketing program and rewards will definitely inspire customers to take action, especially if they like your product.

7. DON’T: Send Out the Wrong Message

Another important aspect to keep in mind is the type of message that you want to send out. It’s critical that your message is catered for specific types of customers. Would you refer a company that offers nothing in return? Probably not. That’s why you should always focus on the benefits of your referral program. You don’t necessarily have to offer products or huge discounts. For web-based or subscription services it is enough to offer extra features or bonuses.

This is probably the biggest mistake that small businesses do. If you’re Coca-Cola or Nike you probably don’t need to introduce yourself, but if you’re representing a local business you might want to provide a little background about your company and services. If the structure of your message isn’t successful, change it. Mix it up a little. Try several variations and track results. Find out what is working and what isn’t.

You might also want to create personalized messages for specific groups. In addition to this, you should prepare unique messages for different triggers (examples: when someone leaves the page without completing a purchase, following up after a purchase and asking for a referral, offering thanks for support, informing about new offers and discounts etc.).

While it is true that automated messages will save you a lot of time and effort, they might also fail to send the message across.

8. DO: Share Feedback & Progress Information

We were talking about how trust works earlier. If you are trying to expand your customer base through referral marketing you should know that people usually refer to their family and friends. With this in mind, you should consider telling them how the process is going. Give them a status update once they made a referral. Tell them what exactly is going to happen once the referral process is complete. A notification once in a while will definitely boost their confidence. A few examples of progression milestones include the following:

• When the lead was contacted
• When the lead replied (+ type of response)
• When the lead shows interest
• When the lead becomes a customer

The person who made the referral will be happy to hear about his friend’s progression, especially if it has a positive outcome. Another benefit of doing this is the fact that you will make the referral process easier to understand for them.

9. DON’T: Expect People to Refer You

There are actually two problems we need to mention here. First of all, you can’t expect people to refer you when you’re not doing anything to encourage them. Secondly, it’s not a good idea to have everyone refer you. Needless to say, not every referral is good for your business. Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that being in a referral group will automatically bring referrals to them. Even if this happens, do you really want referrals that are not relevant?

Referral marketing is indeed effective, but it requires a solid strategy to work. You will have to become involved with social media, get close to your customers, constantly send out messages to them and spice up your reward system. And this brings us to another point. The point of networking isn’t to aggressively promote your referral marketing strategy.

Referral is meant to supplement not replace other marketing strategies. Consistency is required for it to work. You can’t promote your referral program for two months and then forget about it. You should constantly remind people why your products are superior to others.

10. DO: Give Recognition, Not only Rewards

Granted, monetary rewards and gift cards will result in a flurry of referrals in a very short time, but they will not help you strengthen your relationship with customers on the long run. Besides bonuses, discounts, free memberships etc. you should also think about non-monetary recognition. Your customer’s aren’t professional gold-diggers.

As a matter of fact, for some of them it is enough to have a stellar experience with a company to refer it. Take Amazon reviews as an example. Those people aren’t getting paid for sharing in-depth opinions about different products. They are doing it simply because they felt like it was the right thing.

You should switch it up every now and then by rewarding customers and prospects in unique ways: send them a thank you note, congratulate them on their birthday, recognize their referral efforts with a badge or special status, take an interview, invite them to an event, feature them on your website etc.

Things like this make customers feel like they really matter and they will also show your audience that you are genuinely invested in your venture. Happy customers will not only refer, but they will most likely become lifetime values.

This concludes our list of referral marketing Do’s and Don’ts. Remember that educated leads are more likely to convert.

The post Referral Marketing Do’s and Don’ts appeared first on Omnistar Etools.

Bigcommerce is a hosted, fully managed ecommerce platform that makes it possible for users to launch an online store in a matter of minutes. Its features include: a full e-commerce platform, built-in marketing tools, search engine optimized online store, business intelligence information, easy customization, and others. After signing up, you can select a store design and pick out shipping and billing preferences. Then, add or upload your products to your site and make them easily available for your customers.

Using Bigcommerce offers a range of benefits which include: no hosting to buy, no servers to set up, and no backups and upgrades to worry about. In addition, Bigcommerce does not require a contract to sign and cancellations can be processed any time. The platform also provides a host of marketing techniques that help online stores to sell better and to sell more with less effort.

When it comes Bigcommerce Marketing, there are several different ways to do it and all of these are aimed at increasing traffic and sales. Below are four of many effective ways to market your Bigcommerce store.

1) Adhere to SEO best practices.
SEO remains a powerful marketing strategy that should be implemented well. When using the Bigcommerce platform for SEO purposes, the fundamental process includes the following critical steps: doing keyword research; providing complete details for products; writing compelling content; entering details for the page title, meta keywords, meta description, and search keywords on the Bigcommerce store and category page.

2) Promote your e-commerce store at different platforms.
Selling products online is great, but being able to advertise it on a variety of platforms is exceptional. These platfoms include sites like Facebook, eBay and Google Shopping. Bigcommerce provides the tools you need to be able to have your products listed in a short span of time using free applications and inserting basic details about your Facebook and eBay accounts.

3) Use Google Shopping Campaign.
The Shopping Campaign from search engine giant Google is designed to assist web merchants to connect with consumers and market their products online. It is a new campaign type for Product Listing Ads (PLAs) that simplifies the process of managing and bidding on products, reporting on business performance, and seeking opportunities to enhance traffic to the business website. Google Shopping is a PPC strategy beneficial for companies with an e-commerce component. And because Google Shopping results use images, they can gain more attention than text ads. Plus, these results often send searchers straight to product listings, helping to improve conversion rates.

4) Invest in the Success Squad.
The Success Squad is a team of e-commerce experts who work exclusively to help online business owners become successful in their trade. The team has not only helped clients launch stores 50% faster; sales have also more than doubled after personalized coaching from the experts and targeted sessions with them. Sessions include increasing traffic through SEO, social media planning and best practices, improving conversion rates, integrating applications like live chat and email marketing, as well as marketing strategies and tactics that include SEO, PPC and social selling.

These are just some of the many ways to pull in more traffic and get more customers to spend their money on your Bigcommerce store. Depending on your preference, you should decide with prudence as to what paid marketing strategy to use. Should you opt for free ones, make sure to plan everything carefully so as not to waste time on methods that may be less than effective for your unique situation.

The post 4 Marketing Strategies for Bigcommerce Stores appeared first on Omnistar Etools.

1. Run an affiliate program.

An affiliate program is among the most powerful methods to market your products on the Internet. This marketing strategy does not just drive traffic to your website. It also improves your search engine rankings, expands the reach of your brand, and increases sales. With affiliate programs, affiliate marketers place an advertisement for your products and reel in a fixed amount of percentage of any revenue you manage or direct.

The software that is best for Bigcommerce is OSI Affiliate by Omnistar. To start an affiliate program, you need to have software designed to simplify management and implementation of affiliate campaigns. You also need to have an attractive offer to potential affiliates and a well laid-out agreement and policy.

Apart from those, you have to provide the advertising materials, sometimes referred to as creatives. These should be the essentials such as promo banners and logos that your affiliates can use on their own websites and blogs. Other marketing materials you may need to provide are reprinted articles, brandable reports, and email promotions. You then find high-performing affiliates to advertise your campaign. Use OSI Affiliate Software to run the entire program and manage your affiliates and their commission.

2. Use social media.

Social media is a powerful tool that you can use to improve your visibility to more people from different parts of the world, cultivate relationships, and connect with others outside your geography. Online businesses can benefit from this with the social media marketing tools provided by Bigcommerce.

Bigcommerce gives your online store the viable opportunity to market your products through built-in social media tools. By use of this functionality, ecommerce companies enable their customers to easily share their favorite items with their family, friends, and contacts on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest. The option to share is provided after online buyers complete their order.

Furthermore, Bigcommerce enables online business owners to make it easy for their buyers to stay updated through social media icons found at the bottom of each page. Standard and theme-specific icons offer choices to display services like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, and more. This helps you to let your subscribers know what you are up to and keep them updated on the latest about your products.

3. Launch promotions and coupons.

There a number of benefits to holding promotions, not just revenue-wise. Promotions are a great technique to get new customers to buy from your online store. These are also a good way of contacting your regular customers. In addition, promotions give you an opportunity to rebrand your products especially during slow season. Promotions can be in the form of discounts. A good bet would be to offer a 30% discount. According to Accenture’s Annual Shopping Survey, 62% of respondents are persuaded to make a buying decision when a 30% discount is offered.

Bigcommerce provides promotions tool to make this marketing strategy easier to manage. Whether it is a simple sale or a dynamic set of pricing rules that offer discounts for certain orders, the promotion tools provided by Bigcommerce makes the method highly achievable. The promotion tools offer the following options: trackable coupon codes, time-limited promotional campaigns, free or discounted shipping, rule-based promotions (such as buy 2, get 1 free), minimum quantity purchasing, multi-tiered pricing with bulk discount rules, as well as customer groups with pricing policies.

4. Offer items or services for free.

Free items and services are always a great way to get more customers. Whether it is a free item or a free service, it encourages customers to buy from you. There are many ways to offer freebies. One is to send a free gift with a purchase. In most instances, the element of surprise such as in receiving an unexpected gift – no matter how small or simple – often keeps buyers coming back for more. The free gift can be a simple addition to a purchase, such as a free pair of flipflops or a free straw hat for a beach outfit purchase.

Free shipping is another way to get customer attention.. It has been revealed in studies that 9 in 10 buyers think free shipping is essential when making a buying decision online. Providing other options is advantageous as well and enhances the conversion rate. The options can include next day shipping on top of other shipping options. Giving customers choices other than the free shipping gives them more freedom to choose.

5. Use Bigcommerce to sell on eBay.

eBay is an extremely popular site frequented by millions of online shoppers from different parts of the world. While it is beneficial to have an eBay store, it can also be a major headache to maintain both eBay and Bigcommerce stores at the same time. The fortunate thing is that Bigcommerce has made it possible to sell on eBay without the stress of separately managing two store channels. The reason is that Bigcommerce has integrated eBay inside its platform. For business owners using the Bigcommerce program, this presents an added opportunity to reach customers using eBay.

Setting up the functionality of using Bigcommerce to sell product on eBay involves a quick process. In essence, the task involves the following: creating a listing template, in which options like auction or buy it now are specified; setting up shipping and payment modes and more; selecting the products to be listed on eBay as well as the listing template and the time the items will remain listed; and, paying the fees until the auction is live. Whenever a purchase is made or an auction ends, Bigcommerce will send a notification. All operational tasks such as invoice generation and shipping are managed through Bigcommerce.

6. Advertise the Bigcommerce shop on your Facebook page.

Aside from making managing your storefront easier, the Bigcommerce platform also allows you to set up a landing page application and add your products to your Facebook page, giving you wider customer reach. As soon as you have set up your Bigcommerce store, use the platform’s SocialShop to place a landing page on your Facebook page. You can also use it to add all your products as well as their descriptions to your Facebook page. Bigcommerce support provides a detailed procedure on how to install SocialShop on your Facebook page in order to fully take advantage of it.

Once the installation is completed, SocialShop will display all the categories in your Bigcommerce store so that you can effortlessly browse your products by category right within your Facebook page. Likewise, a Facebook store promotional banner also appears ontop of your Facebook store. Facebook provides a default graphic as well as the functionality to upload your own image. The banner can be edited within your Bigcommerce dashboard.

7. Ask customers to provide customer and product reviews.

The best content that any online store can come up with is not something it creates, but rather something that comes from consumers. According to a study called Cone’s 2011 Online Influencer Trend Tracker, four out of five consumers decided not to buy a product based on negative comments and feedback in an online review. In contrast, over four out of five consumers have looked to positive reviews to affirm their buying decision.

Furthermore, customer reviews develop consumer trust that improves conversion by almost 40%. Specifically, product reviews are the content that many online buyers seek out first and use as a basis when deciding on whether or not to buy a product. This is why customer and product reviews are essential to any business owner operating online. Bigcommerce provides built-in product review tool that automatically sends emails to buyers a few days after purchase to request a product review. The tool requires no add-ons and does not come with extra costs. Setting up the product reviews tool entail a simple process and online store owners are notified each time a product review is submitted.

8. Add rich snippets to your Bigcommerce store.

Rich snippets, or microdata, which are tags that make visible important product information in search engine results, can be added to a Bigcommerce store to improve click-through rates from search engine results pages. Snippets can be anything from products details, reviews, ratings, images of videos, or any type of information that help customers make the buying decision. The main point is that with these rich snippets, your Bigcommerce store is displayed on search engines with more useful information to people searching through these venues.

Installing rich snippets involve the following basic procedure: accessing the HTML of the page where the rich snippets will be added; adding the appropriate microdata; and, updating your HTML and testing the rich snippet by means of Google’s Structured Data Testing tool to verify the addition of the snippets that enables search engines to find it so that the details appear on the search results.

9. Make use of email marketing.

Even with the popularity of social media these days, research reveals that marketing through email is still far more effective compared with social media in terms of attracting customers to your online store. According to Custora, a predictive analytics group, customer acquisition via email has grown in the last few years and accounts for nearly 7% of customer acquisitions, with Facebook and Twitter lagging far behind. Furthermore, customers who visit businesses through their email are inclined to buy more and spend more. Custora figures also show that email customers provide 11% more value.

Bigcommerce stores have the ability to use email marketing to their advantage. Automatic emails can be set up to advertise products, offer discounts, or send emails iwth event-based coupons and gigt ideas. What’s more, Bigcommerce allows users to create rules to add customers to one or more list based on pertinent details such as purchased items, order total, and more. Additionally, email marketing through Bigcommerce allows storefront owners to send newsletter to customers and inform them about special offers and new products, which are all effective means of marketing and gaining more customers.

10. Use the built-in SEO features.

Advertising your Bigcommerce store can also be done by means of the SEO tools that are included in the platform’s system. Bigcommerce includes a variety of tools that ecommerce stores need to rank highly in search engines. Optimizing the Bigcommerce store reuires a simple process. The items that need to be taken care of are the following: title and header tags, meta descriptions and keywords, meta keywords, custom page URLs, image alt tags, SEO-optimized themes, and search engine friendly links.

Advanced SEO tools are also provided but do not require sophisticated skills to implement. The SEO tools provided by Bigcommerce are equipped with professional level features that enable users to gain better SERPs and improved control. Some of the aspects involved in the advanced SEO functionality are tableless themes. redirects and rewrites, editable robots.txt file, CSS and Javascript files hosted on speedy CDNs, and prioritized XML site maps that autofeeds to a major search engine.

With the help of these ten effective ways to market their online stores, Bigcommerce store owners can gain more customers for their online business, subsequently improving their sales and ultimately achieving their main business goals. When implementing the methods enumerated above, Bigcommerce store owners have to keep in mind that implementation should be done in a strategic manner. In addition, monitoring the results is important as well as tweaking the methods to make them suitable to certain situations. This is to ensure that flexibility is applied where it is necessary.

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Follow the link below to access the Omnistar Affiliate podcast page:

Omnistar Affiliate Podcasts

The post Affiliate Marketing Videos Now Available for iTunes-Ready Devices appeared first on Omnistar Etools.

The first thing existing users will notice about Omnistar Affiliate is the layout change on the home page. No information or areas have been removed from the previous layout, but rather the information has been reorganized into, what the company feels is, a cleaner, more intuitive layout. A video walkthrough section has also been added to the home page in order to give users the direction they need to successfully use the software.

New users will instantly be greeted with the newest technical aspect of the software, an improved Getting Started Wizard, which must be completed before navigating into the rest of the software. This wizard serves to specify required administrative settings as well as guide the user through setting up his first affiliate program. Once the user has completed the wizard, he will be able to access the rest of the software, but may return to the wizard in order to set up subsequent affiliate programs.

In addition to the redesign of the affiliate software, Omnistar Interactive is currently working on a redesign of the affiliate user section as well as applying the layout of the affiliate software to all of its products in the coming months.

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The company has striven to create a more user-friendly internet home and has heavily integrated video content in the form of how-to and overview clips. The increased popularity of widescreen monitors has also played a part in the design of the site, as it exhibits a multi-column format. The increased screen space makes for a more visually-pleasing layout and also increases the amount of information contained on the active screen, eliminating the need for scrolling on many pages.

Accessibility proponents will also be pleased with the elimination of tables as layout devices. The redesigned site utilizes div pieces and other block-level elements for layout, while cascading style sheets (CSS) are employed for formatting and enhancement.
Take a look around the new site and let us know what you think!

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