In the ever-evolving ecommerce business market, staying ahead is about more than just keeping pace with today’s trends. Your traditional marketing efforts won’t suffice, either.
You must monitor changing trends and develop long-term and effective growth marketing strategies to improve customer lifetime value and stay ahead of the competition.
A future-proof e-commerce growth marketing strategy is built on deep market analysis, insightful consumer understanding, cutting-edge technology, and a focus on customer experience.
This article will discuss future-proof ecommerce growth marketing strategies in detail, along with tips and examples from successful brands you can emulate.
Market Analysis and Consumer Insights
For an e-commerce growth marketing strategy to be truly future-proof, you must base your approach on solid market analysis and consumer insights.
It will help you understand your target audience, anticipate market changes, and adapt your strategies accordingly.
But where do you begin?
Here are some best practices for conducting market analysis and consumer insights to create a solid growth marketing strategy for business growth:
Understanding your target audience:
The first step in crafting a future-proof strategy is to thoroughly understand your customers, what they value, and how they prefer to shop.
Here’s a quick overview of how to achieve this:
- Conduct Surveys and Feedback Forms. Regularly engage with your customers through surveys and feedback forms to gather insights about their preferences, pain points, and experiences with your brand.
- Utilize Social Media Listening. Monitor social media platforms for mentions of your brand, competitors, and industry trends. You can utilize tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to understand customer sentiment and identify emerging trends.
- Analyze Customer Reviews and Testimonials. Seek customer reviews and testimonials to determine what customers appreciate about your brand. Don’t forget to consider the areas that you can improve.
- Segment Your Audience. Categorize your customer base into different segments based on demographics, purchasing behavior, and preferences. This will help you create tailored campaigns based on each group’s unique needs.
- Use Behavioral Analysis Tools. Leverage modern-day behavior analysis tools like FigPii that come with heatmaps, session recordings, and A/B testing, among other features, to show how users interact with your website. For example, if heatmaps show that customers consistently ignore your main call-to-action, it might be time to test a new placement or design.
- Stay Updated with Industry Reports and Research. Subscribe to industry newsletters, attend webinars, and read market research reports to keep abreast of broader consumer trends and preferences.
- Engage with Customers Directly. Nothing beats direct interaction and understanding your customers. Host virtual Q&A sessions, engage in comments on social media, or even conduct one-on-one interviews with willing customers to get in-depth insights.
Demographics also play a crucial role in understanding your audience’s purchasing patterns.
For example, statistics suggest that Millennials and Gen Z prefer brands that stand for sustainability and ethical practices. A study by the World Economic Forum suggests that 75% of Generation Z (born between the nineties and the noughties, roughly spanning 1995 to 2010) prioritize sustainable purchases over brand names.
Conduct a competitive analysis.
Competitor analysis gives you insights into how your competitors conduct business and their products, prices, strengths, weaknesses, market share, and marketing strategies.
This will help you reveal market gaps that your ecommerce business can fill.
Amazon’s rise to dominance in ecommerce is partly due to its ability to identify and exploit gaps in the market, including faster delivery times, which also led to the creation of Amazon Prime.
Pro Tip: Conduct a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) on competitors to gain insights into areas where your brand can differentiate itself.
(Source)
Keep abreast of market trends
Keeping abreast of market trends is paramount if you want to keep up with your competitors, stay innovative, and remain at the top of the market for years.
To do that, subscribe to all prominent platforms that regularly release industry-related reports and conduct market research. Some reputable market research firms you should read include Gartner, Forrester, Nielsen, and McKinsey.
They provide in-depth analysis, forecasts, and insights into consumer behavior, technological advancements, and industry shifts.
Another great tip is to identify and follow industry thought leaders, influencers, brands, and professionals in your industry on LinkedIn, Twitter, and industry-specific forums. They often share valuable insights, trends, and commentary on the industry landscape.
For instance, Invesp frequently posts conversion optimization tips and insights on their Twitter account.
This practice provides invaluable information for industry professionals, offering a glimpse into current best practices and future trends within the sector.
For example, Invesp’s Twitter handle routinely shares their conversion optimization tips and experiences.
Such information proves incredibly useful for industry professionals, offering a glimpse into current practices and potential future trends within the industry.
At the same time, sign up for newsletters and publications that focus on your industry. Sources like The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and specific industry publications like TechCrunch for tech or Ad Age for marketing and advertising offer valuable news and analyses.
Invest in Technology and Infrastructure
If you want to craft a future-proof ecommerce growth marketing strategy, you must invest in technology that will help you stay afloat for years.
This investment supports current operational needs and positions a business to adapt to and capitalize on future market changes and consumer behaviors.
Scalable ecommerce platforms
As an ecommerce business, you should first invest in reputed, scalable, and secure ecommerce platforms.
Shopify and Magento stand out as scalable ecommerce platforms that you can use to grow and keep your business future-proof.
Shopify, for instance, supports millions of businesses in over 175 countries, offering a user-friendly interface, customizable templates, and support for growth.
Magento, with its open-source technology, provides businesses with a flexible ecommerce solution that they can scale and customize according to their specific needs.
Data analytics and customer insights platforms
One way you can stay future-proof is by continuing to meet the changing demands of your customers.
For example, customers’ demands for personalization in marketing and customer support keep increasing with time. You must stay mindful of these changing marketing trends and customer expectations to keep your business afloat.
Investing in credible data analytics tools will help your businesses stay updated with the latest customer data – which will help you drive decisions and personalize the customer experience.
For example, Stitch Fix, an online personal styling service, uses AI and machine learning to tailor its clothing selections to individual customer preferences, sizes, and styles.
How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing And Augmenting Retail The Amazing Case Of Stichfix
This technology-driven approach has revolutionized personal shopping by creating a highly personalized and efficient service.
Optimize for mobile devices.
The world is now turning largely to mobile devices over desktop sites. The trend continues to flow in the same direction for the coming years.
According to Statista, smartphones constituted around 78 percent of retail site traffic globally in the fourth quarter of 2023. What’s more, mobile alone was responsible for generating two-thirds of online shopping orders.
Optimizing your ecommerce site for mobile devices is one of the biggest parts of making your business future-proof. Not just future-proof, but looking at the numbers, it’s clear that optimizing for mobile commerce is also non-negotiable in the present context.
Automation for efficiency and personalization
Automation is another strategy every business is going out of its way to adopt.
Automation tools help you streamline operations, reduce costs, and enable personalized customer experiences.
As an ecommerce business, you might want to invest in the following automation tools to keep your growth marketing strategy future-proof:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools: Automate customer interactions, sales tracking, and customer data management to enhance the customer experience and improve retention. Example tools include Salesforce and HubSpot.
- Email Marketing Automation Platforms: Send targeted, personalized emails to different segments of your audience at scheduled times or based on specific triggers. For example, you can use Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign.
- Inventory Management Systems: Automatically update stock levels, track orders, and manage supply chain operations. Tools like Zoho Inventory and Shopify Inventory Management can help you minimize stockouts and overstock.
- Chatbots and Customer Service Automation: Provide instant responses to customer inquiries, automate common support requests, and offer a personalized shopping experience. Examples include Intercom and ManyChat.
- Ecommerce Analytics Tools: Collect and analyze data on customer behavior, sales trends, and website performance to inform business decisions. Google Analytics and FigPii are powerful tools for these purposes.
- Payment and Invoice Automation Systems: Simplify the checkout process, automate invoice generation, and manage transactions securely. Stripe and PayPal offer robust solutions for automating payment processes.
Implement Omnichannel Marketing
Gone are the days when you had to launch your product and run an email campaign to engage your customers.
Customers demand a more integrated and personalized shopping experience across all major platforms and devices.
They want the convenience of shopping directly on Instagram and the ease of browsing through a mobile app while also seeking the experience of a full-fledged desktop site.
An effective omnichannel approach can enhance customer satisfaction, increase loyalty, and drive sales by meeting consumers where they are.
If you look at omnichannel statistics and trends, businesses with strong omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain, on average, 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for those with weak omnichannel strategies.
With the number of online channels continuing to increase, the demand for an omnichannel strategy is also likely to increase.
So, if you still haven’t cultivated an omnichannel marketing strategy for your ecommerce business, it’s time to start now to make it future-proof.
When crafting an omnichannel marketing strategy, remember these key components:
- Consistent Brand Experience: Your brand messaging, aesthetics, and values should be consistent across all channels. Every touchpoint should reflect your brand’s messaging and value, from your website and social media to mobile apps and physical stores.
- Integrated Shopping Experience: Customers should be able to switch between channels without hassle throughout the entire customer journey. This includes browsing, shopping, and completing purchases interchangeably in-store, online, mobile apps, or social media platforms.
- Personalized Customer Interactions: Utilize customer data to tailor interactions and recommendations across all touchpoints, making each customer feel understood and valued.
You can take notes from Disney’s approach to omnichannel.
From their website to the “My Disney Experience” app, they’ve integrated every aspect of the customer journey.
Disney’s Omnichannel Experience (Source)
The app serves as a central hub for planning a visit to the parks, from purchasing tickets to booking FastPasses, all synced with RFID wristbands for in-park experiences, creating a seamless and personalized customer experience.
Create High-quality, Evergreen Content
Creating high-quality, evergreen content is a must-do if you want to stay relevant and generate leads from the same content for years.
This type of content is like the gift that keeps giving – it stays relevant and valuable over time, draws in traffic, generates leads, and establishes your brand’s credibility long after it hits publish.
Here are some tips to help you create high-quality, evergreen content:
- Choose Timeless Topics: Stick to topics that won’t expire faster than milk. Think how-to guides, product care instructions, or the ABCs of your industry – content that your audience will always find useful.
- Quality is Key: Aim for content that’s so good that readers can’t help but share it. Make sure it’s thorough, well-researched, and dressed to impress. The goal is to be the best answer out there.
- SEO is Your Best Friend: Optimize your content for search engines with savvy keyword research. Remember, it’s a balancing act – you’re writing for humans first, search engines second.
- Keep it Fresh: Regularly update your content to keep it relevant. A little refresh now and then can boost its ranking and show search engines that your content isn’t gathering dust.
The best example of this type of content is wikiHow Guides.
WikiHow has got you covered with step-by-step guides on everything under the sun. Their content is the definition of evergreen.
Invoke Customer Loyalty
As many as 73% of consumers say a good experience is key in influencing their brand loyalties, highlighting the importance of a customer-first approach in this new competitive market.
Once you garner enough loyal customers, they also become your brand advocates. This means they’re loyal to your brand and bring more potential customers for you through positive word-of-mouth.
Now, the question is, how will you turn leads into loyal customers who will continue to buy from you?
Of course, offering them top-notch products and customer service is paramount. But beyond that, you have to make them feel special every time they interact with your brand. You need to make them feel so special and understand that they wouldn’t dream of going anywhere else.
How will you make your customers feel special enough to become loyal to your brand? Here are some tips:
- User-Friendly Website Design: Make sure your site is easy to navigate, loads fast, and is mobile-friendly. A seamless experience keeps frustration at bay and encourages browsing.
- Personalization: Use customer data to tailor the shopping experience. From personalized emails to product recommendations, show your customers you know what they like.
- Top-Notch Customer Service: Be there for your customers with multiple support channels (live chat, email, phone). Quick and helpful responses can turn a complaint into a compliment.
- Reward Programs: Offer points, discounts, or special perks as part of a loyalty program. It’s a great way to say “thanks” and encourage repeat business.
- Exclusive Offers: Give your loyal customers first dibs on sales, new products, or exclusive content. It makes them feel valued and keeps them coming back.
Performance Analysis and Optimization
Performance analysis and optimization are other important factors that will help your e-commerce growth marketing strategy to be future-proof.
It entails measuring how well your strategies work, learning from the data, and tweaking your approach to boost performance.
Before diving into data, you need to know what success looks like for your ecommerce business – which includes setting clear key performance indicators (KPIs). Common KPIs include conversion rates, average order value, and customer acquisition cost.
Once you know which growth marketing metrics and KPIs matter the most for your business, it’s time to keep an eye on them.
One of the best ways to measure them is through analytics tools like Google Analytics and customer behavior analysis platforms like FigPii.
Google Analytics offers a treasure trove of insights, from which pages your visitors linger on to where they drop off. On the other hand, FigPii will help you understand customer behavior through features like heatmaps, polls, and A/B testing.
By visualizing how users interact with your site, you can make informed decisions to enhance the user experience, ultimately leading to improved performance metrics.
Beyond numbers, customer feedback can offer qualitative insights into what’s working and what’s not. Use surveys or feedback widgets to gather this valuable information.
Securing Your E-commerce Future-Proof With Growth Marketing Strategy
Successful growth marketers setting out to craft a future-proof e-commerce growth marketing strategy should focus on building a foundation that can adapt to and capitalize on the ever-evolving trends.
Every effort should be geared toward sustainable growth, from leveraging deep market insights and cutting-edge technology to creating a seamless customer experience and nurturing loyalty.
By staying informed, being adaptable, and continually seeking to understand and meet your customers’ needs, your ecommerce business can not only survive but thrive in the future marketplace.
