Six ways to sell more online without spending a fortune on advertising, part 1

How can I sell more online without spending more on advertising?

Online sellers know that an eCommerce store is only as good as its full shopping carts.

But how do you get more customers without spending a ton on advertising?

If you’re looking to increase your bottom line and sell more online, in part one of our two-part post, “Six ways to sell more online without spending a fortune on advertising,” we present our first three tips.

1. Start with the end in mind – Customer service!

It may seem counter-intuitive and feel a bit like the chicken-and-the-egg argument, but if your customer service is lacking, no amount of marketing will help.

It’s likely that great marketing and high traffic to your to your website may work for a time. But, online reviews and word of mouth can overtake those efforts, and eventually business will dwindle.

So, start with customer service. How is your checkout experience? Do you send a receipt right away? Maybe add some personality to that typically transactional step.

What about shipping? How do you handle returns and refunds?

Each touchpoint with your customers should face scrutiny to ensure a positive experience.

2. Build your audience and convert visitors into contacts

You can’t have customers without first having visitors to your eCommerce site. Views can be a vanity metric – 1 million views may sound great but if no one buys they’re worthless. However, if no one visits your site or joins your audience, you can’t convert them into customers.

Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute, writes about building an audience in his book Content, Inc. “I believe the absolute best way to start a business today is not by launching a product, but by creating a system to attract and build an audience.”

Throughout his book, Joe goes on to explain that an audience that’s loyal will want to hear from you and buy from you. It’s not just a transaction (although some online sales are). It’s a relationship.

If you’re blogging, make sure you have a way for readers to subscribe with their email.

3. Convert contacts into loyal customers – Delight

Delighting customers has become a much-talked-about scenario in social media. From hotels returning stuffed animals after an adventure to random steak deliveries because of a tweet, delight through surprise is great.

But it’s not enough.

In their book Talk Triggers, Jay Baer and Daniel Lemin break down how consistent, relevant, scalable and reasonable actions can turn into triggers to getting people to talk about your brand.

Great customer service, as mentioned earlier, helps with this. But before you get to this point, you have to convert contacts into customers.

Using time-sensitive sales can help. So do relevant emails. For instance, you you sell mittens and other winter wear, keeping an eye on weather reports and sending a timely email to a specific area where a winter storm is due could bring new sales about for your online store (if you plan for shipping times).

Finally on this point, abandoned carts are the bane of many online sellers’ existence. Put a plan into place for abandoned cart nurturing to increase sales where they fell apart. Sometimes consumers just get distracted and your prompt could push them into buying territory.

Check out next week’s blog post on “Six ways to sell more online without spending a fortune on advertising,” part 2, for our remaining suggestions and our downloadable guide to running a successful eCommerce outreach campaign