7 Marketing Tactics That Actually Work to Drive Sales

Everyone wants to drive more sales for their store, but not everyone knows how to do it. The Internet is full of ideas on how to best market your products and your brand, but do all of those methods actually work? Or more importantly, do you know how to execute all of those marketing tactics that actually do seem like legit ways to drive sales?

It’s okay to admit you don’t know how to do something (even if you just admit defeat by doing a search on Google). Not only are there plenty of great marketing tactics that will drive sales for your ecommerce store, there are also programs out there that will help make it happen. Here are the 7 best marketing tactics along with the tools that’ll help you accomplish each one. All programs we recommend integrate easily with Shopify.

1. Engage Customers Before They Leave

You work hard to get people to enter your website- the last thing you want them to do is leave before they make a purchase. Once a customer leaves your website, you always run the risk that they will never return. There are some good tools for retargeting them later (which we will get to), but a great tactic is to engage them before they leave in the first place.

This process works by tracking a user and targeting them when their mouse moves to close out of your website, or go to another one. As this happens, a message will pop up that (hopefully) entices them to stay. You may choose to offer them a discount code or free gift with purchase, for example. Emails may go unnoticed, but these messages force a user to look at them and are a great way to earn that conversion.

Use this: Exit Offers

Exit Offers allows you to send these offers, and they give plenty of customization options. You choose what offer to show, when exactly to show it, as well as the frequency. Their analytics tools also help you track your performance to see how much of a difference your offers are making. Choose to show a discount code if a user is leaving from your shopping cart page, for example, or provide a message about customer support if users are on your homepage. You decide what works best. Also, with Exit Offers you can A/B test your offers to make sure you are sending the best possible offer that is making your customers convert.

Other related programs: OptiMonk, Picreel

2. Market on Instagram

With over 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram is not a social channel you want to ignore. You may already have an account that you use, but are you using the app to its full potential? In particular, you can leverage the power of your customers, making them marketers for your brand. Sharing user-generated content on your Instagram page, as well as your website, helps prove your brand is one that people love. We’ll talk more about social cues and customer reviews later, but always keep in mind that a customer saying they love a brand can make a larger impact than any marketing material you might produce.

Instagram is one of the best social media channels for engaging with your audience, so be sure to capitalize on this by reaching out and interacting with your customers, especially when they post about your products (that is free advertising at its best). Provide a hashtag people can use to share their images so that they are all grouped in one place.

Use this: AuthentiPix

You do not have to limit this user generated content to just your Instagram page- integrate on your website! Authentipix gives you the power to display user-generated content on your website. What is great about this tool is that you can moderate what gets shown and what doesn’t, giving you complete control over how your website looks. Displaying this content is not only beneficial for new users, but also existing customers. Customer loyalty is incredibly important for your store’s success, and this is a great way to keep your customers coming back.

Other related programs: Juicer, Instush

3. Display Product Reviews

Like we said, customer reviews give people more confidence when going to buy a product. In fact, 63% of customers are more likely to purchase a product when there are customer reviews present. Because of this, you should heavily consider integrating customer reviews onto your website. If you are a new brand it may take you a while to build up a good number of reviews, but it is well worth your time. Consider offering people a small incentive in exchange for their review in order to encourage your users to take the time to review your products.

In addition to boosting your conversion rate, customer reviews will also help with your SEO. Reviews provide you with fresh content to add to your page, something that search engines look for when indexing pages. These reviews may also contain keywords you wish to rank for, which is helpful instead of trying to stick keywords on your website where they aren’t really needed (which you can be penalized for, in fact).

Use this: Product Reviews

Product Reviews allows you to incorporate your user reviews easily onto your website. You have full control over how the reviews display on your website, and you can also monitor, filter, or hide any reviews. With all of these customization and control options, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be incorporating reviews onto your website.

Other related programs: InnovaReviews, Testimonial Robot, Get Five Stars

4. Upsell Items

Upselling is a great way to increase sales. In short, upselling is that act of offering your customers a slightly better product than the one they are currently considering purchasing. The key here is to offer an item that will still fit the customer’s needs, but is in some way better than the item they are considering so that the customer will be willing to pay more. Keep in mind that this is not an opportunity to sell a way more expensive item (for example: if they are looking at a $20 item, they will likely not jump and buy an $80 item, but they may consider a $30 item). The item also has to offer all of the features the previous item had. If you offer a range of products in your ecommerce store, this is a great opportunity to increase your sales simply by offering products you are already selling.

Use this: Product Upsell

Upselling may sound simple, but in reality it is pretty complicated. For this reason, it is best to use a program that specializes in this process so that you are sure to offer the right items at just the right time. Product Upsell gives you several upsell options that are based on various factors such as how much a customer is paying or which items they are buying. They also offer other deals such as Buy One Get One and other discount codes.

5. Optimize Ad Spending

Paying for ads can get very expensive if you aren’t sure how the process works. Figuring out bid prices, per day maximums, relevant keywords, and more, can get very confusing quick. Instead of guessing and potentially spending thousands of dollars without getting much in return, you should optimize your ad spending so that you know you will have a positive ROI. Paid advertisements both on search engines and social media are great options for increasing your customer base and your sales. However, without doing them correctly you will waste a lot of money that you can’t get back. While there is some amount of trial and error involved with any marketing tactic, when money is involved you want to reduce your risk as much as possible.

Use this: Vantage

Using a service like Vantage will automate your campaigns in order to make them more successful. While they charge a service fee, this is well worth it compared to handling things on your own and risking losing your entire advertising budget. They offer help with a variety of campaigns as well including Google ads, Facebook ads, and Instagram ads.

Another related program: Wordstream

6. Sell on Facebook

Facebook remains the most used social media platform, with 1.7 billion monthly active users. Because so many people are already there, why not sell your products there as well? You are likely already using Facebook (or if you aren’t…you should be) so there is no disadvantage to adding a shop section to your existing page.

Facebook is a great tool for increasing your customer base, both organically and with the help of boosted posts and Facebook ads. Make it easier on your customers by displaying your products right there along with the option to purchase. The fewer steps a customer has to take, the better. Instead of routing them to your store- take care of the purchase right on Facebook!

Use this: Facebook Store

If you have a Shopify store, your best option for integrating with Facebook is to use the Facebook Store plugin. This will integrate your store right into Facebook and keeps one track listing of inventory so that you don’t have to monitor the purchases taking place on Facebook separately. You can also choose to have your store displayed only to users who have liked your page- a tactic sure to increase your page likes in addition to boosting revenue.

7. Use Web Push Notifications

Finally- we have web push notifications. These notifications are one of the best ways to interact with your audience, retarget individuals, advertise sales, alert users of their abandoned carts, and more.

This marketing tactic is fairly new (for the web anyways, mobile push has now been around several years), and is the best way to get your marketing messages shown to your audience. With billions of people using email and social media, the chance your messages will get ignored is high. Instead, use web push to ensure your messages get seen.

Use this: Aimtell

Aimtell is your full service web push notification tool that works both on desktop and mobile devices. Visitors who come to your site will be able to subscribe in just one click (no forms/emails needed) and then you have permission to send them bite-sized notifications instantly. Users who opt in to your messages can receive these notifications even if they don’t have their browser open!

With Aimtell you can also segment users based on just about any factor you can think of. Target visitors who viewed specific products on your website, previously purchased a product, live in a certain area or a combination of all of these. You can even create automated/triggered notifications that go out after certain actions occur such as purchasing an item or abandoning a cart.

If you want to get started with Aimtell web push notifications, click here.