7 Best Ways to Engage With eCommerce Customers

Starting successful e-commerce customer integration is a challenge with increasing competition. A number of eCommerce accounts are now available on the web all over the world. Also, several very large companies are active, where it seems as if expansion is taking place in every sector. But what can you focus on to ensure that you remain successful in the market? That, again, depends on the matter of customer integration, and the following 7 ways are the bests for making sure that your engagement with the customers stays well.

1. Determine your niche

Nice that you have a product to sell, but why is it so special and for whom? This is a standard analysis that you should make to determine your marketing strategy, but how do you translate this into your online environment? Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you have many or few competitors?
• Do they offer an identical product, or do you have a unique product or service?
• Don’t just ask yourself these questions, but also ask potential customers. 

2. Focus on the potential customer

It sounds easy, and we hear you say, yes, we know exactly who my potential customer is. But seek contact with the customer and ask whether they need your product or service. Do not forget to ask how and when the product is used. This is part of the old-fashioned market research, but these days it is often skipped or not done thoroughly enough. Yet this is often the beginning of healthy growth of your web shop. The use of the eCommerce CRM software will help the proper maintaining of the eShop so that all the customers stay properly recorded.

This also directly helps put a focus on the things you want to do and things you need to drop. Instead of just looking at what the competition is doing, you can make the right decisions about where to invest money and time. When you have insight into this, you then choose the right online marketing message and associated channels to spread it.

But what do you want to say in your online marketing communications? For this, it is essential to know which story you want to tell to your target group.

3. Storytelling

Not exactly the first part you think about, but it is one of the most potent parts of marketing. Stories provide a framework to convince users why you are different from the rest. Besides, you can communicate your webshop and product choices to your target group with a good story. Not only product-related but also fire-related internal and external communications are included. This engages the customer to a great deal as their interest grows from time to time.

Implement an omnichannel storyline

What are you going to tell where and when? Draw up a plan for this so that your target group always encounters the right communication at the right time on different channels. Take into account the best practices per medium. So, no 4 pages of web text in a Facebook post, but adjust the content per channel. Also, it is important to keep in mind that not every medium has the same objective. For example, search ads are usually a lot more sales-oriented than a branding display campaign, and you should not expect the same results.However, there is one objective that you can keep the same for each medium: send the user further into the sales funnel. These are the most essential ways that you will need to be sure of at the moment. These are the moments of surety for you.

4. Customer funnel

It is therefore very important to use a customer funnel. This way, you can highlight the different steps in the sales process. For this, we look at three different focus points:

• What is the user’s problem?
• What is the intent of the user?
• How can we help the user to solve his problem?

Especially for a webshop, it is important to know what problem your target group has to solve this as effectively as possible. See also the point at the beginning of this article. However, this also depends on the intention of the user. Is the user looking for an immediate solution, or are they still in the exploratory phase? And how can we persuade the user to move from an exploratory phase to a purchase-oriented phase? That differs per user, product, and webshop. One of the best performing options for improving your customer funnel is the implementation of personalization in your communications. You should be adequately aware of these matters in every way.

5. Personalization

Personalize your marketing message

This starts very early in the process of communication. We have just talked about implementing an omnichannel storyline between the different mediums. Also, include this in the personalization of your message on other channels.

So if someone has already seen a particular category via Facebook, include this in your Adwords communication. But let the message come back according to the customer funnel. Even if you already know what someone has seen in your webshop or know the name of that person (a logged-in user, for example), use this information to address the user in a targeted manner. And to show the categories or products he visited last time.

6. But what are the different channels you can use to reach users?

We often get the question, “Where can we contact my users to get the most sales at the lowest price?”

This is the wrong question to ask. The first question should be: where is my target audience? And what is the intention of my target group? There are a number of channels you can always use. 

7. Limit your channels

This may sound strange, but it is one of the best ways to grow faster. When you limit yourself to fewer channels, you have more time to implement your entire customer funnel and omnichannel strategy properly. And the possibilities and range within the different channels are so great that you need enough time to get the most out of it.