This blog is Part 2 of 2 for eCommerce business owners on How To Attract More Customers. This follows on with number 7, so if you missed the first 6 ways to get more customer, click here to check it out and then come back to this blog. I’ve recorded this session also, so feel free to watch the video below or go through the text blog below. Whichever works best for you.
7. Bing Ads
Number seven is to add Bing Ads. Most people don’t really think about the Bing search engine because in Australia, it’s only 7% or 8% of search. So you might be thinking, “Is it worth it, if it’s only 7% or 8% of search?” But the thing is, your competition isn’t really think about it.
When you look at it from a supply and demand point of view, you can get traffic with Bing for a fraction of the cost of what you can get from Google. So some advertisers will find they may not be able to make AdWords work but they can make this work. Often, for some really popular keywords, there are whole areas on the right hand side where no one is advertising at the moment. Microsoft, who own Bing, are also very smart in that they know where the customers are already, which is using AdWords. So when you create a Bing Ads account, one of the first things it asks you is “Do you have an AdWords account that you want to suck in?” And you pretty much click two or three buttons and it brings in all of your AdWords and all of your settings, so you can be up and going really, really, quickly. It’s worth noting that is might not set your world alight, but if it is additional customers, it is additional sales. And as we know, we want to just keep building our database so that we can market to them again.
So now we want to start thinking about some other things out left of field, such as funnel optimisation and also start thinking outside of the box with free plus shipping offers. If they hit our eCommerce store but they didn’t buy, what can we do now to plug those holes in the bucket and get them to turn into customers?
8. Tripwire Offer
So above is an example of where we’re doing a tripwire offer. They’ve hit a jewelry eCommerce store. They didn’t buy so now we’re showing them a Facebook Ad that takes them over to here (screenshot above), grab a free plus shipping earrings offer. So in this case, obviously on the next page, we do upsells offers and the like and we know our maths so we know that we can make the maths work. What is really cool about this is many of your competitors won’t be doing this, certainly not to the level you’re learning about in this serious so you can outperform your competition just by doing some of these things.
A lot of these now we’re building with a tool called ClickFunnels, and what I really like about ClickFunnels is you can build something once, and then with one click of one button, you can clone it, and then you can create another offer. Some industry peers of mine, Ryan and Richard talk about ‘don’t always just keep coming up with new funnels all the time as far as new products, new services. Sometimes, just with a click of one button and the change of a different lead magnet or tripwire, it allows you to do it really, really, quickly and easily.’ Which is very true and important to note.
Tripwires on eBay is another option. So below we’re doing this in the music space at the moment. Here we’re doing 20 guitar picks for $2. One thing that is interesting about this is, if we change the price to $1, we get roughly double the amount of sales as well. So it’s even price-sensitive at that lower price point. You might be thinking, “Why worry about this?” The real gain here is because we want to get them on the email list so that we can market to them again. So we know by doing these sort of offers, we’re just acquiring customers at speed from eBay.
9 .eBay
One thing that I really, really love about eBay is that the maths work. So you’re able to acquire customers profitably. And a lot of people don’t think about it enough or they’re more focused on Amazon because it’s sexier or trendier, but in Australia it’s still a very, very, viable platform. Say, for example, you’re doing X amount a month on your eCommerce store. Now, a great opportunity is to look at well, what do we have to do to do that much a month now on eBay? So it’s another opportunity to double. We see business as actually two ways. One, they’ve already got the big eCommerce store, and we try to get them the big eBay presence, or sometimes, they’ve got a big eBay presence and we try to get that over to have a big eCommerce store. One of the keys there is to have a consistent name, consistent branding for your eBay store and your eCommerce store.
Another tripwire we’ve worked on with a client of ours is string winder. Again, similar principle, just a $2, no-brainer type of item, but by doing that, they’re then getting sucked into MailChimp which is the email system that’s going to nurture them and give them other offers over time and I’ll show you in a moment, how that whole piece of the puzzle really, really comes together.
10. Amazon
So now number 10. If you’re going to go international, then expanding onto Amazon is a great idea. So Amazon, if you get it right really is like drinking from a fire hose, but it’s like eBay in that if you’re just new to the platform, it’s really, really hard to get the visibility. So that’s where you might need to be doing specials and discounts and coupons and that kind of angle to artificially inflate your sales to get enough positive reviews, enough transactions so that you then start to rank naturally. And with Amazon as well, if you use FBA, which is Fulfillments By Amazon, that will also help you to rank in their algorithm.
The other thing for us, as Aussies, to think about with Amazon is at the moment, it’s not on Australian shores other than the digital version, where you can buy your Kindle books and that kind of stuff, but it’s only really a question of time before they get here. So as an eCommerce store owner, I think a great plan is to be thinking about how does Amazon work? When they do come here, I think a lot of people are going to be thinking it’s doom and gloom, but really you want to be just first to market there, and get onto Amazon Australia when it happens quicker than your competition. Get yourself some good sales history and just look at it as another channel.
11. Comparison Shopping Sites
So at number 11 is to add comparison shopping sites. So really the big three in Australia are GetPrice, au.shopping.com and MyShopping. The way these work is pay per click as well. So people search for whatever product that they want in these comparison shopping engines, and then it comes up with a whole bunch of options, and then if they see your product and they like it, they click on it. At that stage, you pay for the click, and it goes over to your eCommerce store.
So things that I like about this is that they come in here with buying intent. These platforms can be really good as far as they’re bringing you”buying-prospects”. What I don’t like about it is that they’re very much price shoppers. You get that a lot on eBay as well, so they are fully price-focused shoppers. There are real pros and cons to it, and it’s a little bit hit and miss. So it can be great once you’ve got the history going, but again, it can be hard to get that initial momentum going. As a whole though, they are another great way of getting customers.
12. Pinterest Promoted Pins
Number 12, which is the last one I’ve got for this section of our series. This is a new one which is Pinterest Promoted Pins. At the moment, the way it works is you’ve got to go through an approval process to get approved to advertise on Pinterest. What I really love about it is like any new traffic source, when it first comes out, it’s dirt cheap and that’s how it is at the moment because of the whole supply and demand angle. This is a kind of a unique social environment in that one, it is mainly female shoppers, and not being sexist, but females are better spenders as a general rule. I can feel my wife’s disapproving looks as I write this. And two, it’s got a search component, so they can search within Pinterest too.
So I think this is a real one to watch, and if you’ve got an eCommerce store, especially if it’s got visual components like whether it’s jewelry, dresses, all those kind of products, then you definitely want to be applying for this. Trying to get it approved, and then how it works is you create a pin of your product or your offer and then you can promote it, and you can say, “I want to show it just in Australia, just to this demographic, and just to people who have searched for these type of terms.” That is the basics of how it works.
If you’re reading this sentence, that makes me pretty confident that you have now completed 2 out of the 4 blog posts on what I term ‘The Profit Triad Of eCommerce’. You have 12 ways to get more customers in and maybe you’ve been doing 3 or 4 or 5 of these already but by adding an additional 6 or 7 channels, can you start to see how you might double, triple and more the amount of customers coming onto your eCommerce site? Pretty exciting huh?
I’ve got part 3 headed your way shortly and I want to show you how you can get your ‘Average Order Value’ up by getting your customers spending more. Now start to visualise what this could mean for you business, you’re adding additional channels to get more customer AND you’re getting them to spend more with you. It’s time you start thinking BIG about the future of your eCommerce business.