Setting up your WooCommerce store is the first step to start selling. The second? Marketing. As most eCommerce store owners know, the old saying of “build it and they will come” isn’t always true for eCommerce businesses. The internet is a big, wide place with lots of online stores and LOTS of competition. So how do you drive sales? If you’ve been asking yourself that question, this WooCommerce Marketing guide is for you!
WooCommerce Marketing: 6 Simple Tips to Sell More
- Utilize Social Media
- Strategy
- Paid Promotions
- Influencers
- Build Loyalty
- Make the WooCommerce Store User-Friendly
- Utilize Personalised Pricing
- Use Sales Urgency to Drive Sales
- Bulk Sales
- Timed Discounts
- Create Demand Through Scarcity
Social Media for WooCommerce Stores
You’ve probably already heard how important social media is. Why do you keep hearing about this? Because, in short, it IS that important. Having a social media presence makes your brand and its products easily discoverable. It does two things: it provides social proof, and it drives traffic.
Social proof is important. In the social media world, it’s the equivalent of you asking your friends and family about a new product you’re thinking about trying. Your social media numbers, reactions, and reviews can either help you make the sale, or they can hurt you during the sales process (especially if you sell a bigger ticket item or service, for which customers tend to do research before purchasing)
Social media can also drive traffic to your website. Each social media presence is like a billboard: another place to advertise your products and send more visitors to your site. What’s especially great about social media is that it provides a platform where you can communicate directly with your exact target market. And that is SO valuable.
So, how do you utilize social media to promote your business? There are three areas to explore:
Create a Strategy
Where should you start? At the very beginning of course. Identify your target audience and create content that is valuable to them. This way, you will begin to build an online community of people who have similar values and interests as your brand.
You can’t sell if you don’t know who you’re selling to! Take some time to define your target market and then map out their buyer journey (the process, turning points or emotions they go through before needing your product or service). Once you’ve mapped that journey out, brainstorm ways in which you can serve them with useful or engaging content, even before they come to need your service.
Why? Because you want to engage your customer before they’re looking for you, so that when they do need your product or service, you’re the obvious choice . There’s a lot less competition and resistance when you try to engage your customer early in the buyer’s journey.
…and the keyword here is engage (rather than sell). Social media is for being “social” not for selling. The best performing content is meant to serve your customer in some way – be that providing useful information, or making them smile.
Use Paid Promotions
Building organic leads through regular social posts is always the most effective social strategy, however, it can take time to see results. Paid promotions allow you to begin reaching your target market instantly. If you are running a sale or promotion, use ads and post boosts to extend your reach. Note that you can get VERY specific with your targeting, so you can ensure you’re paying only for your target market to see your ads. No more time or money will need to be spent on unqualified leads.
Leverage Influencers
Another way to sell more is to utilize influencers. Identify social influencers that your ideal customers trust and support. Using them to promote or refer your product will encourage your consumers to follow in their footsteps. That’s right, word of mouth has gone digital! Helpful tools to find them include brand ambassador agencies.
Build Loyalty
There is nothing more valuable to a brand than a loyal consumer. If you can develop and maintain relationships such as this, your brand will always have a support system. Great, but how? Good question! The best way to build brand loyalty is to be the best in your space at serving your customer. Delight them through every step of the sales process, and then delight them even more! Any extra detail you can add to go above and beyond during the sales and post-sales process will pay for itself in repeat purchases.
When it comes to eCommerce, another way to drive repeat purchases is through email marketing. Save your past customer’s email addresses and continue to communicate with them after their purchase. Let your consumers know when a product they were looking for is back in stock or notify them of sales. You can even give your loyal consumers a little discount just for staying in touch. Small steps like this will keep you top of mind and make your consumers feel valued.
Make Your Website User Friendly
Listen carefully now, don’t ruin a good thing with a bad design! If you want to keep making repeat sales, the first sale needs to be seamless and easy as pie. Choosing the right theme is important! Check out this list of WooCommerce themes for good options. Compliment your design with useful tools too. Look for plugins that:
- Allow for easy product reviews
- Search engine optimize your site
- Can create timed sales
- Allows consumers to earn rewards
- Follow up with an email when someone abandoned their cart
Personalized Pricing
Build loyalty by giving your customers “insider” pricing. Make use of a plugin such as WISDM Labs to give repeat shoppers discounts. This will encourage first-time shoppers to come back for discounts and will keep your consumers feeling valued.
Sales
It should come as no surprise that sales give people the motivation and sense of urgency needed to make a purchase decision. Imagine prompting a purchase like this that results in an unbelievably happy consumer who loves the product they received! Sales dreams do in fact come true, right?
That is just one example of many reasons why people buy on sales. Moral of the story, sales provoke purchases! There are two kinds of sales that you can implement to encourage purchases:
Bulk Sales
Bulk sales are a great way to get consumers to discover new products. You can do this by creating package deals or allowing for discounts when consumers spend a certain amount. Package deals are particularly great around holidays like Christmas and discounts are a great way to get your consumers to add that extra item just for the discount, all year round.
Our plugin recommendation would be WooCommerce Product Bundles.
Timed Sales
Timed sales will require a plugin, however, this is an amazing trick to keep up your sleeve when you want to speed up sales. Adding a timer automatically means that someone feels like they are going to miss out! Do you know what that sounds like? Fast sales!
Give Impression of Scarcity
If urgency doesn’t do the job, another great option is creating the assumption of scarcity. When your consumers see that stock is limited, they realize that the decision needs to be made now or else they may never get the product. This can be done through a simple notification email, adding a timer to announce when products are released or a simple banner displaying how many items are left. You may also easily display notifications such as “low stock” on products – and this can be configured through WooCommerce.
With eCommerce taking over the market place, there is so much opportunity to thrive! These tips and tricks are just a start to a successful business ahead of you.
BONUS: How to keep track of WooCommerce sales data & accounting
The next step? To figure out your WooCommerce store accounting and sales data management when you’re making more sales than you can keep track of!
If you’ve been using WooCommerce for a while, you’ve probably already noticed that it’s not an accounting or sales reporting platform. While it excels in powering eCommerce, it’s not made to keep track of accounting data. So how do you keep track of accounting data? Our top recommendation for WooCommerce store owners is to use QuickBooks Online as your cloud accounting platform, and use MyWorks Sync to integrate WooCommerce and QuickBooks and sync data automatically between the two platforms.
With MyWorks Sync, all sales data will sync to QuickBooks as soon as a customer places an order. The order would sync as an invoice or sales receipt, containing an itemized list of the products sold, taxes/fees charged, the payment information, and processing fees… and they would all automatically get categorized into their corresponding accounts. The best part? That means your books will be up to date and ready for a breezy tax season!
