As economic headwinds continue to impact the world of eCommerce, more businesses are looking to maintain their conversion rates by reapproaching their marketing efforts. Can businesses maintain their sales revenues through creative marketing techniques?
According to Insider Intelligence data, eCommerce retail sales fell 7.2% in 2022, with a further 0.6% drop being forecast for 2023, leaving businesses with a 7.8% gulf to address in maintaining their conversions into 2024.
This downturn in customer demand is being driven by economic headwinds that have seen businesses contend with historically high inflation rates and interest rate hikes from the Bank of England in a bid to control the economy.
The result could pave the way for a recession that will see consumer spending power fall even further when it comes to e-commerce shopping.
For eCommerce stores, this means that fresh efforts will need to be made to protect sales volumes through these turbulent times.
Establishing a fresh approach to marketing with more creative techniques can help to ensure that your store remains prominent and your cash flow stays safe from the downturn.
But how can your eCommerce store maintain its conversion rates in a prospective UK recession? Let’s look at three key approaches to steer your business in a downturn:
Prioritise Customer Advocacy
Customer advocacy plays an important role when wider economic circumstances are set to make it more difficult to generate interest in your products organically.
Advocacy occurs when customers are happy with your brand and subsequently recommend your store and products to others, helping to generate leads without you having to lift a finger.
The great thing about customer advocacy is that, when it’s done right, you can effectively leverage free marketing among your customers. There are many approaches to customer advocacy, too. One leading way is by setting up a loyalty program for returning customers, while other approaches can involve offering rewards for customers who share content and products on social media. Referral schemes can also be an excellent way of securing new customers.
UK coffee chain Costa run a particularly notable loyalty program whereby customers collect ‘beans’ with every order that can be redeemed for a free drink on an app. Similarly, your eCommerce store can run offers where bulk purchases incur a discount, or a freebie can be sent after five purchases.
By setting up rewards schemes and maintaining high customer service levels, you’ll be able to utilise user-generated content (UGC) to highlight how customers are enjoying your products.
With as much as 85% of consumers recognising UGC as more influential than brand photos or videos, this approach can be great in generating marketing materials without having to work on new campaigns or graphic design.
As the Twitter repost above shows, Costa is also adept at utilising UGC to help generate engagement surrounding advocacy for a particular product.
While receiving UGC for eCommerce store products is likely to be less frequent, your business can encourage more user-generated content through social media campaigns offering rewards for users uploading the best picture of themselves using your product.
The reason UGC is such a strong way of endorsing customer advocacy is that it’s an extremely cost-effective form of marketing that can help protect your budgets during recessions.
Utilise Guest Blogging
Another means of making your budgets stretch further during a financial downturn is through guest blogging.
Guest blogging is the practise of generating content that links back to your business, or positions you as an industry voice of authority that’s published on high-reputation websites.
This helps to generate an organic stream of traffic back to your eCommerce store which can leverage better sales volumes and greater lead generation.
What’s more is that gaining valuable backlinks from high-reputation websites means that search engine crawlers will identify your site as a more trustworthy resource, helping to boost your SERP positions and become more discoverable on Google results pages.
Using SEO tools like Ahrefs can make guest blogging easy. Let’s imagine you’re a UK computer hardware store, and have identified Novatech as a market leader. By running an Ahrefs search of Novatech backlinks, it’s possible to gain a comprehensive overview of its referral sites, which you can then target with your content to build your network of backlinks.
By sorting your results by Domain Rating (DR), it’s possible to view the website’s backlinks based on the reputation of the referral site. Although it’s entirely possible to target DR90+ websites, this can be an extremely difficult process due to high entry requirements.
Today, only one agency, Solvid, offers guest posting services that provide placements on DR90+ websites.
Established in 2015, Solvid helped hundreds of businesses and agencies scale their link-building efforts.
Adapt to the Changing Needs of Customers
We’ve already seen the Covid-19 pandemic impact customer behaviour and expectations. These changes can force businesses to adapt quickly to protect their bottom line amid changing sentiment.
“[T]he most adaptable marketers don’t do different things; they do things differently. In particular, they listen differently and they plan differently,” notes Cassandra Nordlund, advisory director at Gartner.
This level of adaptability will be required for eCommerce businesses seeking to navigate an economic downturn. To action this, conduct social listening to better understand what your customers are saying and what they’re concerned about.
Don’t be afraid to start a dialogue with your customers to see how they would respond to the downturn, and create plans in advance to anticipate widespread changes in sentiment.
One great way of anticipating a loss of consumer spending power is to alter your offers to promote more budget products, as opposed to luxury ones. This can help to promote not only increased sales but also ensure that your customers know that you’re thinking of them.
Self-Reflection Reigns Supreme
During an economic downturn, it’s more important than ever to monitor your on-site metrics. When in a recession, markets can take unexpected turns and it’s essential that you continue to monitor your sales funnels and the performance of your conversion rates.
Here, platforms like Google Analytics can help generate a holistic view of your website performance that can quickly alert you to any changes that could be required.
Self-reflection is an important means of ensuring that your conversion rates remain strong even as markets enter a downturn. In the meantime, continue to measure the results of your actions and marketing techniques, and resonate with your customers on a deeper level.
