In a perfect world, your eCommerce marketing campaigns would be flawlessly executed and always yield a high return on investment. However, as we all know, the real world is not so perfect.
Even businesses that use the latest and greatest strategies still find numerous ways to mess up their marketing ROI. But how?
The eCommerce world is growing more and more competitive by the day, and businesses are finding it difficult to keep up with the constant addition of new online stores, increasing customer expectations, and advancing technologies.
To help you avoid getting lost in the mix, we’ve compiled a list of five ways we’ve observed businesses ruining their ROI with eCommerce marketing.
| TLDR Key Takeaways |
| You’ll get a lower ROI if you focus too much on acquisition and neglect customer retention—you need to find a good balance between the two. Customers want to be able to communicate with you in more ways than just one, which is why you’ll need to take advantage of omnichannel communication. You’re losing business to the competition by not using automation. |
This has to be #1 on the list because, quite frankly, it has the biggest impact on your bottom line. Sure, new customers en masse are great for temporary gains, but what about the long term?
What happens once everyone buys something from you but doesn’t come back for more? What happens when you don’t focus on improving your product/service and keeping customers happy?
We don’t want to point the finger at one business in particular, but we’ve seen this play out time and time again. Businesses focus on growth at all costs, and it ends up costing them more than they bargained for.
The fact is customer retention is just as important, if not more important, than acquiring new customers.
Many of the metrics you use to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts already focus on retention—lifetime value of a customer (LTV), churn rate, repeat purchase rate, and purchase frequency, just to name a few.
If you want to completely destroy your marketing efforts, then, by all means, don’t focus on customer retention.
If you’re putting all your marketing efforts into a single channel (email marketing, we’re looking at you), then you could be wasting a lot of money—and unnecessarily harming your ROI.
Today’s customers are always on the go, and mobile devices enable them to access social media, emails, SMS, web browsers, and other platforms.
And if you’re not taking advantage of every possible opportunity to reach out to your target audience, then you are missing out on more than just profit. You’re missing out on the chance to build seamless customer experiences that build long-lasting relationships.
Omni-channel communication is the future of marketing, and if you’re not embracing it, you’re falling behind your competitors.
Every business starts its marketing efforts with some type of top-of-the-funnel campaign designed to build brand awareness and attract new customers. However, once they have customers in the funnel, they shift their focus on converting those at the end.
It’s a trap every business falls into because most businesses think top-of-the-funnel marketing is a waste of money. After all, those customers aren’t committed to finding a problem—they might not even know they have a problem to begin with!
But this way of thinking has severe repercussions on your marketing ROI.
When you focus on converting the mid to end-of-funnel customers, you have to compete for your prospects’ attention. Plus, you’ll end up with a one-for-one exchange when they convert (you spent money on them to spend money on you).
If, however, you focus on providing useful information that helps the early stages understand what they need, you build trust with them, making them more likely to convert.
The best marketing strategies use a combination of early-stage and late-stage marketing techniques to maximize ROI.
Most eCommerce businesses focus on one-way communication, broadcasting their message to as many people as possible. But this approach is no longer effective in today’s cluttered and competitive marketplace.
Customers want more. They want 24/7 support in case they have a question or problem—and chatbots can only go so far.
With two-way messaging, customers can have a direct conversation with your business. They can express their concerns or share valuable information about their personal needs and behaviors that you can use to improve your marketing strategies.
Plus, this type of interaction builds trust and loyalty, both of which are essential for keeping customers satisfied and coming back for more.
The only thing holding you back from automating your business is yourself—whether you’re not sure where to begin or you’re not sure what to automate.
Let’s face it. Everyone’s working with a limited budget and resources, so why are you spending precious time and effort on mundane tasks that could be automated, for example, an abandoned cart?
Do you have a team that’s dedicated to monitoring every abandoned cart and sending out emails/SMS to individuals who don’t complete their purchases? Probably not. Just like you don’t have a specific team available for celebrating each and every customer’s birthday.
But you can set up an automation that will do exactly that. It will reach out to customers when they don’t complete a purchase. It will give them a personalized message or special offer on their birthday or anniversary.
In short, automation can streamline the customer journey, ensuring every customer has a superior experience.
If you’re not using automation, you’re letting potential customers slip through the cracks, making it more difficult to retain the ones you do have.
As a business owner, you’re always looking for ways to maximize your ROI, and rightfully so—it’s what keeps your business afloat. But how do you know that your efforts are really making a difference in your bottom line?
With Patch, you’ll never have to wonder how your marketing efforts are performing. Our cloud-based platform is equipped with advanced analytics and a user-friendly dashboard that gives real-time updates on your campaign’s performance.
Plus, we have a wide range of tools to help your business streamline operations and improve your bottom line, such as:
Don’t make the same mistakes we see other businesses make. Schedule a demo and unlock your hidden ROI.