How to Grow an Ecommerce Business

In today's fast-paced digital world, the importance of keeping up with ecommerce trends cannot be overstated. As the internet permeates every aspect of our lives, online shopping has become the preferred choice for most consumers. Ecommerce offers unparalleled convenience, accessibility, and an extensive array of choices, presenting an extraordinary opportunity for businesses to achieve significant growth.

In this post, we’ll look at 10 immediately actionable steps you can take to start growing your ecommerce business and achieve success in the ecommerce marketplace.

1. Define Clear Goals & Target Audiences

In the competitive realm of ecommerce, the key to unlocking unparalleled growth lies in the strategic implementation of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timebound (SMART) goals, along with a deep comprehension of your target audience.

SMART goals provide a clear roadmap for success, ensuring focus, measurement, and achievement. Let’s look at each goal, and why it is important:

Specific: Ambiguity has no place in ecommerce or when looking to grow. Specific goals provide clarity and reduce the chances of misinterpretation. By precisely defining objectives and goals, such as increasing sales by a certain percentage, expanding product offerings, or enhancing customer retention, businesses can channel their efforts with laser-like focus. State what you’ll do, and use action words!

Measurable: The ability to track progress and measure success is paramount. Measurable goals are quantifiable, allowing businesses to analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) and gauge their advancement toward achieving their set goals. This data-driven approach enables agile decision-making and continuous improvement. Define which evidence will prove that you have achieved, or come closer to your business’s goals.

Achievable: While ambition is admirable, setting realistic, attainable goals is crucial to maintain motivation and avoid unnecessary strain on resources. SMART goals are grounded in feasibility, empowering businesses to create action plans that capitalize on existing strengths and resources. These goals should be challenging, but possible.

Relevant: Aligning goals with the overall vision and mission of the ecommerce business is essential. SMART goals are relevant, ensuring that each objective contributes directly to the overarching strategy and long-term growth. These goals should naturally align with your values and be relevant to your business’s growth.

Timebound: Deadlines can be really useful in pushing us to achieve our goals. SMART goals come with well-defined timelines, instilling a sense of urgency and encouraging teams to work diligently toward meeting milestones. Avoid going for goals that you may hit “one day.”

There’s also significant value in identifying and truly understanding your target audience. With this understanding, you can:

Tailor Marketing Efforts: A profound understanding of your target audience allows you to tailor your marketing efforts with precision. Armed with comprehensive knowledge of demographics, preferences, and pain points, brands can craft compelling campaigns that resonate deeply with their ideal customers.

Efficient Resource Allocation: Rather than spreading resources thin across demographics, understanding your target audience enables you to allocate marketing budgets and efforts strategically. Focusing on the most receptive segments maximizes return on investment and optimizes outcomes.

Enhance Customer Experience: Personalization is the cornerstone of exceptional customer experiences in ecommerce. By addressing the specific needs and preferences of your target audience, your business can forge stronger connections, boost satisfaction, and inspire customer loyalty.

Establish Niche Dominance: Targeting a well-defined audience allows ecommerce ventures to position themselves as niche experts. This authoritative stance not only sets brands apart from broader competitors, but also attracts a devoted and engaged customer base.

2. Build a Community Around Your Brand

In today’s day and age, building a vibrant and engaged community around your brand is no longer just an option, it is a strategic imperative for long-term success! Fostering brand loyalty and a sense of belonging through an online community can help businesses unlock lots of opportunities for growth.

By creating a thriving community, customers get access to a space where they can connect with like-minded individuals who share their interests and values, which in turn can result in an emotional attachment to the brand. Moreover, by encouraging the creation of self-generated content, this bond can further deepen as customers become active participants in shaping the brand narrative and experience.

Providing unique perks for community members is another great way to enhance their sense of value and appreciation - which ultimately nurtures brand loyalty. Hosting discussions is one way community members can express themselves, and you can gain valuable insights on their pain points along the way.

Bottom line: A well curated online community built around your brand becomes a valuable asset that can drive word-of-mouth marketing, increase customer loyalty and retention, and elevate your brand’s reputation.

3. Implement a Subscription Model

Implementing a subscription model is a game-changer for ecommerce businesses seeking to secure steady revenue streams while enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Through subscriptions, your brand can provide unparalleled convenience and value for customers. The ease of regular deliveries, subscription discounts, and assurance of never running out of their favorite (or essential) products are great incentives for your loyal customers.

Another effective way to make subscriptions more enticing is offering exclusive access to new releases, events, or special discounts. What’s great about this is that it not only provides a lot of added value for your customers, but also for your business! The additional revenue generated from subscriptions enables businesses to efficiently forecast, plan and ultimately create financial stability, which in turn helps when looking to scale.

It goes without saying that implementing a subscription model is a great way to drive sustained growth and success in the competitive ecommerce marketplace.

4. Collaborate with Influencers

Americans spend around 6 hours and 59 minutes on the internet each day on average. With so much time of the day spent online, there comes great opportunity for brands to capture some of the attention, directly where people spend their time. A considerable portion of this is spent on social media platforms, which creates an opportunity for brands to connect with their target audience, foster brand recognition, and drive engagement.

Influencers play a crucial role in this landscape. Collaborating with influencers who align with your brand values and target audience is a powerful tactic that can significantly amplify your ecommerce business's reach and credibility. Influencers possess the ability to connect authentically with their followers, ultimately earning their trust and loyalty. By partnering with influencers whose values align with those of your brand, you can tap into their established rapport with their audience, allowing your products or services to be introduced organically and with genuine enthusiasm.

This can boost your brand’s visibility, accelerate customer acquisition and foster brand awareness. It also adds credibility to your brand, as an influencer endorsement simultaneously acts as a stamp of approval for your products.

Similarly, you can also work with affiliate marketers, which can help you connect more easily with your target audience. Overall, a well-executed influencer strategy is another great way for brands to increase sales and tap into growth opportunities for their ecommerce business.

5. Harness User-generated Content (UGC)

Just like handing the mic to influencers, tapping into the authentic voices of your customers can also be a potent strategy for your ecommerce business. Encouraging customers to share their experiences, reviews, and product photos on social media channels or ecommerce sites not only bolsters brand credibility, but also sparks a sense of community among customers.

UGC serves as social proof, affirming the trustworthiness and value of your products or services through real-life experiences. Integrating UGC into a brand's website can significantly influence the buying decisions of potential customers, and give them the needed reassurance that your offerings are what they appear to be. By using UGC on social platforms, brands can create a brand personality and memorable connections with their audience.

Lastly, using user-generated content in your marketing materials further amplifies its impact by adding real and unfiltered endorsements from customers that are more trustworthy than traditional marketing messages. As a result, embracing UGC allows brands to tap into the power of their satisfied customers and brand advocates, fueling the growth of your ecommerce business through genuine word-of-mouth marketing.

6. Optimize for Mobile

A staggering 92.3% of internet users access the web through mobile devices according to the Global Internet User Overview January 2023 report by DataReportal. With the ever increasing number of consumers relying on smartphones and tablets for their online shopping needs, providing a seamless browsing and shopping experience on mobile devices is paramount.

Besides a user-friendly design that automatically adjusts to various screen sizes, fast loading times are also very important in order to avoid cart abandonment. In 2023, shoppers expect instant access to information and products, therefore it is important to keep the process as short and to the point as possible.

Streamlining the mobile checkout process with user-friendly interfaces and convenient payment options expedites the path to purchase, encouraging customer loyalty and often repeat business. By prioritizing mobile optimization, ecommerce businesses can capitalize on the growing trend of mobile shopping, boost customer satisfaction, and secure a competitive edge in the digital landscape.

If you’re an emerging CPG ecommerce brand that lacks the funds to upgrade and optimize your online store, check out our guide to ecommerce funding.

7. Leverage Social Media Advertising

Most social media platforms offer robust targeting options for advertising, which allows businesses to precisely narrow down their audience based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and other factors. With these options, brands can create and deliver tailored content and ads to their most relevant prospects, increasing the chances of getting their attention and ultimately driving conversions.

For those prospects that have previously interacted with your ads and shown interest but have yet to make a purchasing decision, retargeting can be a great way to re-engage with those users. By strategically retargeting these potential customers with personalized ads, ecommerce ventures can reinforce brand awareness, stay top of mind, and recapture their interest, which can ultimately result in higher conversion rates and improved return on advertising investment.

A well thought-out strategy around your social media advertising and retargeting is crucial when looking to grow your business, making it a pivotal component of any successful ecommerce growth strategy.

8. Offer Limited-time Promotions and Flash Sales

Another great way to grow your ecommerce business is by time-sensitive deals. By creating a sense of urgency and exclusivity through limited-time promotions, flash sales and exclusive discounts, you can drive immediate action and spur growth. When customers get a sense of urgency or fear of missing out (FOMO), it compels them to make a quick purchasing decision.

You can get creative with this! One way to implement this is to alert customers that certain high-demand products can only be saved in their cart for a short amount of time, which further prompts them to decide on making the purchase.

What you don’t want to miss out on is promoting these deals through multiple channels. Leveraging email marketing campaigns ensures direct communication with existing customers, while social media ad campaigns amplify reach and engagement among broader audiences. Website banners with countdowns or other marketing messaging prominently displayed on your website are also great ways to encourage immediate action.

9. Expand Your Product Range

Continually evaluating market trends and customer preferences is a crucial aspect of successful ecommerce growth. In the dynamic world of ecommerce, consumer preferences and market conditions evolve rapidly, making it essential for businesses to remain vigilant and ready to pivot. Ecommerce entrepreneurs can identify emerging opportunities by closely monitoring market trends and listening to customer feedback. With this data, you can then plan and execute strategic product expansion.

By staying on top of customer preferences, pain points and desires, businesses can innovate and tailor their offerings precisely to stay ahead of the competition and maintain relevance in the ever-changing marketplace. You could add more colors, more sizes, and more styles to your current range, or introduce product-adjacent items that compliment your existing ones. Depending on the nature of the business, you can make this decision based on what makes sense for your customers. Here are three examples:

New versions of existing products, for example Pepsi introducing Diet Pepsi and other flavors

Upgrades to existing products, which is what Samsung does with each new version of its smartphones

New products, which can be color variations or accessories for the main product – in Samsung’s case a range of adapters, chargers and software applications for its smartphones

By introducing new products or variations of existing products, you can complement existing offers and cater to the evolving needs of your customers, which will keep them interested in what you have to offer, and also make them come back for more.

10. Utilize AI for Smarter Business Decisions

With the rise of artificial intelligence comes great opportunity for emerging ecommerce brands. Implementing AI-driven analytics and insights is a game-changing move for ecommerce businesses seeking to gain a deeper understanding of customer behavior to optimize sales strategies. Artificial intelligence algorithms can analyze vast amounts of customer data, enabling businesses to identify patterns, segment audiences, and predict purchasing behaviors. This data-driven approach optimizes marketing efforts, driving increased conversions and maximizing return on investment.

You can also leverage the power of AI-powered chatbots for instant customer support. Not only does this enhance responsiveness, but is also a great way to offer personalized shopping experiences. Chatbots can intelligently analyze customer inquiries and preferences and provide tailored recommendations and solutions in real-time!

By embracing AI-powered tools and technologies, ecommerce ventures can gain a competitive edge, elevate customer experiences, and chart a data-backed course toward sustained growth and success in the ever-evolving, fast-paced digital landscape.

Connect with Assembled Brands to help your Ecommerce Success!

Scaling your ecommerce business through tailored financing is a pivotal step in unlocking the full growth potential of your business. As an ecommerce entrepreneur, accessing the right financing solutions tailored to the specific needs of your industry can fuel expansion, innovation, and increased market share.

Whether it's funding inventory purchases or upgrading your entire ecommerce business, Assembled Brands can help! With ecommerce funding, you can up your marketing budget and reach more customers, optimize your online store, launch new products, and more. Assembled Brands’s specialized financing options are designed for ecommerce businesses to provide the necessary capital needed to seize growth opportunities.

Assembled Brands is the go-to lender for emerging CPG brands. Discover how your brand can benefit from Assembled Brand’s simple and streamlined process. Apply today!