Growth Hacking: Effective Strategies for Accelerating E-Commerce Sales

While traditional digital marketing avenues help develop brand growth over a long period of time, especially for larger corporations, what about those start-ups and other businesses that need quick gains? Well, this is where growth hacking comes into the picture. Read on to discover everything you need to know about developing a growth hacking marketing strategy and why it’s important.

What is Growth Hacking in E-Commerce?

Let’s begin by answering the burning question; what is growth hacking? Growth hacking involves evaluating data to fuel certain activities that drive business growth. The objective is to determine weak spots and opportunities for growth.

The origins of the term can be traced back to 2010 when the term ‘growth hacking’ was coined by Sean Ellis.

It was created out of a necessity for startups whose needs were not being met by conventional digital marketing. After all, startups cannot grow fast by building brand awareness and encouraging engagement.

Instead, A/B testing and establishing certain growth metrics were closer to what these businesses needed, which is why growth hacking became so prominent.

Growth hacking brings the worlds of marketing and engineering together. Traditional digital marketing concentrates on customer acquisition and awareness. However, growth marketing goes beyond this, concentrating on acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue.

Why Should E-Commerce Brands Use Growth Hacking?

There are a number of reasons why growth hacking should be part of your e-commerce sales strategy, so let’s take a look.

• Discover growth loops – A growth loop is a closed system whereby you input something to generate an output. This is then fed back into the loop, which grows the system altogether.
• Build better products – Growth hacking enables you to build better products that your customers genuinely want. If you have a better range of products, you’re naturally going to make more sales because people will recommend your products to others.
• It benefits all e-commerce businesses – Although we’ve mentioned startups, growth hacking isn’t exclusively for these types of businesses. It benefits any company that wants to find growth in terms of the goals they’ve set.
• Embrace a growth mentality – If you’re aggressive about seeking growth, you will quickly learn how to implement growth hacking methods into your operations. You discover what works and what doesn’t. If you’re passive, you’ll settle for less.

Effective Growth Hacking Strategies for an E-Commerce Store

There are a number of different strategies you can use when putting together your growth hacking marketing strategy. Let’s assess some of the best growth hacking examples below.

Strategically Place Trust Signals

The vast majority of online stores today have certificates and trust badges on display. Large, trusted brands will typically place these trust signals in the footer. However, if you have a small business that’s not very well known, it’s better to place these badges in a more prominent position.

Test different parts of your website to discover where you should place trust signals to inspire the most confidence in your customers. Add them to your shopping cart and product pages too.

Segment Your Audience Based on Their Behaviour

When segmenting your customers, adding behavioural factors is a great way of boosting engagement. By assessing your audience’s behaviour, you can make targeted offers where and when visitors are most likely to respond to them.

Request Social Shares

One of the best ways to increase mobile conversions is to request social shares. After all, we’re more likely to believe what our friends and loved ones have to say than the message in a sales pitch.

There are a number of different ways you can go about this.

• Request social shares with order fulfillment – After an order has been delivered, send a follow-up email and ask the customer to share the product on social media if they have been happy.
• Request social shares after the order has been confirmed – Once someone has placed an order, you can add social share buttons to the confirmation. Offer a template for the post that you request the customer to share, making it as easy as possible for them.
• Add a social share card with the shipment – You may also want to consider placing a card in the order that asks customers to take a picture of the product and share it on social media.

It’s important to recognize that you’re asking customers to take some of their own time to help your business. Because of this, you may want to entice them to do so with a special offer or deal.

Competitive SEO

Last but not least, while we’re sure that you already perform SEO, you need to consider how you do this.

Which keywords are you competing against? Competitive keyword research is imperative so that you can put together an effective strategy that beats the competition.

The only way you can do this is by having a thorough understanding of the key phrases your competition uses so that you can outwit them.

Wrapping Up: Growth Hacking to Increase E-Commerce Sales

So there you have it: some of the different reasons why you should develop a growth hacking marketing strategy. This can help businesses to enhance their marketing efforts so that they can achieve short-term gains. This could be just what you need to get your company up and running!

Author Bio

Sabrina Sedicot is an experienced marketer who works for Appnova, a Shopify development agency. She works on projects across UX/ UI design, luxury e-commerce, creative and brand designing content production. Her work covers everything from UX to mobile app design.