Strategies for e-Commerce Customer Acquisition : Reduce Costs

By this point in the series, you’ve figured out that selecting a profitable niche is more than just picking a few products on a whim and crossing your fingers that there is a demand.

It's a calculated decision, and many factors need to be taken into consideration.

Attract and Impress New Ecommerce Customers

The content on your e-commerce site is going to play a significant role in your success and is just one of those variable that you need to spend some time focusing on. Here we'll show you how to cater content to your particular niche in a way that is engaging, informative, and optimized to bring in the ideal traffic.

When it comes to keyword research, your first mission is to make sure that you aren’t using old tactics when applying them to your content. You don't want to stuff articles and come across robotic because you've added too many keywords in your diesel ecommerce site.

Keyword research attracts: Your customer acquisition strategy searching for you

In fact, your content should already have relevant keywords coming through naturally just because you are writing about a particular topic or product.

However, you still need to do research, and here are a few ways you can find the words that compliment your niche and drive organic traffic to your online store.

#1: Keyword research tools

Using a keyword research tool is a great way to get a general idea of what people are searching for and in what volumes. It’s an excellent place to start your research, and while you can pay for more advanced tools, there are also some free options out there that get the job done when you’re on a budget.

Here's an example of Google Keyword Tool. It shows mobile trends for the word “automotive” and the keywords are listed below. You can adjust the setting to break down searches by devices, so you know how many mobile users are searching versus those using a tablet or desktop (among many other features). Year make model, while incredibly important for automotive ecommerce site, is not extremely popular.

#2: Customers

Once you've gathered information from a tool, then it's time to listen to what customers are saying and how they are saying it. You can look at reviews, online forums, and talk to people in your community who are interested in the niche you've chosen. Pay close attention to their dialogue and how they phrase things.

The closer you can tailor your content to the way they would search, the better. If you find that people repeatedly ask you the same question about your niche, plug it into Google, and if nothing comes up, chances are no one has addressed it yet.

#3: Competitors

Not that you've developed a pretty decent list of keywords for your niche, go to your competitor's e-commerce sites and see if they are targeting similar words. Learning about your competitors is going to be helpful in multiple areas of your business, so you'll be happy to know you are knocking out a few tasks on that to-do list.

Creating useful tutorials

Another way to cater content to your niche is to create useful tutorials. Tutorials are genuinely helpful for your customers (and an excellent way to drive traffic to your site), and when you do them right, you'll save customers (and yourself) a lot of time because you won't have to go back and forth trying to resolve an installation issue.

You have a few options on how you can follow through with it. You can use one or a combination of the different ways to get information across. Start with something you're comfortable making and then you can gradually grow your tutorial library.

#1: Video

Depending on how complex your products are, a video might be necessary to show people how to install correctly or assemble the parts. Videos also give people a higher sense of trust because you are putting your face with the product.

You can create a quality video from your smartphone, and there are even some video apps that can help you with the process.

Here's an example of how MTD Parts does it. They made a short video showing people how to change an air filter in a lawn mower and posted it in their Knowledge Center.

#2: Podcast

Podcasts are great because you don't need to have your customers engaged on a computer. They can easily listen to the information like they would an audio book while they assemble the part.

#3: Images

It’s been shown that you can have a quality product with a poor image and a substandard product with a high-grade image, and more people will choose the product with a better picture. It's a bummer, but it's reality.

Make sure that your product images and tutorials are clear and give customers a full view of all aspects.

#4: Text

When it comes to tutorials you want to be clear and informative. People won’t care that these are boring as long as the directions are easy to follow.

Let's look at MTD Parts again and their brief text tutorial that they paired with the video on changing an air filter:

The text is simple, straightforward, and paired with the video the person should be able to change the filter successfully with little to no hassle. Of course, you can go into more detail for your customers such a FAQ page that addresses the most common mistakes and questions associated with the assembly.

Social media and blogs

It’s getting harder to reach people on social media and through blogs because the game has changed quite a bit and there is much more noise in everyone's feed. However, that doesn't mean that you should get discouraged and ignore it.

You can get some pretty significant results when you take the time to get to know your audience and pay attention to what they respond to. You also have a big opportunity to engage with your customers and get involved in what everyone is talking about within your niche.

The best rules for social media and blogs are to be consistent, engage with people, and continually adapt to the needs of your ideal customer. While tutorials serve a different purpose and don't have to be personal, social media and blogs need to grab people's attention and intrigue them to come by for a visit.

Think outside the box

The more you focus on catering content for people within your niche, the more opportunities you'll see to do something unique for them. Think outside the box and write down ideas that you think people would respond to and then test those out on a small scale.

Once you hit on something that people react positively to, you’ll know you’re moving in the right direction.