Business owners looking for more profits from their ecommerce stores should seriously consider blogging. That’s because there’re several ways how blogging actually helps you boost the profitability of your ecommerce store.
Just in case you’re unaware, business blogging has been around for nearly quarter of a century. It began in 1995 and over these years, has become one of the mainstream platforms for businesses worldwide to popularize themselves, generate leads and serve customers both directly and indirectly.
Blogs operated by some of the largest corporations in the world are proof that blogging is indeed a superb business booster. Some classic examples of blogs run by giant organizations include those of Visa International, the world’s largest credit and debit card issuer, Amazon Web Services that provides various IT solutions and Huffington Post, the largest news aggregator and blog that operates from the US.
Blogging to Boost Profitability of Your Ecommerce Store
Given the above facts, you can be assured that blogging could indeed help increase the profitability of your ecommerce store. In this article, we will explore how blogging boots profitability of your ecommerce store.
Consumer as Researcher
Anything between 75 percent and 90 percent of all consumer research about companies, brands, products and services online before making a final decision to place an order. And they trust blogs more than ads by companies or even content on official websites of a business. They also read blogs to compare products or services and find out what best suits their needs and budget.
When you create a blog for your ecommerce store, you’re actually helping a prospective buyer conduct such research. And if your blogposts are honest, engaging, interesting and relevant to a consumer, you could expect your ecommerce store to feature in their shortlist to place an order. A blog packs in more convincing power than a conventional advertisement or company literature. And you can leverage this trust to win over customers.
Email Marketing
If you’ve ever bought anything online from Amazon, the single largest ecommerce store in the world, you’ll definitely get their emails about latest products and promotions. This clearly indicates that email marketing remains relevant till date, though a lot or organizations consider it as outdated and redundant, which I firmly dismiss as myth.
By opening a blog, you can provide the facility for followers to subscribe to your emails. People will provide their email only when they’re interested in your business and want to get updates. When people leave their email IDs, it allows you to build a superb email list for sending updates and marketing.
You can make special offers to leads to convert them as customers through email marketing. Since they’re made on emails specifically to someone, your special rates and offers remain a secret. You can choose whether to offer discounts or freebies to convert a lead as customer.
The cornerstone of ecommerce businesses are email marketing strategies. As mentioned, they’ll assist you in interacting with your consumers more conveniently, help you in increasing customer loyalty and sales and aid you in gathering feedback. You can find some of the top email marketing software for ecommerce here. And although there are many differences among the various types of software offered, always make sure to choose the appropriate email marketing software created primarily with the retail industries and e-commerce in mind.”
Listening & Responding to Customers
Often, we all have some doubts about something we wish to buy. And that’s all the more true for your ecommerce store because people can’t go someplace and view the stuff themselves to get a firsthand feel. They can therefore ask questions through the comments section on your blog. And you can respond to these comments and questions in a manner that entices leads to place an order.
Listening and responding to customers also has several other benefits. It helps develop a bond between your business and the customer that translates as loyalty. Additionally, negative comments and feedback enables your ecommerce store to change or upgrade its product offerings and services. Comments on blogs can also serve as an excellent resource for customer and after-sales service. It could help you innovate the entire offerings from your ecommerce store to boost profits.
Affiliate Marketing
Blogging is also one more channel to attract people to your ecommerce store both directly and indirectly. You can provide affiliate marketing type of links from your own blog to your own ecommerce store and boost profits. Therefore, other than your ecommerce store, you’re offering one more sales outlet.
And indirectly, you can leverage blogging and some skilled affiliate marketers for your ecommerce store to increase profitability. Affiliate marketing has superb advantages. It opens up multiple sales and marketing channels for your ecommerce store, free of cost. You will pay affiliate commissions to bloggers only when they record a confirmed sale through their affiliate links.
Here too I’ll cite the example of Amazon. Various sources claim that between 40 percent and 42 percent of all sales on Amazon.com occur through affiliate websites. Others peg the number much higher. Similarly, affiliate marketing can boost profits of your ecommerce store too.
In Conclusion
The above reasons clearly indicate how blogging boosts profitability of your ecommerce store. You can leverage blogging for lots of other business purposes too such as online brand building and rolling out new products quickly through your blog.
