If you own an e-commerce business, you must constantly be looking for ways to expand your business horizons, and increasing sales must be your primary goal. However, given the cut-throat competition on e-commerce platforms, making your mark could be tricky.
Even if your business is scaling on its own, there are many things you need to do to keep up with it. Read on to know how you can scale your e-commerce business in the right way.
Before scaling your e-commerce business
There are a few things to consider before setting out on a scaling journey:
Perform catalogue review and scale right products
To scale your e-commerce business, you should not only sell products but also emphasise the ones that get you more profits, even with advertising and shipping costs. Analyse each product in your catalogue to determine the top sellers. These will help you decide which items you may want to invest more time and resources in, while also understanding which items can be optimised to perform better. Considering your margins and focusing on profitability is essential to protecting your overall cash flow.
Have enough cash
Profitability is at the core of any e-commerce business. So before you start scaling, reassess your expenses. You need enough cash to keep the business going if you want to scale.
However, most e-commerce sellers face a common challenge of delayed payouts, waiting for 7-14 days (as per their settlement cycle) to receive their sales revenue. Delayed payouts can cause significant cash flow problems.
With Instant Settlement for marketplace sellers by Razorpay, you can withdraw your sales revenue in under 7 seconds. Simple, easy and no hidden charges.
Key approaches to scaling your e-commerce business
Understand your customer’s needs
Any social media site can serve as a sales funnel for your business depending on what products or services you provide. It is important that you understand how your ideal customer will discover your product or service through advertisement on social media and what will compel them to click on the advertisement. However, a common mistake many e-commerce businesses make is assuming that potential customers are the same across all social media sites.
The way people buy and behave is unique to each social media platform and each customer has their own journey. In addition, the competition in these markets is fierce. Brands that fail to cater to unique customer journeys won’t compete.
Step up your inbound marketing efforts
Inbound marketing focuses on creating and distributing content that draws relevant people to your website. If you want to attract customers to your online store, the correct inbound marketing strategy can help you. It is a set of activities that, when done in tandem, can create scalable revenue for your business.
So, as a part of your e-commerce inbound marketing strategy, you should:
- Create stellar content and optimise it for on-site and off-site SEO. Find keywords that are relevant to your e-commerce business. This way, you will be making your site more user-friendly to your shoppers, which will also help with conversions.
- Use different social media channels to create a following for your brand. You can also consider getting an influencer to market your brand and products.
- Convert traffic into leads that can be re-targeted through Google, Facebook or email remarketing campaigns.
- You can use paid ads or drive traffic to your website. Advertising plays a crucial role in making people aware of your brand and product offerings. This becomes especially relevant if you enter a new market or promote sales through your website.
A solid inbound marketing strategy for e-commerce will ensure that your brand is regularly introduced to your target audience through social posts, blog posts, videos, infographics, and influencer campaigns.
Have an excellent customer service strategy
Besides the regular automated emails and live support, you should be investing in ways to improve customer service that will help set you apart from the competition and take your business to the next level.
You can create a loyalty program that encourages constant customer growth while still rewarding existing customers. Be it free shipping, exclusive discounts, or free gifts, it is much simpler to retain your customers through exciting loyalty programs. Statistics reveal that acquiring new customers cost 5X more than retaining repeat customers. So clearly you’re increasing profitability when your customers are loyal to you.
Befriend automation
It’s simple: as a business scales, complexities, demands and repetitions add up. Hence, to optimise resources and free up time for critical tasks like creating marketing campaigns and content, e-commerce businesses need to befriend automation.
For example, there are several services for push notifications available in the market today. These services can help you re-target abandoned carts, send drip campaigns, boost repeat sales and promote content based on users’ interests. Likewise, chatbots can help automate a part of your customer service efforts, like responding to customer queries 24/7. It is important to scale your business with a system in place to deal with any issues that may come up from the start.
Pay attention to inventory management
As an e-commerce business, you must rank your product listings on the first search results page when a customer looks for a similar product. If you run out of stock and cannot fulfil the orders, you might lose your product rankings.
Therefore, you must pay special attention to inventory management and ensure that you don’t lose out on additional orders. You can take the help of inventory automation service providers to manage your inventory efficiently.
Expand to new markets
Once you have made your mark in one country, you must target to establish your brand in another country. Selling your products internationally is one of the best ways to increase your sales and earn more profit.
Before entering a new market, conduct thorough research on the type of market and analyse the chance or possibility of your product succeeding in it. For instance, your business has the least chance of succeeding if you are planning to sell sweatshirts in Dubai. Therefore, conducting thorough research is necessary before entering a new market. Expansion to new markets is a great strategy to scale up your business, develop an entirely different customer base and make your brand reach places.
Expand your product line
Another great strategy to scale your e-commerce business is to add new products to your list of offerings. More products mean better views, increased sales and better brand visibility.
For instance, if you are selling clothing for women, you also add matching accessories, bags, jewellery and to your list. You can also sell the complete look by creating a combination of all the products. This could prove to be a great strategy for scaling up your e-commerce business and increasing sales. This would further improve your brand image and provide you with a great opportunity to increase your revenue.
Expand your sales channels
You can go beyond your existing e-commerce marketplace, explore different e-commerce websites, list your products there and earn profits. Additionally, you must also start your company website and start promoting it to increase your brand value and establish it. To develop your customer base, you must work on establishing your brand.
Takeaway
Although scaling up an e-commerce business is challenging, it can be made easier with planning and effective strategies. The strategies outlined in this article will guide you if you are at the expansion stage for your e-commerce business.
Meanwhile, you can try Instant Settlements for Marketplace Sellers by Razorpay to avoid cash flow issues and take your business to the next level.
