E-commerce sales are at an all-time high, with sales globally hitting 4.28 trillion dollars in 2020 and expected to reach 5.4 trillion dollars by 2022. However, with such massive potential comes massive competition. It’s getting difficult by the day to grab the customers’ attention with the explosion of online marketplaces and a plethora of options available for purchasing.

Driving e-commerce sales has become more difficult than ever, particularly without a substantial marketing and advertising budget. However, not every company can afford to spend a lot of money on advertising their products and services, especially in the initial stages of the business.

There are, however, many effective strategies to increase traffic and attract customers. And in this post, we’ll go over some proven tactics that will help you boost your E-Commerce sales without spending a dime on advertising. Let’s begin!

The best way to leverage your email list is to use personalized email marketing to reach out to each subscriber individually.

Addressing recipients by their first names is a well-known strategy, but you can go above and beyond to wow the targeted consumer with several other techniques that trigger the right action. For example, you can add a list of their abandoned cart products in an abandoned cart email to remind them of the products in their shopping list, as well as a checkout button so they can easily make their purchase.

Here are different types of emails that you can leverage throughout the customer journey:

• Abandoned Cart Emails: For customers who have left products in their carts.
• Up-Sell and Cross-Sell Emails: To push new products for customers who have already purchased.
• Promotional Offer Emails: To send promotions and offers.
• Customer Loyalty and Re-Engagement Emails: To strengthen the bond between you and your customers and regain those who haven’t bought from your site in a while.

Doggyloot, one of the largest flash sales sites that offer dog-related products, boosted CTR by 750% by personalizing their E-Commerce emails.

There are a few different ways that you can automate your email marketing. One way is by using an autoresponder. An autoresponder is a tool that automatically sends emails to your subscribers at set intervals. This can be a great way to stay in touch with your customers and keep them updated.

It’s not always easy to reach out to new customers and get your products more eyes, without investing in paid advertising. However, there is another way around this. Partner up with affiliates and pay them commissions depending on the sales they generate for your business.

Affiliate marketing can help you:

• Increase brand awareness
• Enhance your reputation
• Generate more sales

With all of these advantages, it’s no wonder that more businesses are using affiliate marketing to boost their presence. In fact, by 2022, affiliate marketing revenue is expected to reach $8.2 billion.

You can create an affiliate marketing plan using these steps:

You can start by joining a reliable affiliate network like ShareASale or Clickbank. These are middlemen who serve as a link between retailers and publishers. They can assist you in reaching out to various affiliates to promote your products where they earn commission on every sale a customer makes through their link, and you get recurring product purchases—it’s a win-win. Look at how others have designed their affiliate programs, what commissions they pay, etc.

The next step is to choose a commission structure. In most cases, commission rates for E-Commerce businesses range from 5% to 30%.

Influencers enjoy high levels of interaction from their following on social media sites such as Instagram and YouTube. As a result, collaborating with influencers can help you reach a wider audience and boost sales.

You can also collaborate with websites and bloggers with a similar target audience to promote your products.

MVMT is an American watch company that encourages small and midsize influencers to become brand ambassadors via their #Jointhemvmt hashtag campaign. Around 120,000 posts are already using this hashtag, and more are added every minute.

Kaela Dang, a beauty influencer with over 4000 followers promoted an MVMT watch and led her followers to an affiliate link in her bio.

Content marketing is the process of creating and sharing content in many forms, such as written articles, instructional videos, and infographics—to generate more leads, build your brand, and drive more people to your website.

The fact that 70% of marketers actively invest in content marketing demonstrates how powerful it can be to scale your business.

Here are some advantages of a well-executed E-Commerce content strategy:

• Brings fresh visitors to your website.
• Helps people to trust your brand.
• Assists vital conversions.
• Holds the potential to provide a new income source.
• Evergreen Content delivers long-term value and gets compounding results.

Beardbrand, a beard accessory E-Commerce site, claims that blog posts account for 69% of their organic traffic.

Referral marketing is a marketing strategy that motivates old consumers to inform others about your products or services organically. Around 92% of buyers believe referrals from friends or family over advertising, making this form of marketing effective.

Here’s how you can build a solid referral marketing program for your E-Commerce store:

• Choose an incentive: Choose what you’ll provide referrals as a reward. It might be in cash, a discount, or digital products such as ebooks or courses.
• Convert your loyal customers into loyal referrals: Let your customers be the first ones to know about the program; you can leverage email marketing to put the word out.
• Use social media to promote your referral program: Spread the word about your program through your social media channels, and invite customers to join it by highlighting the perks.
• Employ referral marketing tools: Implementing your referral program will be easier if you have tools to simplify the process.

Here is an example of Hincapie, a cycling gear E-Commerce store specializing in customizing apparel for cyclists. When customers spend a particular amount of money via referrals, Hincapie gives their referrals a customized cycling T-shirt—a personalized gift, which justifies the popularity of this program.

Social proof marketing is a strategy where businesses use customer recommendations to prove brand or product credibility. It’s a highly effective technique to drive sales, especially because 77% of customers make a purchase with a business if their friends or peers recommended it.

Social proof can help you increase the number of conversions, your brand’s credibility and boost your customers’ trust.

Here are different types of social proof examples you can use to boost your E-Commerce sales:

User-Generated Content (UGC) such as reviews, testimonials, and photographs of your customers using your products are marketing goldmines for the company’s growth.

Reviews and star ratings are among the most prevalent forms of social proof utilized by E-Commerce businesses because up to 70% of internet buyers read product reviews before purchasing.

One of the problems with most review systems is that if you don’t have a lot of reviews, the buyer could conclude you don’t have a lot of customers, your customers don’t purchase particular product ranges, or your items aren’t very great.

Instead, recommendations are a perfect complement or alternative for reviews because they provide prospective consumers a glance at whether existing customers suggest your items,

Here’s an example of a clothes retailer, Free People, using customer reviews cleverly as their advertisement copy to gain the trust of their customers.

Excellent customer service helps customers complete online purchases seamlessly by addressing complaints, providing a consistent customer experience across channels, and assisting the consumer every step of the way.

In today’s digital-first world, E-Commerce customer service is no longer a choice, but a need for success, especially since customer service is vital to 95% of customers for brand loyalty.

Here are some best practices that can help you provide a great customer service experience to your customers and generate more sales:

Developing a multichannel approach involves knowing where your customers are on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp and being present there with a solid content strategy.

66% of customers find waiting on hold or repeating information to various representatives the most irritating aspect of seeking customer service support.

A strong customer service experience requires consumers not to repeat themselves or wait days for a response.

According to statistics, adding Live Chat on your site can result in 3-5 times more conversions.

Implementing live chat will allow customers to get their queries cleared immediately, rather than wait for 24 hours or more. This improves customer experience and, in return, will increase customer loyalty.

Ensure your E-Commerce website has an FAQ area and a knowledge base with all the information a customer would need or answers to doubts they may have about a product or the purchasing process.

Best Buy’s Twitter support staff performs an excellent job of giving clients concrete advice and enabling them to contact the company for more help. Here you can find them responding to one of their customer’s queries.

With online competition growing by the day, E-Commerce businesses need to be more creative and consistent to attract and retain customers.

We can’t deny the fact that paid advertisements will provide you with better short-term results, but if you want to raise brand awareness, improve sales, and turn your customers into long-term buyers, you need to look beyond advertisements.

Use the strategies mentioned in this article to build a bullet-proof E-Commerce sales blueprint that can help you generate more sales through organic methods to build trust with consumers and get an upwards rising revenue graph.

Eduard Klein is an International Digital Growth Marketer, Blogger (eduardklein.com), and Entrepreneur with a global mindset. He guides through the process of starting and growing a digital business, and riding the wave of digital technology and marketing without getting swept away.