To be effective, a marketing plan must have a solid objective. In other words, before you can test it, you need a clear idea of what you’re trying to accomplish. This might seem a bit elementary at first glance. After all, your immediate response was probably, “Duh! My goal is to make more money.” However, there are many ways to go about doing so; each of which requires a slightly different plan of attack. Said simply, before you can learn how to test your ecommerce marketing plan, you must figure out what you want it to do.
What’s Your Goal?
On the marketing side, gaining more customers, selling more products, or raising prices can increase revenues. Each requires a taking slightly different route, so you must decide which method you want to employ and devise a plan to accomplish it—but not just yet. Once you’ve decided which approach you want take, you need to figure out why it isn’t already happening.
What’s Kept You from Achieving It?
Let’s say you decide you want to increase your revenues by gaining more customers. Before you can do this, you must determine why customers aren’t buying from you. Maybe it’s because they don’t know you exist. Maybe it’s because your competition makes buying more appealing than you do in some way (prices, rewards, etc.). Or, maybe it’s because your site simply isn’t attractive to customers.
Conduct some research to establish which of these possibilities is the most likely culprit, then formulate a strategy by which you’ll overcome the issue. Worst-case scenario, it might be all three. If this is the case, tackle them one at a time. Each situation requires a different approach and trying to deal with them simultaneously will tax your resources too heavily.
How Can You Fix This Problem?
Let’s say you determine your site simply isn’t attractive to customers. Your first step should be to upgrade the look and feel of your ecommerce store. A good way to do this quickly is to go with one of the pre-existing website templates offered by an enterprise ecommerce site builder like Shopify. These have been proven to be attractive to shoppers, and you can readily tailor them to complement your product line.
How Do You Tell Everybody It’s Fixed?
Once you’ve solved the problem, it’s time to figure out how to let the world know its perception of your site is no longer valid. Brainstorm many different methods of getting the word out; whether it’s social media promotions, influencer engagements, organic content placements, a series of email blasts, a traditional advertising campaign or some combination of all the above. When you’ve decided which of these methods you will employ, or how you will blend them, it’s time to put your solution into play and see how it performs. A local company can help you implement your plan.
Did They Hear You?
Give yourself a measurable goal and a reasonable deadline by which to accomplish it. As an example, you can say; “Over next quarter I want to see visits increase by X amount and the conversion rate to be X percent.” Make sure you record where you are before you implement the plan, so you’ll have a solid baseline against which to evaluate your results. If you see a solid uptick, you’ll know you’re on the right track. If the needle doesn’t move (or moves too little), adjust your approach and try again.
The Key Takeaway
Before you can learn how to test your ecommerce marketing plan, you must identify the problem you’re trying to solve and craft some workable methodologies by which you’ll do so. Only then can you proceed to test them to see if they work.