Author: chargeafterdev

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and if you haven’t begun prepping for a lovely sales season this February the 14th then it is high time you turn to your marketing team to concoct some attractive strategies. We have curated this article to give you some ideas on how to give your customers an incentive to buy leading up to Valentine’s Day. You should jump on these strategies sooner rather than later if you wish to increase sales from couples shopping for their partners.

Fund Valentine’s Purchases With Online Financing

Customers spend a fortune on Valentine’s Day. For this reason, it is one of every online businesses highlight of the calendar year. Now, more than ever, you should introduce new ways for your shoppers to buy from your eCommerce store. You should consider the integration of strategies that help shoppers purchase those expensive items they have been dreaming of giving their partners. Whether your business sells elite watches of boutique clothing, you can integrate online financing to leverage more sales leading up to Valentine’s Day. Online financing from ChargeAfter is a powerful tool that plugs into your checkout page, giving your customers access to one of the most efficient and affordable loan payment options on the market. At the push of a button and without having to go through the stress of credit checks, customers can receive zero interest loans from ChargeAfter’s leading network of lenders. This leads to an increase in sales as customers can finance their Valentine’s purchases without having to consult their financial service provider. 

Start Your Social Media Push Now

If you haven’t already, then start your social media push now. This should include regular Valentine’s Day posts, ad campaigns, Google search advertisements, and other paid advertising strategies. Over and above starting early, you should couple these campaigns with competitions or discount codes. You need to give shoppers an additional reason to buy this Valentine’s Day over and above your customer service and product range, and these kinds of social media marketing tactics drive great traffic to eCommerce platforms. 

Dedicate a Landing Page to Valentine’s Day

Consumers that click through your social media and Google advertisements should land on a dedicated page that speaks to Valentine’s Day. As such, you should create a new landing page to direct your traffic to your competition, a special Valentine’s Day catalogue, and other information about the dreamy day. A dedicated landing page will ensure that you serve your customers the right kind of content that encourages the sales of speciality products through the clever use of calls to action, product photography, and additional features such as online financing. 

Ensure You Can Ship By Valentine’s Day

If you can guarantee to ship by Valentine’s Day, you will win customers from competitor shops as they seek the most efficient online shopping services during this special day. Consult your logistics partner and provide comprehensive insight into delivery due date expectations so that customers are completely aware of your policies as well as when to expect their items. You could also include shipping discounts during Valentine’s Day to offer customers additional value and further entice the sale. 

The combination of online financing from ChargeAfter to fund expensive Valentine’s Day purchases, a strong social media push with discounts and competitions, a dedicated landing page that tells your brand’s Valentine’s Day store, and shipping information that clarifies one’s ability to deliver before the special day will guarantee an extremely successful and profitable February the 14th for your business.

Want to learn more? Reach out to us here.

Whether you have an eCommerce business, are thinking about starting one, or are in the process of integrating one, online selling requires strategizing and developing comprehensive marketing plans. In this ultimate guide to online selling, we discuss how you can prepare your online store for a successful year. We showcase the steps to take to ensure that your eCommerce platform is optimized, attracts your target audience, and drive sales, from market research to consumer financing. 

Conduct Market Research

Market research allows you to closely understand how your eCommerce platform fits into the existing marketplace for your specific products. Market research involves analyzing the current competition, auditing the need and growth potential for a store like yours, assessing the most prominent marketing tools similar businesses use, and clarifying an action plan to drive all of your marketing efforts. This helpful resource provides a step-by-step guide on how to conduct market research. 

Identify Your Target Audience

The next step to running a successful online business is identifying and defining your target audience. This refers to the people that you intend to sell your products to. It is not enough to have a loose idea of these people in your head. You should work with a marketing team to pinpoint the exact person who will benefit most from your products and outline everything there is to know about them in buyer personas. These buyer personas should explain the ideal customers demographics, psychographics, discuss their likes and dislikes, their preferred social media platforms, what drives them to make a sale, what’s important to them, their profession, their household roles, and the list goes on. The reason eCommerce companies develop buyer personas is so that they can send the right marketing material and content to the right person at the right time. This ensures that marketing budgets are optimized and that there is a positive return on investment. 

Build Your Brand Presence

A brand presence involves creating a solid brand narrative, expressing your brand identity visually, and delivering content that aligns with your brand story and visual aesthetic. Holistic brand presence development rests on an appealing corporate identity and digital playbook that will guide the styling of your website, social media pages, and all consumer touchpoints as well as focus your content publication efforts. To build brand awareness, you can utilize social media advertising and other paid media channels to showcase your growing brand presence to new consumers within your target audience.

Optimize Your Storefront for Sales

With buyer personas, a solid market research and action plan, and a strong brand presence, you can drive sales on your website. That is to assume that your storefront is optimized for sales. Optimizing your website is not only beneficial for your google search ranking but a seamless user journey is fundamental to eCommerce success. Shoppers want a website that is easy to navigate and offers additional integrations to supplement their shopping experience. For example, consumer financing from ChargeAfter is a powerful platform that provides consumers with zero-interest financing options at the checkout. Individuals that have access to consumer financing are more likely to convert to paying customers as this form of financing is more cost-effective, quicker, and less stressful than traditional financing options with third-party providers or financial service providers. Consumer financing integration is one of many storefront optimization techniques to support your online selling. 

Conduct market research, identify your target audience, build your brand presence, and optimize your storefront to sell online faster than ever and grow a thriving eCommerce business within your competitive industry.

Advertising, competitions, and influencers drive traffic to websites. These are three marketing tools that eCommerce businesses must implement to support their traffic flow and grow their consumer base. Beyond utilizing these channels to drive web traffic, you can increase the likelihood of converting new consumers to regular shoppers with buy now pay later from ChargeAfter at checkout. This integration gives your customers access to ChargeAfter’s reputable lenders who offer zero-interest financing. The benefits of ChargeAfter’s buy now pay later platform drive greater sales as consumers turn to the powerful integration for their shopping needs. 

Below, we discuss three ways you can drive more traffic to your website that encourages sales with buy now pay later from ChargeAfter. 

Set Up Social Media Ad Campaigns

The most common digital marketing ad avenues are Facebook, Instagram, and Google. Pinterest, LinkedIn, and even Reddit offer advertising, but the three listed above represent the most prominent, cost-effective, and reliable advertising channels. Online stores that do not make use of Facebook, Instagram, and Google’s ad platforms are missing massive audiences to competitors that run social media ad campaigns. eCommerce marketing teams must allocate budget and resources to social media advertising to remain relevant and attract new traffic to the website. 

Let’s take a look at how to ensure these ad campaigns drive more traffic to your website.

Meta: Facebook & Instagram Ads

Meta has developed an effective ad campaign management tool in ads manager that allows online stores and other businesses to run Facebook and Instagram ads. The platform is relatively easy to navigate and empowers businesses to run ads across Meta’s two primary social media platforms simultaneously. With Facebook and Instagram ads, you can drive traffic to your website by utilizing the various campaign objectives Meta provides. When running these ads, the algorithm sends your ads to consumers most likely to take your desired action. This is a fairly simplified approach to advertising with Meta, and you can follow this resource for a more detailed guide on how to run successful Facebook and Instagram ads to drive traffic to your website. 

Google Ads

Google empowers online businesses to run search-based and web ads to drive traffic to their websites. Using Google Ads, eCommerce marketing teams can attract new traffic to their websites through keyword-optimized campaigns and display advertising on other relevant websites and landing pages. Google Ads offers immediate results, and businesses benefit from its affordable cost-per-click system. According to Insider Intelligence, consumers convert within five days of searching for a product. Therefore, Google Ads are essential for generating short-term profit. You can use this resource for a greater grasp of Google Ads and how to run a successful campaign.

Introduce Competitions & Giveaways

If you market a prize big enough, consumers will share your competition with their friends. Competitions remain a staple marketing tool for generating new traffic as, beyond the prize itself, they are completely free. Competitions and giveaways also fall within the realm of user-generated content as consumers encourage their friends and family to support eCommerce businesses through their own social channels. Competitions typically involve liking posts, following pages, and sharing the content with friends. You can improve your campaign results by encouraging consumers to visit your website and sign up for a newsletter to enter your competition. This has the added benefit of building your email database. 

Work With Influencers

Influencers encourage their fans to support their favorite brands, and eCommerce businesses should work with influencers to drive more traffic to their websites. The best influencer strategies involve referral discounts for consumers that utilize coupon codes when shopping with online stores. For example, you may collaborate with an influencer that posts about your products and encourages their audience to use a specific code during checkout to receive a discount on their order. Influencers will take a commission of those sales, which is not particularly costly and small in comparison with the return on investment of new traffic to one’s website.

Drive more traffic and beat the competition with social media ad campaigns, competitions and giveaways, and partnerships with powerful influencers.

From personalization to social media store integration, take your marketing to the next level with these top five digital marketing tips for eCommerce stores with waterfall consumer financing. 

1. Personalize Your Customer’s Experience & Introduce Waterfall Consumer Financing

Personalization is the name of the game in the modern eCommerce, or me-Commerce, environment. Every aspect of the online shopping experience can be personalized, from showcasing customer names when browsing to sending birthday coupons, promoting items related to their interests, and encouraging feedback to hear what they have to say. Double-down your personalization efforts with waterfall consumer financing from ChargeAfter. This financing plugin provides your shoppers with access to lenders that tailor loan plans according to their shopping needs. Depending on their orders, customers can receive comprehensive financial coverage without having to go through credit checks. Furthermore, these payment plans come with no interest on loans. This encourages purchases while also ensuring that every customer’s unique shopping requirements are met when they arrive at the checkout. 

2. Invest in Public Relations and Distribution

Public relations management is crucial to eCommerce success as digital magazines can attract new customers to websites and encourage purchases. From blog articles featuring on the best journalism sites to backlinks to your store via social media content on news platforms, you can leverage the power of public relations to improve your digital marketing efforts. Distribution channels also include guest posting, which is a great way to drive new traffic to your website of the audience of another popular platform as well as grow your SEO results. 

3. Integrate Your Store With Social Media

Your eCommerce store should not only sell your products via a website but also utilize social media’s selling platforms for greater revenue potential. Meta’s primary platforms Facebook and Instagram enable product selling via their business profiles and pages. You can embed your store into every aspect of your socials to diversify your sales channels as well as attract audience members who are returning customers. Customer retention is essential to eCommerce success, further emphasizing the need to integrate your store with social media. 

4. Build a Better Email Database

An email database is essential for driving return visits to your website as someone who is willing to provide their email address for notifications is particularly interested in your products or services. In this day and age, it is vital that you inspire email sign-ups with beneficial lead magnets like free resources or discounts available upon sign up. To integrate a successful email marketing campaign, you need to start with building a better email database. This database will become one of the cornerstones of your customer loyalty and retention strategy. 

5. Take Advantage of Video Marketing

Video content, from long-form YouTube videos to short-form reels, has become a mainstay in the modern digital marketing world for eCommerce stores. No matter what products or services you sell, you should take advantage of video marketing to diversify your audience base, attract new visitors, and build a unique presence on video content platforms. You can incorporate influencers to build your video content, collaborating with popular social media users to tap into their audiences. They can become the spokespeople for your brand, driving great traffic through consumer advocacy. You should also have branded video content on your pages that are search engine optimized to further your reach. To double down on your video marketing efforts, be sure to post your content on Pinterest as this platform is a highly beneficial but underused sales avenue. 

Personalize your customers’ experiences, build your database, and take advantage of more of these five digital marketing tips for eCommerce stores with waterfall consumer financing. 

Email is far from being a dated communication strategy for businesses. In fact, email marketing is one of the most powerful tools in an eCommerce store’s arsenal of marketing tools. In this article, we explore email marketing in more detail and discuss how you can use it alongside consumer financing to secure more sales. 

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing refers to the process whereby businesses encourage sales through emailers sent to an existing email database. An email database is made up of all customers, potential consumers, and leads that have supplied an online store with their email via several lead magnets used during the marketing process. These lead magnets often include pop-ups asking for customers to sign up to newsletters to receive discounts, free resources that consumers can access after providing their email addresses, and post-purchase emails asking customers to provide their addresses for future notifications and specials. Tapping into one’s existing email database through email marketing is critical to eCommerce success as businesses can attract individuals who are less motivated by social media advertising and other promotional consumer touchpoints. 

How Consumer Financing Supports Email Marketing

To be a successful eCommerce store, one should integrate email marketing into the brand’s holistic marketing strategy. That said, email marketing will not work alone. Email marketing is bound to bring customers to the website, but there needs to be a reason to buy beyond an appealing email, good prices, and quality customer support. eCommerce platforms can go above and beyond to support their shoppers using consumer financing from ChargeAfter. Consumer financing is a means of providing your customers with immediate access to zero-interest loans via a network of trustworthy lenders. ChargeAfter is a leading consumer financing partner that can deliver this solution with great return on investment potential. The addition of consumer financing from ChargeAfter on your website will secure more sales as a consumer’s shopping experience is made easier than ever before. 

3 Steps to Ensure Sales With Email Marketing

Considering the combination of email marketing and consumer financing at checkout should bring success, let’s take a closer look at 3 steps to ensure that these efforts lead to valuable customer conversions. 

1. Develop a Comprehensive Plan

Most email marketing failures can be chalked up to a lack of planning. In today’s day and age of online shopping, eCommerce platforms must formulate clear and concise plans for a profitable return on investment. An email marketing plan should include a clear audience definition to ensure you are sending the right information to the right people in a way that will grab their attention. The email marketing plan should also establish a frequency output and goals to assess success. The frequency will depend on your existing analytics and goals will help you analyze future analytics for email marketing optimization.

2. Design Better Looking Emails

Email marketing has become visual, and the best eCommerce store’s go above and beyond to curate beautiful-looking emailers for their customers. Gone are the days where a paragraph or two of written content will do the trick. Today, emails need to express a narrative. They need your logo, colorful pictures, bold headlines, clickable buttons, and a variety of design elements that attract consumer interest. To begin designing better emails, consider using Mailchimp.

3. Highlight Added Value

From discounts to consumer financing, customers are more likely to purchase from eCommerce stores that offer added value. You should make your added value offerings clear in your emails to grab the attention of consumers. You could have a big discount value highlighted in big and bold colors at the top of your email. Maybe reconsider the positioning of your subject line, using this key call to action as a selling point to showcase your added value offerings. Either way, you should make it clear that you provide value beyond the competition. 

Email marketing is a powerful strategy to diversify your sales channels and encourage more conversions, and you can utilize consumer financing to take advantage of the revenue generation potential of a solid email marketing strategy.

Want to learn more? Reach out to us here.

In the modern digital marketing world, eCommerce stores need to leverage new tools and solutions to increase sales and stay ahead of the competition. A combination of one or more marketing tools, including online financing, SEO, SEM marketing, influencer marketing, and loyalty programs helps eCommerce platforms drive profitable return on investment for their marketing initiatives. In this article, we discuss these 5 best marketing tools for online businesses and how they can support your eCommerce platform. 

1. Buy Now Pay Later at Checkout

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) financing is a powerful checkout integration that can encourage sales during consumers online shopping experience. ChargeAfter provides eCommerce businesses with cost-effective and reliable BNPL solutions. They work by giving a brand’s consumers access to a network of reputable lenders capable of financing their orders. This system requires no credit checks and repayment plans come with no interest on installations. This is an extremely beneficial selling point for consumers, that you can market on your online store. The ability to source online financing at the push of a button, and without having to seek assistance from a third-party financial service provider makes this one of the most efficient and effective new marketing tools for eCommerce. 

2. SEO for Web and Content

If you sell products via a website, then it is essential that you optimize your site for search engines. SEO is a crucial strategy for appearing higher in the search rankings, resulting in an increase in organic traffic to your website. This increase will likely mean greater sales as more users are actively engaging with your content. All of your website content pages, product pages, and social media platforms should include specific search terms to make your content more discoverable. You can use this resource to explore the best ways of developing an SEO strategy that attracts eager shoppers. 

3. SEM Marketing

Search engine marketing involves increasing online visibility through paid advertising efforts. Typical types of SEM marketing include Google Ads campaigns and PPC advertising. This marketing tool is highly effective as it is an instant way of appearing first for specific Google search terms or displaying ads directly on other websites for immediate results. The immediacy of this marketing tool is the key driving force behind its use as a valuable sales-driven approach to marketing. It is a far faster means of increasing online visibility than more traditional SEO approaches, meaning the combination should yield a great response of organic and paid traffic. 

4. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing refers to the process of using powerful social media figures to advocate for a brand’s products or services. This particular marketing tool involves collaborating with reputable social media icons that are willing to share product recommendations with their existing and extensive audiences. As a more promotional form of user-generated content, influencer marketing appears more authentic to audiences, yielding valuable sales that require less advertising budget than other means of promotion such as social media marketing and SEM marketing. 

5. Loyalty and Reward Programs

Customer retention is more cost-effective than customer acquisition. Hence, online stores need to consider loyalty and reward programs that increase customer lifetime value. This is a highly profitable marketing tool as it can long-term sustainable growth with an audience of interested buyers. These shoppers are more encouraged to browse and buy from one’s online store as there is an element of added value driving the purchase decision.

The combination of these 5 marketing tools for online businesses will lead to greater sales as marketing costs are optimized for more valuable conversions. If your business has not yet implemented one or more of these marketing tools, then now has never been a better time to do so!

Instagram has grown from a social media app to a viable sales platform in a short space of time, and if you are not taking advantage of its ability to push products to consumers then you are missing out on a massive touchpoint for revenue generation. In this article, we discuss why you should use Instagram as an eCommerce sales platform with waterfall consumer financing to maximize your revenue potential.

Why You Should Be Using Instagram

The value of using Instagram as a sales platform lies in the popularity of the app itself. Furthermore, the number of people worldwide that are now using Instagram to shop as opposed to other digital channels like Google Shopping. According to authoritative sources, “130 million Instagram users tap on shopping posts every month”. That is a massive figure, and if you are not using Instagram as a shopping avenue then you are missing out on a huge part of your potential consumer base. 

Furthermore, Instagram has made adding shopping features to a business profile extremely simple. The process is far less complicated than setting up a Google Shopping channel through Google Merchant Center or uploading your product catalog onto your Facebook page. The platform is extremely well-optimized, giving eCommerce owners efficient access to the benefits of using Instagram as a sales platform. 

How Waterfall Consumer Financing Encourages Instagram Sales

Waterfall consumer financing is a powerful web integration that can encourage conversions of consumers that arrive on an eCommerce store from Instagram. ChargeAfter is a leading provider of waterfall consumer financing solutions that businesses big and small partner with to leverage the benefits of online financing. The solution itself is a plugin that appears on a website’s checkout page, allowing all consumers to access it when arriving at their online shopping carts and initiating the checkout process. ChargeAfter’s waterfall consumer financing solution can give an eCommerce store’s customers access to instant loans with no additional interest at the push of a button. This is done by connecting the consumer with ChargeAfter’s network of lenders on the fly and providing repayment plans without the need for credit checks. The process ensures that consumers stay on the eCommerce site for longer and do not have to deal with third-party financial service providers. It streamlines their shopping experience, leading to an increase in conversions and Instagram sales. 

How to Use Instagram as a Sales Platform Best

Many brands have turned to Instagram as a sales platform to tap into new audiences and broaden their consumer base. But, not many of them are doing it effectively. There are several ways that you can get ahead of the competition when using Instagram as a sales platform beyond introducing waterfall consumer financing into your website. 

1. Utilize Shopping Tags

Shopping tags help Instagram’s algorithm categorize your products and send them to users that may be interested in the specific or similar categories. You can add tags to just about every type of Instagram content, and it also allows your customers to easily browse more items in your catalog without having to jump through various user experience hurdles. 

2. Encourage User-Generated Content

User-generated content on Instagram is essentially a new review strategy that can put an eCommerce platform in good stead for increasing sales. This type of content refers to content that is posted or shared by customers who have had pleasant experiences with your brand. They become brand advocates for your store, encouraging their friends and family to buy from you as well. This can have an extremely positive domino effect on revenue generation via Instagram. 

3. Collaborate With Influencers

Beyond the general public, influencers are powerful individuals that can advocate for your brand. You can collaborate with influencers to launch new products, discounts, and other strategies, associating your brand with theirs and enticing their existing following to check out your store. 

Instagram continues to grow in popularity and has quickly become a powerful sales platform for eCommerce businesses. Using Instagram and waterfall consumer financing, you can tap into new audiences and increase revenue generation. 

Want to learn more? Reach out to us here.

Analytics are essential to making strategic eCommerce decisions, and business owners should work closely with marketing teams to make profitable decisions based on data. In this article, we discuss marketing analytics, the types of marketing analytics, and how online financing can support successful decisions based on marketing analytics.

What Are Marketing Analytics?

Marketing analytics refers to data collected on critical consumer touchpoints within a sales funnel. These analytics paint a clear picture of the buyer’s journey and give eCommerce businesses insights that prove critical to making profitable marketing decisions. Marketing analytics should be collected and reported on monthly to ensure that all eCommerce marketing initiatives are backed by strategic insight. 

Types of Marketing Analytics

There are several types of marketing analytics that eCommerce stores can assess to make strategic marketing decisions. While there are often too many to track simultaneously, marketing teams can prioritize relevant marketing metrics to track analytics that will help grow the particular eCommerce store. For example, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) businesses should keep a close watch on abandoned cart rates as these can offer valuable insight on the reasons why shoppers turn away from their stores right before making a purchase. Below are a few key marketing metrics that will yield valuable marketing analytics for online store optimization:

• Descriptive analytics
• Predictive analytics
• Prescriptive analytics

You can learn more about these types of analytics here.

How Online Financing Supports Marketing Analytics

With these marketing metrics in mind, let’s take a look at how online financing can support decisions made based on marketing analytics. 

1. Improved Customer Lifetime Value

eCommerce marketing teams can assess customer lifetime values to determine how profitable their customers are for the business. Customer lifetime value refers to the total spend an individual customer will make with an online store across all of their purchases. Improving customer lifetime values is a sign of positive customer retention, a profitable marketing strategy that requires attention. Online financing from ChargeAfter can help increase customer lifetime values as it provides many important consumer benefits. Customers are enticed by online financing as it provides an easy way to shop online, encouraging them to return to an online store to purchase again. It does this by giving them access to on-demand financing at the push of a button without credit checks and zero-interest repayment plans. 

2. Longer Time Spent on Site

eCommerce platforms should consider the time that customers spend on their sites. The longer a potential customer spends on a site, the more likely they will make a purchase. The time spent on site can provide insight into the user experience, the relevancy of branded content, the attractiveness of discounts and products, and more. To increase customer time spent on-site during checkout, integrate online financing from ChargeAfter. This integration gives customers access to instant financing options without having to leave your store to consult their bank or third-party lender. This can lead to greater sales during a business month. 

3. Higher Conversion Rates

Conversions are critical to the success of eCommerce stores. Marketing teams must look into the current conversion rates and determine avenues to grow these throughout the year. One such method is integrating online financing from ChargeAfter. The platform encourages consumers to shop as it provides greater financial aid than alternative platforms. Furthermore, the integration is easy-to-use. eCommerce platforms that integrate online financing will also yield more impactful marketing analytics as ChargeAfter’s round-the-clock customer service and data insights are a complimentary add-on to partnership packages. 

Marketing analytics are essential to making better business decisions in 2022. Online store owners should consider key marketing metrics and the insights gathered from analytics to drive success moving forward. With the inclusion of online financing from ChargeAfter, eCommerce stores will see improved customer lifetime values, longer times spent on site, and higher conversion rates. 

Want to learn more? Reach out to us here.