Revenue growth is a fantastic goal. If you launched a new strategy or embarked on a bold new campaign, revenue growth provides the black-and-white reality at the end: Did the new strategy deliver as promised?
But as a North Star for building an ecommerce content strategy, revenue growth sometimes comes up short.
For ecommerce managers and directors at leading brands, there’s often increased pressure to generate and hone an effective revenue growth strategy. But there’s no simple dial you can turn. You need a clear, simple plan, sometimes paired with a complex elixir of tactics — and that can test your creativity as an ecommerce professional.
The best start way to start is to know which strategies to mix in. What are the strategies and tactics that tend to drive revenue and ecommerce growth? And how will you know when you’ve made an impact, not just exerted empty effort? Explore some strategies you can start using today.
Strategy 1: Implement Critical Indicators for Ecommerce Growth
Revenue going up? Good. You know that your business is moving the needle. But you also need data to pinpoint the specific strategies that impacted growth.
According to keyword research company Semrush, surprisingly few marketers keep track of varied key performance indicators (KPIs):
- 64% of respondents calculate revenue from content marketing;
- Only 51% measure it from organic traffic; and
- 19% calculate growth from non-paid channels.
This puts you at a potential advantage. If you measure more than growth — and keep an eye on the channels that drive that growth — you’re usually ahead of the curve.
Consider this example. SMNutrition, in partnership with Salsify, had a lot of tricky marketing content to navigate. Not only was there different content for dozens of products, but SMNutrition also had to balance U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advertising rules and the return on investment (ROI) of its content marketing channels. Which was really driving revenue to the bottom line?
SMNutrition implemented Salsify and started measuring ROI on each marketing channel. This way, they could avoid overinvesting in one channel and underinvesting in another. They found Salsify helped keep this measurement ongoing — not a single revenue review that occurred at the end of the quarter. Knowing what was working meant SMNutrition could scale with greater ease.
Strategy 2: Leverage DTC Ecommerce for Global Growth
Jen Gulley, director of direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce sales at WestPoint Home, said her company turned “Salsify” into a verb. The challenge was working with a broad range of product information — up to 30 different forms. But it was difficult to translate data from what they dubbed “manufacturing” speak into something simple enough for translation on a global level.
DTC ecommerce can go as far as you want to take it. But if your content only appeals to buyers from one market, like the U.S., it limits your revenue growth to U.S. trends.
Gulley adopted the “I can Salsify that!” mantra into her work for WestPoint Home’s ecommerce arm, using Salsify to set up DTC channels and keep the information consistent on each platform. They did something similar with Shopify, which meant any change they needed to implement could work with any of their channels — and in any region.
Why does it matter? Without a product experience management (PXM) platform to unify and simplify your DTC channels, it can be difficult to scale globally. Ideally, using a strategy like SMNutrition’s content strategy means you can reinvest in the content that works and drop the content that doesn’t. Plus, you can keep your product experience consistent across all channels and reach your full potential for global growth.
Strategy 3: Syndicate Your Data and Content to Promote Wider Distribution
A surgical approach to revenue growth makes sense. But sometimes, you just need more eyes on your brand. And you can’t do that until you master product content syndication.
What is product content syndication? It’s the process of sending product data to retail endpoints in a way that conforms to retailers’ standards — in this context, enabled by software.
This means you’re not manually populating spreadsheets or sending data to your channels, subjecting your online presence to human error or incorrect data — or, even worse, avoiding them altogether because the process is too cumbersome.
It can be daunting: Listing your products on popular platforms often requires different data, and each retailer has their own rules subject to constant change.
But software equipped with product content syndication capabilities can take the data and content you feed it and match the retailer’s requirements — and even enable you to reach new ones.
Your team is then free to focus on bottom-line strategies for revenue growth. And more importantly, they’re untethered from a lengthy manual process.
However, as retailers change their requirements for your data, how can you ensure you stay compliant and optimally refresh your content?
Choosing software equipped with APIs helps you save valuable time on these dynamic updates and boost operational efficiency. The result: Your products spend more time on digital shelves everywhere.
Ecommerce Growth and a Revenue Growth Strategy Go Hand-in-Hand
When you start — or hone in — on your organization’s dream revenue growth strategy, you’ll realize that ecommerce growth is also part of the winnings.
Understanding the right KPIs, leveraging DTC channels, and ensuring your content is effectively activated, syndicated, and optimized for your preferred retailers and across the digital shelf will ensure success in no time.
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