Shopify: A Robust E-commerce Powerhouse —Start free trial
Shopify is one of the most renowned e-commerce platforms globally, trusted by over a million businesses. It’s known for its robust set of features and tools designed to make online selling a breeze.

1. Ease of Use
   Shopify prides itself on its user-friendly interface. Even if you have minimal technical knowledge, you can create and manage your online store with ease. The platform offers a drag-and-drop website builder, making it simple to design your site and customize its look and feel.
2. Features
   Shopify comes packed with a wide range of features, including:

Payment Processing: Shopify offers its payment gateway, Shopify Payments, along with support for numerous third-party payment providers.

Inventory Management: Easily manage your products, track stock levels, and set up automatic alerts for low inventory.

Marketing Tools: Shopify offers various marketing features like email marketing, SEO optimization, and the ability to create discount codes.

App Store: You can extend your store’s functionality with thousands of apps available on the Shopify App Store.

3. Customization
   While Shopify provides many customization options, it may not be as flexible as some other platforms. However, if you’re not a tech-savvy person and want a straightforward solution, Shopify’s themes and customization options should suffice.
4. Pricing
   Shopify offers various pricing plans to suit different business needs. The most popular options include Shopify Basic, Shopify, and Shopify Advanced. Prices range from $29/month to $299/month, with additional fees for using external payment gateways.
5. Scalability
   Shopify is an excellent choice if you plan to grow your business. It can handle a high volume of sales and traffic without significant performance issues.

Wix: The All-in-One Website Builder
Wix is another popular website builder that offers e-commerce capabilities. It’s known for its simplicity and versatility, making it a great choice for beginners.

1. Ease of Use
   Wix excels in terms of ease of use. Its drag-and-drop website builder is incredibly intuitive, allowing you to create a visually appealing online store without any coding skills.
2. Features
   Wix provides a decent set of e-commerce features, including:

Payment Options: Wix supports multiple payment gateways, including PayPal and credit card payments.

Templates: Wix offers a wide variety of templates, catering to various industries.

App Market: Similar to Shopify, Wix has an app market where you can find additional features and functionalities.

3. Customization
   Wix offers a high level of customization, allowing you to create a unique online store. You can freely position elements on your site and choose from various design options.
4. Pricing
   Wix has a range of pricing plans, including a free plan with limited e-commerce capabilities. Paid plans for e-commerce start at $14/month and go up to $49/month.
5. Scalability
   Wix is suitable for smaller e-commerce businesses. While it can handle moderate traffic and sales volumes, it may not be the best choice for large-scale enterprises.

Which One Should You Choose?
Choosing between Shopify and Wix ultimately depends on your specific business needs and preferences:

Choose Shopify If:

You need a robust e-commerce platform with advanced features.
You plan to scale your business significantly.
You’re willing to invest in a slightly higher-priced solution for greater functionality.

Choose Wix If:

You’re a beginner or want a straightforward, user-friendly platform.
You have a smaller e-commerce business with moderate traffic and sales.
You prefer a more budget-friendly option.

In conclusion, both Shopify and Wix have their merits and are suitable for different types of businesses. Carefully assess your requirements, budget, and long-term goals before making your decision. Regardless of which platform you choose, a well-designed online store can be a powerful asset for your business in the digital marketplace.

A growth marketing strategy requires a prior analysis. It relies on data to launch targeted, personalized and more efficient campaigns, which is why growth marketing generally follows growth hacking.

How to do growth marketing? Presentation of the AARRR framework
AARRR is the acronym for : Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Recommendation and Revenue. We talked to you about these 5 major steps previously.

The AARRR framework is an essential tool to understand your customers, and it highlights the buying journey and helps you optimize your sales funnel.

Each step must be treated and measured separately to optimize your conversion rate.

Let’s take a look at the 5 stages that make up your sales funnel!

Acquisition: attracting customers
This is the stage where the customer discovers your site or brand. It’s important to consider the acquisition part holistically.

This means not only analyzing the volume of visitors to the site, but also understanding how they land on your site and what their behavior is afterwards.

Regarding acquisition, you need to ask yourself three fundamental questions:

Which channel generates the most traffic?
Which channel generates the most qualified traffic, the one that gets the best results in terms of conversion?
Which channel has the lowest customer acquisition cost?
The objective is then to focus your acquisition efforts on the best performing channels and/or to improve those that are not performing as well as you would like.

Activation: the first user/customer experience
Activation is about your customer’s first experience with your offer. The objective: to prevent them from stopping using your product or service after the conversion.

At this stage, growth marketing consists of helping the customer in his use. They must immediately understand the real value of your product. What you can do? Send tutorials, tips and demonstration videos via email.

Depending on the complexity of your product or service, you can also offer training sessions or face-to-face demonstrations.

Retention: the loyalty stage
Retention means that visitors come back regularly to use your service or to buy your products again. For example, for an e-commerce, it is about making a consumer come back to buy complementary items to his first purchase.

In the context of a service, retention consists in encouraging the renewal of a subscription, or even in making the user upgrade to the next offer.

Several marketing techniques can be used here, such as emailing (personalized, based on the customer’s purchase history) or retargeting campaigns conducted on social networks.

In the context of a mobile application, you can also send push notifications with promotional offers.

Referral: turning customers into brand ambassadors
The absolute way to drive growth for your business is through referrals. According to a Nielsen study, 83% of satisfied consumers are willing to recommend a product or company. However, only 29% actually do so.

Moreover, a lead that comes from a recommendation is 4 times more likely to convert.

Needless to say, you understand the importance of encouraging your customers to become influencers! To do so, you have several strategies at your disposal:

Set up a referral program: if your customers can earn gifts or discounts by referring you, they won’t hesitate.
Use influencer marketing: if influencers speak publicly about your company, consumers will be encouraged to do the same.
Send reminder emails after a purchase that encourage them to talk about you on their social networks (and to follow you on those networks as well).

Income: How can you increase your income?
If you optimize the previous four AARR metrics, your revenue will most likely increase naturally. However, there is a way to optimize your profits: increase the customer lifetime value (CLV), while decreasing the customer acquisition cost (CAC).

CLV is the amount of revenue you get from a consumer over their lifetime as a customer of your company.

The CAC is the budget spent to acquire a customer. This includes the cost of marketing, sales, prospecting meetings, or whatever is necessary to get your customer to convert.

Now that you have a clearer picture of your customer journey, you can see areas of spend to reduce, including dropping or reducing underperforming channels. On the other hand, now is the time to increase the value of CLV by pushing your long-time consumers to up-sell, for example!

Growth marketing is the key to your company’s survival. It allows you to ensure the sustainability of your brand by retaining your customers on the one hand, and by regularly generating new prospects on the other. If you want to be successful in your market, in the long term, this is the strategy to adopt!

In such a competitive environment, it is essential to have a creative and convincing marketing strategy. A strategy that not only acquires customers, but also provides a breeding ground for virality, word-of-mouth and organic growth.

This new and powerful way to build a loyal user base has a name: growth marketing! What principles are behind this strategy? How is it related to growth hacking? But above all: how to use it wisely in your digital strategy?

Growth Marketing: a strategy focused on the customer journey
Growth marketing is about looking at the entire customer lifecycle to drive your strategic decisions. Its goal is to create campaigns with highly qualified prospects at each stage of the funnel.

Rather than focusing on the beginning of the buying journey, growth marketing considers the entire experience. It’s a true multi-channel strategy that can be deployed via your blog, social networks, emailings or paid ads.

Growth marketing pays special attention to the unique motivations and preferences of customers. Instead of offering content focused on conversions and revenue, it prefers to “feed” users with information to help them make a purchase.

It’s a long-term strategy in which authenticity and engagement create a sense of ownership to increase customer longevity.

A growth marketing strategy typically affects customer acquisition rates, conversion rates, retention rates and, as we just said, buyer lifetime value.

The Customer Lifecycle: The Pillar of a Successful Growth Marketing Strategy
The customer lifecycle refers to the journey that buyers take as soon as they express a need. This journey goes from the search engine query to the final transaction, through product/service comparison and interaction with companies.

However, the lifecycle doesn’t stop at conversion, it also continues beyond, when it comes to customer loyalty.

In summary, growth marketing divides its action into 5 major steps:

Acquisition
Action
Retention
Recommendation
Revenue
Each step contributes to the customer experience and requires the implementation of specific campaigns. We’ll talk about them in more detail at the end of this article.

Growth Marketing Vs Growth Hacking: the differences
Growth hacking and growth marketing are two trendy words in the digital sphere. In fact, you may have already heard of growth hacking? Note that they are two different approaches, although complementary.

Growth hacking intervenes to bridge the gap between your product and the market. It is a multi-channel approach whose goal is to promote rapid growth of the company. Its objective is to acquire as many users or customers as possible, with a reduced budget.

It is usually used by start-ups, needing massive growth in a short period of time. Then, growth hacking turns into long-term strategic plans, aimed at keeping the company going. This is where growth marketing comes in.

The 3 main differences between growth hacking and growth marketing are:

1 – Brand design
The most fundamental difference between growth hacking and growth marketing comes down to their vision about branding.

Growth hackers want quick results and usually have ingenious (and sometimes simple!) ideas for growing the business.

Let’s take Dropbox as an example. In its early days, the cloud storage tool offered to “unlock” extra space by sharing a tweet or a post on Facebook. The goal was to get users to promote Dropbox in exchange for a gift.

Today, the application has over 500 million users, including 11 million paying subscribers!

Growth marketing is more about building a community of loyal consumers and brand ambassadors. Its goal is not to have high growth at all costs, but to refine lasting relationships that promote retention and repurchase.

The goal is to sustain the business, while growth hacking focuses on profitability.

One example is Front, a messaging tool for B2B companies. To make itself known, the application first offered to test its service to well-known start-ups. This resulted in 200 registrations. Then Front republished its free trial offer on target communities, such as Betali.st and Product Hunt. These sites are visited by professionals and freelancers looking for tools to improve their productivity.

2 – The growth rate

When a growth hacker needs to increase sales or conversions, he often relies on paid acquisition channels such as Google, LinkedIn and Facebook ad networks. He also finds roundabout strategies, via automation in particular, to acquire and contact new prospects quickly.

His goal is above all to generate immediate sales, without worrying about future sales.

The growth marketing specialist, on the other hand, runs organic campaigns to reach his target. He analyzes and studies customers to develop strategies that will work more slowly, but in a sustainable way.

Their goal is to win AND keep customers.

E-commerce has been growing steadily over the years. In France, the turnover achieved by the e-commerce economy reached 112 billion euros in 2020. This represents an increase of 8.5% compared to 2019.

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In just one year, 17,000 new e-commerce sites have been created. The competition is increasingly tough and it is crucial to be visible to buyers.

You will have understood: the success of your e-commerce store depends directly on its referencing in search engines.

So how can you do it? How can you improve the natural referencing (SEO) of your e-commerce store? Here are 5 tips to follow!

1 – Make sure your e-commerce site is fast and responsive
To optimize the user experience (often called UX for User eXperience) on your e-commerce site, you must respect two crucial points:

First, make sure that your pages load as fast as possible.

The longer it takes for the page to load, the more visitors and potential customers you will lose. They will not take the time to wait for the content to load completely and will leave your online store.

To check the page load speed of your e-commerce site, you can use free tools like GTmetrix or Google’s PageSpeed Insight.

Next, you need to make sure your site is responsive. This term means that it will automatically adapt to the resolution and type of device used to view your pages. This is especially important for smartphones, which have very different screen sizes than computers, and which are mostly used in portrait format for web browsing.

Contrary to what happened for years, Google’s algorithm now refers websites based mainly on mobile versions and not their desktop version.

The robots now crawl web pages by simulating a navigation on smartphone. They will check if the site is mobile-friendly by assigning scores on its mobile accessibility. Buttons or links that are too close to each other, elements that are too heavy (photos, videos, animations…) or content that is too small or displays poorly will all be negative signals that impact the SEO of your e-commerce site.

The technical quality and therefore the SEO of your site also depends on the way it has been designed. The choice of CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal…) will influence the technologies and features that you can integrate or not on your site as well as its scalability.

It is important to study in advance the different solutions available to you, their advantages and disadvantages. Especially when it comes to e-commerce sites for which the question of the payment management platform is obviously crucial. Some platforms like IONOS even offer to take care of all these aspects to facilitate the creation of your online store.

2 – Streamline the navigation of your e-commerce site
The navigation on your site is a crucial point and not only for the natural referencing. The quality of the navigation will directly affect your sales.

You have probably been regularly confronted with shopping cart abandonment? To limit the number of shopping cart abandonments on your e-commerce site, you must offer your visitors a simple, fluid and user-friendly navigation. Don’t forget: every click that separates your customer from the order validation reduces your chances to close the sale.

For the good referencing of a website, the architecture is a central element. Your pages must be well connected and well organized. It is a good practice that each page of a website should not be more than 3 clicks away from the home page.

By ensuring that your navigation is optimal, you will give an excellent signal to Google regarding your SEO!

3 – Go link hunting
A well-referenced e-commerce site is first and foremost a popular e-commerce site. For Google, the popularity of a website is mainly measured from the number and quality of links pointing to this site.

To get links to your e-commerce store, you can contact bloggers/influencers in your field of activity to ask them to write an article about your store directly on their website.

You can also establish partnerships with websites in your field of activity or complementary e-commerce stores. Finally, within the limits of reason and taking care to check the quality beforehand, you can register your e-commerce store in directories.

These links will not only allow you to improve the natural referencing of your e-commerce store but also to attract more qualified traffic and thus develop your sales. We give you more tips to work on your netlinking on this dedicated article!

4 – Create (good) content
The key to good SEO of an e-commerce site is the quality of its content. You will have to create a maximum of content to position a maximum of pages of your e-commerce site in search engines.

Attention, it is not about creating low-end content simply to place your keywords. You must write content with high added value.

A content with high added value is a content that brings something to your consumers and prospects. To do this, make sure that the content you create for your site fulfills at least one of these purposes: inform, educate, solve, entertain.

In addition, remember to optimize the content of your product sheets. Especially avoid copying and pasting descriptions and images provided by your supplier!

Google and search engines hate duplicated content, which is not relevant enough. If you copy word for word the descriptions provided by your supplier to fill the pages of your e-commerce site, you can be sure that you will have the same content as dozens or even hundreds of other platforms that sell similar products!

Finally, if you publish very high quality content, you have a great chance to see it quoted on other websites and therefore to gain new links essential to good SEO, as seen in the previous point.

5 – Analyze your traffic and the behavior of your visitors
Improving your referencing is not done in one go. It is a continuous work. That’s why you need data to make decisions and implement effective actions.

For this, use Google Analytics and Google Search Console, two free tools that will provide you with enough data to optimize your website’s SEO.

Google Analytics will provide you with information about your visitors’ behavior: number of visitors, time spent on the site, number of pages viewed, most visited product sheets, bounce rate, acquisition channels…

With Google Search Console, you will have data about your performance in search engines, and therefore a visibility on your referencing. You will find the keywords that bring you the most traffic, the search volume of the queries on which you are positioned and the number of visits they bring you.

Thanks to this, you will be able to detect opportunities of queries really typed by users on which you position yourself thanks to quality content. You will also identify the keywords on which your e-commerce site is not well enough referenced and will be able to set up actions to improve your referencing.

Do not forget that the referencing of an e-commerce site is a long term work.

You will not see your number of visits explode overnight nor immediate results on your turnover. However, you can be sure that all the SEO actions taken today will have a considerable impact on your business in the long run!

From the top to the bottom of the sales funnel, influencer marketing helps you attract qualified leads, keep them engaged and convert them. So how does the influencer marketing funnel work? What strategy should you adopt at each stage? How do you measure your success? This article gives you all the answers!

Top of the funnel (TOFU): reaching new audiences
The top of your funnel represents the first contact with your company. In B2B, the potential customer takes the time to inform and surround himself before choosing a provider. At this stage, your goal is to increase awareness of your company.

In IMH’s 2020 Influencer Marketing Report, 40% of companies indicate that awareness is the primary goal of influencer campaigns.

Why use influencers at the top of the funnel?
So why are influencers so effective at building awareness?

They give brands access to a loyal and acquired audience: not only are these audiences often large, but they are also made up of groups that share common characteristics or interests with your buyers personae. This qualifies them for your sales funnel.

Influencers take your company’s identity and spread it to your audience. They know how to communicate with their community to enhance your services with authentic and relevant messages.

Influencers master storytelling. From introducing your company to demonstrating the results of your services, their storytelling and presentation skills are perfect for your marketing strategy.

What influencer marketing strategy to adopt at the top of the funnel?
At the top of the sales funnel, the leading content is :

Sponsored posts
Blog posts or guest blogging
Contests (if possible, because in B2B, it’s not always easy!)
Tip lists
What kind of influencers are in the top funnel?
The influencers you can rely on are mainly :

Press journalists (general and specialized)
Bloggers specialized in your field of activity
These platforms already have an established audience, your prospects regularly consult your articles and are attentive to the solutions that meet their needs.

Example of a successful campaign
Northwestern Mutual used storytelling in its latest influencer marketing campaign. The company reached out to business leaders impacted by the Covid crisis to tell their stories. The goal was to highlight the need for support and guidance for these entrepreneurs.

Northwestern Mutual then positioned itself as a partner to these struggling executives, humanizing its business and making itself known to other professionals. The company relied on social networks and traditional advertising to spread its campaign.

Metrics to analyze at the top of the funnel

How do you know if your influencer marketing campaign is effective right from the beginning of the funnel? Measure the engagement generated by your ambassadors via indicators such as

The number of likes on social media publications
The number of comments on publications (social media or blog)
Traffic to your website and landing pages
The growth of the number of subscribers on the company’s social networks
Growth in the number of subscribers to your newsletter
Middle of the funnel (MOFU): inform and educate the audience
The middle of the funnel refers to the consideration phase. It refers to repeated exposure to a product, brand, concept or event. Influencers are particularly useful for this phase!

Why use influencers in the funnel environment?
One of the main benefits of influencer marketing is its ability to drive customer engagement.

In the middle of the funnel, influencer content helps build relationships with prospects who already know your business. However, they need a push to trust you… and get known!

Here, action is your primary goal. You’re not just trying to build trust with potential buyers: you’re empowering them to make an intelligent buying decision.

What influencer marketing strategy to adopt for the funnel medium?
As mentioned, the goal at this stage is to drive engagement and action. You need to get prospects into a lead nurturing strategy by distributing – via influencers – high value-added content.

Your campaigns should encourage actions such as: subscribing to a trial offer, requesting an appointment or a quote, downloading a white paper, registering for an event…

To do this, you need to organize one-off campaigns, comprising a series of content over a given period. By introducing a product or service to a customer more than once, they are much more likely to remember it when making a purchase decision.

Fortunately, influencers know exactly what to do to facilitate both industry knowledge and that emotional connection.

Engaging content to introduce in the middle of the funnel includes:

Product or service reviews
Trial offers
Live sessions co-hosted with an influencer
Interventions in webinars or podcasts

What kind of influencers for the mid-funnel?
To achieve your mid-funnel goals, you can rely on:

Your satisfied customers: especially if they have an efficient presence on social networks, with an active community
Bloggers who are experts in your industry
Journalists working in specialized media
B2B influencers with a profile similar to your buyers personae
Another tip: at this stage, it is advisable to diversify your influencers to better hammer home your message and expose it to as many people as possible. In order to increase repetition, which is essential to stay in the minds of buyers, it’s better to spread your influencer marketing budget among several micro-influencers (between 10,000 and 100,000 followers), rather than investing in a single “star” influencer.

Example of a successful campaign
Content planning tool DivvyHQ was looking to improve its brand awareness and reputation. The solution? Use 30 marketing influencers to run a strong campaign.

These influencers wrote articles and participated in video interviews on the theme of “Back to the Future. The objective was to express themselves on the future of content marketing by talking about a research report published by DivvyHQ. A report used to generate leads.

Results: Each campaign increased the number of downloads of the research report by 300% and conversions by 140% in the week following its publication.

Why use influencers at the bottom of the funnel?
71% of buyers are more likely to contact a company based on recommendations. During their consideration, B2B prospects check the e-reputation of companies that can meet their needs and rely on the recommendations of recognized experts.

Which influencer marketing strategy to adopt for the bottom of the funnel?
Depending on your product or service, conversion goals may include direct purchases, trial sign-ups and/or subscriptions.

When planning your conversion campaign, you should clearly indicate to your ambassador which call-to-actions to integrate in their publications. Ideally, they will send prospects to a landing page where they can sign up (for a special discount or trial offer, for example).

As for the content to put in place at this stage, you can choose between :

Product reviews
Video content about the experience of using your products/services
User guides for your services
White papers or co-published reports
You can also integrate influencer content on your website. For example, reference an ambassador who has already used your products or services on your landing pages or in your blog posts. You can even add one of their quotes to your calls to action.

What kind of influencers for the bottom of the funnel?
Micro and nano-influencers (less than 10,000 followers) are particularly good at driving sales. Their audience is small, highly engaged and composed of professionals who do the same job as the target. They are usually the colleagues of your potential customers.

Your current customers and employees are also excellent ambassadors at this level.

However, all types of influencers can generate sales. By maintaining long-term relationships with them, you can identify the best performers at this stage, regardless of the size of their community.

Example of a successful campaign
Cisco’s ambassador program, called the Cisco Champions program, is a great example of bottom-of-funnel influencer marketing. Here, influencers (who are customers of the company) are invited to share their expertise on Cisco products on YouTube, during company events, on LinkedIn and on Twitter.

Cisco’s B2B influencer marketing program also allows these “champions” to enhance their skills and knowledge by connecting with other professionals. The company also offers them exclusive invitations to events, access to its products and recognition as incentives.

75% ! That’s the average cart abandonment rate. Impressive, right?

As online shopping continues to grow in importance, it’s important to stand out from the crowd to reduce cart abandonment and maximize your revenue.

How do you convince users to complete their conversion? Check out our tips and sample follow-up emails!

Tip #1 – Offer multiple payment methods
In B2B as in B2C, buyers appreciate having a choice in the way they pay for their purchases. 48% of B2B buyers will not make a purchase if their preferred payment method is not available.

One might think that the preferred payment method is the credit card. However, while 86% of buyers use this method to make online purchases, 77% want other payment options. 50% even prefer to use an alternative payment method when possible.

76% of B2B customers have experienced a problem with an online credit card purchase.
79% of those who do are disappointed after the transaction.
Following a credit card payment, invoices and receipts are difficult for buyers to find and download.
The risk of fraud is higher, which could jeopardize the company’s cash flow.
Credit cards are often declined due to suspected fraud or expiry dates.

What payment methods should be offered on an e-commerce site?
Apart from the credit card, the main purchase options that you can set up are :

Bank transfer
There is even a more secure version called ACH (Automated Clearing House). This money transfer system facilitates the sending of large amounts of money. It is particularly suitable for business-to-business transactions.

PayPal
The main advantage of PayPal is that it locks the transaction by avoiding disclosing bank details. Individuals and SMEs alike often find it an easy way to pay online.

An additional advantage is that PayPal offers the possibility of making ACH transfers!

Direct Debit (SEPA)
This payment method is relevant if you offer an online service with a recurring direct debit. It can also help reassure the B2B buyer in terms of accounting facilities.

Tip #2 – Be transparent about additional costs
There is nothing more frustrating than discovering an unexpected surcharge at the time of payment. This “surprise” is often prohibitive for buyers and will cause them to abandon their shopping cart.

This is especially true for B2B buyers who do not make impulse purchases. They have specific needs, precise requests and a predefined budget. So it’s important to avoid unexpected hidden costs that can hinder the deal.

Be transparent from the beginning of the buying journey. Provide all the ancillary costs of your product and services: taxes, shipping costs, currency conversion, etc. These details can be listed directly on the product page or calculated by asking for the customer’s zip code.

There are tax calculation extensions that you can add to your e-commerce site. The objective is to quickly inform the buyer about the taxes and shipping costs related to his location.

This is a good practice, especially essential if you manage an international business!

Tip #3 – Communicate your delivery times, shipping options and return policy
Delivery is an essential element in e-commerce. Customers expect to have shipping options tailored to their needs.

In B2B, timely delivery is critical. Especially if you sell raw materials. Your buyers are counting on you to be able to make their own products and satisfy their customers.

As for hidden costs, be transparent (and don’t hide anything, that is). If there are delays in delivery, make it clear to customers. Buyers who can wait will do so, others will avoid having a bad experience with you and will come back to your site another time.

Tip #4 – Work on the user experience (UX)
Nearly 60% of shoppers abandon their purchases if the checkout process takes too long. In addition, 40% of business buyers are frustrated by inefficient websites.

Put yourself in the buyers’ shoes to make it as easy as possible for them to purchase. You should pay particular attention to:

Page load time
More than half of the visitors leave a web page that does not display within 3 seconds.

The fluidity of the payment process

The shopping cart
It must be displayed throughout the visit and be available at any time. Buyers must be able to modify it easily, both in terms of the quantities ordered and the products themselves.

The product sheets
They must be clear and detailed. All the information needed to make a purchase decision must be available in one place.

Mobile compatibility
Now that mobile traffic has surpassed desktop traffic, think about mobile users by offering them an optimal experience!

To the ability to create a quote
In B2B, this option can make a difference. Professionals sometimes need a quote to validate the purchase internally before placing an order online.

A social proof
Don’t hesitate to place reassurance elements in key places (product page, shopping cart, payment page…). You can for example integrate reviews that you will have previously collected from your most loyal customers.

To the security of payments
This is one of the critical points of the purchase decision. So if you use payment security solutions on your e-commerce site, it’s time to display these badges on your commercial pages.

To distracting elements and your CTAs
Once the user has entered the checkout process, you will want to prevent them from leaving the checkout page to perform another action.

To do this, identify all the elements that are not essential on these pages. Also work on the positioning of your call-to-actions in order to help your visitor get straight to the point, i.e. to confirm their shopping cart and purchase.

Tip #5 – Offer quality customer service
Customers place a high value on responsive and efficient customer service. 55% of them give a high priority to a 24/7 customer service.

Even at the end of the buying journey, buyers may have a few questions. So you need to be prepared to answer them to avoid losing them at the last moment.

For starters, clearly display your contact information: email, phone number, WhatsApp handle, contact form… If a potential customer wants to get in touch with you quickly, they should immediately know how to do so.

Also provide a detailed FAQ page to answer any last minute questions about your products. Not to mention questions related to delivery times and costs, purchase costs, taxes, after-sales service, user support, etc.

Last tip to avoid shopping cart abandonment: equip your e-commerce site with a chatbot. It can automatically answer common questions, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It can even help the professional to choose the product or service that fits his needs.

But how much exactly? What is their total value?

The answer to this question has a name: Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)!

Its role is to help you make medium and long-term financial forecasts. The objective is to better manage your budgets and resources. Are you interested? We reveal everything you need to know about Customer Lifetime Value!

Definition of Customer Lifetime Value

The Customer Lifetime Value (sometimes called CLV for speed!) indicates the total revenue that a company can expect from a customer account.

In other words: it is a prediction of the average revenue brought by a buyer… until he stops doing business with you. Hard to estimate? Yes and no.

Because you can’t guess how long the relationship will last. Some customers stay a few months, others will be loyal for years. It depends on your industry and the nature of your offerings. In B2B, the customer lifetime is often longer than in B2C, especially for companies selling complex tools or solutions.

Nevertheless, there are (almost) simple formulas to apply to calculate this indicator…

How to calculate the Customer Lifetime Value?
There are two ways to calculate Customer Lifetime Value: in terms of revenue and in terms of profit.

Calculating CLV in terms of turnover
With this formula, we reason purely in terms of turnover. How much turnover does a customer generate?

To calculate it, you will need to know 4 other indicators beforehand: the retention rate, the customer lifetime, the average basket and the purchase frequency.

Retention rate
This is the percentage of loyal customers who renew their contract from one year to the next. Take into account your renewal frequency to calculate this rate.

For example, if your contracts are signed annually, compare the years 2020 and 2021. What percentage of customers to re-sign in 2021?

If you have had 70 contract renewals out of 100 customers, your retention rate is 70%.

Customer lifetime
On average, how many years (or months, quarters, semesters…) do your customers stay with you? To find out, apply this formula:

1 / (1-Retention rate)

In our example, it will be :

1 / (1-0,70) = 3.33

The customer lifetime is about 3 years.

The average basket
The average basket determines the amount of purchases, on average, per transaction. It is calculated as follows

Sales / Total number of orders

If you have made 650 000€ in sales with a total of 175 orders, the average basket is :

650 000 / 175 = 3 714€

Purchase frequency
The purchase frequency highlights the recurrence with which customers buy from your company. It is calculated as follows

Total number of orders / Total number of unique customers

If we follow our example, this gives :

175 (orders) / 100 (unique customers) = 1.75

This means that some customers renew their purchases during the year, or add new features to the service/product.

So how do you calculate the Customer Lifetime Value in terms of revenue?
Here we go! You can now calculate the average Customer Lifetime Value of your buyers with this formula:

CLV = (Average basket * Purchase frequency) * Customer Lifetime

That is, in our example:

(3 714 * 1.75) * 3 = 19 498.5 €

A customer brings, on average, 19 498.5 € of turnover to the company.

Calculate CLV in terms of profit

If you want to get a more accurate value, you will need to subtract customer acquisition costs and retention costs. The objective is to identify the profit generated by each buyer.

You will need to add these two indicators to the CLV formula:

Customer acquisition cost
Budget spent on prospecting and marketing campaigns / Volume of new customers

The cost of customer retention
(Cost of retention campaigns + Cost of after sales service) / Volume of customers

The CLV formula in terms of profit is this:
[ (Average basket * Purchase frequency)* Lifetime ] – [ (Customer acquisition cost + Customer retention cost) * Lifetime ]

Let’s go back to the example above, specifying that the company has spent :

35,000 € in marketing campaigns
15,000 in customer relations
Let’s also remember that it has a portfolio of 100 customers, including 30 new buyers.

We obtain :

Customer acquisition cost: 35,000 / 30 = €1,166
Cost of customer retention: 15,000 / 100 = 150€.
We can now apply the CLV formula in terms of profit:

[ (3 714 * 1.75) * 3 ] – [ (1 166 + 150) * 3 ] = 15 550.5€

The profit generated by a customer, on average, is 15 550.5 €.

Calculate CLV per buyer
The previous formulas allow you to establish an average on your current customer portfolio. With a marketing automation solution, you can apply the CLV formula in terms of profit for each of your customers.

The interest? Identify buyers with above-average values to better target your marketing campaigns (more on that later!).

Indeed, collecting data via an automated tool helps you to :

identify the entry and contact points of each customer: in other words, the campaign that led to their acquisition
Understand each customer’s journey and measure the costs required to convert / retain them
Obtain the revenues generated at each contact point
Add up the customer’s purchases over a given period
Subtract the customer acquisition and retention costs spent during the customer lifecycle.
With this information, you can apply the following formula:

Customer Revenue – (Acquisition Costs + Customer Relationship Costs)

Let’s take 2 examples:

Mr. X spent $17,500 with your company, thanks to acquisition and retention campaigns that cost $1,800.

Mr X’s CLV is 15 700€. This is slightly higher than the average.

Mrs. Y spent €18,600 with your company. But her buying cycle was much longer and required marketing and after-sales expenses of €3,200.

Mrs Y’s CLV = 15 400€. Here, it’s slightly lower than the average.

Why is Customer Lifetime Value a key indicator?
A Criteo study reveals that only 34% of marketers surveyed are “fully aware of the term and its connotations”. Only 24% of them believe that their company effectively monitors Customer Lifetime Value.

Yet CLV remains a fundamental indicator. We explain why:

CLV helps segment buyers by value
81% of marketers say tracking CLV drives sales.

By calculating CLV per buyer, you can improve your marketing campaigns, without affecting the budget. By increasing communication with the most profitable customers to increase their lifetime, and sending incentive offers to lower value buyers, for example.

CLV helps drive the customer acquisition budget
Thanks to this indicator, you will quickly know the weight of your acquisition campaigns on the profits generated by customers.

Sometimes the acquisition cost is higher than the profit generated by the first purchase… This anomaly hinders the profitability of your activity and must be corrected quickly.

CLV reinforces customer loyalty
Just as this indicator gives you an idea of the ratio of acquisition cost to customer lifetime value, it helps you measure your retention efforts. And you know the saying: it is often less expensive to retain a customer than to convince a prospect!

The objective is to better manage the budget by perhaps readjusting customer relationship actions to encourage buyers to spend more, longer.

The CLV is a key indicator of the company’s health
CLV provides you with essential data for forecasting over several months.

You know how fast your business is growing and what the potential profits will be over the next few months or even years. This information is invaluable for steering your future investments.

The CLV encourages repeat sales
Encouraging repeat purchases is the lifeblood of many companies. To be profitable, they rely on a high renewal rate of their consumers. This is the case in the technology, restaurant and fashion industries, for example.

With the CLV, these organizations verify the relevance of their strategies in achieving this objective of constant renewal.

5 tips to increase your Customer Lifetime Value
The probability of selling to an existing customer is between 60% and 70%. For a new customer, it decreases significantly and is between 5 and 20%.

And that’s not all! Existing customers are 50% more likely to try your company’s new product. They’re also more likely to spend more… So you might as well put your efforts into increasing CLV, right?

Here are 5 tips to do just that:

#1 – Leverage first-party data
A quick reminder, if necessary: first-party data refers to information directly collected by your company on customers and prospects. This is declarative information (first name, last name, emails, position held…) and behavioral information (actions performed on the website or application).

This data is important to improve content personalization and recommendations, activate different audiences and refine upselling and cross-selling strategies.

It also helps you improve the user experience. A personalized user experience significantly increases revenue and value.

To increase your CLV, consider improving your data collection and accuracy. The more you know about your prospects and customers, the more relevant your campaigns will be.

#2 – Check in with your customers regularly
Even if they don’t directly ask for help, your customers sometimes have difficulties with your product or service. By regularly contacting them, you can anticipate possible dissatisfactions, while improving the customer relationship.

To do this, you can :

Call your best customers to check up on them: an effective strategy in B2B, where a close relationship is particularly appreciated.
Launch satisfaction surveys by email.
Publish surveys on social networks.
Send tutorials and usage ideas by email (but also publish them on social networks) to support your customers on a daily basis.

#3 – Improve the value of the average basket
There are several techniques to increase the average order value. By encouraging your customers to upsell or cross-sell, you are bound to improve the Customer Lifetime Value.

Some good practices to apply:

Add personalized product recommendations on the site, based on customer behavior.
Send newsletters containing product or service recommendations based on the customer’s purchase or browsing history.
Trigger product recommendations, based on additions to the shopping cart, directly on the site.
Create bundles with attractive discounts.
Offer additional services: insurance, extended warranty, training or personalized support, express delivery…

84% of professionals say they have difficulty and are stressed when it comes to proving their marketing ROI.

Why is it difficult to effectively measure the ROI of marketing campaigns? There is no lack of tools…

Another problem that companies often highlight is the inability to agree on a definition and a positive marketing ROI.

As a result, 61% of marketers do not integrate this indicator into their decision making, because they do not trust their own data. It’s crazy when you think about it, right?

Measuring ROI is critical to the growth of your business. So, to help you define, calculate and optimize your marketing ROI, we’ve put together this guide!

What is a good marketing ROI?
A good marketing ROI is a ratio of 5:1.

In other words: for every 1 euro invested, you should earn 5 euros.

However, this goal depends on your company, your industry and the competitive universe. The more competitive your market is, the lower the return on investment.

The main goal is to have a positive marketing ROI, at first, to try to optimize it later on.

In addition to these factors, the value of your marketing ROI depends on the type of marketing campaign.

For example, a lead acquisition campaign will certainly have a lower ROI than a strategy to retain your existing customers.

In the first case, the value of the first purchase does not always reach the cost invested in the acquisition. As a result, the ROI can be neutral or even negative. However, you have gained a customer who may become a regular buyer. Hence the importance of calculating your lifetime customer value, a valuable indicator.

With a loyalty program, you encourage repeat purchases. Your target already knows you and is (usually!) satisfied with your products or services. They will be easier to convert, which logically increases the ROI.

How to calculate the ROI of a marketing action?
One of the main challenges in calculating marketing ROI is the measurement approach. The formula to use is simple, but it is important to integrate all the elements of each component.

ROI on revenue or profit?
The trickiest part of calculating marketing ROI is determining what constitutes your “return” and your true investment. It’s up to you whether you want to consider:

The total revenue generated by a campaign
That is, the revenue generated by the increase in sales after a strategy is launched.

Gross profit
Or an estimate of the gross profit. This is the revenue minus the cost of goods to produce/deliver a product or service.

Net Profit
This is the gross profit minus the marketing expenses.

To have a complete global view, you can calculate all 3 data and evaluate them from one campaign to another.

Remember to take into account the hidden costs!
Another essential parameter for calculating the marketing ROI is to take into account ALL the expenses related to the campaign.

Very often, there are hidden costs that are not taken into account! It is easy to identify the cost of the marketing tools used, the ads launched on the different channels, the influence campaigns or even the fees of the service providers involved.

However, you should not forget the time spent by the sales people to convince the prospects, the salaries of the members of your team, the technical developments necessary for the campaign (creation of landing pages, visuals or videos, etc.) or even the sales delayed by possible technical problems on your website.

The special case of inbound marketing campaigns
In the specific case of an inbound marketing campaign, there are even more relevant figures to measure the ROI.

Here are the 4 main questions that will allow you to measure the ROI of an inbound marketing campaign:

#1 – How much does it cost you to generate a lead?
The cost of acquiring a lead is a measure you need to take into account to determine if the Inbound Marketing actions taken are consistent.

Just as there is a cost per customer, there is also a cost per lead. It is essential to know how much you have to spend to get a lead.

This indicator allows you to verify that you are carrying out the best actions to generate qualified leads.

To calculate it, you simply need to make the ratio between the cost of your inbound marketing campaign and the number of leads generated.

#2 – How much does a customer bring you over time?
3 letters symbolize this indicator: CLV, for Customer Lifetime Value.

Are your customers rather “One-shot” or loyal over years? Closely related to the notion of cost per lead, this indicator helps you to know your customers: the frequency of purchase, the average basket, the motivations to remain a customer with you.

By improving the CLV of your customers, you naturally impact the ROI of your Inbound Marketing campaigns.

To learn all about it, we wrote an article on CLV

To go further: How to calculate your Customer Lifetime Value?
#3 – What is your visitor/lead conversion rate?
The isolated data of the number of visits to your website is of little interest if none of them turn into leads.

The volume of leads generated tells you directly about the quality of your conversion tunnel. It’s better to have only 2000 monthly visits that generate 200 leads than 15,000 visits for 25 leads, right?

By analyzing the performance of each of your landing pages, and your content in general, you can determine which path is the most effective in converting your traffic into leads.

With this data, you can then optimize the ROI of your Inbound Marketing campaigns.

#4 – What is your lead/customer conversion rate?
It is important to measure the level of qualification and maturity of a lead in order to treat it in the best possible way.

To do this, you can rely on the Lead Scoring methodology.

To optimize the ROI of your Inbound Marketing campaign, you need to optimize the Leads/Customers conversion rate by identifying the most mature and qualified lead sources.

What tools should you use to track your marketing ROI?
You need to collect data from various platforms and analyze several metrics to calculate your marketing ROI.

Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to get an overview of the volume and behavior of visitors to your website.

You can visualize important data for the calculation of your marketing ROI like :

The number of visitors generated by each campaign
The behavior of visitors on each campaign
The impact of your natural referencing strategies
The impact of your Google Ads campaigns
The volume and value of conversions per channel and per campaign

When my general manager at the time came to me and asked me to make a marketing budget proposal, I immediately asked myself how I was going to do it.

I did what you do today: I went to Google, typed in “How to calculate my marketing budget” and applied the method I found most effective.

Theoretically, it was great. In practice, it was crap.

If we have so much trouble defining a marketing budget, it’s because we’re not looking at the problem the right way.

We try to determine an efficient marketing budget without knowing where we want to go. And that’s impossible, unless you’re lucky.

To calculate your marketing budget, you must start from your objectives!
The method to calculate your marketing budget
If I continue my anecdote from the introduction, I managed to calculate a marketing budget that seemed relevant with this method found on Google.

I went to see my CEO and presented him with the budget and the strategy that I had in mind. From memory, it was for 80 000 euros for the year.

He was shocked by the amount and said he would study the 20 pages of my document. I never got the marketing budget.

Why do you think that is? Why couldn’t I convince my management?

Because I didn’t talk about return on investment.

To define an effective B2B marketing budget, there is nothing complicated really: you just have to start from your objectives and work your way up.

Step #1 – Define your revenue goal
This is the starting point for defining your marketing budget effectively.

Without having a clear idea of the revenue you want to generate with your marketing strategy, you will not only not be able to define your budget but you will also not be able to generate any return on investment with your marketing strategy.

Of course, your revenue goal must be achievable and time-bound.

Step #2 – Calculate the number of new customers you need to sign
Now that you’ve determined the revenue you’re aiming for with your marketing strategy, you’re in a position to define the number of customers you need to sign to achieve it.

To do this, nothing could be simpler: you divide your objectified revenue by your average basket.

Step #3 – Calculate the number of leads you need to generate
This is where your thought process for calculating your marketing budget will make sense.

If we recap, at this point you know how much revenue and how many customers your marketing strategy should bring in. You start to have a clear idea of the means you will have to put in place to reach these objectives.

To reach your objectives, you need to implement a marketing strategy that will allow you to generate the necessary leads for the sales team.

To determine the number of leads you need to generate for salespeople, you simply take their conversion rate: how many prospects do salespeople need to meet to sign a new customer?

By getting this answer, you can set the number of leads you need to generate.

Step #4 – Determine the number of visitors you need to attract

Ok but how many?

Same mechanics as for the previous point: to define the number of visitors that your marketing strategy must allow you to attract on your website to reach your objective, you just have to start from your visitors / leads conversion rate.

How many contacts do you generate each month from your website? How many visitors do you have? If you do the ratio, you get your conversion rate.

Applying it to the number of leads you need to generate with your marketing strategy, you get the number of visitors you need to get to reach your goals.

Step #5 – Estimate your marketing budget
Now you have all the keys in hand to define your marketing budget.

You know that your marketing budget must allow you to generate a certain number of visitors, leads, customers and therefore revenue.

You therefore have a more or less precise idea of the actions to be taken to achieve these objectives.

A relevant marketing budget is a marketing budget that is between 15 and 25% of the targeted turnover.

Depending on the actions to be taken to reach your objectives, you are able to adjust this range.

Better yet, you have all the elements to convince your general management!

You can define a marketing budget that will allow you to reach a precise turnover and thus present to your management the return on investment envisaged.

The 4 steps to defend your marketing budget
You’ve made up your mind. You’ve got a solid case and you’re ready to go to your manager’s office and ask for a marketing budget.

After all, your campaign project or the new tool you want to buy will allow you to generate quite a few numbers. Your request is more than legitimate.

Yet, you’re feeling a little bit sick to your stomach. What if they say no? Worse: what if he doesn’t take you seriously and uses this marketing budget request to question you?

I understand your fears, I’ve had them and every marketer I know has been there.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. The nerves can go away if you give it your best shot.

In fact, the issue is not to ask for a new budget but to mobilize enough evidence that your CEO will propose you this marketing budget.

We will see how to do this in this article.

But before that, let me tell you a little story that will allow you to answer this question for yourself.

When my CEO wanted to buy my Twitter account!
It made such an impression on me that I remember the scene perfectly: one morning, in my office with a beautiful (and rare) sun beating down on my screen.

As I often do, my CEO comes to see me about something and talks to me about 36 unrelated things. In the course of the discussion, I end up showing him my Twitter account.

At the time, I had 4 or 5000 followers that allowed me to generate a few hundred visits to my website per month and mostly quote requests.

I show him my Google Analytics and the 2 requests I received in the last few days. And then, to my surprise, he asks me his question:

“How much for your Twitter account?”

Convinced by the methodology and its efficiency, my CEO at the time was ready to buy my Twitter account whereas it usually took 100 arguments to unlock a Marketing budget of a few euros…

The reason is actually natural!

With my demonstration, I convinced him of the potential of the tool and he quickly understood the interest for his turnover.

From that day on, the nervousness I had when talking about the marketing budget disappeared. I had the perfect method to convince him to invest, without stress

And this method, here it is!

Step #1 – Be constantly on the lookout
For me, this is the first quality of an effective marketer.

The world is moving so fast – behaviors, uses, platforms… – that it is essential to stay informed to stay effective.

But besides that, your monitoring is an important ally to justify your marketing budget.

With this watch, you will discover very relevant studies to convince your CEO.

For example, the list of statistics to know by Hubspot or the barometer of Inbound Marketing by Plezi will give you a whole bunch of quantified arguments.

Step #2 – Benchmark your competitors
I see it in the field all the time: the best argument to convince a GM to take action is to tell him about the competitors.

Either by explaining to him that the competitors are doing something you’re not doing and it’s working for them.

Or by selling the fact that your competitors are not yet doing what you are offering and that you can therefore be one step ahead.

The natural ego of the manager will do the rest and convince him to give you your marketing budget.

There are many tools that allow you to analyze your competitors’ websites and compare their performance with yours.

In fact, I propose a free tool to analyze the SEO of your website and compare it with your competitors

Step #3 – Make regular reports, real ones!
A good reporting is not an Excel table that simply shows the evolution of your KPIs.

Numbers are nice but you can make them say anything and everything.

A good marketing report is a report that presents conclusions and recommendations to be more efficient.

If you regularly provide your CEO with relevant reports, you will gradually educate him or her and convince him or her to invest the necessary time without pressure.

Let’s imagine that you regularly report to your CEO on the conversion rate of web contacts into customers.

You tell him every month that in order to convert more often – and therefore earn more money – you should be able to do lead nurturing.

When you arrive at the end of the year to defend your Marketing budget containing a 30,000 euro line for a Marketing Automation software offering this functionality, it will be immediately easier right?

Step #4 – Experiment (if possible!)
If we go back to my story, my CEO wanted to buy my Twitter account from me because he saw the potential very concretely.

The decision is immediately easier for him when there are results, however small.

To defend your marketing budget with serenity, rely on concrete experiments.

Let’s imagine that you want to invest in a Marketing Automation tool to do Lead Nurturing, to continue on the example of the previous step.

Nothing prevents you from testing the approach manually by sending quality emails to a few qualified leads that are not yet mature enough to talk to a salesperson.

This test will allow you to get some key figures.

And if you manage to show your CEO that this one-off test has enabled you to improve your conversion rate by 20 points and that it has generated a few hundred euros in sales, you will have no trouble convincing him to invest in industrializing the approach, don’t you think?