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The growth of online retail is three times higher than that of the wider industry, bringing in an estimated $436 billion in the US alone, according to Business Insider. With ecommerce stores outperforming their brick-and-mortar counterparts, you might think it would be easy to grow your new online business.
However, there is a lot of competition for your prospective customers’ hard-earned dollars. How do you drown out the noise created by your rivals and capture your audience’s attention? Here are some marketing tips to get you the customers you need to grow your business.
Marketing Tip #1: Build Up Your Blog
If you’re not taking advantage of this essentially free form advertising, you’re missing out. Your blog can educate and inform visitors to your website as well as gently guide them toward your product. When readers come to depend on your blog to give them the answers to all of their questions about your industry, it will cement your business in the role of industry leader— and your product as the best product to suit their needs.
Blog consistently, offering new content at least once a week, if not more often. Storytelling is an appealing way to engage prospects, as are images, videos, and infographics. Don’t be afraid to get creative and develop a distinctive, educational, and entertaining voice that will bring readers back time and time again.
Marketing Tip #2: Embrace Social Media
If you haven’t established a presence on social media, it’s time you bit the bullet and create accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram. If the thought of getting up to speed on all of these accounts is overwhelming, don’t worry— you don’t need to have an active presence on every platform. Instead, find out where your audience is most active, and meet them there. If your prospective buyers are usually found on Facebook and Twitter, for example, focus on those platforms.
Another way to determine which platform would be most successful for you is to find your competition. Where are they active? How many people are following them? Do they routinely engage with their customers? Get a good feel for what you’re up against and determine what you need to do to outperform them. Be ready to answer questions, post to your accounts regularly, and build relationships with the people who follow you or comment on your posts.
Marketing Tip #3: Organic SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, refers to the process of making your website more search-engine friendly— specifically, more Google-friendly. The better your SEO, the higher your site appears on the search engine page. Organic SEO simply means that you’re bringing users to your page without paying the search engine sites to rank your page higher.
Search engines are becoming savvier; you can’t just stuff your content with keywords to rank higher. Now, Google will ding your site for repetition, plagiarism, and failure to be optimized for mobile devices. With that in mind, ensure that your site’s content is completely original and easily viewable on a smartphone or tablet.
Marketing Tip #4: Create an Engaging Email Workflow
The average person gets 121 emails every day. How do you make your email stand out from the rest? Ensure that it’s interesting and valuable to your customers. Eye-catching subject lines, enriching content offers, educational tips, and anything else that will enhance your customer’s business will be welcome. Don’t waste their time, or make them regret giving you their contact information in the first place.
That’s another important point; be sure that you get an ethically-sourced email list. Yes, you can purchase email lists, but when people get an email from a business to whom they haven’t given their information, it’s a clear message that the business is willing to engage in slightly-shady practices to sell their product. Instead, develop a relationship with your contacts by offering them useful information that will entice them to request your emails.
Marketing Tip #5: Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-Per-Click, or PPC, advertising just means that the advertiser—you— pays a predetermined fee whenever the prospect— your customer— clicks on one of your ads. These ads can be in a variety of places, including in a Google search or on the social media platform of your choice. They’re relatively inexpensive, and they will target potential customers where they’re already present and direct them toward your website.
Google AdWords is the predominant method that ecommerce businesses use for PPC. It’s a simple process to sign up, and they have comprehensive tutorials on the site to help you create a successful campaign.
PPC advertising is particularly effective within the mobile market. As more people use their mobile devices for online searches, a PPC campaign that’s optimized for mobile users will garner a lot of attention. Also, ensure that your site loads quickly and is responsive, or you could be losing customers who don’t have the time (or the attention span) to wait for your site to load.
These five tips are a good way to start marketing your ecommerce business. In order for you to focus on these efforts, you’ll want a powerful ecommerce platform running the back-office, like FastSpring. Check it out for yourself to see how much time you could save by clicking here to get your free demo today.
