How To Promote Your eCommerce Website
Ecommerce stores are booming. The value online shopping adds to customers lives with the increased choice, fast service and ease of use has resulted in a massive boom in eCommerce stores. Online shopping and eCommerce stores are only going to get more popular in the next few years as we approach the asymptote.
If a business has an ecommerce store, you know you are in a good place, but this artice isn't just to confirm that you are heading down a good road. Let's talk about how you can promote your eCommerce store. Marketing is the quintessential skill in online business so let's talk about it now.
We've split this article into two parts- how to promote your store to new customers and how to promote your store to previous customers.
Promoting an eCommerce store to new customers.
Is it really all in the list?
The answer is yes and no. . .
If you have a list full of generic emails- people who haven't qualified themselves or given you permission to market them- then you don't have a good list.
On the other hand, if you have a list full of people who have raised their hand and said, "Yes, I give you my permission to contact me again" then it is all in the list. A list alone is not enough- you must have a relationship with the list.
Seth Godin calls this permission marketing. It's where you don't just ask everyone to buy from you, but you sell to those who have given you permission- an email address, a follower on social media.
The way to get let people qualify themselves is to build a lead magnet. This is a gift you will give people in return for their email address. You've seen these all the time on every website you follow. Many websites do well just by asking those who come to the website to subscribe to their newsletter. However, if you can give people something they really want ideally, that can give an instant result, then you win and your conversions will skyrocket.
What do I do with those email addresses
If someone has raised their hand, you should try and sell them your stuff. If they like you, which we know they do, they will probably like what you sell.
However, don't JUST tell them what's on sale. Add value with the emails you send. Tell your prospects the differences between products. What is the best piece of equipment. Which product is for which type of person. Blogs come in handy for this.
There is an important psychological effect to this.It gives members another excuse to spend time on your site- after all, they are learning and learning is never waste a time. It means when they buy, it wasn't because there was a sale on and they felt pressured, but because they already know you offer a good deal because of the research they did when reading your articles and emails.
The overall key here is to add value. Businesses selling information products know this, but it can be forgotten by eCommerce stores.
Now we know what to do with those emails and how to get them, let's talk about driving traffic.
How do I get traffic
While SEO is a great option to get traffic, consider native advertising especially in the beginning. Native advertising is non-intrusive advertising that you should see on Facebook or Twitter. By spending a small sum here, especially early on, you are able to tweak your pages so they convert better and can do it in a very logical, measurable way.
Use social media and social bookmarking.
Setting up accounts on Facebook and Twitter can help the business reach potential customers that might not have otherwise responded to any advertising. Special deals can be offered exclusively for those people who like or follow the business page. Incentives can also be offered to share the page with their friends which will increase the profile of the business. Social bookmarking sites allow people to share the pages they visit regularly with their friends so encourage existing customers to bookmark the business site. This will also increase the number of backlinks to the store which will increase it's ranking in an internet search.
Submit your website to Google and other leading search engines.
This will allow customers to find the ecommerce store who carry out an internet search for the products that are being sold. There are certain things that the business can do to try and make it appear higher on a results page and so it may be worth getting advice from a company that specializes in these SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques about how to apply them to the business website.
Give them a way back.
So a customer has just bought from your site. Congratulations but don't think your done yet.
There are three ways you can grow any business:
- Get more customers
- Sell those customers more things
- Sell to them more often
The third way is neglected so let's talk about it now. If someone has bought from you one time then it is very likely that they would buy from you again. With the way business is today and with all the competition, it has never been harder to get someone to buy from you one time. Conversely, it's never been easier to get them to buy from you a second time. When someone buys from you and they get the value they wanted from that, trust skyrockets.
Creating the return path is easily done. When someone is buying something from your eCommerce store, they will put in their email address.These email addresses go into a different list. These are the customers you really look after. You can send this list a couple of extra emails throughout the month and they will love it. Offer this list extra sales and extra promotions.
This is a step that business owners are shocked by how well it works and how simple it is.This is how you grow your business fast and this is how you promote your business to previous customers.