Because of widespread internet access brought about by smartphones and gadgets, almost everyone can buy and find everything online. This phenomenon brought about the rise of e-commerce businesses where, in place of selling in a brick-and-mortar establishment, entrepreneurs now use a website as their platform.
Online selling and shopping popularity presents opportunities and threats to budding entrepreneurs. The good news is you have the assurance of a stable market and following. However, one of the biggest threats is that thousands of e-commerce stores appear daily. You’re not the only business that has seen an opportunity online. Competition is fierce in e-commerce.
Starting your e-commerce store and releasing your products is only half the equation. It would be best to do more to get your e-commerce store off the first floor. After going through all your effort to develop your products, it’s now time to proceed with one of the more challenging tasks in e-commerce: promoting your store.
So, how do you attract customers to your online store? This guide gives you a quick guide on e-commerce marketing strategies that work.
Leverage Social Media To Your Advantage
Social media has encompassed almost every aspect of life nowadays. Finding anyone without at least a minimal social media presence can be challenging. Apart from individuals, businesses use social media to promote their products.
If you haven’t created any social media accounts for your e-commerce store, you might miss out on new markets or research about your current target. Think of the top four most popular social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. These are the most consumer-centric, potentially expanding your audience reach.
Here are some ideas to help you get started:
- Use Facebook Live to make meaningful connections with your followers.
- Provide links to your e-commerce website on your social media accounts and each post.
- Run Facebook ads.
- Post-in-store photos on your Instagram feed.
- Create an Instagram shop to make it easier for your customers to purchase.
- Curate your visual feed to have a sense of coherence and for more vital branding.
These examples are some quick ways to reach your target market. You’ll learn more as you continue your efforts on social media.
Reward Customers For Taking Action
Rewarding customers for their actions means showing gratitude for their loyalty or regular purchases. Physical loyalty cards are a norm in many traditional stores, and you can still have the same, even in the e-commerce sector.
For instance, you can hand virtual loyalty cards to customers. Here are a few ways to start this:
- Pre-load the loyalty cards with corresponding points, depending on the purchase amount made each time the loyalty card is used.
- Tick boxes on the loyalty card every time a customer purchases in your store and then offer a free item or a gift card after a certain number of assets.
- Give a discount after a customer has reached a specific purchase amount.
Loyalty cards are still doable in a digital world. It would be best if you now had a few ideas with the tips in the list above.
Create A Blog And Post Good Content Regularly
Say you already have your e-commerce website up and running. Did you know you can do much more to maximize your website’s ability by posting blogs? Re-design your website to have a page dedicated to blogs where you can post high-quality content relating to your niche and business regularly.
Blogging is effective in convincing customers to make a purchase. The most successful stores are those that don’t just sell products but solutions. You must show your customers how your products can help solve some of their problems. You can convince them to choose your business and your products.
However, content marketing is a long-term strategy. It takes a lot of patience and hard work before you see any favorable results. Study your analytics from time to time to assess the extent of the results that your content marketing strategy brings to your e-commerce business. Set up a Google Analytics property to back your growth with data.
Lastly, building a noteworthy blog is more than just reaching your audience. It’s also about showing and proving your authority in your niche. Reach out to blogs in your niche to submit a guest blog that provides solutions to your target’s potential pain points. Guest posting can also help widen your reach and establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche.
To help you better understand the ins and outs of content marketing, this video might be worth watching:
Use Email Marketing To Send Promotions And Reminders
Email marketing is still very prevalent and effective, despite new modes of digital marketing. This is because email marketing is a more direct form of advertising, making the reach more robust and effective.
Because of its proven success in marketing, email is an excellent medium to send announcements, like ongoing sales, promotions, and other discounts. You can even send emails and attach codes and vouchers your customers can use on your e-commerce store on their birthdays, for instance.
The recipients might not always use those codes, but these emails remind them your brand exists. When your brand has no ongoing promotions, you can still use email marketing to send newsletters to keep your brand awareness strong.
Get Product Reviews
Getting reviews on your products is one of the best promotions you can post. Furthermore, studies prove your brand’s trustworthiness. It shows that your products live up to what you say they can do in your store.
Most importantly, product reviews from regular customers can also be more relatable than ads from celebrities, simply because ordinary people leave those reviews. Other people won’t doubt whether the person writing the review used your product.
One of the best ways to get product reviews is by reaching out to bloggers who might want to be your affiliates. You can send them products from your e-commerce store to try in exchange for them posting about or reviewing your products honestly. Whether you get good or unfavorable reviews, that’s still publicity. And in the competitive world of e-commerce, any hype is better than not being talked about at all.
Create YouTube Content
Along with social media sites, brands and vloggers have spiked in popularity on YouTube and other video-sharing platforms. There’s a YouTube video for almost anything: product reviews, listicles, promotional videos, inspirational videos, day-in-the-life videos, etc. For brands and vloggers who’ve made a name for themselves on YouTube, their number of subscribers and views for every video on YouTube number in the tens of thousands and even millions.
That fact should prove how effective a platform YouTube is. Use this hype as an avenue to reach new audiences. You can start a YouTube channel or reach out to influencers to post videos about your products.
In this fast-paced world, many prefer watching videos rather than reading long blocks of text. Likewise, videos may have a more lasting effect on viewers. It’s easier to remember something they’ve watched or listened to rather than something they read in a rush. Along this line, you can combine video marketing with your content marketing campaigns. You can pair your content with videos to make your campaigns more effective.
For example, suppose you’re trying to make a name for yourself as a beauty brand. You can write about different skincare routines, compare your and your competitor’s products, and link to your video in a specific way. The link in your blog post also leads your readers to your YouTube channel, where you provide more valuable content and solutions to their problems.
Show Up In Online Forums And Groups
This process takes a lot of effort to learn where your ideal customer usually hangs out. But once you have that information, make the most out of it by being where they are. This means showing up in online forums, groups, and discussion boards for better brand awareness.
Being in the right online groups and forums can drive more traffic to your e-commerce site, especially when your product fits a specific discussion. Position yourself as a qualified expert, so you can explain how your products can solve their problems.
To do this, you can answer some questions, especially if you know their topics. For example, suppose your e-commerce store sells products for infants and new mothers. Answer questions about this niche, and then link to your e-commerce site if you have products that might help with a specific concern.
The Bottomline
Promoting your e-commerce store is pretty straightforward: build a social media presence, create and publish meaningful content, and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. However, starting this campaign can be challenging. The tips in this blog post can help you begin.
Still, you must also figure out what works depending on your audience, your niche, and, most importantly, the products you offer. Over time, you’ll see which makes the most sense for your e-commerce business.
