Your online store is up and running, your products are ready to sell, and you are ready and waiting for any customer who might decide to buy from you. Hopefully, they will start to flock to your website in droves.
But what happens when they don’t appear at your online door? What happens when people are slow to visit your store?
You need to do more to market your business, of course. Offline stores can attract buyers in with a neon logo and a well-stocked window display, but you don’t have these advantages. However, there is much you can do to help your cause.
1. Use Email Marketing to Send Out Reminders
Whenever a customer arrives at your online store, you should encourage them to sign up to your email newsletter with a call-to-action. You can then message them regularly, with news of your latest discounts, products, and any other piece of information that relates to your business. These emails should drive them back to your online store, as they act as friendly (and not aggressive) reminders.
2. Highlight Your Products on Social Media
You know your products are great, but what about the rest of the world? You need to let people know what you are selling, so post enticing content on social media. Use Instagram, Facebook, and all of the other social media channels that fit your business, and post pictures, videos, and engaging product descriptions
Your current network of followers will see these posts, and there is the potential for many others to see them to, especially if you encourage your network to share your posts. Be sure to include a link to your online store with every post you create.
Another way to highlight your products on social media is with paid ads. You will need to be creative with your wording as ad space is limited, and you will need to grab people’s attention. There is a lot of information in this article on social media advertising, with tips on getting the most from all major social media platforms.
3. Master SEO
If your online store doesn’t appear on the first two pages of Google, you might have trouble attracting customers to your website. People rarely venture past page 2, so you want to make sure your store ranks highly. You can do this by getting to grips with SEO. By implementing the right keywords into your website, and by optimizing your website for search engines, you should rank higher. Check out our article on SEO essentials, and consider hiring an SEO professional if the whole concept baffles you.
4. Get Your Customers to Promote Your Business for You
If you can give your customers an incentive to promote your business for you, such as a discount or a freebie, you might get new customers coming to your site. After all, people are far more likely to listen to the people who actually have experience with your business.
So, you could ask them to share your posts on social media. You could encourage them to give your store a mention on their blogs and websites. And you can ask them to leave positive reviews on business websites. The more mentions of your business, the better, for both SEO purposes, and for improving your chances of getting noticed online.
5. Keep Your Content Fresh
Consistent content posted across social media channels will always drive organic traffic to your website. But, as good as this content may be initially, it will eventually fall into the realm of decaying content. This means it won’t be as effective as it once was and will merely take up space on your pages.
Your business can overcome this by using a content calendar to monitor previous posts and update them as and when they are needed. This enables you to reuse previous content but with a recent twist that offers value to your customers. The more engaging and valuable this content, the more likely customers will be to flock to your online store.
These are just a few of the things you can do. Be sure to browse our website for other useful tips on how to succesfully market your business.
