There are many reasons why you may want to market your online store. You could be looking to develop a brand for yourself, generate sales from your existing audience, or even use marketing strategies to find new customers. No matter your reasons, you have to start by understanding what works and what does not work in terms of online store marketing.
To help you identify the most effective strategies, we have compiled a list of tips and advice on how to market your online store.
Use Social Media
One of the best things about the internet is that you can connect with other businesses and individuals across the world. If you have an online store, you can use social media to connect with your audience and potential customers. The most popular social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, provide you with a fantastic opportunity to engage with your audience and let them know about your products and services.
The best part about social media is that it is free. You do not have to pay for ads to gain visibility, and you get to engage with potential customers for free. When your customers and potential customers see you engaging with others on social media, they will assume that you are an active member of the community and that you are interested in their opinions.
On the other hand, businesses that do not use social media effectively risk missing out on a large portion of their audience. According to HubSpot Blogs research, consumers on social media are 86% more likely to purchase a product that is endorsed by a popular account or brand. This statistic underscores the importance of engaging with your audience on social media.
To create engagement on social media, you should aim to post regularly and engage with your followers. When you do so, you demonstrate to your audience that you are active and interested in their opinions, encouraging them to come back for more. In addition to posting content, you can also use social media to promote products, host events, and more. This versatility makes it easier to fit into any marketing strategy.
Product Knowledge Is Key
When you run an online store, you will inevitably be required to know something about the products that you sell. While this should not be a difficult task, it is essential to ensure that you do not sell any products that are faulty or of poor quality. Knowing more about your products and being able to pass on this knowledge to your customers means that they feel confident in purchasing your products and do so with ease. Good product knowledge is also highly beneficial when it comes to marketing and sales, especially online marketing and sales.
To create good product knowledge, you must be able to source your products accurately. When your customers have confidence in your knowledge of products, they are more likely to trust you and your opinion when it comes to choosing a product or service.
In addition to sourcing products accurately and being confident in your knowledge of them, you must ensure that your customers are completely satisfied with their purchase. If you do your job correctly, customers should feel confident in buying from you because you have satisfied them with an extremely high degree of professionalism.
Generating Leads From Qualified Traffic
Traffic is crucial to any business, and online stores certainly do not differ in this regard. When you have a large amount of traffic, you can use this to your advantage and gain access to a large audience of potential customers. When you are able to do this, you can use a variety of tactics to generate leads and sales from this audience.
For example, you may decide that you want to use SEO (search engine optimization) to gain visibility on search engines such as Google and Bing. When your website appears at the top of search results for relevant queries, you will obviously be given the advantage of gaining instant traffic and qualified leads. Your potential customers will find you and visit your website because they are searching for products that you sell and endorse.
As a general rule, the more information that you can provide to potential customers, the more likely they are to make a purchase. To give you an idea of how much qualified traffic you can gain using SEO, we discovered that depending on the competitiveness of the industry, you may achieve a 20% increase in website traffic with only a 3-4% increase in ranking. Basically, as long as you stay within the realms of good practice, inbound marketing, and ethical SEO, you will be able to boost your business’ presence on the web.
Targeting The Right Audience
Depending on the products that you sell, you may want to consider who exactly you are marketing your products to. Do you want to target customers that already know a lot about your products and are therefore more likely to make a purchase? Or do you want to target people that have never heard of your products and are therefore more likely to be interested in what you have to offer?
For example, if you are selling outdoor equipment, you may want to target people in a specific location or in an area where there is high competition. On the other hand, if you are marketing pharmaceuticals, you may want to target audiences in different parts of the world. Your product knowledge will determine which audience you should aim to attract.
What Kind Of Content To Post
To fully maximise the benefits of using the internet to market your business, you must post content that is going to be engaging and interesting to your audience. In the same way that you can use SEO to attract qualified traffic to your website, you can use content to attract and retain this audience. When someone lands on your website because they are searching for information about your products, you want to ensure that they remain there for as long as possible.
To achieve this, you must create and post content that is going to be valuable to your audience. We recommend that you create curated guides that feature the best products from your industry. Not only will this make your audience more engaged, but you can also feature popular products that are suitable for a wide audience. In addition, you can also use product guides to educate your audience about the ins and outs of your industry. Finally, you can use tips and tricks to help your audience solve common problems and achieve optimal results. With these three elements combined, you can be sure that you are posting content that will be valuable to your audience and encourage them to come back for more.
To give you an example of how influential content can be, let’s say that you are selling sunglasses. You can use a variety of tactics to attract potential customers to your website, from influencer marketing to SEO to content marketing. But once they have landed on your site, you want to maintain their interest by keeping them informed about product updates, seasonal sales, and any other information that you can provide that will make them come back for more. To do this, you must create content regularly and ensure that this content is interesting, valuable, and—most importantly—relevant to your audience.
Avoiding The Risk Of Compromising Your Ethics
To avoid any risk of compromising your ethics, you mustn’t engage in any kind of marketing activity that involves paid advertisements. When you run an online store, you will inevitably be tempted to use AdWords or some other type of paid advertising to gain customers. While this may seem like a quick and easy way to gain customers, these advertisements can sometimes be a security risk. For example, let’s say that you sell luxury goods and your customer sees an advertisement for a significantly discounted fragrance and believes that you are offering the same product at a discounted price. In this case, your customer may think that you are falsely representing what the product is actually like. As a result, they may feel cheated and file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. Even if your customer does not file a formal complaint, they may simply feel that they have been cheated and question your judgement as a seller. In cases like this, paid advertisements can put your business at risk of being compromised by dishonest people, raising questions about your ethics as a business owner. For this reason, we highly recommend that you avoid paid advertisements altogether if marketing through content.
Keep Your Email Opt-In
To help you market your business effectively on the internet, you must ensure that your customers have the ability to sign up for email notifications when new content is published. When you have a large audience of potential customers, it is relatively easy to gain their trust and convince them to subscribe to your email list.