If you have an offline business, you should be quite familiar with some aspects of marketing.
However, although the marketing techniques for an offline venture are simple and uncomplicated, promoting an online store can be a very different experience.
When you have a Web shop in WordPress, the number of customers you can reach theoretically extends to everyone that uses the internet.
This is very different from an offline enterprise where most of your customers are those around your location. Running an eCommerce shop also allows you to control your customers’ shopping experience.
Nevertheless, some entrepreneurs get into the online store business thinking that they only need to open the store and there’ll be customers.
An offline store can be located near a busy road and instantly have customers from its first day. Online stores don’t work in the same way because getting a constant flow of traffic requires some promotional techniques.
This article will explain how you can attract online traffic to your web store by leveraging digital marketing techniques.
You’ll also spot the avenues you can utilize to connect your online store with an offline venture if you have one.
Building a steady flow of traffic to your webshop
The typical e-commerce website’s target audience can be split into three types of consumers.
The first are those consumers that have visited your webshop before or know of its existence.
The second type of consumer is those searching for the products you sell. The third are those who would purchase the product you sell if they knew about it.
Those who have visited your webshop or know about it should have some form of linkage to your online store. You need to have their emails, or they should at least follow your social media page.
This ensures that they’d be reminded of the products your store offers, and at some point, they should likely patronize you.
The consumers looking for the products available in your eCommerce shop need to discover you through specific marketing channels. For one, you can use search engine optimization (SEO) to rank your website high in searches.
You can also employ content creation techniques like blogging to get them to discover your webshop.
If your products are those that most of your target market isn’t aware of already, you have to think critically about alternative and unique solutions they might be using.
Once you can determine your target audience, you can workshop the optimal marketing channel for your webshop.
Digital marketing strategies for promoting your online store
It is safe to say that digital marketing is a playing field where you can do wonders for your online business.
There are many strategies you can try and we are now going to show you some of the best.
Build and use your email list
Several offline stores place maximum importance on getting the emails of their customers.
If walk-in shops understand their usefulness, you as an eCommerce website owner should consider leveraging them for your business.
You have to record and store several email addresses from your social media campaigns and the prospective buyers who visit your website. Even if your online store isn’t up and running yet, collecting email addresses would allow you to publicize your launch to them.
You can get an email list of your visitors by using a popup on your website. You can encourage them to submit their emails by offering promotions for those who enter their details.
Improve your organic social media reach
While it is true that with a big marketing budget, you can reach thousands of social media users even if you have a small number of followers.
Nevertheless, getting organic reach will save you lots of dollars that can be redirected to other parts of your business budget.
One way to grow your social media page effectively is to post engaging content like animated images and short but informative videos.
If you have a social media following up to a few thousand, you can leverage that by posting frequently.
Social media users are impatient and enjoy seeing or watching content rather than reading it. Instead of using text, you can leverage short videos or images to engage them. You can also ask them to share your content to increase your post reach.
Make your website SEO-friendly
Search engine optimization is a very big field, and trying to optimize your website without sufficient knowledge can drag you into a deep hole.
To get SEO right, you have to place yourself in your potential customer’s minds. If you can’t do that effectively, you can use a firm like Alphaweb to become more visible on search engines like Google.
You must know the keywords your audience will likely want to see on a product page.
Hence, you have to get some things right, like your product title, description, and images.
For instance, if people search for Android phones with the keyword ‘Android smartphones,’ you’d want to use that as your title.
Using something like ‘Android mobile phones’ wouldn’t get you high up the search rankings, be sure of it.
This leads to a decrease in potential web traffic. You need to leverage meta tags and meta descriptions to give short summaries of what each page on your webshop is about.
Leverage Google Ads
Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords, is an avenue to market your products to potential customers. It works by placing your website at the top of Google’s search engine queries when it contains your keyword.
If you know that the bulk of your customers will come from search engines and you don’t have time to optimize your eCommerce shop for SEO, you can use Google Ads. It’s a great way to drive traffic fast to your webshop once it launches.
Craft stellar social media campaigns
As you know, most of your online flock spends their time on social media networks. This is what makes this playing field good for you.
It has high traffic and is relatively cheap for promoting products and services.
Of course, you need to identify which social platform your target audience uses the most and then work towards promoting your content there.
If your website uses more videos and images, you can leverage Instagram to create ad campaigns.
Unlike offline stores, getting traffic into a webshop isn’t as simple as getting a space and then having foot traffic troop into the store.
It involves leveraging SEO, collecting emails, and understanding a whole bunch of digital marketing jargon.
To promote your online store, you can optimize your website for SEO, craft great social media campaigns, leverage Google Ads, and improve your social media reach.
