eCommerce ERP CRM | Digital Marketing Agency -
Your product, product photos, product description, is all set! Your website designing is complete, great content is occupied in it and launched it online.
Now for what you are waiting for?
Oh yes! You must be waiting to market it in best possible way and want to make your first online sale.
We tried to incorporate everything on how to promote your eCommerce store through social media and make first eCommerce sale.
The eCommerce store can be promoted in different ways:
Through Social Media
Through Search Engine Marketing
Through PR
Through Content Marketing
Through Paid Ads
Through offline mediums
Through Traditional Advertising
In the below article we will take an in-depth view on all the online mediums that help in promoting eCommerce store. Also, we will have a brief glance on all the offline and traditional advertising medium to promote eCommerce store and make your first online sale.
How To Promote Your eCommerce Store Through SOCIAL MEDIA
1) Promote Your Online Store Through Facebook
Facebook Marketing give a boost to your online store in an effective way if done in proper way. It can create everything for your store, from status updates to Facebook page for your store.
You can launch your online store as brand through two different mechanisms of Facebook:
Your Facebook Profile
For startup businesses, owner’s profile page and store’s Facebook page act as their best friends. Statistics show that when you share products or product-related information from your profile page, then 62% people (friends and relatives of yours) read such posts.
Put a link of product from your website on your profile page, or share a press mention about your business, link to a tweet from a family member, friend or fan, post survey, ask a question. You can also share “about us” page of your website on your Facebook profile page.
Just remember, keep your Facebook profile personalized. Continue with that for what it is meant for i.e. share your photos, like friends and relatives stuff, comment on it, etc. Don’t make it look like your business Facebook page. Keep a fine balance between what to post on your personal page, when to post and how much to post.
Your Store Facebook Page
With Facebook Pages, people who have Liked your Facebook page will see your updates. You can promote your business here exactly the way you want. You can post the trends of your industry, your products photo with description, specific stories relating the products, survey, etc.
The key point does not only promote your products always directly. Keep it indirect sometime. And be consistent in what you are doing. Don’t expect the results in one day.
Below is some actionable stuff you can do on Facebook for promoting your business:
- Make a complete list of family and friends.
- Mail them personally or drop a Facebook message. Ask them for feedback about your business. Ask them to write a testimonial.
- Later, ask or request them to like your Facebook business page.
Source: Hubspot.
2) Make Network On Linkedin
Through LinkedIn, you can strategically connect with people, post and how to leverage LinkedIn groups.
Linkedin is your professional Facebook profile. It is not meant for direct sales. But you can expand your network, and opportunities stand in your way with open arms.
How to Make Connections on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a way of “making connection” with people. More connections mean large audience you can broadcast.
How to Complete Your Profile
Your LinkedIn profile is an online resume. Majority of people will read your “summary.” So craft this effectively.
How To Post Updates:
LinkedIn updates are seen as professional messages.
Here Are The Things You Should Post on LinkedIn:
Links to your product web pages
Content that your network will find valuable–
Your content
How to Get Started with Linkedin Groups
Browse LinkedIn’s suggestions for “Groups You May Like” and join groups that are very active.
Tips to make LinkedIn Groups go the extra mile for you:
Don’t Spam
Join Discussions Frequently
Networking On LinkedIn
Below are the tips to help you network on LinkedIn:
Find the best groups as per your business or profession and stick with them.
Continuously meet with the same people, so they remember you.
Don’t network irregularly.
Effective networking takes time.
3) Get Engaged On YouTube
YouTube is among the leading and most popular search engine on earth. Selling with video on YouTube is very effective. Business owners can drive sales to their eCommerce store through this medium powerfully. But the condition applied is what kind of video content you are going to produce and how you are starting with YouTube analytics.
YouTube videos are included in Google and YouTube search results. YouTube videos can also be used at your website to help communicate the benefits of your products.
Things To Keep In Mind While Uploading Videos To YouTube:
Title must be created by keeping in mind the targeted customers.
Keep you title keyword that your target customers may be searching for.
In the description of the video, link back to your product pages.
Attract YouTube customers through tag.
How to Make YouTube Videos
iPhone - You can shoot and edit decent video with your iPhone. This video can directly be uploaded to YouTube without using a computer. Apps recommended for making videos on iPhone is iMovie and Reel Director.
Android- Various video editing apps are available on Android phones. Magisto and VidTrim are the popular apps.
Online: You can edit the video online with the help of YouTube Editor, WeVideo, etc.
Desktop: Video can be edited on desktop too. If you are a Mac user, iMovie is suggested (but not the iPhone app version). If you’re a PC user, Camtasia is suggested.
What Kind of Content Should You Produce?
Below are some categories of content that you can consider:
Educate– Produce videos such as visual buyer’s guides, compare and contrast demonstrations, and “how-to” videos.
Solve Problems– Instructional videos always make great video content. Help customers in solving problem through videos.
Interview Professionals– Great content can be created by interviewing professionals in your industry.
Describe Phenomenal Products– Create videos explaining the amazing features of these products.
YouTube Power Tips
Take Advantage of Your Free Links
Track Your Video Performance with YouTube Analytics
Keep Your Introductions Short and Get to the Point
4) Trigger Conversations On Twitter
Twitter strategically engage potential followers and customers. Without investing too much money, online store owners grow their business and drive traffic to their eCommerce store.
Setting Up Your Account the Right Way
Keep your profile photo as your business logo.
Keep your bio simple, sweet and creative.
Link to your homepage in your Twitter bio section.
Play wisely with backgrounds.
Direct Engagement
Twitter has an amazing real time search feature. You can listen to anyone’s Twitter conversation. This feature helps you in increasing your sales. Do direct engagement only few times a day.
Listen and Converse
“Listen.” Listen as much as you can if you are an established brand and engage people on Twitter. By listening the people you can solve their problems and help them, you can discuss the status of your industry, and even show brands that you like.
Share Interesting and Useful Content
Drop valuable and interesting information on Twitter. This is a great way to start up conversations with other Twitter users who are interested in the same type of things your online store offers.
5) Move with Pinterest
Pinterest can drive huge traffic to your online store. Integrate a ‘Pin it’ button on your site and start inspiring potential customers to start following your pins.
Pinterest is a social platform that is a strong platform for online store owners. It is a visual experience, so your product photos can shine here.
Use The Pinterest Button On Your Website
By installing the Pinterest pin button to your product pages, your website visitors can post images from your online store to Pinterest. This way you will get a third party endorsement from outside your company.
Create An Account For Your Business
As the owner of your business, your social network will be interested in what you have to pin. You can create a Pinterest account for your company. You can double down your Pinterest activities by being both an individual user and business on Pinterest.
Create “Smart” Boards
When you pin an image in Pinterest, you can assign it to a “board.” It’s better to create boards that focus on a specific theme.
When you get popular, you can let your customers contribute to your boards.
Add Price To Pinned Images
To add a price simply add the price with a “$” sign and corresponding value in the description.
Your Strategy Should Be To Inspire
The power of Pinterest lies in its ability to get people to discover amazing images, videos, and products.
Other Things You Can Do with Pinterest
Create a testimonial board
Use hashtags
Host a contest
6) Graft It On Instagram
Instagram is quickly becoming one of the best platforms for online store owners. Discover how to post photos that drive engagement, run contests and more on Instagram.
Instagram is meant for sharing photos.
Amuse the World with Your Photos
The whole point of “Instagraming” is to take photos that will generate some positive and viral reaction. Add photo that is motivating as well as smart product placement. Motivating and positive are great themes for Instagram content.
Example is as follows:
How to #Hashtag
Knowing how to “hashtag” is key to getting more exposure on Instagram. The key to “hashtagging” though is to use a mixture of broad and specific terms for your hashtags. Keep using 5 – 10 appropriate hashtags and you’ll notice people increasingly liking your photos.
Photo Tips
One way to get people to your store is to watermark your images with your domain name. You can use also coupon codes on your photos.
Frequency
The general rule of thumb is only to post a few times a day. You’ll have to test to see what works best with your audience.
Run a Contest with Instagram
Getting started with running a contest on Instagram is simple as well as effective. There are plenty of tools to run a contest on Instagram. Some are TINT, PIXLEE, Statigram, Olapic, Venueseen.
The Secret to Instagram
Though it may appear to be just a mobile photo sharing app, Instagram is being used by small and large brands alike to generate enormous amounts of sales.
7) Tap Into Tumblr
At Tumblr, you can pick from picking a theme, adding content and building links back to your store.
Marketing on Tumbler is much like marketing on Instagram. The idea is to impress people with images and attract a loyal followers.
Here’s how to use Tumblr to bring sales to your eCommerce store.
Create A Tumblr Name And Pick A Specific Theme
Try to make your Tumblr blog highly thematic and ultra-specific. This will create more viral shares, backlinks, and followers. Plan in advance by writing 10- 20 posts that can solidify your theme and be consistent in your effort.
Try to give a creative name to your Tumblr blog, most likely without including the name of your business in it.
Some examples of some popular Tumblr blogs names:
OCD: Obsessive Corgi Disorder. A blog of corgi dogs.
Oscar PR Girl: A Tumblr blog that takes you behinds the scenes of the Oscar de la Renta fashion brand.
Adding Content and Tagging on Tumblr
Tumble is a micro-blogging, lightweight platform. You can add content as quickly and seamlessly as writing a tweet on Twitter. Simply select the icon describing the type of content you want to add.
Just remember, pick tags effectively in your Tumblr blog by using tags. Use tags that describe your picture, category, and theme.
How Tumblr Suits Your SEO Strategy
Use Tumblr to rank strategically on the first page of search engine results by creating keyword rich titles for posts. Although not duplicating the content on your original blog post is recommended. Better create an entire new post and keep the same keyword in your Tumblr title. This same strategy can be used for many of your social media and blogging accounts. Tumblr also permits you to create meta descriptions and image alt tags.
The majority of Tumblr users are between 18-34 years in age. Try to capture their attention and get them to visit your store in hopes of turning them into customer.
SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
8) Stand On Comparison Shopping Engines
Shoppers often use comparison shopping engines to make purchase. Let’s know how to leverage these website and get your products in front of more people.
Sites like Shopzilla, Google Shopping, Nextag, Bing Shopping, and Pricegrabber have millions of shoppers searching for the best prices on online products. For sure you too want grab attention of those shoppers over to your online store.
If your products are listed in these engines, probability is very high of getting a quick response. Majority of these shopping engines require you to “pay to play.”
How To Derive The Benefit?
To get the benefit of comparison shopping engines is to select certain products to be “fed” to these engines. There are two types of products you can do this with:
If you sell something which no other online shop sells, then add those items to your product feed, and don’t bother lowering the price on them.
Select a few items that you don’t mind reducing prices on.
Which Engines are Free and Which Are Paid?
Free Comparison Shopping Engines
The Find
Pay-to-Play Comparison Shopping Engines
Google Shopping, Next Tag, Price Grabber, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Become.com, Pronto.com, Amazon Product Ads
Which Engine Should You Choose?
Certain comparison shopping engines will have a better return on investment for your business than others. The only way to know which ones will yield the best return is to try each one.
9) Get On Google Places
You can only have a Google Places account if “you can make in-person contact with customers.”
What is Google Places?
Google Places is a Google account. Any business can sign up here. It is free. Once you sign up, you will be asked to fill out your business information. When someone uses Google and performs a geographical based search, Google will display results of local businesses that match the intention of the searcher’s query.
Here is an example:
Google Places can deliver amazing results for business owners that have a local place of business.
10) Leverage the Yahoo! Bing Network:
Use paid search ads on the Yahoo! Bing Network to drive targeted traffic to your eCommerce store.
Since you’re running an online store, buying ads on the Internet must seem like a pretty obvious way to make your first sales.
The Yahoo! Bing Network is slightly less competitive, friendlier and cheaper network.
What is Pay-Per-Click Business?
Most search engines use the pay-per-click advertising model (also called cost-per-click). It’s as simple as it sound, every time someone clicks on your ad, you are charged for the click.
You start your PPC advertising campaign by choosing keywords that search engine users will potentially search for. When they do, your ad will be displayed somewhere on the results page. If you wrote compelling advertising copy, chances are someone will click on your ad and will be taken to your online store.
The cost of the click is determined by a few factors:
Your Specified Maximum Bid
Your Quality Score
The Keywords You’re Bidding On
How to Get Started?
Let’s have a look at some demographic data to give to know what people are searching for on the Yahoo! Bing network:
Step 1 – Signing Up
Step 2 – Choosing Keywords
Step 3 – Creating Your Ads
Step 4 – Choose Where You Want To Send Them
Step 5 – Test
A Final Advice
PPC advertising requires your full attention. So you need to login to your account at least once a day to monitor the progress of your campaign. It will force you to be analytical about how your business works and will ignite new ideas for you to test and try out until you get in front of the right person for that first sale.
11) Get Search Engine Optimized
SEO is something how to get your site to rank higher in Google.
Search engine optimization provides good return on investment.
What is SEO?
How Google Determines Who Is On Top?
Various factors effects on the ability for your online store to appear high in Google’s results. A study by Search Metrics ranked various factors that contribute to Google’s ranking algorithm:
Here’s a general list of ranking factors in some order of importance:
How many “natural” links point to your website from other sites
There are two ways to get links:
Seek for backlinks opportunities.
Create a website that naturally gets linked to.
Now, the question is how to get natural links? This can be done these way:
Get online press coverage
Create valuable content
Be unique
Keep doing the above mentioned activities continuously
The authority your site has in its place
Be an expert of your area of specialization by running an unbiased blog full of information.
Here are a few ways to build authority for your website:
Explain how to do something
Be the expert, not the salesperson
Build a strategy to get all the research traffic
The trustworthiness of your website
Build trust with testimonials, security badges, providing guarantees.
The age of your domain name
The longer your domain name, the more history it has with the various search engines, and because of this, and assuming you’ve been providing a good user experience for those years, search engines tend to reward websites for good behavior.
How your website is optimized regarding site structure and “on-page” elements
This can be done in the following way:
All your title tags have unique content. Do not duplicate title tag content.
You have a way to navigate by text links only.
You are using H1 heading tags in your source code.
Use original images and describe what the images are about with alt tags.
Keep iframes to a minimum
Have your content live on your domain
12) Learn From Web Analytics
Analytics will show you what your customers are doing on your site i.e. on which web pages they leave your site, how long they are staying on your site.
Measuring Website Traffic
The beauty of good website analytics is that it can give you a hint about what work best for your online business. The most common “barometer” that analytics provides is that it can measure how much daily, monthly or yearly traffic your website has. Many website owners tend to focus on this macroscopic metric to determine how well their site is performing.
Basic Analytics and Web Stat Software
Almost all websites will come with a default “website statistic” software package that is already installed. These statistics are accessible through your website control panel. The two most common web statistics packages are Webalizer and AWStats. They will tell you the number of visits and what the top entry pages are. They also go into some basic geographic demographics and what websites are your top referring sources.
Other analytics packages use a JavaScript snippet that you place on your webpages to detect traffic. These programs only detect traffic of visitors that have JavaScript enabled.
Google Analytics is the most popular free JavaScript based web analytics solutions. It provides a lot more depth and clarity as to what visitors are doing on your website.
Landing Pages
A very useful report to look at in Google Analytics is your top landing pages. For eCommerce, it’s a great way to see your most popular entry pages and also to learn how visitors found those pages.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate measures how many visitors come to your site and immediately leave.
Customer Tracking and Advanced Metrics
There are analytics packages available that do more comprehensive customer analytics for ecommerce retailers. For example, KISSmetrics provides special ecommerce tracking that can help you with average order value, conversion funnel analysis, real time analytics and lifetime value calculations.
13) Be Accessible On Mobile Devices
If your mobile presence is optimized well, you may pick up many more sales for simply being convenient to visitors and returning customers.
14) Go And Get Product Reviews
This is a strong marketing method of PR. There is a advantage of getting product reviews from other websites. This will help in increasing brand reputation and its credibility.
How Reviews Can Help With SEO
Getting bloggers or other websites to review your products is an effective way to “build links” back to your website. This will increase the amount of free traffic your website receives from search engines.
If you get the opportunity to specify your links and link text then keep these tips in mind:
Choose your link text wisely
For more targeted marketing, link to your product pages
Reach Out to Video Bloggers
Video blogging is very trendy now-a-days. Notice who are the most popular video reviewers. At some point in your dialogue with the video blogger or reviewer, ask if they will link to your product page in their video description.
15) Write a Press Release
Be newsworthy. Try to craft a press release which make sense and rises above the noise.
Good Press Release Consist Of:
Strong heading
Good sub-heading for content to follow
Pertinent information in opening paragraph
Middle paragraph which includes testimonials statistics, case studies, research details,
Conclusion which includes summary of the article, call to action.
Boilerplate that includes brief company profile and contact information.
Company logo or a relevant image with every press release.
16) Use PR Stunt
PR stunts are the best way to viral video. It brings lot of attention to your brand if executed well.
It is also best for SEO, as drive tons of links from authority news sources.
The Buzz Buttons
Author Mark Hughes lists six buttons of Buzz in his book “Buzz Marketing”. The buttons are as follows:
The Taboo
Unusual
Outrageous
Hilarious
Remarkable
Secrets
By pushing this buttons, people start talking about your brand. Push one button at one time and see which works best for you.
17) Interview an Industry Influencer
The best way to produce exceptional blog content is to interview someone who is well known in your industry. Ask their success stories, their tips to other young entrepreneurs, etc.
Make A Video
Take interview to the next level by making video of the interviews. They will be potentially more viral. Post your videos to YouTube and you can also provide a link to your website from the video for SEO purpose.
CONTENT MARKETING
18) Write Guest Post
Write guest blog posts for various websites. This is a high-impact ways to attract internet buzz for your business.
Most blogs gladly accept guest posts because it also keeps their content fresh, different and unique.
The Advantages Of Guest Blogging
Guest post is an appropriate place to plug your business. With this, you will explain to new prospects. The another benefit is it helps in driving traffic, and that is the backlink you get to leave in your signature.
How to Write a Good Guest Blog Post
Write Conversationally
Use Visual Aids, Diagrams, Video
Don’t use stock photography unless you have a reason to use
Give Actionable Informationand details
Tips To Get The Most Out Of Guest Blogging:
Change your links and keywords once in a while
Create a Google Authorship Profile
Give your readers a discount
19) Create a Viral Video
Creating a viral video is as such a difficult task, but it is fun and worth doing it. It although requires the skills and budget set. This is the effective way promote your brand.
How to Be Viral?
Below mentioned are the five characteristics of the viral videos:
Surprising
Intense
Positive
Interesting
Actionable
Have a Clear Value Proposition
Viewers of your video wants to know the important benefit of what you have to offer. Think through your video and focus on clearly expressing your value proposition.
20) Start Your Blog
Start a successful blog, create valuable content for readers. This is the cheapest and easiest way of attracting thousands of new and prospective customers.
So, invest time and energy into blogging. It will be fruitful for coming years. Once a great piece of timeless content is created, the search engines will bring you traffic to that page for the lifetime that page exists.
How To Create Unique Content
Create the unique content that not only brings traffic but bring new customers too.
What are some common questions your customers ask?
Answering common questions in the form of long, detailed blog post always makes great content.
Create “How-To” Content
The easiest type of content to tackle is “How-To” posts.
Does Your Blog is SEO Optimized?
Before you start blogging, make sure that your blog is optimized for the search engines. Check this few things:
Title Tags
Meta Descriptions
Duplicate Content
Text Navigation
Frequency
Blogging is something which requires regular attention. The more you blog, the more the search engines will crawl your website. It will also increase the importance and authority of your website on search engines. This leads to increase in traffic and business.
Promotion
Promote your blog in very aggressive way. This will give you added advantage in promoting your business. Post your content on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc.
Another trick of promoting your content is to link to other articles. You can reach out to the authors that you linked to and ask them if they can share your content with their audience.
21) Create a Youtube Channel
Having a YouTube channel can be one of the strongest marketing and sales tools. It is like having your cable channel with your programming promoting your business. Best part is, it is completely free, and you can play on it 24/7.
What Kind Of Video Content Can Be Produced?
Weekly educational videos
Product Reviews
Testimonials from customers
Create a Program Schedule
Tips For YouTube Channel:
Branding– YouTube channel are the branding options they provide.
Channel icon– Use logo to keep your branding consistent.
Channel art– Upload artwork or photographs that works well with your overall brand strategy.
Create a Trailer– Create a montage of video clips that shows some of the “best-of” moments from your channel’s previous videos. Try to invite people into subscribing to your channels with a great trailer video.
Link Overlays– You are allowed to overlay four links to social media websites and one to your web property. Better only link to your website.
Create Custom Thumbnails– Create custom thumbnails to help advertise your channel videos.
Promoting Your Channel and Your Videos
Do some extra pushing to get your videos circulating and make your channel popular: For this:
Incorporate videos in your email newsletter
Attach videos to your email signature
Incorporate videos into your blog
Promote your videos through your social media outlets
22) Do Email Marketing
Email marketing is very important when it comes to adding to your bottom line. Research shows that companies receive a 40% back for every amont spent on email marketing.
When compared to other channels, email subscribers are more responsive.
Choose the Right Incentive
Building your mailing list by choosing the right incentive, or ‘ethical bribe’, to offer people in exchange for joining your list. This way you will get permission to follow up your potential customers over time.
You can also take help of email marketing and focused incentive apps like Incentivibe and ViralSweep for making the process easier. Another good incentive is a free piece of content that your target customer would find valuable and would put your subscriber into a buying frame of mind.
Create High Converting Landing Pages
Create a landing page (also called squeeze page). It is a page on your website that is 100% focused on getting people to subscribe to your mailing list.
Why do you need a landing page?
You need a landing page so that you can use it in a variety of ways to help build your list.
Add it as a link in your social profiles.
Advertise it using Google AdWords and Facebook Ads.
Link to it in blog posts.
Link to it in emails
You can get people to and convince them to subscribe.
Landing page content should include a headline, text or a video about your incentive and the benefits of joining your mailing list, and an opt-in form.
Place Strategic Opt-in Forms
Besides landing page, the other important element is strategically placed opt-in forms. Opt-in forms are fancy word for the email sign-up boxes.
Popular email marketing software solutions will have handy opt-in form generators that will provide you with a snippet of code that you can just drag and drop into various places around your site. Some popular services are Mailchimp, Aweber, Campaign Monitor and Constant Contact.
Places To Consider To Place An Opt-in
Header or navigation bar - This can be an email field with text like ‘subscribe’, ‘join’, ‘sign up’, ‘get exclusive discounts’, ‘get updates’, etc.
Sidebar - This can be just an email field or name and address field with a sentence about your free incentive and what your mailing list has to offer.
About page – Get visitors to connect and learn more by subscribing. This can be just an email field or name and address field with a few sentences about why people should subscribe.
Bottom of blog posts - If people read your blog post till end, then chances are there that they enjoyed your content and are ready to take action. Placing a form here, tell them what to do next.
Website Footer – If your visitor passes by all of the above fields. If they make it to your website footer, this proves that they are interested. Without delay capture them as subscribers.
Stay in Touch
As you start growing your mailing list, you need to make sure you’re staying in touch with your subscribers. Keep your subscribers interested in your business by sending regular information about your industry like manual updates, newsletters, and links to your latest pieces of content, etc. Also, you can put your customers in an autoresponder series. This is a series of emails that you set up in advance and scheduled to send to new subscribers within a specific timeframe as they join your list.
PAID ADS
23) Advertise on Facebook
Facebook helps in generating sales.
Advertisement on Facebook provides a unique advantage where you can target your ads by gender, age, and interest.
How Many Types of Facebook Ads Are There?
One can advertise on Facebook in various ways, but there are four ways that works best. They are:
Marketplace Advertisements: These are the most standard Facebook advertisement type. This is used by many small and medium sized businesses.
Page Posts Advertisements: These advertisements show up on a user’s newsfeed. This type of advertisement is also known as native advertising. The ads blend seamlessly and appear into a newsfeed like any regular status post.
Sponsored Stories: These advertisements engage people with brands that their friends like, and only show up in a user’s newsfeed if a friend has engaged with the company recently.
Promoted Posts: When you post an update on Facebook, it doesn’t necessarily reach your entire fan base. If you want to reach everyone, you need to boost the percentage of the audience you reach, which costs money.
How To Build Your Facebook Advertisements
Below mentioned steps will guide you about how to create Facebook advertisements, so that you can target your customers and build a better suited campaign.
Step 1 – Determine what you want to sell
Step 2 – Who is this product for?
Step 3 – Select an image
Step 4 – Create compelling copy
Step 5 – Let your ad run for a week or two
24) Pay for Google Adwords
No other advertising network will give you faster sales results than Adwords. This generating targeted traffic to your site.
Adwords is Google’s advertising network that allows online retailers to place advertisements on almost every Google search results page, partner website and Youtube video.
Every time someone clicks on your Adwords advertisement, Google will charge you for that click. The costs of clicks vary on your bid amount and the price other advertisers are willing to pay for the same keywords.
How To Start
To start advertising, go to adwords.google.com. They are quite helpful at getting you started and whisking you into the world of pay-per-click advertising.
The structure of an Adwords advertisement is very simple, but it’s also very important that you understand the components that make up an ad and how they play a role towards converting business.
25) Buy Banner Ads
Banner ads can work magic when it comes to selling products online.
Tips For Successful Banner Ads
Put your banner ads on relevant websites
Be creative while addressing the web visitor’s problems
Test, measure and keep track of what ads have the best effect with your web analytics.
Banner Ad Placement
Creative ads are better than boring ads. Next comes, determining what websites to place your ads on, and on those sites where your ad should be located.
Look for links near the bottom of the sites where you want “advertising”. Contact the website owner and ask them what their rates are, even if they are already posted. The idea is that you want to start a slow and natural conversation with them.
26) Promote Your Tweets on Twitter
Use Twitter’s advertising platform, bring your content in front of more people and increase your engagement on Twitter.
Getting Started With Twitter Ads
Twitter Ads, target options. It is best to sign up for an account and investigate all the targeting options yourself, as there’s a lot to check out.
In Twitter, you can target users by interest, gender and geography, keywords in the timeline and keywords in the search results.
Twitter has cost-per-action model: You pay only when users follow your Promoted Account or when they retweet, favorite, reply or click on a link in your Promoted Tweet.
There are three types of Twitter advertising promotions you can choose from:
Promoted Accounts– Twitter will suggest accounts to follow to its users. One way to squash onto this list is to pay to be a promoted account.
Promoted Tweets– You can also chunk your tweets into the timelines of Twitter users by paying for this targeting option.
Promoted Trends– Twitter will list the top trends in their user’s geographical area and interest domain. You can also pay to be in this trend list. Although, this option is a little pricey.
Out of the above listed options, promoted tweets probably is the most useful for small online retailers. Tweets have a lot of flexibility regarding how you can create engagement, curiosity, excitement and having prospective customers visit your landing page and converting them. Your tweets are very powerful.
You Can Also Try These Tweeting Tactics:
Ask a question–Think of engaging questions that are fun to answer as well as target your target audience.
Tweet a coupon code for a highly demanded product– If you are supplying rare, but highly demanded product, then a sponsored Tweet with a coupon code is great. It will bring more attention to your store as you can advertise to a much larger audience.
Promote a contest- Using Twitter advertising to get the content buzz out is a great idea. You can create tweets that act more like billboards. This helps in branding your contest. This also lowers the advertising costs, as you are not doing actions like retweets, clicks or follows.
Manage Your Twitter Account Properly
The other important thing is to respond to tweets, mentions, and direct messages promptly. If you respond to them timely, then probable chances are there that you will achieve much better results from advertising on Twitter.
Testing Via Twitter
Twitter is a very interesting tool for employing all sorts of marketing tricks. Spend some time in testing your Twitter tactics. Find which tactics are working for you. Especially test branded hashtags (#) and mentioning (@) key influencers in your industry.
TAKE IT OFFLINE
Engage Your Local Business Network:Get into the nitty-gritty of how to effectively network in the real world to get results and sales for your business.
Say Hello to Strangers with Meetup.com: Find meetups in your area and use them to help make important industry connections and promote your brand.
Sell Wholesale to Other Retailers: distribute your products to other retailers.
Take Your Business On the Road: showcase your business in other locations is a fun and productive way to make that first sale.
Deploy a Sales Team:Sometimes getting first sale is easy but sustaining it is difficult. So better hire a sales team.
TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING
Get Going with Tradeshows:Trade shows can have a great impact on your business, especially if you’re the manufacturer or source of your products.
Go Door to Door:This might be one of the most overlooked startup techniques, but it work for digital, subscription and physical products.
Use Print Ads:In the age of online advertising print advertising may seem unusual but can be effective.
Sponsor an Event:Sponsoring events old marketing tactic, but can prove a solid ROI for your business when done for the right event.
Distribute Flyers: Flyers and direct mail are still effective ways to make sales, even in the era of internet marketing.
Advertise Outdoors: Offline methods like billboards can also be beneficial.
Tell Family and Friends:Your network of friends and family will mostly likely be your easiest first sales. They may not purchase but can do mouth publicity for you.
Participate on Forums: Participating in online forums can be an amazing way to get your business in front of the right audience.
Create a Listing on Craigslist:Perhaps the easiest way to launch any business is through Craigslist. It has been providing the world nearly a free marketplace to sell.
Give Coupon Codes:Coupon codes can be a powerful tool to attract new and repeat customers. However, it’s important to know and make sure that discounting fits right into your brand strategy.
Get Others Involved with Affiliate Marketing:Affiliate marketing can be an amazing sales channel for an online retailer. Your success majorily depends on what type of products you sell and how better you pay your affiliates.
Build Relationships with Suppliers: Building strong relations with suppliers is very important as they contribute to your sales and bottom line.
Demonstrate Trust and Security<