Five ways to promote a new online shop
For every business owner who’s just getting started with selling products online, there is one theme that’s constantly running through their strategy sessions: how to promote a new online shop and get customers.
Sure, there are hundreds of channels and tactics to help get the word out about your new ecommerce site. But that’s what makes this so difficult because it’s hard to determine which ones make the most sense for your online shop and produce worthwhile results.
So, where should you start? How can you spread the word about your new business and get people interested and buying your products?
Start by reading this post where we look at five effective ways and channels to promote and grow a new online store.
1. SEO-proof your product pages
Want people to know your new online shop exists? Want them to find your products at the top of the search engine results? Then you need to make sure that your product pages are properly optimised for search engines.
Focus on the basics such as:
- Have you set a catchy title tag and meta description for each product page on your site? If you haven’t, you need to do this immediately. Read this beginner’s guide to writing title tags and meta descriptions to learn why this is critical to your online shop’s success and how to go about it.
- Is the content on your product pages optimised using relevant keywords? This article explains where and how to use keywords to properly optimise your content for search engines.
- Are you optimising your product images to ensure they show up in the search results? If you haven’t done that already, here’s your guide to optimising images for search engines.
- Are your pages loading quickly? Since site speed is a Google ranking factor, make sure you constantly check your site speed and find ways to improve it.
Taking the time to properly optimise your product pages will help you to rank higher in the search engine results and drive traffic to your online store.
2. Drive traffic to your online shop with paid search
People use Google all the time to search for products they’re interested in buying. If your online shop doesn’t show up at the top of the search results, they won’t even know you exist.
A fast and effective way to promote your new ecommerce site and grab people’s attention in the search engine results is to pay for it. How? By setting up a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign on Google Adwords.
If you’re not familiar with it, Google Adwords is an advertising service for any business that wants to advertise on Google and its ad network. In other words, you create an ad and pay to place it on Google’s search results page.
This allows you to immediately draw prospects to your ecommerce website.
The great thing about Google Adwords is that even if you’re on a limited budget you can still afford to set up a PPC campaign for your new online shop. That’s because you only pay for your ad when someone clicks on it or calls your business.
The tricky part is figuring out how to set it up correctly to make sure you get the best result. Fortunately, with our free course on PPC you can learn how to create and setup your first Google Adwords account correctly.
3. Build awareness and trust with great content
There’s no tactic that’s more effective at building awareness and attracting prospects to an online store like content marketing.
Why? Because publishing valuable content can help you to:
- Increase your visibility in the search engines, which is where your prospects are looking for your products
- Build trust in your brand (which is essential to the success of any new business)
- Keep people informed, educated and entertained
- Get people talking about your products and brand on social media
Here’s what you need to understand: your ecommerce site is not all about selling products. In fact, most people are looking for more than just a shop to purchase from. They’re looking for information, advice and solutions to their problems.
That’s why starting a blog is a great way to give your customers more of what they want and need. And if you fill it with useful content like in-depth articles, tutorials, guides, infographics and videos, you also give them a reason to come back to your online shop more than once.
The more they visit your blog and site, the greater the chance you’ll have of getting them to buy from you.
Plus, your blog posts are a great place to add relevant keywords that your prospects may be searching for when browsing online.
Another effective strategy is to reach out to blogs and sites in your industry and offer to guest blog. For example, if you own a wedding shop, you can contact wedding blogs and magazines and offer to write a piece for their readers.
Although this is a time-consuming tactic for driving traffic to your site, it helps to position you as an authority in your industry, to spread the word about your online shop, and it also exposes your brand to an audience base you may have never reached otherwise.
Take our free blog and content marketing course to learn more about using content to attract prospects to your new online shop.
4. Draw attention on social media with paid ad campaigns
Building a following on social media is hard, especially as a new business. Even if you’re active and share great content, it takes time for people to take notice.
One way to get people’s attention and quickly is with social media advertising. The great thing about an ad campaign on social media is that you can get incredibly granular with who you show your ads to. You can target people who live in a specific city, have a certain age, hobby or job title.
Now, for social media advertising to work, you’ll need to:
- Choose the social media channels where you know your audience likes to spend time online. Not sure which ones to choose? Read our post on which social media platform my business should be on to find out which social networks best match the needs of your business.
- Make sure you target the right people who are actually interested in your products. Don’t just target everyone because you’ll only end up losing money.
- Since video receives more engagement than text or images, try creating a video ad instead.
Take a look at these Facebook ad examples to get inspired and see how other businesses advertise on this popular social network.
If you decide that Facebook, Twitter or Instagram are where your prospects like to spend time online, check out these resources to learn how to advertise on these platforms:
- A free course that’ll teach you how to set up your very first Facebook and Twitter ad campaigns
- A beginner’s guide where you’ll learn how to get started with Instagram advertising
5. Interview influencers in your industry
If you’re not familiar with influencers, they are people who already have the attention of your potential customers.
Now, they don’t always need to be celebrities or people who huge social media followings to make an impact. But they do need to have a loyal and active following of at least 1,000 people who are interested in what they have to say and always engaging in conversation.
Now that you know what influencers are, it’s time to find yours and interview them. Why is this a good tactic?
Because it not only shows you value their expert advice but you’ll also get free exposure since they’ll most likely share that interview with their following. This helps to spread the word about your new brand and hopefully attract new customers to your store.
Wrapping up
These are just a few strategies that you can try to help promote your new online shop and attract your first customers. If time or budget are an issue for you, choose one or two of these ideas at a time and see how well they work for you. Still need help? This guide talks more about setting up an online shop. Good luck!
