Category General Marketing Strategies

Running an eCommerce store is no easy task.

You might already be experiencing that. There are a lot of things that need to work together for success. In fact, it is even hard these days since there are many online stores out there selling the same items you are selling.

Just opening your store on Shopify, Amazon, Alibaba or any platform is not enough. Getting a web designer to design your new ecommerce website is not enough.

In these days of hyper-competition and digitalization, you have to think beyond the normal trend.

Just because your pricing is affordable, your products are of high-quality standard and your delivery/shipping system is efficient does not mean your online store will succeed. When you start your eCommerce store, the first thing you have to think about is targeted traffic.

Just think about it!

If you should have a brick and mortar business today, you will need foot traffic to generate sales and profit. You will probably want to set up your shop in an area where you can get a high volume of targeted foot traffic.

According to the Law of Probabilities, the higher your foot traffic, the higher your potential to get high conversion conversions and sales.

The same applies to any online store. The reason Amazon, Alibaba, and many others succeed is because of the high volume of targeted, high ticket traffic they get.  

How do you drive traffic to your online store?

SEO & Copywriting.

A well-oiled strategy of SEO & Copywriting can fuel your e-commerce store with the targeted traffic you need to increase your conversion rate and sales. Maybe you might not have your own e-commerce website. You might probably be selling on Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, Jumia or any other platform out there.  

Regardless of where you are, SEO & Copywriting can help you. If you are thinking about how to drive traffic to your online store, the following tips and hacks can help you.  

ON-PAGE SEO FOR E-COMMERCE WEBSITES

Well, let’s first look at SEO for eCommerce websites.

SEO simply means optimizing search engine results to drive traffic to your e-commerce store. It means using hacks, tricks, and techniques to drive targeted traffic from Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask and many other search engines to your online store or e-commerce website.

There are several SEO techniques that you can use to drive traffic to your e-commerce store. But let us look a couple few tips on how to drive traffic to your online store.

Emma Labrador, Head of Communication & Marketing at OnCrawl provided a list of top SEO tips for an e-commerce website. It is a comprehensive list that provides the basic techniques that every online store must start practicing.

Below are the fundamental SEO tips for eCommerce websites by OnCrawl :

1. Set up efficient keywords.
2. Use strategic keywords in the anchor text.
3. Avoid duplicate content.
4. Write compelling product descriptions.
5. Optimize your product images.
6. Optimize your URL for search engines crawls.
7. Watch if traffic is converting into sales.
8. Improve usability.
9. Avoid broken links

If you look at the list above, you will realize that the tips simply focus on On-Page SEO, positioning the e-commerce website to rank. But nothing is said about the Off-Page SEO strategies that can help the site to rank high and drive more traffic.

Therefore, saying that the 9 tips are the top SEO tips for an eCommerce website can be misleading. Therefore, let us add a little bit more to what Emma from OnCrawl provided.

OFF-PAGE SEO FOR FOR E-COMMERCE WEBSITES 

 

Let’s look at other strategies that you can use outside your website to promote and drive traffic to your online store. Consider these tips in addition to what On Crawl provided.

1. Build A Strong Affiliate Network

Why should you build a strong affiliate network?

Affiliates earn commissions by driving traffic to your site to generate sales. They have built their own blogs and social media networks. To monetize their platforms, they use affiliate marketing.

Why is this an SEO strategy?

You see, most of these affiliate marketers create custom links and they add them to their websites. These links are usually text or banner links. They use their custom links on their website, social media networks, email and blogs. All these links drive traffic back to the eCommerce store, generating millions of dollars of sales for the eCommerce company.

Even though you might be a small ecommerce store, please understand that you can’t do this alone.

You need other people. You have to think outside the box and get a high amount of traffic to your eCommerce site through affiliate networks.

With about 100 to 1,000 affiliates using your website links across their websites, blogs, and social networks, it will drive targeted traffic to your site.  They will promote your website through their network and that will build your brand. This system has made Amazon the largest online retailer in the world and it can work for you too!

2. Leverage Social Media to Promote Your Online Store

Social media is very important for businesses! As an eCommerce website, you have to actively be engaged with your fans, customers, and audience online. With the help of social media, you can build a strong brand for your business and also generate sales.

Set up a Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and other social media pages for your business. Get a team of social media geeks to be in charge of these channels. Using graphics, text links, blog posts, contests, and amazing offers, they can help drive traffic to your eCommerce website.

Use your social media pages to entice your audience to make purchases, try new products and also get surprising new deals.

You can also consider announcing new items on your website via your social meid networks. The key is to stay connected, engaged and close to your shoppers via your social media network.

3. Use Press Releases to Promote Your Online Store

Press releases are among some of the most forgotten marketing strategies used by eCommerce websites. But you need to take a long at this again. News, media, and PR networks have dominated social media networks these days. You can consider using digital PR to build your brand!

If you are targeting local shoppers for your eCommerce website, you can consider writing a compelling news/press releases about your e-commerce store and then send it to a local journalist to publish and have it syndicated on other press release networks as well.

Make sure that the press release has a backlink that is pointing to your online store or e-commerce website.

A single press release syndicated on several news outlets can drive targeted traffic to your website and even boost your backlinks.

4. Ask Review Sites/Bloggers to Promote Your Ecommerce Website For An Offer

Bloggers are building their network every now and then. If you are selling shoes for corporate executives on your online store, you can consider talking to a blogger that blogs or writes reviews about corporate dressing to promote your store.

The blogger can promote your online store to their target audience which can increase visibility, engagement, conversions, and sales. If you already have an affiliate program in place, you can consider enticing this blogger to join the network.

Whatever is the case, if you can get at least 50 to 100 bloggers to promote your eCommerce website and build backlinks that drives traffic to your site, your online store will probably catch fire. Targeted traffic from a credible source will help build your e-commerce website.

5. Start a Blog for Your Ecommerce Website

Content marketing is central to SEO. Blogging has helped many top brands like Amazon, Hubspot, Moz, and many others to drive targeted traffic to their website.  Through https://blog.alexa.com/, Amazon drives millions of traffic to their website which is converted via lead magnets into subscribers and buyers.

Using the right keywords, content, and images you can build a successful blog for your ecommerce website.

Who says that the eCommerce website doesn’t need to blog? Blogging is very essential to grow your network, traffic, sales, and profits.

Start a blog for your eCommerce website, get high quality copywriting to promote the site. Invest in content marketing. You can consider using our six-step content marketing system to start blogging and using SEO to drive traffic to your e-commerce website.

6. Try Influencer Marketing

Sometimes all it takes to move out of mediocrity is get a celebrity endorsement. Top brands like Adidas, Nike, and many others spend millions of dollars every year to have celebrities endorse their brands. You see, these companies are not fools!

They leverage the audience of celebrities to promote their brands and drive traffic to their e-commerce website. You don’t need to spend millions like what Adidas and Nike do! You just need to have a compelling offer that will make a celebrity or an influencer to endorse your brand.

Look for some of these influencers. Consider their audience. Are they your target market? You need to make sure that the target market of the influencer is what you are chasing after, or else it will be an effort in futility. Make sure you understand their audience and then make an offer that drives targeted traffic to your e-commerce website.

7. Invest in Google, Facebook or Twitter Ads

Sometimes you just have to do it! You just have to spend money to make money. But what many online store owners dread is spending money on advertising without getting a better ROI. Well, that is why targeting is very important.

You need to make sure you are targeting the right audience, market, and customer. Use the right keywords that drive traffic, engagement, and sales for your online store. If you are using Facebook, Instagram or Twitter Ads, make sure you have an attractive compelling content.

The right targeting, messaging and ad management system should help you to get a better ROI from your ad spend. You should also consider using YouTube Ads. Video has been doing well these days. Try using a compelling video to drive traffic via YouTube to your e-commerce website.

       8. Use Newsletters

Don’t forget the newsletter!

Email marketing is one of the best digital marketing strategies every eCommerce website must employ. With the help of your lead magnets and subscription systems, you can be able to build a list of buyers who are interested in your product and brand. This group of people can be nurtured into sales through newsletters. 

Through regular newsletter systems, you can begin to convert and generate sales for your e-commerce store. Sometimes people may not buy at once, but through regular nurturing and provision of value through newsletters, you can begin to build trust and rapport with your audience giving them the trust to make a purchase and become your customer. 

CONCLUSION

Use the Off-Page SEO Tips from OnCrawl:

1. Set up efficient keywords.
2. Use strategic keywords in the anchor text.
3. Avoid duplicate content.
4. Write compelling product descriptions.
5. Optimize your product images.
6. Optimize your URL for search engines crawls.
7. Watch if traffic is converting into sales.
8. Improve usability.
9. Avoid broken links

Use the Off-Page SEO Tips from Think Expand:

1. Build a strong affiliate network
2. Use press releases to promote the online store.
3. Leverage your social media network to promote your brand.
4. Ask bloggers to promote your e-commerce website for an offer.
5. Start a blog for your commerce site.
6. Try influencer marketing.
7. Invest in advertising
8. Use newsletters

If you are going to do well with your online store, you must take action. You can’t just wait and say, “Let’s build and they will come!” You have to use off-page SEO  tactics to drive targeted traffic to your e-commerce website and then use on-page SEO tactics to drive engagement, conversions, and sales.

We are Think Expand focus on SEO and Copywriting. We write compelling product descriptions and blog posts backed with SEO friendly keywords. If you already have an eCommerce website or starting one, you might want to start doing product description for every category and use keywords that will help your site to rank well.

We can help write SEO friendly, engaging and compelling product descriptions for your product and brand. These product descriptions will be backed with strategic SEO techniques so that they can position your e-commerce website to rank well on Google and other search engines.

With the help of the below SEO tips, you can make your e-commerce website successful!

 

The importance of branding your small businesses cannot be underestimated.

If you want to build your small business into something huge, exciting and exhilarating, you need to take branding seriously. The faster you will start working on your brand, the quicker you will start getting the results of your strong brand.

Regardless of the type and kind of business you run, you can still build a strong brand for it. Branding is important and crucial for all businesses. But one of the things that many small to medium size business owners do is to think that branding is just for big and large multinational corporations.

That’s a lie!

Branding is for every business. You don’t need a huge advertising budget to build your brand. You can build a strong brand for your small business regardless of your budget. You can always start small. But if you’re consistent in your branding efforts, you’ll be amazed at the results you will see.

If you run a food service business, health coaching, business coaching or any service business, you can still build a strong brand for your business. The importance of branding in business cannot be taken lightly.

To get somewhere with your business, you can’t think small. You have to enlarge your thinking and find ways to enlarge the scope of your business and brand. The following are the 5 importance of branding your small business.

1. Branding helps to build trust for your business.

The most important commodity in business is TRUST!

The more people trust you and what you sell, the more they will buy from you. So you have to focus on how to always increase your TRUST RATING. The more credible, trustworthy and professional your business, the easier people will feel when doing business with you.

Branding helps you to build your trust rating.

The stronger, well established and well known your brand, the easier it will take to convince people to buy from you. By consistently investing and building a strong brand for your business, you will be seen as an authority and market leader in your field.

2.   Branding makes it easy to convince people to buy

People buy from people they know, trust and like. Once people know and like you, you don’t have to push and pressure them to buy. Branding is very important in selling. If you invest in building your brand, then your brand will do the job of breaking through people’s subconscious mind for you.

If you don’t have a brand for your business. You have to show your pass work profile, testimonials, persuade, push and do many things to get your business online. A strong brand breaks inertia and the wall of resistance that keeps people from buying. It shortens the sales cycle and makes you close sales faster.

3.  Branding wins new customers and maintains existing customers

There are basically three ways to grow your business. The first is to get new customers, second is to maintain your existing customers and the third is to increase the unit amount per sale.

But you see, you can’t increase the unit amount if you don’t invest in acquiring new customers and maintaining existing customers.

It is very hard to keep customers these days because they are being bombarded with many offers from competitors and other related business. And the essence of branding is to keep your business in the mind of the customers always.

Don Sexton said, “Building and maintaining your brand keeps you in your customer’s mind…the only place it counts.”

Branding helps you to win new customers and build high customer loyalty for your business. When you mix innovation and branding together, your business will catch fire.

4. Branding manages and increases the demand for your services/products.

You should invest in branding for only one thing. What’s that?

Increasing the demand for your products/services.

Branding is very essential if you want to increase demand for your services and products. The more you invest in building and maintaining your brand, the more people will recognize you as an expert in your field.

When people are looking for services or products related to your field, guess where they will turn to. You! Why?

Branding builds awareness, recognition, and attention in the marketplace. It increases demand for your products and services. It allows you to charge higher prices and attain high products on your products and services.

When you target the right audience and focus your branding efforts on them, you will begin to increase demand for your services and products. Not only that, constant and consistent branding efforts will keep your brand in the mind of your customers.

5. Branding helps to increase sales and achieve higher profits

Why do you think well-established brands like Coca Cola and Apple still promotes their brand even though they are highly successfully? Once you stop building and growing your brand, you will also begin to lose your place and attention in the marketplace.

Since attention is money, the more you lose attention, the lower the demand for your products/services and the more your sales level reduces. Branding increases demand which leads to an increase in sales and that means higher profit. Your investment in branding should go back to fuel your sales an grow the profits and the bottom line of your business.

Conclusion

If you are serious about growing your business then you have to take branding, marketing, and sales very seriously. A strong brand enables you to inspire confidence in your team.

They feel like they are working for a company that is special and unique. Your customers, investors and the general public respect your brand and confidently do business with you. This leads to an increase in demand, sales and bottom line profits for your business.

Steve Jobs said, “ Even a great brands need investment and caring if it’s going to maintain its relevance and vitality.”

To build a strong brand for your business, you have to invest in branding, genuinely care for your customers and be consistent in the delivery of high-quality service/product.

Ready to build your brand?

Contact us to schedule for our 15 minutes brand building strategy. Let’s develop a strategy to help build a strong brand for your small business regardless of the kind of industry you operate. With your brand building strategy, you can take your business and brand to the next level.