9 Effective Ways to Promote Your Online Store

Have you ever seen a marketing blunder that cost a company millions of dollars? I’m sure you have seen it!

I feel no surprise in saying that 14% of online businesses fail because of poor promotional ways. It’s because, improper marketing strategies can make customers feel overwhelmed, annoyed, or even angry.

One of the biggest cold drink brands, Pepsi, faced criticism for its marketing strategy.

Are you wondering how to make sure it won’t happen with your online store? You can go through this blog post to uncover some of the most effective ways to promote your eCommerce store online and get an idea of “What’s better to do?” and “What may have the wrong impact?” in your marketing strategy.

Get ready to know them. I promise it’s worth it.

Why is it necessary to promote your online store?

More than 7 billion people are out there, out of which 4.9 billion are already using the internet. Don’t you feel like making fair use of that?

Well, promoting your online store and reaching out to even a small part of these 4.66 billion people will help you build mansions. And that’s what describes it all.

So, believe that it’s time for you to start working on online store marketing with the right strategies so that you can;

• Increases your store’s visibility
• Engage your potential customers

• Tell them more about your product/services
• Establish potential customer’s trust in your brand
• Convince them to make a purchase

It may not be as easy as it seems, but I’m sure with the right marketing strategies it will work.

What is your target audience for promotions?

To make your marketing strategy more effective, you need to first know your target audience and whom you’re looking to sell.

Usually, there are 3 main target audiences for any eCommerce website, to help you get started with your marketing strategy. That I’m describing below, and along with that, I’ve added the different ways you can approach them:

1. Those who purchased from you in the past. Retargeting ads, personalized emails, loyalty programs, and discount offers can help approach them again.
2. Those who are in the hunt for similar products that you sell. You can come in the middle of their search journey with the help of search engine marketing, enhancing your presence on Social Media, or using PPC ads served by PPC agencies..
3. Those who know about your brand and are looking to purchase from you in the near future. Personalized emails, discount offers, and sharing solutions for their problem can help.

Now that you know “whom to approach” and “how to approach”, we can start with the most effective ways to promote your online store.

Effective Ways to Promote Your Online Store

Let’s start with the main topic you’re here for. These effective marketing ways will work perfectly if you work on them with all the energy and patience you have left.

And remember, the more visibility your eCommerce site gets, the more traffic you’ll get on your online store.

1. Go ahead by holding hands with SEO

The main goal of performing search engine optimization (SEO) on any website is to rank it at the top of search engine results pages (SERP)

Now you may be wondering if there is any ready-made SEO strategy to improve SEO on your online store, or not. Well, I can share a list of things you can do to strategize SEO for your eCommerce store. And that list includes;

• Keyword research
• URL optimization
• High-quality content on the website
• Website Speed Optimization
• Mobile-first approach
• Internal linking and high-quality backlinking
• Performance analysis
• Improved user experience

Another thing is that SEO is huge, and there are many areas to look after. But these are some areas where you need to pay extra attention while working on SEO, as they hold great potential to rank you at the top of search engines. And those areas are;

• Product Title
• URL
• Meta tags, or title tags
• Product Description
• Images and alt tags
• Blog, or related content

Simply, Moving forward with it will help you promote your online store easily.

2. Don’t leave behind email marketing

People think email marketing is dead! But the truth is that it is still one of the most effective marketing tools.

In simple terms, it allows your online store to provide a personalized experience to your potential customers to establish trust and foster a new relationship.

If someone says it doesn’t work, they may be doing it wrong. There are many ways to promote your online business with email marketing, and you only need to start with the basic thing of “building a good subscriber list”.

Now, you may wonder how to attract your potential customer to click that “Subscribe to Newsletter” button. Well, in that case offering incentives will turn out as an effective strategy.

For instance, visitors or existing customers can receive discount coupons after subscribing to the newsletter.

3. Take the Help of PPC Marketing

PPC stands for pay-per-click. It is an advertising solution from Google Ads, where advertisers need to pay each time their ad is clicked. Here’s an example of how PPC ads look on users’ end.

If you’re looking for quick conversion, a PPC strategy can help you promote your eCommerce website in front of thousands. This works the same for other business types like SaaS, PaaS to name a few. Incorporating PPC for SaaS into your digital marketing strategy can accelerate your product’s growth and visibility. It is so impactful that on Google, 46% of clicks go to the top 3 PPC ads.

The most common type of PPC advertising is search engine advertising. And Google AdWords will help you with that. From creating an ad campaign, and bidding on keywords to checking analytics, Google AdWords will work on all your requirements perfectly.

4. Make an Effective Presence on Social Media

A thing that any human craves is – a connection.

And that connection is the reason for the addiction of people to social media. And if you’re able to make that connection with your potential customers on social media, you’re winning already.

It’s proven that social media advertising can drive you a lot of attention as it keeps you and your customer in active interaction.

It’s always good for you to have an effective social media presence to promote your eCommerce or online business.

This is true no matter whether you’re in a B2C industry using Instagram reels and TikTok to promote your online business, or if you’re in a B2B space using LinkedIn Premium to reach more potential clients.

Here are some ways to leverage your social media presence:

• Start analyzing your target audience on your chosen social media platform
• Try to engage them with posts and live sessions
• Establish a positive brand image to build their trust in your brand
• Promote your products in a non-pushy manner
• Add value to your post instead of just selling it
• Share things that your customers are interested in spending time on

Your social media presence is of no use if you post once in a while or when you get time. You need to schedule the entire strategy to make your social media presence do some magic and attract more and more people toward your brand.

Now, what would you add to your strategy that keeps your target audience engaged with your brand? Want me to share some ideas? Okay, sharing them right below.

• Conduct quizzes and contests
• Post-micro-contents on your feed` `
• Share video tutorials and behind-the-scenes
• Go live with your followers
• Post reviews from existing customers on your feed
• Be part of brand-related trends

Okay, so these were some ideas of what you can do on social media to maintain an active connection with your followers. You can adapt them to improve visibility for your eCommerce brand as they work all the time.

Additionally, social media platforms such as; Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and many more have shopping features, so you can take benefit from that, too.

5. Let Influencers Talk about your Brand

Influencer marketing is all about word-of-mouth, and that’s the reason why it’s so popular.

Because when a highly influential person/brand recommends your products, it attracts a large number of followers to show interest in your brand.

And if you have those influencers talking well about your brand on social media platforms, such as; TikTok and Instagram, you’ll get fruitful results soon.

Worried about “How” you’ll start this? Well, you can find the steps below.

Step 1: Finalize your budget to clarify which category of influencers you’re looking to work with.

Usually, there are 4 types of influencers by follower count.

• Nano-influencers (1K–10K followers)
• Micro-influencers (10K–100K followers)
• Macro-influencers (100K–1M followers)
• Mega or celebrity influencers (1M+ followers)

And all of them charge accordingly, so you must work on your budget first.

Step 2: After the budget, find influencers that are working on your same niche. Such as; beauty, health, lifestyle, travel, and more.

Step 3: Shortlist at least 25 of them, and try to connect with them.

Step 4: After they respond, talk to them about your marketing ideas and agree on how long or how many posts you can commit to.

Step 5: Lastly you can settle it down by sending your products to them or by paying them with money.

That’s it! You’ve established a trustful relationship with the influencer.

6. Unlock the potential of paid promotions

Ad campaigns are the best way to promote your online store, be it on Google or any social media platform.

Now, why is that? See, the internet is a crowded place, which makes it easy for ads to get lost in it. And that’s why having a well-planned strategy for your ad campaigns will work as a key to success.

With a proper ads strategy, you don’t only increase brand awareness but also improve online store traffic and sales. It’s like a combo pack of benefits, isn’t it?

To make your process easier, I’ve also added below how you’ll make an impactful Ad campaign strategy.

1. Find out answers for the below questions.
   1. What is objective and budget?
   2. Who is your target audience?
   3. What brand message you’re trying to share?
   4. What content works best for which platform?
   5. How can you make my ad strategy unique?
2. Maintain consistency with brand image, brand message, posting frequency, and hashtags.
3. Keep experimenting with your content marketing strategy to make it stay ahead of current trends to never compromise with content quality.
4. Always analyze metrics, to ensure that your marketing strategy is working well and your online store is getting better results from the ad campaigns.

Following these best practices can make your ad campaign more impactful.

7. Keep up with Content Marketing

When you have properly implemented a content marketing strategy for promoting your eCommerce business online, there are higher chances of receiving attention from your customers or your target audience.

Normally people think that once they write blogs for their online store, they’re doing good at content marketing. But that’s the half-truth. As there are some more factors than just writing blogs, which include; guest blogging, answering questions on Quora/Reddit, and more such stuff.

Before you fall for any mistake in content marketing, you can check out some tips given below.

Content Marketing Tips:

• Ensure that your content meets business goals
• Understand the audience that you’re writing for
• Publish content at regular intervals to maintain consistency
• Know your customers’ journey and tailor your content accordingly
• Know your user’s concerns and solve issues for them
• Build the most informative content
• Keep your content 100% original
• Lastly, don’t forget to keep track of analytics

By implementing these tips in your content marketing strategy, you can unlock the box of benefits, which includes;

• Presents your online store as an industry expert
• Shows the trustworthiness of your brand
• Sticks your target audience to your brand for longer
• Increases traffic on your online store (if the content is optimized for SEO)

Now, you’ve surely got an idea of how impactful content marketing can turn out for your eCommerce business.

8. Offer Discounts and Coupons to your Customers

Well, offering discounts is the ‘pro’ way to promote your online store to a huge amount of online users. Because who doesn’t like to save money? Everybody does. You’ve to make good use of it to grab your visitors’ attention and boost your eCommerce sales number.

So make sure you’re offering your target audience attractive offers and deals as they are always helpful in bringing more customers and more traffic to your eCommerce site. If you don’t have better knowledge of different types of discounts and coupons to attract your target audience, here is the list.

• Percentage discount
• Buy-one-get-one-free (BOGO) Discount
• Coupon code
• Clearance sale
• Loyalty rewards
• Referral discounts
• Seasonal discounts

Ensure that you make good use of most of these discounts, as all of them have huge impacts on your customers’ decision of purchasing from you.

9. Enroll for Google Shop Listings for Free Advertising

2020 was the year when Google introduced a facility named “Google Shopping” for every eCommerce retailer to list their products for free.

Now, we know that Google is the most-visited site in the world. If you choose to list your products on Google Shopping, they will be presented to millions of people visiting Google. And who doesn’t like a free advertisement for a huge amount of people? Everyone does, as it’s packed with fancy benefits.

Moreover, Google Shopping allows you to run product ads or a promotion for your best-selling product. This is somehow similar to Google Ads, where you’re charged when your potential customer clicks on your ad.

So this could be another way of promoting your online store and your products, by listing them on Google Shopping, and I swear it will get you great results.

10. Collaborate with relevant brands for increasing market share

In 2023, collaborations are an unavoidable part of the digital marketing toolbox and not just hype.

I’ve seen some brands running contests together, and giving shout-outs to each other on their social media channels, which results in greater visibility, sets trends, and gives their audiences an option to give attention to each other’s brand.

It’s always a good idea for your eCommerce to collaborate with other brands with similar target audiences, that support you. Collaborating with them will open the gate for their audience to engage with your brand and can result in an increase in brand loyalty from your customers.

Conclusion

Building a perfect marketing strategy is complex. For keeping it on track, merchants are always thinking of ways to promote their online store that works perfectly.

In the midst of pressure mounting over the head, sometimes merchants choose the wrong ways to promote eCommerce, which turns out to be harsh on users.

However, the strategies that I’ve shared with you in my blog are legit ways to promote your online eCommerce store and will never backfire as they are verified by marketing experts.

So make your process easy and adopt these ways to promote your online store without getting lost in confusion.

Thanks for Reading!