Do you want your online store to make higher sales? Well, you need to do a lot more than sending out promotional emails or posting a photo on Facebook or Instagram. It is time you get out of your comfort zone and be open to new ideas to promote your store online. In today’s world, everything is online, and making your presence felt is very essential.
With just one click, you reach all over the world. To promote your store online smartly and reach out to your target population within a small period, we have compiled a list of 11 effective ways to improve your shop online. Here we go.
- Try AdWords
By using AdWords, you reach your target audience almost immediately. Every business should have an AdWords account in today’s online world. Your advertisement gets displayed on search engines and third party websites.
Banner ads get displayed on websites and blogs belonging to your niche. You can also try out text ads on Google or other search engines. Your website appears the first when something related to your given keywords is searched.
- Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is all about giving someone a percentage of profit if they make a sale for you. You can either promote this as your USP or make sellers sign up on your website or ask influencers to do that. Some stores give massive discounts or free clothes to wear, but money works as the best motivation to boost sales. Also, these people will promote your product all the time, so you get two things done simultaneously.
- Email Marketing
Keep your email game updated with attractive messages, discounts, promotions, etc. Email your customers regularly, give your audience secret coupons and extra benefits to try out your products. You can send out different emails pretending to different audience, occasions, and seasons. Just make sure you don’t bombard them with too many emails.
Also, include your store’s website/ offers in your email signature along with social media handles. It will encourage viewers to visit your online store and glance at it.
- Social media and promotions
Social media play a vital role in promoting your online store. It’s one of the easiest ways to reach millions of active users. A recent report suggests that nearly three billion people around the globe now use social media for the various purposes. Facebook tops the list of social media for monthly active users.
With eye-catchy messaging and attractive promotional campaigns, you can easily connect with new as well existing users. Keep your social media always active; engage your audience in daily activities. Apart from promotions, you can also use social media to answer user queries, give suggestions, hear and solve customer issues in real-time.
- Get help from social influencers
Find social influencers like photographer, bloggers, and vloggers on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube that belong to your niche. Send these influencers free samples of your product and ask them to review it after using it. You can also send a discount coupon for their followers to apply while shopping at your online store. Many followers trust these influencers and often purchase products that they use.
- Contact with guest bloggers
Sponsor bloggers to write blogs about your products or services. Give them a free sample to try or else start a monthly subscription process, where the blogger writes three or four blogs on your products. Target review bloggers, because people look up to them to provide the best review so that they don’t have to spend much time researching about a particular product.
- Sponsor an event
Keep track of events that happen locally. Pick a couple of them every quarterly and sponsor the event. You don’t need to sponsor the entire event but a part of it, for example – food or lights, or paying for the venue. Ask the event organizers to let you put up a small stall, where people can check out your products and buy them.
8 Gift merchandise and coupons along with every purchase
Every time someone purchases your products, you can give discount coupons and merchandise along with it. The merchandise can be something like a sticker, fridge magnets, a t-shirt, key chain with your company’s name and logo. It increases customer loyalty, and the discount coupons increase sales too.
Send some gift on customer’s first order like keychains or something small. Also, change your gifts every season to get people excited about it. Promote these rewards on all your social media accounts and the homepage of your online store as well.
- Referral program
When any user come to your store and purchases some products, give them a referral coupon code for their followers. This program helps in spreading your brand name and attracting lots of new users
It will motivate every user to refer someone new and thereby to grab the referral reward.
- Start blogging
Take blogging seriously. Apart from spreading the brand awareness, Blogs help in widely in SEO. They improve the number of backlinks and increase traffic to your online store. The more the backlinks, the more chances of coming up in organic search results in different search engines
Post blogs at least thrice in a week to let people know about your latest products. You can hire freelance writers and give them topics to write that suit your niche. If you have a clothing store, ask the writers to write on topics like bridal trends of 2017, winter trends for 2017, and some hack or how to articles.You can also make styling/ informational videos on YouTube and reach out to a broader audience.
- Fire up your social media with reviews and attractive photos
Become an influencer yourself. Any person who comes across your social media account should get hooked on your reviews and photos. Invest in hiring a photographer and a stylist to make your photos look attractive. When you upload good quality photos, your customers will start following you and become loyal shoppers.