All businesses that sell physical products should take advantage of the opportunity of an eCommerce website. Selling on Amazon or eBay is great, but having your own website easily the most profitable way. If you employ the marketing tips below you’ll easily be able to get traffic to your website and start a community that produces a recurring revenue.
An Automatic Recurring Revenue Source
The need for a brick-n-mortar storefront is becoming a thing of the past. Many businesses are enjoying the fruits of a recurring revenue stream with the simplest automation tactics. If your products are already sourced and you keep your inventory stocked creating such a revenue will easy.
If you use the Shopify app to make your eCommerce store, connect it with Oberlo to keep track of all the products you source. Oberlo will give you continuous updates as to whether the products you sell are in stock.
If you’re selling your own products, you’ll have to keep track of it on your own. Shopify makes it easy to do that too. Just check out this link to set up your inventory management system now.
Automated Marketing Techniques
eCommerce website requires marketing, but there are many tools out there to ensure you’re keeping your customers informed.
Email Campaigns
An eCommerce website without email marketing campaign managers is not complete. What happens to all the customers that come to your store and decide to not buy anything? They forget about you, that’s what.
To make sure they don’t forget about you and let them know when newer products and deals are available get yourself an email campaign manager like MailChimp, Constant Contact, or Drip. These products allow you to collect emails and other customer information so you can keep in touch with them.
If the customer came to your website and didn’t buy something, it means you’re doing some things right and some things wrong. What you did correctly is get them to your website in the first place. Kudos to you.
After that something went wrong. Maybe they didn’t feel comfortable with the reviews or the copy on the website. Maybe they found a better price. Who knows? The point is that you need to follow up with them and figure out what went wrong.
Use your email campaign manager to send your list of customers more information or a 2-for-1 special to come back and buy from you.
PPC Ads
PPC ads are also a staple of an eCommerce website. It’s definitely the easiest way to get traffic, but they can be pretty expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing. Check out this article on Facebook monetization to get a feel for what’s involved.
After some time using any PPC ad platform, you’ll realize that the most important thing to understand is that research is vital to the success of your ad set.
Another great way to ensure your ads do well is to hire a copywriter. Getting to the root of the emotions of why a customer buys your product is essential to trying to sell to them. Little things like the wording of your ads or the picture used can make all the difference.
Another big point I must make is to use video as much as possible when selling a product. What do you think is more convincing? A video that shows how resilient a rugged phone case is or an ad with a picture and some copy. Obviously, you would trust the video of someone beating up the phone over a written ad that talks about it.
Search Engine Optimization – SEO
If you have the time and the patience, ranking your website on Google is a strategy you should consider. However, if you don’t have the patience to wait over 6 months to see results in this arena then forget it. Read this article to find out why you don’t need SEO goals anymore.
That being said, SEO is one of the best ways to get traffic to your eCommerce website, and it’s free. Here is a quick guide to get you to the first page of Google.
Disclaimer: SEO is not as simple as putting your keywords on your website or writing about it in a 300-word blog. SEO is a sophisticated science that takes patience and a lot of planning. You need to know exactly what you’re going to write about in advance and keep your schedule as best you can.
How to Market Your eCommerce Website
Twitter is a great place to market your eCommerce website. You can promote all the blogs you write, run ads, and point thousands of people each day to your very best products.
The best tweeter uses the app very frequently and most likely use a product like Buffer to stay consistent. Consistency is the most important part of any social media marketing.
You’re probably already on Facebook, but wonder how people use it to make money. Besides doing Facebook ads, you easily promote your eCommerce website using Facebook pages and creating a group. Create your page right now, and remember to post to it daily.
Maintaining a group does take some time, so if you’re too busy hold off on this for a little bit or hire some loyal followers to run it for you. You can even use a private group for troubleshooting and to do tutorials if your business requires it. This keeps the bad press off your website and allows you to help your customers in real-time.
LinkedIn is very similar to Facebook, but if you’re a B2B company this is the best place for you to market your store. The key to LinkedIn is to master the art of direct messaging possible clients and building relationships.
Keep your posts consistent and make sure you check out the ad features and see if you’re on the right network.
Medium
If you’re a blogger, you can post all the blogs on your website on Medium too. This does not count as duplicate content and you won’t be punished by Google for doing so. You can also use this as your only blog and link to it from your website to other social platforms. It’s formatted in a very aesthetic way so you don’t have to worry about it looking good.
Instagram is the most powerful eCommerce tool these days. Not only can you promote your business on it and link to it in your profile, but you can also sell your products on the platform itself. This allows your customers to purchase directly.
Go to Instagram and look for the little suitcase. That means you can purchase the product as long as you have your Paypal hooked up. This is an eCommerce website on steroids for impulse products.
If you’re new to Instagram, check out this article on hashtags to get a feel for the app and the hashtag tool. They are simply the best way to get your information out there, so study up.
Snapchat
Snapchat is also a great place to promote your business with videos. You can tell all your followers to follow you on Snapchat. Then make it your most consistent posting profile. Here you can point people in the direction of your website all the time and offer specials. So many genius marketers are doing this regularly.
Direct Mail
Lastly, use direct mail to promote your eCommerce website. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s really a great way. Most people don’t expect to get a lot of mail these days. It’s email and pop-ups that scare them away. Direct mail is almost a sure thing if you do it right. Check out The Ultimate Sales Letter, by Dan Kennedy for great instructions on how to do this.
Let’s say you’re selling paper products and graphic designs. You can make a print ad or a mailer to get people to view your website. Going to your website instead of a physical location is a great way to get more traffic and see what offer without leaving the customer’s domicile.
Online Shopping Grows Every Year
Most people already know that online shopping is growing every year. Just look at Amazon’s stock price.
It’s no secret, but why aren’t you doing it yet?
You’re probably not going to have the success that Amazon has, but it doesn’t mean that an eCommerce website isn’t the answer to creating that new revenue stream that sets your business apart from your competition. Using it is if you focus on it being a legitimate revenue stream.
I think most people talk themselves out of having an eCommerce store because they think they missed their chance. You might be late in comparison to the other businesses that already have theirs, but it doesn’t mean it’s too late. It simply means that you’re business doesn’t have it yet, but should.
For more information on how to get your eCommerce website off the ground, consult this article on online business now to see the benefits of creating your first store.
