When you first start an e-commerce website it can be difficult to know where to start with regards to marketing. It is such a task to actually get your website live and functioning that you might not even have thought about actually marketing it, so with that in mind, here are 5 simple tips to get you started.
Social media
Social media doesn’t have to be a mystery, it is actually very simple: Your customers are already using social media and they are communicating with their friends who are probably interested in similar areas.
The easiest way to use social media is to simply ask. First of all, make sure your service and your products are top notch and top value, and ask every customer to share you with their friends. You could even offer incentives to really help the sharing.
SEO
SEO requires an upfront investment, so if you are on a shoestring it may not be for you. But once you have achieved good rankings you can continue to get good volumes of traffic for some time afterwards, and if you keep working at it SEO can give you a solid foundation to build your business on.
Copy your competitors
Have a bit of a spy on your competition and try to figure out what types of marketing they are using, then simply figure out how they could do it better and do it for yourself. It is amazing how many businesses completely fail to pay attention to what the competition is doing!
Repeat custom is by far your biggest opportunity and one that many businesses fail to take advantage of. Make sure you collect every email address you can and regularly check back to see what your cusomers think of you.
Send out vouchers, special offers and helpful advice that your customers will appreciate. Be friendly and make sure that next time they want something you sell, you are the first place they look.
PPC
PPC is the easiest way to get a lot of traffic to your site very quickly. The downside is that it costs money, so if you want to make a profit you are going to have to keep a careful eye on your costs and make sure your campaign is effective at creating customers.
Many PPC campaigns don’t make any money on the purchases they produce, but if you can use email marketing to ensure repeat custom, you can make it back out financially.
