4 Free Ways to Market Your eCommerce Business Online
The internet has brought forth a wealth of knowledge and tools for everyone to utilize. As a small business owner, you would be at a disadvantage to not use this abundance of help.
One of the greatest ways to use the internet in the business world is to market yourself and your product. No longer do you have to rely on old school marketing and business practices. With a little insight and practice, you can increase your eCommerce business’s revenue and productivity with online marketing.
In this post, we’ll look at four ‘free’ ways to market your store in the new world. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on advertisements, billboards and sales, start using these channels to market at a much lower cost.
Utilize Email Marketing
If you are still in the land of mailed paper coupons, you could be missing out on a wealth of opportunities. While some businesses can be successful marketing by mail, there is a large group of consumers that prefer emailed coupons due to accessibility and eco-friendliness. With the stress and busyness of today’s clientele, having resources readily available by email on their mobile devices increases their loyalty and preference to your brand. Not to mention, your business will save large amounts of money by marketing through email instead of paper mail.
In fact, studies have revealed some very interesting facts about email marketing:
- Email now accounts for 7% of all eCommerce acquisitions, second only to organic search.
- The customer lifetime value for email is 12% higher than the average.
- 33% of consumers report that email contributes to most of their online spending.
- The ROI (Return On Investment) for email is $44.25 per dollar spent.
Amazon’s email marketing is consistently top quality. They analyze everything you do on their store, like what products you bought, your browsing history, your wishlist, and more, to create personalized recommendations that they send to your inbox.
Here’s an example of an email they send based on purchase history –
Get Involved with Social Media
Yes, your business has been around for years and seemed to be doing just fine before social media was born. However, businesses have begun to utilize the tool that is social media to market effectively to a larger group of consumers. While you were previously successful without the tool, you now need social media outlets to stay abreast of the competition. Remember, losing relevancy with the consumer is one of the fastest ways out of business.
Sephora has been killing it on social networks. While many brands are still getting their feet wet with social media, Sephora has gone on to dominate Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. They’ve even started to grow huge followings on newer networks like Vine and Snapchat.
Have a look at their Vine channel. It’s just 6 seconds of video, but they manage to engage and capture a huge audience. Can’t argue with over 100,000 subscribers for a relatively new channel!
Make Yourself Mobile
This could apply to many different routes of marketing. By making a website that is mobile friendly, your consumer will be able to visit your brand and product on their phones while on-the-go. Another option is to produce “call-to-action” logos on your product to encourage consumer interaction. New customers may not be willing to become dedicated enough to download your app, but if you offer a possible prize on a “call-to-action” blurb, they may get involved with your company.
One route that is more in-depth for businesses is to create a mobile app. This is a product the consumer can download on their phone which allows them ease of access to your business and your products. Some big eCommerce companies in India have actually shut down their web stores and completely moved to mobile.
If you’re still a small business, it makes sense for you to focus on the web but also have a site that’s responsive. You may not see too many sales coming from mobile on Google Analytics, but that doesn’t mean customers aren’t just browsing and researching products to buy later on a desktop. A poor mobile experience will definitely put you in a negative light.
Additionally, Google has started to prioritize mobile-friendly sites in search results. That means more free, organic traffic to your store.
If your eCommerce store is not mobile-friendly, you’re missing out on traffic and sales. It’s time for you to make some changes. You can either hire a developer to that for you or switch to a platform that is already mobile-friendly.
Create a Blog
Businesses that produce blogs with timely, consumer-relevant posts have a better chance of being visible on search engines. If you feel you are not equipped to write blog posts, consider hiring out for a part-time social media, blogger professional to manage your online affairs. Often, this employee can simply telecommute and work a few hours a week to keep costs low.
If that seems like too great of an expenditure, try partnering with existing bloggers in exchange for publicity or goods. Many bloggers will be willing to do guest posts if they can generate more links back to their homepage through you.
Have a look at the Fitbit blog for inspiration. They totally get it, and their blog has helped them attracts thousands of customers at higher returns than advertisements.
You can see that they publish posts on topics related to Fitbit features, like exercise, food, and health. They also publish case studies of other customers using Fitbits to achieve their health goals. This inspires readers and converts many of them into customers.
Stop Wasting Money
Of course, no marketing is completely free, but in this day and age spending money on advertisements is just not feasible for small businesses. Even for Google Adwords, the competition is always increasing and costs are getting higher. Instead, by focusing on the channels mentioned here, you can dramatically cut your costs while increasing traffic and sales.
