Many greenhorn brands think that by just creating a website or social media platform, they have ticked all the boxes in their business promotion journey and the next thing they need to do is sit back and count the dollars that would pour in.
But sorry to say that just taking your business online is not enough. Having one profile or page cannot contribute to the overall brand value promotion of a firm. You should drop that misaligned impression.
Now don’t get me wrong.
It is crucial to have a website and social media handles for your business that enables your clients and customers to have a broad idea about your company, answer crucial and pressing questions related to the product, and felicitate their needs with regular posts.
Now except you are doing all of those, staying online would not bring you the expected business results except some best ways to promote online store as covered here is applied.
I mean what is a shop without shoppers if you’re online and those who should be patronizing you are not aware of what you sell.
The more people see your business, the better your chances of reaching those people who need what you are selling.
When you promote your online store, your marketing content reaches the right places at the right time, putting your product in front of the eyes you want to reach.
Bottom line is that you need a proper online marketing strategy in place to effectively promote your online store.
Driving Traffic to Your Online Store
Whether you’re trying to attract your first customer or you’re already big in the industry, generating more traffic to your online store is a crucial way to promote your online store.
If your site is properly optimized for conversions, getting an increase in web traffic could mean more customers and more sales.
You need to drive massive traffic to your brand to stay ahead of the pack and set your business up for success in this increasingly competitive marketplace.
Strategically targeted ads can work like a magic. But if you’re a novice in this path, you’re probably on a shoestring budget, making the idea of sinking money into ads seem out of reach. Fortunately, there are lots of other free ways you can get traffic to promote your store.
10 Best Ways To Promote Online Store
There are many ways to promote your online store, both free and paid methods, that can help you get more traffic and eventually increase your sales. In this article, I will walk you through the best of the best ways.
#1. Start a blog
Your business needs a blog where you can regularly publish useful, long-form content on your site. This is non-negotiable.
Research shows that Marketers with blogs are 13 times more likely to generate a positive Return on Investment (ROI) as over 55% of users visit blogs.
A blog is the best way to connect with your audience.
It gives you the platform to not only showcase your work but also allows your audience to know more about you and your product.
Blogging is a way to increase your search engine ranking as companies that blog have been found to receive 67% more leads a month than companies that don’t.
Blogs give a brand a voice and connect its audience to new products and services, news, timely information, market trends, and what happens at the company beyond its website.
Blogs showcase a company’s expertise and influence and establish industry credibility.
Other reasons why starting a blog is important for your business
#1. Increase customer engagement: Blogs help in establishing your business as a brand and help set you apart from your competitors.
They make your visitors aware of what is happening with your business right now and can also be used to give more insights into your products/services.
#2. Boost your brand identity: Constantly blogging about relevant and unique issues in your niche will increase your visibility and so make your content instantly recognizable to your audience.
While many consumers take the time to research and compare options, others choose whatever they happen to recognize.
#3. A blog gives you the chance to claim your title as an industry expert: Creating a blog and writing great content in your niche set you on high grounds as an industry expert.
Customers will feel much more comfortable making an order because you have shown clear evidence through your content that you are an expert in your field.
#2. Boost your organic social presence
An organic social presence nurtures your relationship with your customers or audience. It helps you establish and grow your brand’s presence where people are already spending their time.
It supports and retains existing customers.
Once they feel connected, you have a much better shot at not only gaining conversions but building brand loyalty hence promoting your online store.
With competition continuously increasing, brand loyalty and customers’ perceptions of your company play an important role during the buying process, which is why an organic social presence is vital.
One thing that makes organic social presence so great is that it’s relatively inexpensive. It doesn’t deal with ad budgets, and costs appear as the time and labor put into creating posts and strategy. It’s a cost-effective way to connect with your audiences, build relationships and share your brand.
An organically grown audience is the healthiest weapon to fight competition. So make a lot of noise without becoming a nuisance, but make sure you are heard.
#3. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
No matter what kind of business you are involved in, the chances are that new customers will arrive having found you via a Google search or any other search engine.
By working to make sure your site is ranked as high as possible on the search results you will increase the amount of qualified traffic driven to your site.
The traffic of this kind is also known as ‘organic’ traffic.
Search engine optimization ensures that your product is easily found in organic search. Once you remain at the top of the ranking, people will be able to see you more easily and this is a great way to promote your online store.
Brands that invest in SEO can build credibility and trust with audiences, making it an important part of an online marketing strategy.
#4. Progressive Web Apps (formerly Chrome Apps)
These apps are responsive to every device and they function and feel like any app you would get from the Apple store or Google Play Store.
One of the primary features of a Progressive web app is that even though it feels like an app.
Other significant benefits PWAs offer are their speed, the ability to work offline, and accessibility directly from the browser.
Users ordinarily expect a site to load within 2 seconds and may abandon your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
With users abandoning mobile sites that take too long to load, PWAs are a worthy option for businesses.
PWAs provide a set of best practices and modern web APIs that are aimed at meeting your customers’ needs by making your site fast, installable, reliable, and engaging.
#5. Run a Facebook Campaign
With 2.91 billion active Facebook users, it’s safe to say that Facebook is a reliable choice when deciding where to advertise.
Facebook is popular among a wide variety of demographics, including gender and age which means there’s a good chance your target audience is engaging with the platform, making Facebook a great platform for running ads.
The latest statistics show that Facebook continues to reign strong as the king of social media, with 2.91 billion active users in 2022.
That means that around three out of every four of the 3.96 billion social media users are active Facebook users.
According to a global survey, 93 percent of responding social media marketers used Facebook to promote their online stores.
Running a Facebook advertising campaign that incorporates engaging contests or giveaways can be an effective strategy to reach your diverse target audience and promote your online store.
Using contest templates can help you create eye-catching and interactive contests that resonate with different age groups and genders, increasing your brand’s visibility and engagement on the platform.
#6. Create an app for android and apple app stores
Reach customers where they are, which is probably with their phones. The reality is that you hardly can find any person around without a phone that they are so attached to these days.
It’s now the best way we stay connected with the rest of the world in more ways than one. As a business, it makes brilliant sense to build relationships the way your customers prefer.
It makes brilliant sense to reach an audience through their phones by creating a mobile app for your business.
Using the cloud-based drag and drop business app maker, you can create powerful business apps that drive more sales, leads, and revenue helping you to promote your online store.
Appy Pie’s app maker is a convenient tool that allows you to create business apps for Android and iPhone without having to spend a lot of time learning the technicalities of coding.
As an app entrepreneur, you may have a great idea for an app, but not the resources or the skill set to convert it into an app. Appy Pie’s business app maker gives you just the advantage you need.
Not only does it take coding out of the equation, but also lets you create business apps in minutes for a fraction of the cost. The opportunities are vast whether you want to build something as simple as an inquiry form app or as complicated as an e-commerce app.
#7. Use Microsoft ads (formerly Bing ads)
Microsoft is not a platform to be ignored if the goal is to promote your online store. With nearly 3% of the market share and consisting of more mature users who have a significant household income, Microsoft ad is a platform to leverage in promoting your online store.
Microsoft also owns Yahoo and AOL search for an additional 2% of the market. The search engine gets approximately 13.7 billion searches monthly.
Microsoft ads platform uses a range of marketing communication channels such as advertising, sales promotion, events and experiences, public relations, direct marketing, and personal selling in an integrated way to communicate its marketing message to its target customer segment.
By and large, the Microsoft ads platform is a great platform to promote your online store.
#8. Partner with complementary brands
A brand partnership is a mutual agreement between two or more businesses or organizations. Through these partnerships, companies help one another to increase brand exposure, break into new markets, and add extra value to products/services.
Partnership marketing delivers several other key benefits, including increased revenue and customer retention.
But perhaps more importantly, partnership marketing is a necessary new avenue of growth as older, established methods become less efficient.
#9. Create unique and relevant content.
Creating unique and relevant content only costs time. It’s incredibly cost-effective and even better as it offers compounding returns on ads.
When you create relevant content, your offer your customers an irresistible bait that they must swallow once they come across it, they want to consume it to the end and when this happens, Google sees you as providing quality and rewards your efforts handsomely.
Content is king because it helps you give your audience something they haven’t seen before. Providing them with the same old content that they can get with everyone else won’t serve to your benefit.
Give them unique content and you will wow your audience. For this, you have to research and understand your audience.
Well-written content engages the reader; increases search engine rankings and traffic and increases the likelihood of quality links from other sites.
#10. Utilize Your Email List.
Building an email list is crucial because it’s the best way to build a relationship with potential customers intimately.
You’re right in someone’s inbox, where they receive other personalized communication from their work, family, and friends.
Personalized emails stand out within the inbox as highly relevant, tailor-made material. They make an email more likely to be opened and clicked on.
Email marketing strategy is the most cost-effective way to promote your products, communicate with your customers, and reach your business goals.
Conclusion
The process of promoting your store online a lot of times feels like you’re shouting into a dark, bottomless hole. Like you are calling attention to yourself in the middle of a noisy and rowdy marketplace.
But that is not what it is; don’t get discouraged if your first attempt isn’t a great marketing experience you will enjoy sharing.
As outlined in this article “Best Ways To Promote Online Store”, there are many ways to promote your online store successfully too. This requires making use of the best marketing strategies. It could be a combination of two or more of these strategies.
So if your online store tales have been a sad statistic, fall back on the methods outlined in this article to turn that sad story into a success story.
