Nine ways to promote your online store like a pro
Did you grow up hearing the tortoise and hare story? The moral of the story, “slow and steady wins the race,” still lingers in our minds. This moral is true even in marketing, especially when promoting an online store.
With the average cart abandonment rate of 80%, customers are not that easy to engage. It requires a great deal of effort, persistence, and various marketing strategies to engage and reach your audience.
While offers and discounts are essential for increasing online sales, it’s no longer the only thing that works. Today, customers prefer engaging in brands that have a story and voice.
You need diversified marketing tactics that enable long-term customer relationships while ensuring customers return to your online store.
But it’s easier said than done.
In this article, we discuss nine ways to promote your online store like a pro.
Here are a few ways to build a robust online store and get your store in front of the people who want to buy.
1. Use online slideshows or presentations to tell your brand story
The vast majority of business-related slideshows and presentations are mind-numbingly dull.
When you stand out from the crowd and craft a memorable presentation, your store becomes the talk of Tinseltown.
The key here is presenting customers with a brand story that instills emotion and makes them purchase from your online store.
That’s where presentations can come in handy. Using sequential slide decks that you create using Pitch’s presentation maker, you can provide a visual and auditory narrative about your online store.
Using slideshows, you can embed video clips, add images, and bring your narration to life. It helps in conveying a rich and immersive experience.
While creating videos is costly and time-consuming, using slideshows or presentations to tell your brand’s story is an excellent tactic for online stores that are just starting.
2. Leverage the power of social media
Today, social media is not about making friends or sharing videos and pictures. Instead, it’s a gigantic marketing tool that can help you promote your online store like a pro.
From using Instagram reels to TikTok, you can attract customers in many unique ways. Choose the social media platform depending upon where your customers spend the maximum of their time online.
You need to have a presence on those platforms. Make sure to share vibrant and attractive images and engaging videos.
Notice how Bon Bon Bon uses Instagram to display images of their products.
That’s the type of social media marketing that will help you attract, engage customers and direct them to your online store. Other great ways to leverage the power of social media are using the right hashtags, offering giveaways, and working with influencers.
There is no better time than now to start your social media presence, and you can take help from Sprout’s social media platform to build a strong online presence.
3. Create valuable and exciting content
Creating content for your target audience and customers is an excellent way to drive traffic to your website and provide information that portrays your online store as an authority in the market.
One perfect example of an online store providing excellent content to their customer is Nykaa. The company uses “Beauty Book” to provide insightful content on different makeup topics like face, lips, nails, and even bridal makeup.
It helps buyers make informed decisions about the products and use their products. Such content provides value to customers and boosts the SEO of your website.
4. Have an SEO strategy
One of the major disadvantages of selling from an online store is lower traffic than major marketplaces like Flipkart and Amazon.
You have to optimise your online store to receive more website traffic. Focus on incorporating SEO keywords into your product description and listing titles.
You can drive more traffic and boost sales by incorporating search terms customers use when searching for your product on various search engines.
Using Ahrefs’s SEO tool, you can identify relevant SEO keywords.
Give preference to on-page SEO which refers to product titles and descriptions, images, or blogs on your website. Ensure to include keywords such that they use language a customer might use when searching for related products.
5. Work with influencers
Working with influencers is a social commerce strategy that might be expensive initially but can deliver exceptional results.
Usually, influencers have a large online fanbase, and they can influence the purchasing behaviour of their followers. When deciding to use an influencer for promoting your store, choose one that aligns with your target audience.
This ensures that the influencer’s values are an excellent fit for your brand. Influencers can post pictures using your product, write a post explaining its features, talk about your product at an event and write authentic online reviews.
You can even go ahead by working with the influencer to create a new product. Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams collaborated with musician Tyler to create a new flavour.
You can successfully increase customer engagement and drive traffic to your website by paying a fee to influencers.
6. Encourage product reviews
Authentic customer reviews are an excellent way to build trust around your online products and stores.
As online buyers cannot physically touch and feel the product, they depend primarily on the social proof–product reviews.
According to research, 82% of U.S adults read reviews before purchasing a product for the first time. So, encourage your store visitors to leave a review of the product they purchase. Ask them to leave detailed feedback, whether positive or negative.
You can even email customers to leave feedback on their last purchase from your store. You can even provide an incentive like a discount or free extension of product warranty for the feedback they provide.
In the following example, Kodak television provides customers with a three-month extra warranty on sharing reviews about their product.
7. Retarget your ads
How do you win back a customer who visits your online store but fails to make a purchase? The answer is using the strategy of retargeting.
The appearance of your ads on sites that the visitor visits keep your products visible and accessible to buyers who require an extra push for making a purchase.
This method places a cookie from your website into the visitor’s computers. The cookie enables the ad to show up on another website when visitor visits it.
Your retargeting is beneficial when you perform it towards a specific customer requirement.
Ensure that your retargeted ad has a promotion factor and a clear call to action.
Using AdRoll’s retargeting platform, you can effectively place cookies in the store’s visitor browser and track the performance of your campaigns.
8. Promote via affiliate sites
Another great tactic that works for every retailer is affiliate marketing. It’s the process of promoting a product through a third-party website.
When using affiliating marketing, sign up for a commission-based model.
But, when you already have a website, why spend extra on a commission-based model?
Wise online visitors and shoppers first visit various discount websites to see if they can save any money before purchasing. Various discount and voucher code websites can lead a rush of potential customers to your website.
This might include customers who might not have heard about your online store.
9. Use email promotions
For promoting your online store, it’s imperative to have a strong email marketing list because email is far away from being dead.
So, collect as many email addresses as possible. When you’re launching a product or your store, you can send emails to prospective customers and people interested in your products.
You can consider offering promotions and discounts via email to encourage customers to share your website with friends and family.
For collecting emails of your customers, focus on collecting email addresses on your website. Some brands use pop-up boxes to prompt users to share their email addresses for a small discount or giveaway.
Key takeaway
Don’t fall into the trap of trying all these nine strategies at once. Focus on choosing a strategy that best works for you and your audience.
Once you know how to use one or two strategies, you can integrate more and build a robust marketing strategy for your online store.
Promoting your online store might be a daunting task, but it’s doable, especially if you take one step at a time.
Also, don’t get disheartened when one strategy fails. Instead, measure the results and understand why they failed before moving on to the next one.
While these strategies are just the tip of the iceberg, they’re an excellent place to start.
Author’s bio
Priya Jain is a professional copywriter with eight years of experience.
She has an MBA and engineering degree. When she is not writing, you will find her teaching mathematics, spending her day running behind her toddler, and trying new recipes. You can follow her on LinkedIn.
