Digital Advertising for your eCommerce Start-Up: 8 Tools to Use for Optimum Growth
Ever since technology started taking control of our world, more and more businesses are taking the completely online route when it comes to where they are located. Companies that are based online can reach so many more people in a short amount of time, as long as their advertising is effective.
If you are starting an eCommerce, you should be able to use your digital advertising strategy to your advantage. Digital advertising may seem a little tricky at first, but if you use the following eight tools and tips, your business will be booming in no time.
Manage Social Media Accounts
Update Your Website Consistently
Utilize Other Online Networking Websites
Post Ads on Social Media
Keep a Clean Reputation
Search Engine Optimization
Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
Email Marketing – But With Personalization
Conclusion
Sounds good? Let’s dive in!
Perhaps the easiest and most effective method of digital advertising is creating social media accounts for your business. Since it is 2020, Facebook usually does not cut it anymore, and you should think about creating an Instagram, Twitter, or even TikTok account for your business to gain more potential customers.
People, especially younger generations, like to see the product they are interested in being used and showing results. If you choose to make an Instagram, start following other people and businesses that might be interested in what you have to offer. All you have to do is hire someone that is social media savvy and let them create accounts that are pleasing to the consumers’ eyes.
Social media will help you to gain more customers.
Another big part of having a healthy and growing online business is making sure your website is growing with it. The website should be able to catch someone’s eye while still being easy to use. People are quick to turn away and click out of the site if they think navigating it is too difficult or boring. There are plenty of website maker tools on the internet that can help guide you while making your website that will ensure people will enjoy their time they spend on it and will want to come back. Just like a brick-and-mortar business needs its store to look right and appropriate for its business, an eCommerce business needs its website to do the same.
Make sure your website is growing with your business.
When creating and starting an eCommerce business, it is essential to remember that you are not alone, and you are not the only person in the world doing it. LinkedIn is a wonderful tool to connect with other businesses and consumers. You have the ability to create personal connections with locals, and build more and more friends and consumers through other peoples’ word of mouth.
The more awareness that is brought to your business, the more consumers you will get. Also, with high levels of knowledge, other brands and companies may want to collaborate to help each other grow. Personal connections play a huge role in the business world, and that does not change when it comes to eCommerce.
One of the easiest advertising tools for digital businesses is posting ads on social media. For example, through Instagram, you can create a business account that will give you the ability to “promote” your posts, which essentially just makes that post an ad for anyone who likes similar content. You can also make your tweets on Twitter promotion, and that tweet will become another ad for your business. These advertisements are cheap and effective because they can reach almost anyone without having to do any work, except for pushing a button.
Of course, there are other options that make Social Media a goldmine for businesses. For example, influencer marketing. Finding high follower organic traffic pages in your niche, and promoting your business through their page.
Generally, how this works is you provide the image/caption, and at an agreed upon rate that page will post it on their channel. Giving all of their followers a glimpse at what your business has to offer.
The results?
Often it’s not easy to guarantee how great or small the results of this marketing will be. But, if your research is done properly into said pages, you should be seeing a growth in your following and even traction on your various social media handles over time.
Posting ads on social media is one of the easiest advertising tools.
With online businesses, consumers have a lot more power than they typically do. If a business has its product in a store, potential consumers can check out the product for themselves in person. However, with online companies, consumers do not have the ability to look at what they are buying before they buy it, so they have to look for reviews. If your business has a bad reputation online, no one is going to want to purchase your product.
Remember to look at reviews everywhere, whether on your website, on a review website like Yelp, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else someone could have left a comment about your business. Also, be sure to respond to reviews, whether they are good or bad.
Oftentimes, businesses fail to understand how important word of mouth can be when it comes to brand recognition. According to studies, up to 74% of consumers in the United States claim word of mouth is the biggest key influencer in buying a product or investing in a service.
Additionally, it was shown that consumers trusted brands more if they showed that they genuinely cared about the consumer experience. This means, if you have a bad review – you shouldn’t treat it like a flame that needs to go out. Reply to the review, and try to find a solution that puts the unhappy customer at ease. This will show that you care for future customers potentially going through all your reviews.
The most cost-effective and smartest method of growing your online business is using search engine optimization. This method does not always give you the fastest results. You have to wait for Google to decide to provide you with free traffic to your website. There is no genuine guarantee that it will work; however, if it does work, your website will eventually gain a ton of traffic.
Search engine optimization is also incredibly smart to use if you are just starting out because you might not want to blow a ton of money on advertising right away. Search engine optimization is the only method that is entirely free, so remember to be patient and let Google do its job.
You should remember of search engine optimalization if you want the fastest results.
Organic marketing can make or break any startup. However, as effective as certain organic marketing strategies are – there are limits as to what you can achieve in terms of brand growth and market penetration.
That’s where Pay Per Click Advertising comes into the picture. You know when you search for something on Google, and some relevant websites, services or even products pop up? Well, this is PPC in action.
There are a number of different types of campaigns that you can choose from, but when it comes to a new e-commerce store the most relevant options you can consider are:
If this is something, which you have the budget for and would like to invest in – it’s important to clearly understand what each strategy is and how it can influence your marketing campaign.
Paid searches are quite literally just a way for brands to ensure that their brand name is at the top of relevant search pages. For example, if a user types in a product relating to your business in Google, your link will be at the top.
This marketing strategy has a fairly high conversion rate due to relevancy. The chances are if someone is searching for “Best irons to buy in 2020”, they are looking to invest in a new iron for their house, right?
Thanks to the high conversion rate, and accurate target focus, more and more businesses tend to opt-in for this strategy, according to a report done by Clutch.io, almost 45% of small businesses in the United States plan to or have used Paid Search campaigns in the last 12 months.
If Paid Search is the way to bring new customers into the fold, Display Ads is the obvious winner for targeting consumers who showed interest but didn’t make it down the conversion funnel.
Generally, Display Ads are reliant on Algorithms that constantly analyze what you have been searching, and try to predict what your problems/needs are and how to solve them. Ever had to search something up for your significant other, and then seen promotions relating to that something for the next few months?
That’s really the magic behind Display Ads. Instead of focusing on bringing customers down the sales funnel with clickthrough rates, it uses banners relating to what the user searches to try to create an interest in your business and what you have to offer.
There was actually an interesting study done on the various ad options, specifically using Google as the main platform. It showed that 49% of people claim to click on text-based advertisements in comparison to 31% on display ads/shopping ads and 16% on video ads – this was according to a study done by PPC Protect.
When it comes to a subscriber list on Mailchimp, there are a lot of false/over exaggerated expectations. Having an email list is incredibly important for any e-commerce store, over time it will be a huge contributor to your sales funnel, batch orders and maximizing sales campaigns you have planned.
However, it’s just like building a house. To do it right, it needs to be done slowly, carefully and with a lot of planning put into it.
What I love helping businesses do is personalize their way to success. When planning out your weekly emails it’s easy to think oh well “X Best things to do in LA this weekend” – well, isn’t that a great topic for everyone?
But what you need to consider, what about the people living in Canada, South Africa, or even Asia?
In the travel industry alone, personalization is the difference between a 60% open rate and a 20% open rate. Each industry is affected differently, and each target audience needs a different tone, pitch and content to make them happy.
A good tactic is to first segment your subscribers on the list. You can do this based on what products they last purchased, what services they used, or what they are interested in. Through doing this, you can make sure that the email blasts you send out are highly relevant to their interests, and problems that you are hoping they ask you to solve.
From there, it’s also important to play around, find what works best and what just doesn’t float. This is also known as A/B testing. Take two different emails conveying the same idea. But approach the emails with different tones, styles, and subject lines.
Figure out which email has a higher conversion rate and why. From there, you can keep on improving and over time develop an email blast with a huge CTR and conversions to make you proud.
When it comes to tools, strategies and experts discussing what exactly “the best way to market a new eCommerce store” is…
Well, there are really too many options to count on. And trying to implement them all at once would do nothing more but drive you crazy. The honest answer is that there is no right answer. It’s all about experimentation and finding what strategy works with your business model and customers.
Each industry is different, as well as the niches within these industries. However, the tools we have listed above are really the easiest / most affordable strategies a new startup can implement. The most important step to implementing these structures successfully, however, is always putting in that research to understand what exactly your potential customers are looking for – and how you can deliver it to them.
Gabby Miele is one of LaunchPad’s Outreach Strategists. She focuses primarily on creating content and bridging the gap between client goals and website owners through the individual content created.
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