How to promote your online store
So you started your online store and you just realised that you have no customers and your store is lost in the crowd. To make money you must get more traffic to your site and convert that traffic to customers.
General information
Most online stores these days find themselves in a competitive market. What you need to do is concentrate on marketing your unique selling point (not necessarily price) and promote from there.
You don't need to just concentrate on online marketing, offline marketing is just as important (most offline marketing you may be already familiar with).
Suggestions for generating traffic
Here is a comprehensive list of possible tactics you can try to generate traffic to your site. Not all these will be suitable for everyone some will depend on your budget and business plan. You need to pick and choose the right options for your store from this list.
- Pay per click
- Article marketing
- Newsletter
- Auto responders
- Word of mouth
- Joint ventures / strategic partnerships
- Talks to groups
- Participation in online forums / discussion groups
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
- Free for all link pages?
- Pay per click advertising
- Banner advertising and banner exchange programs
- Reciprocal linking
- Shopping comparison sites
- Bundled products
- Free gift with purchase
- Regular newsletter
- Helpful content on your website
- Companion blog for your website
- Offline advertising and promotion
Pay per click
Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines.
Advertisers bid on "keywords" that they believe their target market (people they think would be interested in their offer) would type in the search bar / box when they are looking for their type of product or service. For example, if an advertiser sells red widgets, he/she would bid on the keyword "red widgets", hoping a user would type those words in the search bar, see their ad, click on it and buy. These ads are called "sponsored links" or "sponsored ads" and appear next to and sometimes above the natural or organic results on the page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad.
While there are many companies operating this sort of advertising, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing are the largest network operators as of 2006. MSN has started beta testing with their own PPC services MSN adCenter.
Article marketing
Article marketing is the process of writing articles that pertain to the subject matter of your web site. The articles are usually targeted to interest prospective buyers of the products on your web site.
You write articles and then you submit those articles to online article directories who publish your articles and help them propagate on the web.
Newsletter marketing
Newsletter marketing is a form of opt-in e-mail marketing. The recipient of the newsletter has consented to receive it, usually by adding their email address to a list. Newsletters like this are a way to let customers know about upcoming events or promotions, or new products. In this type of advertising, a company that wants to send a newsletter to their customers may ask them at the point of purchase if they would like to receive this newsletter.
E-mail has become a very popular mode of communication across the world. It has also become extremely popular to advertise through . Some of the many advantages of advertising through e-mail are the direct contact with the consumer and is inexpensive, flexible, and simple to implement. There are also disadvantages attached to e-mail advertising such as, alienating the consumer because of overload to messages or the advertisement getting deleted without getting read.
Auto responders
Word of mouth
Joint ventures / strategic partnerships
Talks to groups
Participation in online forums / discussion groups
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Free for all link pages?
Pay per click advertising
Banner advertising and banner exchange programs
Reciprocal linking
Shopping comparison sites
Bundled products
Free gift with purchase
Regular newsletter
Helpful content on your website
Companion blog for your website
Offline advertising and promotion
Useful links
This guide was written buy the easywebstore support team. We would like to invite you to contact and chat to us if you have any further questions. You can also discuss this guide with us in our forums. We will be happy to help.