Starting your own ecommerce site used to be something you would do once you had already come up with the products that you are selling. However, nowadays, it is an essential early step to take if you want to maximize your sales and reach as many people as possible. Customers are used to services such as Amazon and they expect you to have your own site. However, once you have your ecommerce site up and running, how can you get people to come to it? What you need is a successful marketing strategy.
Have plentiful content
Your site needs content as well as products. Your homepage, your product category and product pages all need plentiful text content on them. This is because search engines consider sites with lots of useful, well-written and relevant content to be better than other sites – similar to how people view sites. Your homepage needs to tell people exactly what it is that you sell and why customers should buy from you instead of somewhere else. Your product pages need to explain the features of the product and how they will benefit the customer. You should aim for at least 300 words of content per page, where possible. If you sell hundreds of different products then this might be a tall order, so you should probably just concentrate on the main pages.
Produce interesting blog posts
As well as plentiful content for your pages, you also need to make sure that you have a regularly updated blog that is full of interesting posts. Search engines look favorably upon sites that add new pages relatively often. However, blog posts are also a great way to get people interested in your site and your company. Blog posts can be about anything you want. You could do a post about a new product that you have available on your site. You could write one about something industry related that you are an expert on. You could even interview an industry expert. Blog posts are also a chance for you to express yourself and get your company culture across.
Social media presence
Having a social media presence is an absolute must in 2018. When you start an ecommerce site from home, you are unlikely to have a particularly large following. This is where your existing social media profiles will come in. You will (hopefully) have some friends on Facebook, who might be interested in what you are selling. Set up a new profile for your brand and then share the page on your personal page to get interest started. After doing that, you can do posts on the brand profile about any new products or deals, or even link to your interesting blog posts.
The objective of your social media presence will be, ultimately, to get people to click onto your site and browse your products. It’s essential to get great pictures of your products whether you do it yourself or get professional still life photography of your products for better results. However, you can also do other things to build your following on social media. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are excellent for having conversations with your followers. Engage with your followers by replying to their questions, complaints and comments. You can ask their opinions about new products and deals and even run competitions for them.
Email marketing
Email may seem like ancient technology compared with social media but it is still an immensely important weapon in the digital marketing arsenal. It is hugely effective at reaching your audience in a more targeted way. Email marketing is not about spamming generic sales emails to anyone and everyone. Since spam is not the aim of the game, you need to be able to harvest people’s email addresses. Existing customers will have already given you their address when they signed up to buy from your site. You can get potential customers’ email addresses by encouraging them to subscribe to your blog.
Email marketing platforms will let you split your customer base into various demographics, based on stuff like whether they have signed up to your blog, what they have bought before and much more. This means that you can send them more personalized emails that will engage with them better. Valentino Vaschetto is an email marketing expert who works for advertising and marketing agency Iconic Industries. Valentino Vaschetto has a popular Vimeo that uses videos to explain all aspects of digital marketing to you.
Conclusion
Starting up a business from home has never been easier. Ecommerce and digital marketing allow you to direct customers to your shop where they can buy your products, all by using the internet.