I have launched an e-commerce web site for holiday goods and looking for a tangible advise on how to promote it. Spending lots of money on advertising is not an option, however I am prepared to put a lot of effort into it.
Great question. One way to get the word out is to partner with site owners who may be interested in partnering with you. See what you can do for them first to help cross promote. If you are selling, for example Christmas cards, you may want to partner with a site that sell Christmas cookies, or holiday jewelry.
You can also work out an agreement where you can buy space in a holiday website owner's newsletter. Usually this may not cost a lot, (it depends on how many subscribers they have) but this can get eyes on your site.
When people come to your site, you definitely want them to enter their email address so you can connect with them in the future. So ask them to sign up for your newsletter or maybe you will send them a free sample, etc. You just need a way to build your email list so you can share your products with them.
Because I live in the world of online marketing, you also want to make sure your site is SEO friendly. I can write a whole new post on this subject but search online for good SEO strategies to make sure your site can be found in search engines. If you need help with this, feel free to give me a call. Hope this helps!
Create account on major social media sites. Facebook, Twitter, G+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and post there. If you cannot spend money on advertising then you need to spend time on posting, sharing and interaction.
Also, do on-page SEO and off-page SEO. If possible try blogger outreach.
Hire some Virtual Assistant to help you in these areas.
Influencer marketing. Find a bunch of micro influencers with sub 5,000 follower counts on twitter, insta, fb, snapchat and offer to send them free product. Maybe throw in a referral link and pitch them on the commissions they can make.
The price being only your time to find them, communicate with them, your COGs, and shipping.
Over time it can have a compounding effect on growing your brand while also driving immediate traffic to your site.
The best way to promote ecommerce website is through finding appropriate blog and social media sites that the customers in your product space use and visit and then writing something catchy about your product there that could grab the attention of people. If you post the images of your products that will increase the chances of grabbing attention of your prospective customers manifold.
Other than that you can use SEO strategy for this purpose. You can select and use appropriate key words for this purpose through which people will be able to find your product and store through searching on internet.
The other thing you can do is to ask your existing customers to post their reviews on related blogs and websites. You can also provide a space for review on the website of your store. People mostly rely on the experiences of others and positive reviews help in increasing customer base while negative reviews will help you to improve your product.
I grew my business in the first year by using subscription boxes for cross-marketing. The subscription boxes in my niche already have thousands of eager customers. The boxes source my product just above cost and we get to introduce ourselves to thousands of new potential customers. We don't have to pay; in fact, we generate revenue AND marketing opportunity this way. It's a win-win.
