6
How to promote a new Online Store? A new online store is often empty. Shoppers don’t yet know your shop. They haven’t had time to learn about your products or your customer service. So if you want immediate store traffic and sales, you’re likely going to need to advertise. There are certainly other ways to generate website traffic, conversions, sales, and profits. You could, as an example, use content marketing. If you have time to let your business grow slowly and you can be patient, content

How to promote a new online store?

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: How to promote a new online store?

How to promote a new Online

Store?

A new online store is often empty. Shoppers don’t yet

know your shop. They haven’t had time to learn about

your products or your customer service. So if you want

immediate store traffic and sales, you’re likely going to

need to advertise.

There are certainly other ways to generate website traffic,

conversions, sales, and profits. You could, as an example,

use content marketing. If you have time to let your

business grow slowly and you can be patient, content

Page 2: How to promote a new online store?

marketing will work. But if you want to kickstart your

business, you will need to do some sort of promotion, and

you’ll almost certainly have to pay it. Bottom line: You

need advertising.

1. Pay-per-click Ads on Search Engines

Search engine marketing can take a few forms. But it is

most frequently pay-per-click advertising wherein search

engines display your ad on a search engine results page

and you pay when someone clicks on your ad and lands on

your website.

Search engines will try to match your ad with interested

shoppers so that both the advertiser and the shopper have

a good experience. To do this, the search engines use some

sort of ranking model to decide which ads to show for a

given search query. Google, for example, uses a system

called Ad Rank.

PPC typically requires experimentation. You’ll try a few

ads, spend some money, and through trial-and-error find

Page 3: How to promote a new online store?

the most effective ads for your store. In the end, PPC is one

of the most powerful ad vehicles at your disposal.

2. Social Media Advertising

Most of the leading social media services offer some form

of paid advertising. These services can drive a significant

amount of highly qualified traffic to your online store.

There are a few things to know about the services.

They often have very good demographic information since

they know their users well.

They may be less competitive and less expensive than

search engine PPC ads.

They may have ad units designed specifically to drive site

traffic.

Similar to PPC ads, social media advertising is also a

learning process. You are likely going to need to try a few

ads to determine what works. Consider promoting

individual products on social media rather than broad

categories.

Page 4: How to promote a new online store?

3. Digital Advertising

Here I am using the term “digital advertising” broadly. It

can describe a banner ad on a website or just about any

other ad unit you can imagine. All of these can drive traffic

to your new online store.

One approach to using digital advertising would be to find

important websites or online publishers in your industry

niche and place ads there. For example, if you’re selling

fishing gear, you might try an ad on Sport Fishing

magazine’s website or on the Outdoor Life site.

Often the fee for these ads is a cost-per-thousand

impressions or a flat rate for a given time period, say a day,

week, or month.

Also in this category are ads on influential blogs and

podcasts.

4. Video Advertising

Page 5: How to promote a new online store?

Internet video advertising is one of the fastest growing

advertising formats. There are a few reasons for online

video advertising’s popularity.

First, making a video commercial is relatively easy. It can

be done with a good smartphone and free video editing

software.

Second, Internet video ads are a good value. Although it is

rapidly growing, video advertising can be less competitive

than other online options and therefore may be relatively

less expensive.

Third, lots of folks see video ads. Tubular Insights reported

that YouTube on mobile devices reaches more

18-to-49-year-old Americans than any broadcast or cable

television network.

Consider using video platforms like YouTube or Hulu to

spark your online business.

5. Traditional Advertising

Page 6: How to promote a new online store?

So-called traditional advertising can describe some of the

most familiar promotional forms, including magazine,

radio, television, and direct mail.

These ads may drive the most site traffic when you focus

on a specific geographical area, such as shoppers near your

shipping warehouse.

In the past, traditional advertising earned a reputation for

being relatively expensive and ineffective. That was true to

an extent. But there are still plenty of opportunities to

drive site traffic to your new online store with a traditional

ad.

For example, shared direct mail can be a productive and

cost-effective way to attract customers.

There is one caveat, however. Traditional advertising

drives the most traffic when you offer a discount in the ad.

So if discounting is not part of your plan, it won’t work as

well.