Marketing an Ecommerce BusinessYou have the products, the website, the PayPal account, and the packaging materials all ready to go. Now, the next step is bringing traffic to your website and converting the traffic into paying customers. Marketing an ecommerce business can be challenging, but with the following smart strategies, you can jumpstart your online success.

Optimize Your SiteOptimizing your ecommerce site for ease of use and search engines is the first step in marketing an ecommerce business. This begins with ensuring that your page load times are as fast as possible. If necessary, you’ll want to clean up any issues with navigation, caching, images, themes, and modules.

From there, you’ll want to make your site as search engine friendly as possible. This includes weaving keywords through your content and meta data, having a clear hierarchy, text links, and a site map to list the pages of the site. Not sure what keywords to use? Try Google’s Keyword Tool.

Email CampaignsEmail blasts and newsletters are a great way to spread the word about sales, promotions, and company news. Many hosted ecommerce providers offer email marketing capabilities within their solutions. And for those who don’t have hosted ecommerce sites, there are many solutions for email marketing that will enable you to create email marketing campaigns from customer databases. These campaigns can be used in conjunction with other forms of marketing and provide a useful opportunity to share information with prospects and nurture relationships with existing customers.

BlogsThe addition of a blog to an online store can significantly help with marketing an ecommerce business. Like with email campaigns, blogs provide an opportunity to share information about your products. Many online business owners update blogs weekly or even daily to stay in touch with their customers. Blogs can also provide a boost in search engine optimization by providing fresh content to your site – something that the search engines reward.

When launching a blog for your business, think beyond just promoting your products. Providing “behind the scenes” information about how your products are made, what is happening in your industry, or sharing the latest trends can be entertaining and informative for your customers. By providing high quality content on a blog, you can position your business as an industry

expert and build credibility with customers. Blog content can also be repurposed in newsletters and off-site articles, increasing its value even more!

PartnershipsIs there a way to partner with a fellow business owner who sells a complementary product? It’s worth investigating opportunities to cross-promote with others. This could take the form of having an ad on another business owner’s blog or offering a bundled package of products at a promotional price. The possibilities are endless, and the more ways you can market your ecommerce business, the more opportunities you’ll have to reach directly to your customers.

Pay Per ClickDepending on what you’re marketing, pay per click (PPC) may be a good option. It is definitely one of the fastest ways to market an ecommerce business, but it can be costly. To leverage the value of PPC, you must ensure that traffic is arriving on a website that is relevant and that you’re able to capture contact information to continue to market to them.

Public RelationsSharing news with the world about your business is a cost-effective strategy for marketing an ecommerce business. Yes, you can generate press releases and publish them on news wires. However, there’s much more to public relations than just press releases. Consider contacting newspaper and journal editors, magazine publishers, and news producers to share unique stories about your business. It only takes one story in a national news outlet to bring countless new customers to your website.

Content MarketingContent marketing is a hot new marketing buzz word for something that every business should have already been doing – sharing information with customers. Content includes your product descriptions, other content on site pages, images, social media channels, videos, blogs, articles, testimonials, reviews, and more. The more compelling information that you can provide your customers, the more likely they’ll buy from you. Yes, it’s really that simple!

Marketing an ecommerce business takes a level of commitment and it also takes money. If you’re in need of a cash infusion to launch a new campaign, improve your website, or even to buy inventory or hire help, there are a variety of lending options to choose from including banks, family, friends, and credit cards. A new option that is increasing in popularity is Kabbage which provides online businesses the cash they need to grow, when they need it. Unlike traditional lenders that often take weeks or longer to approve loans, Kabbage offers advances in under 10 minutes. Learn more at http://www.kabbage.com.