This post was sponsored by Squarespace, which makes it easy for anyone to build a personal brand online. Use the code CONTESSA for 10% off of your site.
There is a whole slew of ways to market your online business, which is a blessing—and a bit of a curse.
Congratulations, you launched your e-commerce shop! You built a beautiful web presence with perfect copy, curated items, and illustrative images. The only problem? Nobody is really looking at it—yet.
Once you launch your online shop, there are many avenues to explore in order to find your prospective audience. In short, you will want to create content for your current and prospective customers. You will want to create lots of content—written, visual, audio, and video. Let’s dive into the why and the how of different types of content you can use to market your e-commerce shop.
Implement Content Marketing
Content Marketing is a buzzy phrase you have likely become familiar with over the last ten or so years. Whether or not you are aware of it, you are likely consuming content marketing on a daily basis. Everything from a tweet about the most reliable pencils to a blog post about the best places to get a cold brew in Austin, Texas fall under the content marketing umbrella.
So, what is content marketing? Whether with or without its current name, content marketing has been around for quite awhile. As far back as 1732, Benjamin Franklin was using his Poor Richard’s Almanack as a way to promote (but not obviously promote) his printing business.
Content marketing is when marketers use content to disseminate information about a brand or company—all to build a reputation. Many companies use a blog as a means to build their content marketing. In this way, they can use their website to drive customers to digestible content—whether or not directly about the product itself.
It’s not as in-your-face as a pop-up ad or as traditional print advertising. In fact, content marketing usually manifests as a helpful piece of content or a how-to in the marketer’s industry or field. In this way, brands are able to build trust or recognition without traditional advertising techniques.
Social Media Marketing
Your first go-to, when marketing your e-commerce shop, will likely be social media. Before you even launch your shop—or shortly thereafter—you should register social accounts for your business. If the name of your business is up for grabs, register it! If it’s not, get a little creative.
You can always use underscores or descriptive elements to name your shop on social media.
If possible, try to make all of your handles uniform across platforms. This will make it easier for your customers to find you—whether you’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest.
Next, make sure to create customized content for each platform. Do you have amazing photos of your goods? Get them on Instagram. Do you have a sale with a discount code? Consider posting all the details on Facebook or—if you can fit them—on Twitter.
Figure out which platform works best for you and your audience. Not everyone will find equal success across all social media platforms. Once you figure out where your customers are most active, double down on that platform.
Once you’ve chosen your platform du jour, use all of their available tools to amplify your audience. Depending on what you’re using, you can use geography tags and hashtags to search for more likeminded customers.
Email Marketing
Once you are generating traffic to your website, you will definitely want to capture names of leads through forms. Using Squarespace’s forms tools, you can capture emails. From there? You can create beautiful emails that maintain the design consistency from your website—right to your customers’ inboxes.
Use email marketing to let your customers know about new products, to announce (and invite them to) events, and to share general updates. With Squarespace’s mobile editing tools, you can even create your marketing emails on the go. On top of that, every email you send will be created with responsive design—so it’s friendly across all devices.
When you’re first starting out with email marketing, you might try to lure your prospective customers in with an offer. A popular email list subscription tactic is to offer a first-time discount code in exchange for an email address. This approach will give your customers the incentive to join your email list and make their very first (discounted!) purchase at your e-commerce store.
From there, you can use your email list to disseminate a weekly or monthly newsletter. Keep your customers coming back for more with announcements, stories, helpful how-tos, and more—all via a couple of emails.
Video Marketing
Did you know that businesses who used video marketing ended up growing revenue 49 percent faster than non-video users? Video marketing is gaining traction—and it’s probably here to stay.
Maybe video marketing seems intense—and costly—to a business owner new to e-commerce. Well, if you have a smartphone, you basically have a video crew.
Video marketing works great—especially in tandem with other marketing techniques. For example, showcasing your beautiful products via video can give your customers a 360-degree view of your product. Embedding videos in your email marketing also has proven success.
When you are first starting your marketing, experiment with video. Use it to tell stories, to share special or exciting deals, and to connect face-to-(digital) face with your customers.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
If you’ve mastered all of the above, you are more than ready for SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Remember the last time you were looking for an at-home hair-dye or a reliable ladder? You probably went to Google and searched something like “best ladders” or “most reliable ladders.”
After enacting this search, what you found is the result of good SEO.
SEO, loosely explained, is the search terms that will lead your prospective customers to you. Specifically, when employing SEO in e-commerce, you will want to make sure your product indicates what it is, what it’s used for, and what problems it might solve. All of this text is put into the great grand Google machine to figure out what it is—and direct your customers straight to you. When done right, SEO is a crucial tool in any marketing campaign—from beginning to end.
In Conclusion
Starting and marketing an e-commerce site is an exciting time for a budding (or a seasoned) entrepreneur. Stay tuned for more tips on how to market and grow your e-commerce site—coming soon!
This post was sponsored by Squarespace, which makes it easy for anyone to build a personal brand online. Use the code CONTESSA for 10% off of your site.
