One of the key things that you need to consider, even before launching your eCommerce site, is how you are going to drive traffic to said website, because as good as your site and as cool as your products are, they can be next to nothing without the proper audience.
To create an audience, you need to build up traffic first. Most importantly, organic traffic, which is traffic that comes naturally to your site by following a trail of quality content. In this chapter, you will learn about some of the hottest methods to attract the right type of traffic to your eCommerce site.
Create a content driven blog
Creating a great content driven blog is not only a huge opportunity to engage your cust0mers, but is also one of the most powerful search engine marketing tools at your disposal. This is because traffic on your blog based on keyword searches can be HUGE.
By selecting the right keywords and creating valuable content related to your products and services, you are guaranteed an audience. There are two approaches to creating great content driven blogs for your online shop.
The first one is to create a blog that is straightforward about being a content window for your eCommerce site, where you will talk about your products and services. Check goodasgold.com’s blog, for an example.
There you will see blog posts focusing on their products, describing them in detail and using keywords like autumn and winter fashion to get traffic from those searches. They also place a link to their products on each description, which can easily convert a visitor into a customer!
The other approach is to create content that, while mentioning your brand and products, does not necessarily focus on advertising them. Check Tailor Stitch’s Journal for an example, there you will find anecdotal posts in short bursts of content.
Use Instagram influencers
Instagram has recently dethroned both Facebook and twitter as the most popular and most visited social media platform. Marketers and retailers alike have found a great, young audience eager to be engaged by interesting stuff and looking to socialize.
That trend has created a group of marketing pros that are called influencers who perfectly blend among the daily stream of millions of Instagram users, and their job is to influence the decision of prospects over a product.
You can search for an Instagram influencer and offer them a free sample of your products, so he or she can review it in front of millions of their followers, which in turn can generate a huge spike in organic traffic that can be converted into a HUGE number of customers for your brand!
Produce video campaigns
Producing video campaigns for your eCommerce site, for your products and for your brand is one of the best, safest and most cost effective ways to drive the correct type of traffic for your eCommerce site.
That is because video productions can be uploaded to video streaming services like YouTube where an enormous audience is already established, and where around 4 billion videos are viewed each day.
When you create a video focused on a product or topic, it will be easily found, because viewers normally look for specific keywords to find videos. The good thing is videos, more often than not, are not cramped along with meaningless and unrelated search results which often happens on search engines.
Take for example this “audiophile headphones” keyword search, which will provide results containing that specific set of words. Basically every audio brand producing audiophile headphones will appear.
That is the lesson that you need to get from this, and it is as simple as producing a video that is keyword rich for what you are selling!
Add social media sharing buttons to your products
Adding social media sharing buttons to your product pages will make them more likely to reach a wide and interested audience, because when people share a product on their social media walls, it means that they do it with the knowledge that someone else may like it as well.
This creates a great opportunity to attract the right kind of people for your site! For example, every product page on National Geographic’s eCommerce site has a share button for every major social media site out there.
Join Facebook Groups
Joining a Facebook group is also a great and cost effective way to get followers and customers. Enter any keyword on Facebook and you are guaranteed to find a group for it. The positive thing about Facebook groups is that they are made with the intent to create social engagement.
For example, if you are in the cake decorating business, you can look up “cake lovers” and you will find many, many groups that are named around it. You will find lots of people sharing cake decorating information and recipes.
By having a nice and adequate Facebook profile, you can post interesting content on said groups. Once you post content, you will get lots of likes and shares that will end up reaching a significant number of people inside and outside of Facebook.
All these people are either cake lovers or people looking for the kind of content that you are posting. Once they find that you are a business and thus an authority on what you sell, they will be urged to follow you and to always share what you post, giving you a great conversion method!
Giving away shared coupons
Giving away shared coupons is a great way to get traffic for two reasons. The first reason is because this gives people the opportunity to get not one, but two coupons in one offer, which in turn leads them to be more competitive about it.
The second one is because you are getting a second prospect to convert. The trick here is to offer a shared coupon through a contest, and said coupon can be obtained by the party that shares the post promoting the coupon the most.
This coupon will be valid for the two people that shared the most and for the winner, so the giveaway is for three people, and those three people will give you triple traffic compared to a coupon for just one!
