Marketing for your ecommerce store is a given – because your products won’t sell themselves.
Perhaps the hardest thing is deciding how to go about marketing your online store. For instance, what types of marketing will be most effective? Would it shock you to learn that there are about 100 different types of marketing you could try?
That’s a ton of marketing techniques. But don’t get freaked out. Instead, choose a few tried-and-true strategies that are easy to implement and can also boost your brand awareness – and increase sales.
Take content marketing. It’s an especially effective marketing tactic, and there are lots of ways to use content to promote your e-store.
Even that suggestion strikes fear in people’s hearts. “Content marketing” sounds so broad. We want to help simplify the process. We suggest you break it down into specific types of content, making it manageable (and thus more likely to get done).
Why not start with online original content to market your ecommerce store? It’s easy to do in long-form and in short. It can be repurposed across many channels. And maybe best of all: it’s inherently sharable.
We’ve put together a list of 5 easy-to-implement types of online original content that you can use to market your ecommerce store.
- Blog. Every company can benefit from a blog that it writes, posts and shares. Create one (or more!) and commit to a new post weekly or every other week. What to write about? As long as the topics are relevant to your market, informational (not promotional), and engaging (that is, written well and sure to capture interest), you can write about a host of things. Examples: Share ideas about how to use your products. Write how-to posts that educate your customers. Develop content that demonstrates you’re a leader in your field. Post your blog on your site, then share across your social channels.
- Newsletter. Email a monthly or weekly newsletter to your clients. Include announcements about new product launches, awards you’ve received, include a “did you know” feature, and perhaps spotlight a customer or an employee. Make sure you use an email management system that tracks every bit of engagement: opens, shares, opt-outs, and so on.
- Email Campaign. It’s different from a company newsletter – which can be more promotional in nature. You could repurpose your blog in a regular email to customers and prospects. Why do both? Because not everyone in your target market will see your blog. Reach them through other channels, including email.
- User-generated Content. Does your ecommerce store have product review functionality? Customer feedback is highly valued. Encourage feedback and product reviews. The same applies for customer testimonials. Ask for them, get permission to use them on your site, and keep adding them over time.
- Long-Form Articles. Journalists for all kinds of media, traditional and digital, are forever in search of new sources. You can pitch article ideas for sites and publications that attract your ideal customer. You might also want to check out HARO, which is an acronym for “Help A Reporter Out.” This site invites people to sign up as resources in their particular niche. Once you do, you’ll receive regularly emails that list reporters who are searching for experts to interview.
All 5 of these types of content marketing will help promote your ecommerce store. You don’t even have to implement all of them, but using multiple marketing tactics simultaneously increases your exposure and helps spread your brand.
