7 Low-Cost Marketing Tactics for E-Commerce Business Owners
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What separates successful e-commerce businesses from those that are not successful is marketing. The competition is fierce, and no matter how great your products are, there will always be someone out there selling similar things, and you need to make sure you stand out.
But if you’re worried you need to invest enormous sums of money in your marketing strategy to make it work, you’re mistaken. All you need is some time, thought, and persistence, and you’ll notice the results in no time.
Here are some low-budget marketing ideas to help your e-commerce business soar.
Optimize Your Site for SEO
Your website is the most important part of your e-commerce business, and if it’s not perfect, you can invest in the most genius marketing plan ever, and it won’t work. Your site needs to function properly and be optimized for the search engine.
Before you start focusing on keyword research, link building, and other SEO-boosting techniques, you need to invest in a technical SEO audit for the website. This type of technical review will expose any not immediately visible problems that may be hindering your performance in the search results.
Once you have this base work done, you can build on it from there. If you skip this part, any subsequent efforts will feel like building a house on a rotting foundation.
Build Your Brand Through Social Media
Building a strong social media presence doesn’t have to cost a thing, and it can be a great marketing tactic to increase your sales. In fact, 89% of consumerswho follow a brand on social media will at some point buy a product from it.
There are many ways to build your brand image through social media channels. It’s best to focus on one or two so that you can dedicate enough time to each of your accounts. You should post relevant content regularly, and this can be a combo of promotional, entertaining, and informative content.
You can also encourage user-generated content by asking questions, using hashtags, running contests, etc. This way, you connect with the audience, create a buzz around your brand, and get customers to promote your products for free.
Stay Relevant With Quality Content
As an e-commerce business, you have limitless potential for creating quality content. Great content can put you on the map, make you an authority figure in your niche, attract a large following, and encourage people to purchase your products.
You can use your products as inspiration for your content. Apart from blog posts, you can also do short and fun videos on creative ways to use your products, for example. You can then post this on your social media accounts as well.
Each product you have on offer has a story, so think about how you can make it more interesting and appealing to prospects. For example, if you sell scarves, you may write a blog or create a video tutorial on the ways you can use a scarf to style various kinds of outfits.
Use Good Old Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the best ways to stay in touch with your existing customer base and reach new prospective buyers. It’s also one of the cheapest. You just have to capture their attention and get them to subscribe. You can do so by offering useful newsletters and using large CTA buttons they can’t miss.
Once you have their contact, you can automate many great marketing campaigns, such as leveraging buyer intent to remind them of the products they’re interested in, sending custom birthday offers, and similar.
Just make sure that whatever you send will genuinely spark interest because if you start spamming, they won’t hesitate to unsubscribe.
Put Your Best Testimonials Forward
Buying something online is quite a different experience from making a purchase in person. That’s because you don’t really know what you’ll get until it arrives. That’s why happy customer reviews are your best bet at attracting new buyers.
A staggering 95% of people read online reviews before they decide to buy a product. You need to show them that your items are top-notch by displaying customer testimonials on the website. Otherwise, they may not trust you enough to make a purchase, especially if you sell expensive products.
You can also encourage customers to post photos of the products they bought so that those who are interested can see these items look just like in the product photos.
Make Help Available Round the Clock
Hiring support agents and making them available 24/7 can be expensive, but being available round the clock could boost your sales significantly. However, you don’t need live agents if you get a conversational AI-based chatbot. These bots are a one-time investment, but they’re at your customers’ disposal at all times and can cater to them all instantly.
An AI bot can assist people while shopping, answer questions across different channels (website and social media), and even recommend products that repeat customers would like based on their previous purchases.
It’s a cost-efficient solution to providing the best possible customer support. What’s more, as you scale your business, you don’t need to invest in more agents because a chatbot can assist as many people as necessary.
Advertise the Right Products
If you want to use paid ads on a budget, you need to make sure you advertise the right products. Take a look at what’s trending right now and which of your products are the most sought after among your existing customers. You want to focus on them because they are the most likely to attract potential buyers.
You should also go for affordable, inexpensive items over expensive things because people are more likely to buy them immediately. If you have heavily discounted products, put them forward as well and make sure you emphasize how much money they can save by buying the discounted item.
This way, you’ll get the most out of your paid ads and won’t have to spend more money on advertising.
As you can see, you don’t need to waste money on expensive marketing techniques if you follow these tips.
This guest post was written by Michael who has been working in marketing for almost a decade and has worked with a huge range of clients, which has made him knowledgeable on many different subjects. He has recently rediscovered a passion for writing and hopes to make it a daily habit. You can read more of Michael’s work at Qeedle.
