This post may contain affiliate links. Read the full disclosure here.
So you took a bazillion product photos, overthought the price of every single item, and built your Squarespace or Shopify site. Yay, you are officially an e-commerce business owner, now what? Check out these low-cost e-commerce marketing tactics you can implement right now.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is all about solving problems and providing free value to your audience. The Big Daddy of content marketing is blogging. Blogging is a great way to provide value and build trust with your audience.
Even if the thought of writing freaks you the eff out, you are a problem solver, and that’s all blogging is. Solving problems for your peeps.
Imagine you are talking to stranger and she is asking questions about your business, using who, what, when, why and how.
- Who is {your product} for?
- What is {your product}?
- What is your return policy?
- What are the benefits of {your product}?
- When is the best time to buy {your product}?
- When is it time to replace {your product}?
- Where to buy {your product}?
- Why {your product} exists/is awesome?
- How to use {your product}?
- How {your product} is different from others in the marketplace?
The Customer Journey
Every prospect goes through a predictable process on the journey from stranger to prospect to customer to advocate. Consider writing content that helps her at each stage.
Awareness: What information does she need to know about your product as she’s becoming aware that she has a problem?
Consideration: What are the benefits of your product and how does it compare to other options in her search for a solution?
Post-Purchase: What does she do with the product now that she’s purchased it?
Leverage SEO in your e-commerce marketing
You’ll want to use good SEO, search engine optimization, practices in your blog posts, but you’ll also want to ensure your e-commerce site is optimized for search engines.
The first step is to use keywords in your title and meta description tags that are relevant, but also general enough so you’re not targeting a specific keyword phrase or topic too narrowly (which can lead Google’s algorithm astray).
The second thing would be ensuring the content on pages of products has good SEO practices as well: include product descriptions with keywords; ensure there’s an image associated per page/product listing with alt text describing what people see when they hover over images without clicking them – this helps crawlers understand which pictures represent each item.
Unpaid Social Media
Unpaid social media is a fantastic low-cost e-commerce tactic. It’s a great way to get your content in front of people who are interested and have the potential for becoming customers.
Instagram is a great platform for e-commerce because it’s visual and people are more likely to buy something they see on Instagram than from any other social media channel. It also has an “Explore” tab where you can find products that your followers have liked or commented about, which makes the process of finding new customers even easier!
As an e-commerce owner, you aren’t just sharing your products, you can actually sell your products directly!
Facebook Shop
Facebook has a “shop” feature where people are able to buy directly from your catalog without ever leaving Facebook. Your product catalog can be created from your Facebook Business Page.
Instagram Shop
The same functionality is available on Instagram with the “shop” feature. To create an Instagram shop, you’ll need to have a business account and then go into the “Shop” section of your Instagram profile.
Learn how easy, peasy, mac and cheesy it is to set up shops on Facebook and Instagram here.
Shopping on Pinterest
Pinterest is a great platform for building awareness about your e-commerce site, but it’s also a great place to sell your products. Product pins, pins that contain metadata indicating it is shoppable, can be added by creating a catalog or adding rich pins.
Social media can be incredibly time-consuming, so have a strategy before you start.
Online Video Marketing
Online video marketing is an excellent low-cost way to market your e-commerce site. You can create videos that are informative, entertaining or both!
Remember that list of blog posts from earlier? If you can write it, you can record it. There are so many options for video tutorials! Video is a great tool to share instructions on how to use your product. You can start by using it in the campaign section of your website or you could take featured videos for people who want shorter, informative snapshots of what your content has to offer.
An e-commerce Marketing Must-Have: Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the best low-cost marketing opportunities for e-commerce sites. You can use email marketing to promote your products, make announcements about sales and new arrivals and connect on a deeper level with your prospects and customers.
Two must-have emails are the post-purchase follow-up and the Abandoned Shopping Cart. The post-purchase follow-up email is sent to customers after they receive their order to ensure they are satisfied.
The Abandoned Shopping Cart Email is triggered when someone fails to complete a transaction. This email is usually sent within 24 hours of the customer abandoning their cart and it provides a link to complete checkout.
Which of these low-cost e-commerce marketing tactics that you can implement right now will you tackle first?
You’ve got what it takes to be a marketing rockstar, and you deserve to be treated like one. In the concert world, the green room is where artists go to hang out before and after the show. My Green Room is your backstage pass to all the best marketing training to grow your microbusiness. It’s the place where I share all my best tips and tricks on how to market your business in today’s world. And it’s completely free! Join me there now.