Marketing strategies for online stores

by MicFir
15 replies
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Hi everyone,
Just returned to Warrior Forum after a long break.
I'm just finishing to set up an online store and would like anyone thoughts on the best way to market the website. The site has products to sell (through affiliate marketing), free activities and information content. I guess I'll need to use Facebook advertising and social media postings, but if someone has actual experience in this topic, it would be great to hear from you.

Thanks,
Michael
#marketing #online #stores #strategies
  • Profile picture of the author LABEShops
    I'm working on figuring this out myself. My stores have been online for 14 years, but trying to boost sales and figure out how to market them better.

    Just started about 6 months ago setting up mailing lists and am launching regular newsletters this month. Have been working on posting more regularly on facebook and building up followers there. Have tried a few facebook ads but honestly have found they do better to build likes to your facebook page than to drive traffic/sales to the stores (though still experimenting here). Just added their new call to action buttons on the pages, but haven't had anyone use them yet.

    Thinking about trying pinterest ads (got an invite), bing and google ppc. Haven't worked on that yet.

    I actually closed a few of my smaller stores doing forwards to their similar counterparts so I can focus easier on marketing.
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    Owner of LABEShops.com & 20+ Niche Online Stores as well as Scifispace.com and other sites. Recommended Host: Evolve

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    • Profile picture of the author MicFir
      Thanks LABEshops for your reply.
      We are posting to Pinterest and will ahve to see if that actually drives Traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author TeKn1qu3z
    the best way for that is you need to know the specific target areas to sell your product
    use social media to target and share via your friends and relatives first.
    find a good marketer. thats it!
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    There are 3 basic ways to drive traffic, 1) organic search rankings 2) paid ad traffic & 3) free referral traffic (a 4th would be through affiliates, but I'm not going to cover that since you said your site lists affiliate products & you can't really use that approach)

    Each of these 3 ways has several methods within them & you could literally spend the next year learning about any one of them.

    Let me give you a brief overview of how we utilize each of these 3 traffic sources for a typical new ecommerce store:


    #1 - Organic Search Rankings

    Like most IMs we focus primarily on Google organic rankings. You obtain solid rankings in Google by 1st, building a well optimized website that's loaded with solid unique content; then 2nd, driving authority to the website through backlinks from high quality websites (mainly within our market).

    Driving natural looking backlinks to your website is the more challenging of these 2 components. To get backlinks we do some manual link building and we also do content promotion. There are a handful of safe manual link building approaches that still work well. In addition to that, we create high quality content that carries the same characteristics as other content that's been heavily shared and linked to in our topic. We then promote that content to encourage linking and sharing.

    #2 - Paid Traffic

    We primarily use PPC campaigns at a handful of portals we almost always do well with. PPC is more competitive than ever before so you really have to have a smart approach. First you need to know what the maximum amount is that you're able to pay PER CONVERSION in order to have that PPC campaign be worth your time to set up. This means you really need to have a good idea of what your profit will be on the average ORDER (not product) on your site. Secondly you really need to be ultra-focused with your campaigns and only pay to show up for keyword phrases that CLOSELY match your content and will convert at a high rate.

    #3 - Free Referral Traffic

    This is basically getting linked/listed on highly related sites that can send you totally free traffic. Our favorite approaches are topic forums & being a contributor on high traffic websites.

    If you identify the top 2+ forums in your market, you can become a daily poster in those forums and establish yourself as an authority on the topic. Then once you reach that status, folks will naturally click through to your website to check it out.

    Guest posting is frowned upon by many SEOs now because people abused it so badly to get backlinks, but if you follow some safety guidelines it's totally safe to do (and probably always will be) and it can drive a lot of good targeted free traffic. You just have to present yourself as an expert on the topic and it's usually pretty easy to get accepted as a contributor on the higher traffic sites within your niche.

    SIDE NOTE: We don't really worry about whether the link from our bio to our site is "clean" or nofollow, simply because we are going to get visitors through that link regardless and it's also building our brand at the same time.

    I hope this is helpful!
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    • Profile picture of the author MicFir
      Hi Dave and thanks for the detailed reply and good advice.
      I agree with what you suggest. I'm wondering if there are different strategies for shops that are selling dozens of different products? We are working in a particular niche and have content that can be submitted and posted. But I wonder how successful online shops such AliExpress and fashion stores started out, where information content is not really relevant.

      Regards
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    Mike, content marketing can really be done in all niches. You don't necessarily create content about your products, you create content related to your topic and promote that. For example, if you're selling NASCAR model cars you are going to create content for people interested in the NASCAR sport, not necessarily content about your specific model cars.

    Your overall website authority increases from the links coming in & then your on-site factors tell Google what each page deserves to rank for. So the content you are promoting and getting links to doesn't have to be on the actual product categories and pages.

    Make sense?
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    BizSellers.com - The #1 place to buy & sell websites!
    We help sellers get the MAXIMUM amount for their websites and all buyers know that these sites are 100% vetted.
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    • Profile picture of the author MicFir
      Yes it does make sense. That's what we're starting to do.
      Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author MicFir
      Do any of you use Facebook advertising, not just building a FB page. If so, do you find it drives traffic?.
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      • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
        Originally Posted by MicFir View Post

        Do any of you use Facebook advertising, not just building a FB page. If so, do you find it drives traffic?.
        I have never used Facebook Ads to drive traffic to an ecommerce store, but I used it for everything else. The platform is extremely effective for selling just about anything. Just make sure you start small and monitor your campaigns closely. Facebook basically has everyone in the world on their platform.
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        • Profile picture of the author soluck92
          Originally Posted by PerformanceMan View Post

          I have never used Facebook Ads to drive traffic to an ecommerce store, but I used it for everything else. The platform is extremely effective for selling just about anything. Just make sure you start small and monitor your campaigns closely. Facebook basically has everyone in the world on their platform.
          You can use face book advertising. That is what you can use facebook better
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      • Profile picture of the author LABEShops
        Originally Posted by MicFir View Post

        Do any of you use Facebook advertising, not just building a FB page. If so, do you find it drives traffic?.
        I've tried and it really didn't generate sales. I find FB ads best for generating fb page likes - I think people are more likely to do that then click a link to an outside site - at least that's what I've found. Even targeting an ad for a deeply discounted sale generated little traffic and no sales.
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        Owner of LABEShops.com & 20+ Niche Online Stores as well as Scifispace.com and other sites. Recommended Host: Evolve

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  • Profile picture of the author Markets
    To really kick off your website, go with paid traffic.
    But don't forget about free traffic as it will help give you a better ROI.
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    "There comes a time when people get tired."
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  • Profile picture of the author kamaldeepchandel
    You can use the Linked In Group which is something that can have a lot more interaction than a Company Page. One of the differences is that the group you create will be publicly attached to your personal profile.

    Through Linked Group facility, you are able to send invitations to your existing connections so they may join the group, and also you are able to send email invitations to join your group.

    You can easily promote your product or services through this group.
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  • Profile picture of the author quinng123
    You should just research ways to get traffic.

    Here are some of the main ways to generate traffic to a product/website

    1)Video marketing
    2)Paid advertisement
    3)Article marketing
    4)Search Engine keyword rankings
    5)Forum posting
    6)Social media marketing-twitter,facebook,pinterests,redditt,stumbleupon
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  • Profile picture of the author Lipipaliwal
    Banned
    The best marketing strategies for an online store is you should have a good knowledge about your products and also get a knowledge about the targeted location where you want to get more visitors on your website.
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