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10 Ways Online Retailers Can Get New Customers To Their Website

(Read Time: 4 minutes)

Here are few ideas we have put together to help you get new customers to your website.

Press releases: Write a great press release telling the world all about you or a great new product you have.  You don’t have to be an expert to do this. There are many freelancers that will write an amazing press release for you and distribute it to your target audience.  Sites such as www.peopleperhour.com have free-lance professionals that can do this for you.  One client of ours got a press release wrote and distributed to 20 newswire platforms, 35k U.S. journalists and indexed on Google for just €90!

Paid Advertising: It’s one of the most basic forms of driving people to a product or service, but don’t forget about it! Experiment with Google Ads since you can fine-tune your targeting and choose how much you want to spend.  Investing in Google AdWords is one of the fastest ways to drive traffic to your Ecommerce site. Luckily, even those on a limited budget can afford to pay for some advertising using Google AdWords. Paid social media advertising, such Facebook Ads, can also be very effective but be very careful with social media advertising, it cannot all be about selling, think long term!!

Incentivise First Purchase: Sweeten the deal for first-time purchasers and you’ll increase the amount of conversion from visitor to customer. Some online stores offer a small discount for first-time purchases, the key is to make it tangible and obvious what the customer will get if they purchase right now.  This also gets your products in the hands of your customers and gives you a chance to impress them with the quality of your products and customer service.

Referrals: The best and arguably most valuable method of customer acquisition is when existing customers refer a friend. When this method works well, all the marketing is done by your existing customers meaning you can focus on running your online store instead of spending time bringing people to it. Referrals can happen organically via Word of Mouth marketing (focus on great products, great prices, and excellent customer service – these alone will get you very far) but you can also implement a referral marketing program.  There are plenty of referral apps out there that will manage your referral program and people.

Run a Competition: Competitions can be a fun way to spread the word about your store but remember to keep the competition purposeful to your brand.

Here are 7 steps to make your competition successful:

  • Know your target market.
  • Choose your contest type, details, and prize.
  • Build your contest.
  • Market your contest on a variety of platforms
  • Track your results.
  • Follow-up post-contest.
  • Take notes on what did and didn’t work.

Participate in Social Media: In the age of social media, effective marketing is not just about getting people to come to you – it’s about participating in the channels that your customers are participating in whether that’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any of the other dozens of popular services. Pick the channels that are right for your business and participate authentically – remember that social media is not there to simply drive people to your store, it’s also there to help you create stories about your business that people can share with others.

Instagram : We felt that Instagram deserved its own heading to show how much we value the platform, if it is relevant to your offering/sector. Instagram is undeniably one of the most important social channels around currently.  It is centered on storytelling and people relate to stories.  It allows you to be creative and show the public the real personality behind your brand.  It’s a great way to draw attention and attract new customers.

Instagram has over 500 million people are on the platform daily, so on this fact along your company needs to be here.

Offer a New Product / Service : It sounds obvious, but a super effective way to capture a whole new customer segment is to offer a whole new product or service! This doesn’t even need to be complicated, it could simply be a repositioning, repackaging or even repricing of an existing product. This also looks good to existing customers as it shows you are developing as a brand and growing.

Write Targeted Blog Content : It’s no quick-fix, but writing authoritative, interesting content in your online shop’s contextual domain will pay huge dividends over the long term. Targeted content will help boost your site’s SEO bringing in new customers organically and will also encourage your existing visitors to share your content more. Every online shop should have blog content as part of its marketing strategy!

Premium Content : Publishing consistent, valuable, and all-around enjoyable content drives tons of traffic to your Ecommerce site. Your Ecommerce shop is not all about selling products and services. In fact, most consumers are looking for more than just a retail shop to purchase from.  This has no cost to you but your time, so get creative!