If you’ve recently launched an online store, you might be unsatisfied with its traffic. You might wonder how, in a pool of millions of users, not many have found your site.

It’s important to keep in mind that the expansive number of online users is useless if you don’t make them aware that your store exists.

The key to earning qualified traffic to your new website is marketing. Just like a physical store, you can draw people to your online store by advertising your products and services.

But how do you advertise your online store?

In this post, we’ll answer that very question, touching on five great ways to market your store online. Read on to learn more, and then consider partnering with the WebFX team of over 200 digital marketing experts to boost your advertising even further!

1. Use search engine optimization (SEO)

Before you start advertising your online business, think about how most people find pages on the Internet. Do they usually go to the address bar and type in an exact URL? Not exactly.

More often than not, people find new pages by encountering them in Google search results.

That means that you can start by simply optimizing your website’s content pages to appear in search results — in other words, you can implement search engine optimization (SEO).

The key to SEO is creating valuable content and including target keywords. If you sell used cars in Houston, for example, you’ll of course want to appear in search results for keywords like “used cars Houston.” When someone in Houston wants a used car, you want them to come to you, and that may be the only way they’ll find you.

To do that, include some written content on each of your product or service pages. By including a textual description of what you offer, you can incorporate your desired keywords to attract more traffic.

It’s not just about keywords, though. You’ll also want to make sure you craft a fantastic user experience for your online store. No online shopping promotion will help you if your website itself is the problem. That means creating fast load speeds and using responsive design, among other things.

2. Get into email marketing

Another great thing to invest in is email marketing. Any chance you get to build up your email list is a golden opportunity for your online advertising. One of the best ways to gather emails is to include email capture forms on your website.

Once people sign up for your emails, you can send company newsletters, links to your latest blog post, or special offers to increase brand awareness and loyalty. You can also send out information about sales and special discounts that other people might not be aware of.

And if someone visits your store but ends up abandoning their cart, you can even use email marketing to follow up with them about whatever they were on the verge of purchasing or to recommend a different product they might like. Amazon does this very well with their emails.

Email marketing is great because people love personalization. An ad that addresses them by name and promotes things based on their specific interests will be much more effective than a generic one that feels like it’s trying to target everyone.

3. Harness the power of social media

As mentioned earlier, one of the biggest benefits of the Internet is the fact that it is home to a massive audience. If you want to reach all those people in a more direct way, social media is a great online business advertising method to consider.

To some extent, you can treat social media like an outright podium. As you gain followers, anything you post will be like speaking into a microphone, and the likes and reposts that come in will be like applause from the crowd.

But social media is more than that. Unlike a podium, social media gives you the chance to interact with individual users directly. When someone asks a question, you can respond, and when someone posts a good review, you can thank them personally for it.

Social media marketing is one of the most versatile ecommerce promotion ideas on this list. With a social media account, you can hold contests , advertise sales, and promote blog posts.

4. Try your hand at pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

When you first thought about how to advertise your online store, you may not have imagined SEO or social media. You probably pictured the ads that appear at the top of Google search results or in the margins of websites.

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If so, you were thinking of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. These ads, usually run through a platform like Google Ads, and require you to pay a certain amount of money each time one gets clicked. When done right, though, they can have a significant return on investment (ROI).

To create PPC ads, you first have to bid on the keywords you want in Google Ads. Next, you have to create landing pages on your website for each of the relevant keywords you target. Google Ads then displays the highest-bidding ads in each search.

You can also use PPC ads to target specific demographics of users, such as age and location. So, if your target audience is women under 30, you can alter your settings to make sure your ads don’t target users outside of that group.

5. Contact some influencers

Rounding out our list of ecommerce promotion ideas is a relatively new tactic from the past few years: Influencer marketing.

Influencers are social media users, particularly on networks like Instagram, who use their platform to recommend different products to their large follower bases. The idea behind influencing is that an influencer is a neutral third party whose opinion can be trusted.

Essentially, influencers give you the inflated benefits of good reviews. A few people may see good reviews of your products, but usually, only those who are already interested. Influencers talk up your products to massive audiences who may not know you.

To use influencer marketing, you need to find an influencer who talks about things relevant to your industry. Then you’ll want to send them a free sample of your product in return for their endorsement, and hopefully watch their followers rush to your store.

Still wondering how to advertise your online store? WebFX can help

Still struggling with the details of how to advertise your online store? WebFX is here to help. We’ve been in the digital marketing industry for over 20 years, and we’d love to bring that experience to your business.

With the aid of our digital marketing services, you can optimize every online shopping promotion to bring in maximum results. To get started with us, just call us at 888-601-5359 or contact us online today!