Advertising Best-Practice Tips for E-commerce Websites

Advertising is usually the first way people learn about new services and companies. However, the advertising climate has dramatically changed in recent years. It wasn’t long ago when websites relied on banner ads to bring them new traffic. Today, more computer users are utilizing ad-blocking software to bypass these ads. In fact, nearly 70 million people will use ad blockers this year alone. Other users simply leave websites that are full of blinking banners.

With banners slowly dying off, it’s time for entrepreneurs to look at different avenues for marketing their e-commerce sites. There are many different and more effective ways to lure in new customers.

Most of these advertising techniques are also affordable and easy to implement.

Social Media

We are living in the age of social media. It seems that every few months, another social media platform emerges out of nowhere. More people are engaging in one or more of these platforms every day. On Facebook alone, there are over 1.71 billion active users each month.

E-commerce companies can take advantage of social media by running an active business profile. It’s usually free to maintain a business profile on social media, and it only takes an hour or so each day to make a few posts. Marketing on social media is as simple as making new posts about upcoming releases or engaging with customers to find out what they want.

Sweepstakes

There is no better way to introduce people to your products than by giving a few of them away in a promotion. Offering sweepstakes on your site is a great way to gain more traffic. The more site traffic you get, the likelier you are to turn that traffic into sales. Sweepstakes cost almost nothing to host. There are many websites where you can advertise your upcoming sweepstakes for free. Customers are drawn to sweepstakes because they are more interactive than other forms of advertising.

Search Engine Results

Most people indeed learn about new companies by entering a simple query in a search engine. In fact, Google processes over 3.5 billion searches every single day. That’s why it’s so important to be at the top of the listings. People are more likely to click on results that appear on the first page of a search.

Smart SEO marketing is how you get your site visibility on the major search engines. Most enterprise e-commerce platforms have SEO tools available to their users. Be sure to write content that can be linked to your site to help improve your search rankings. Knowing how to optimize the most common keywords for your industry, exceptionally less competitive long-tail keywords, is also essential.

Hiring Affiliates

One form of marketing that is quickly becoming more popular is hiring affiliates. These are people or companies that you agree to pay a fee for sharing your product with their already established audience. For example, many companies are turning to YouTube personalities to get their product introduced to an audience they wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise.

When working with an affiliate, you can agree to sponsor them by paying a contracted fee or simply send your product to them for their consideration and to share with their followers. This form of marketing works because people are always looking for reviews before buying a product, particularly from someone they look up to.

Instead of wasting your limited advertising budget on banner ads that may get little to no clicks, consider trying some of the newer marketing techniques of successful e-commerce businesses. Your site may benefit from a presence on social media, an online sweepstakes, better SEO marketing, or even by hiring affiliates to speak about your services. The best advertising won’t break the bank, and you should see an increase in your e-commerce conversion rates as a result.