3 New Tips for E-Commerce Launch Marketing
A significant difference between marketing products in a physical store and on an e-commerce site is that when people visit a store, they’ve already made a time investment and are unlikely to just walk in and walk out again. Online visitors have no such investment. The marketing needs to focus not just on attracting visitors to your site, but also keeping them there and creating conversions. Here’s how.
The most critical aspect is in your launch is just getting the e-commerce site off the ground. Once it’s safely in orbit, you’ll have other priorities. For now, here’s where you need to expend your energy:
Create Awareness
Your target market needs to know that they can buy from you online. If you already have a physical store, you have a tremendous awareness advantage. After all, your prime demographic is coming into your store everyday. It's a perfect place to advertise your new online sales offering.
A very basic, but effective strategy is to put a sign visible from the street in the front window, a banner in the store, and have cashiers put coupon-bearing fliers announcing the site into every bag. If you don’t have a physical store, the best way to create awareness quickly is to pay for search engine ads.
]Drive Traffic
Once people know your site exists, you want them to visit and stay there for as long as possible. Promise them it will be worthwhile. The promise you make is essentially this: If you visit my site, I won’t waste your time.
Every page needs to include something noteworthy and be no more than one click away from your online store. If your web pages are nothing but self-serving spin, people may not come back ever.
Create Conversions
Although there's an altruistic benefit to educating consumers on your website, you’d like a portion of those visitors to actually buy something. In order to continue educating consumers you need to make money. After prospects have browsed through your site, you want them to think: I can see that you know what you’re doing and I trust you. In addition, I really appreciate your help. It would feel good to buy something from you right now.
Make it easy for them to do that. Make the product selection easy, make the checkout process seamless, be upfront with the shipping costs, and show them where they can save money. Also, don’t forget to use transactional emails for further promotion.
Don’t waste time trying to figure out how to make visitors buy, give visitors a sensible reason to buy instead. The quality of your site will make or break your online business. Your competition isn’t other companies, it’s the mouse.
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