As we all know, there are numerous ways that you can spend time and effort trying to promote and grow your online business. However, for more small e-commerces, trying out every method at the same time is a guaranteed waste of resources. After all, it’s hard to do anything really well when you’ve spread yourself too thin.

Instead, you should pick a few methods to focus on at the beginning, then gradually work your way down the list, eliminating the methods that aren’t producing results, and finessing the ones that are proving to drive your sales figures. The question is, where should you start?

In this series of articles, we’ll be exploring various means of promoting an online store, as recommended by the experts at Linkeo Ltd., starting with:

How to Promote a New Online Store with Content Marketing

When it comes to online store success stories, you’ll find that content marketing has the biggest impact, since it gives you the chance to explain what sets you apart from your competition. Also publishing regularly builds a body of content that fuels a stronger social media presence as well. How? Well, producing free, valuable content creates trust in your brand, keeps people informed, and helps you rank in search engines. You’ll see the power of content marketing via social shares, increased visibility in search engines, and increased traffic.

Here are a few tactics you should start with:

Publish More Than Just Blog Posts

While running a blog is one of the best ways to create a loyal fanbase and build your brand awareness, you can and should take it further. Consider producing and giving away valuable and in-depth content pieces like e-books and courses. Another underrated, yet valuable promotion mediums is to create high-quality video content that shows what a certain product does and how it benefits its users. And once you’ve published the video, promote it heavily on social media.

Don’t Neglect SEO

Combining content marketing and SEO is particularly effective when you’re marketing a product that has high search volume for generic terms (e.g. “wedding invitations”).

Here are a few strategies with a proven track record of driving traffic with content and SEO:

Foundational Content: Many customers that come to your site are in the very early stages of the buying process and may need further education on the product or how to use it. Having good foundational content will lead to better time on site and better engagement is one of the signals used by search engines to validate keyword accuracy.

Remarketing: This works like a charm if you have a blog that is geared towards the early-stage researcher. When someone visits your blog, you can track them using remarketing cookies, then serve specific content and messages to them over the following weeks as they browse the web and social. Remarketing is much cheaper than buying the acquisition and offers a return on investment to a factor of 8 – 15 times more.

Outreach: Outreach using content marketing is all about creating brand awareness. If we take the wedding card example from before, contact all the major wedding blogs and magazines with fresh content you’ve produced. Often, sending unsolicited content works, but at other times you need to go further. For example, if you’re contacting a major outlet, you may need to tailor your content to their creative direction.

Rich Snippets: Rich snippets allow search engines to better understand what information is contained on each web page. However, many miss the content marketing opportunity of using snippets. You need to include a clear, concise description of a product, not a keyword-laden signal to the search engines.

Consider Paid Search for Short-Term Growth

It’s important to remember that while the tips above are proven to work, they are still medium to long-term solutions. You still need to create that initial boost, which is where paid advertising comes in. Consider getting Google Ads—Google Shopping ads and some display/video branding ads—set up for the new store immediately to help get the new business name out there.

Then, have these running while implementing ongoing SEO. This strategy will draw attention straight away while also laying the foundations for long-term organic growth. The added benefit of PPC advertising through search engines is that you can choose what specific keywords your ads—and therefore your content—display for.

We hope the information in this article has proven useful to you developing a marketing strategy for your new online store. Be sure to check back soon for the second part of this series.