How to attract more customers to your enterprise? A common method for promoting a dropshipping store is using various social media platforms. However, what other tools and channels can you implement into your marketing strategy as an alternative?
By now, it has become clear that online promotions are essential to attract customers to your business. Once your online store is launched, it is highly unlikely that people will find it by themselves. So, any entrepreneur that looks to start an online business needs to come up with a proper marketing strategy.
Importantly, if you don’t provide a marketing plan, you risk ending up with a business that doesn’t bring you any income.
To ensure your business comes out on top, we have gathered a list of the most effective ways to attract customers online. But, this time we decided to exclude social networks.
We know how substantial social media is for marketing purposes, but on different occasions, they can easily be ineffective.
For instance, various audiences simply don’t use social media, thus you won’t be able to promote your products to your target audience. Another reason why social media can be useless for promoting your products is if you’re selling items that have advertising restrictions.
So, how do you attract customers if you can’t or don’t want to use social media for some reason?
If you’re expecting online users to find you, then you need to focus your efforts on search engine optimization. When people intentionally search for specific products, they usually do so with the intent to buy them. This is why SEO is quite very crucial, by optimizing your website, you increase the chances of people finding it organically.
Let’s cover the basics so that you can understand what you need to focus your efforts on.
A great SEO strategy includes the following aspects:
- Researching related keywords to find the types of keywords customers are exploring in their online searches
- Optimizing the website based on the keywords
- Working on content marketing to attract more customers organically
How To Attract Customers Online With An Email Marketing Campaign
An email marketing campaign is an integral part of any ecommerce business. Recently, it’s still one of the best strategies for increasing engagement with your customers and convincing them to purchase from you.
How to collect emails for your campaign
To properly implement an email marketing strategy, you’ll need to set up an email list. And to do so, you need to gather consumer emails or have them subscribe to your email newsletters.
So, here are various methods through which you collect emails:
Pop-ups
Pop-ups are small windows that automatically appear on a certain page after a specific user action, page scrolling, or just after a specific time.
Subscribing to store news
Offer them to subscribe to your email notifications so that they get notified about new sales, discounts, etc.
These are just a few methods you can use to effectively collect your customers’ emails and contact them back. You will find more tips from our digital marketers in this article!
How To Attract Customers To Your Business With Influencer Shoutouts
A common method used by different brands is promoting their products or services through influencers.
Who is an influencer? An influencer is someone who has a large following on a specific social network: we have previously talked about YouTube influencers and Instagram influencers in more detail. Influencers share insightful and useful information on their preferred niches or industries. It can be anything really, from sports to foods, to photography, to gadgets, etc.
So, what’s the strategy? Nothing too difficult really.
What you need to do is find an influencer who specializes in a topic that is relevant to your online store and contact them so they can shoutout your online store.
More importantly, by collaborating with an influencer who has a similar niche to yours, you promote your products or service to your potential customers.
How Does It Work?
All you have to do is come to an agreement on what you will give them in return. Of course, many influencers set a specific price for their shoutout.
But, you can also provide them with an item or a few from your store. Thus, they can promote your products, give an honest review on it, and in the end keep it. It’s that simple and everyone will be satisfied.
How To Attract Customers Using Google Ads
Everyone knows Google, right? Yea, After all, it is one of the world’s biggest companies and perhaps the most popular search engine on the Internet.
Besides all that, it can also be a great instrument for you to find and attract more potential customers. You have a few ways to attract customers on Google, through “Google Search” and through “Google Shopping”.
Google Search
Let’s begin with the first one. Google search is perhaps one of the most popular Ads services out there. It displays ad texts when an internet user uses various keywords specified by the advertiser.
Compared to Google Shopping, Google Search allows you to use more keywords you wish your product to be seen for. Moreover, it allows you to use more textual content, including even a product’s description. Here are some examples to give you an idea! However, that’s where it’s limit lies: unlike Google Shopping ads, search advertisements are text only.
Google Shopping
On the other hand, there is Google Shopping and it is perfect for ecommerce store owners. All you need to use Google Shopping is a product feed, Google Merchant Center, and an ecommerce website. Google Shopping ads are usually shown at the top of the search results, which is great in terms of visibility.
However, it is a bit more complicated than Google search. Whether your product appears at the top is heavily based upon your “Product feed”. It consists of various information about the product: the brand, quantities, sizes, colors, etc.
So, to make sure your product pops up, you need to carefully optimize your Google Shopping data feed. The challenge here is to provide all the different attributes that Google wants and provide it in the format that Google wants.
The major thing to recall when using any of these ad services is that these are PPC ads. A PPC (Pay Per Click) ad is a form of advertising, where you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
So, importantly, when setting up any of these tools for your promotional purposes, you need to optimize your ad spend budget. If you want to know what is the ideal budget to set – unfortunately, there is no clear answer.
Nevertheless, we encourage you to start with a small budget and work your way up. Even if you don’t get sales right off the bat, you will get data. And in online marketing, data is very valuable.
While your ads are running Google will learn about your audience and their preferences, and can find various connections to their buying patterns. As a result, your ads will be shown to more consumers with similar buying behavior.
Results To Expect From These Methods
It is quite hectic to decipher, as there are a lot of factors that affect each method.
- SEO
If we’re talking about SEO, the results vary heavily. However, experts state that it takes about 6 months to see notable results.
And the 6 to 12-month time period is when you will see the largest gains. Keep in mind that SEO is not something you set up and wait for to bring you results. It requires you to always keep track and manage it to see any lasting results.
- Email marketing
Moving on, an email marketing campaign can take even more time to see sufficient results. Especially if you’re starting from scratch and don’t have an existing email list. You’ll need to build one so that you can launch email campaigns.
And when you focus on creating an email list, the key is patience. It can take up to 6 months to create a fully-fledged email list of customers who want to subscribe and follow you.
Always recall that email marketing campaigns are used for establishing long term relationships with your customers.
- Influencer marketing
How soon will you see the results of collaborating with various influencers? It depends.
We know that’s not the answer anyone wants to hear, but that’s how it is. It all depends on your brand, product, budget, process, and how you execute your strategy.
If you properly execute your promotional campaign, you can see results within 3 months.
- Google Ads
Attracting customers through Google Ads is probably one of the fastest ways to get traffic, leads, and sales.
However, it takes time to create an effective campaign and it involves lots of testing. Nevertheless, you will see the first clocks and traffic boost almost instantly.
But to see successful long-term results, it can take weeks or even months.
Summary
It’s quite evident that there are many ways to promote your dropshipping business and attract customers online. All of them are effective in their own way, but it will take some time to see any lasting results. Of course, a lot depends on how you approach and adapt these methods to your business.
There are actually various effective methods of attracting customers online, however, surely you want them to come to a website that’s professionally made and designed?
Well, you can get one with Dropazz! You will receive a fully optimized online store that will create a lasting impression on your customers and generate sales.
