When it comes to shopping online, consumers have an overwhelming choice available for their shopping requirements. With large e-commerce stores like eBay and Amazon selling nearly everything you need and delivering directly to your home, online shopping is constantly growing.
However, for small businesses, it can be a challenge to increase traffic to a website and generate more sales without spending all of the marketing budget. Unfortunately, just having a fantastic search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is no longer enough. Today, websites need to create cost-effective plans that drive traffic to their site through unique and creative means.
If you’re trying to make your business stand out from the crowd, you need to make sure you’re one step ahead of your competitors. This not only means remaining competitively priced by using tools like Revenue Intelligence but also involves the use of influencers, creative domain names and stellar content.
Using Influencers to Drive Traffic to Your Site
Social media is a powerful tool and one that you’ll want to utilize. And a great way to do this is to use influencers who have thousands upon millions of followers. A recent study found that the most dominant source for generating e-commerce sales from social traffic was Facebook, while 25% more engagement was created for brands through Instagram than any other social channel.
When finding influencers you can work with, you’ll need to find experts in your industry that have a loyal following. To promote your business to them you might find it beneficial to offer them a trial of your services or a free sample. Then, if they choose to endorse you (you can’t buy their endorsement), you can provide them with a custom URL that directs their followers to your site from their blog or social post.
Up to 10 times more conversions can be made through these shared posts than if the brand themselves are posting, which is why it’s worth trying to reach out to relevant influencers.
Creating a Unique Domain Name
The dot-com space has become incredibly saturated in recent years as many businesses have created an online website. Therefore, to get a unique URL many companies have to opt for a confusing or long domain name, which can reduce its effectiveness. However, one way to differentiate your business is to ditch the .com and opt for something a little more creative.
Go for something unique that’s fun and more in line with what your business does. This could be .style, .boutique or you could even use your location, e.g. Florida.
By using an ending like this you’ll make your URL more memorable so people will start to notice it more. It adds a little more intrigue to your website while also giving more information to your customer in the process.
Producing Relevant, Valuable Content
Content marketing is a tried-and-tested strategy that many companies utilize, but there’s so much more to this than a “blog.” To really benefit from your content strategy you need to create content that’s incredibly valuable to your customer.
Only 35% of organizations actually have a strategy for their content despite many more companies producing content on a regular basis. Therefore, to make sure your content’s getting chosen over everyone else’s you need to create unique posts that your customers can relate to.
You might feature your employees or customers and their unique stories, including why particular clients have chosen you over other companies. Or you could write useful and original articles about your products and the value they add to a customer.
Each of your customers will have a unique problem that they need solving, and by positioning your company as an expert in this area you’ll gain their trust and custom. It just takes some research to find out what how-to information they’re looking for so you can optimize their experience with your content. It will also mean that other websites turn to you as a valuable source of information, providing all-important backlinks to your site. This is another great method for increasing your search engine rankings.
Make sure the content you’re producing is worth reading and integrate your SEO strategy within this (naturally!) so you’re driving maximum results from it at all times. By providing this type of content to your users it will enable you to become a more relevant, valuable source within Google, thus boosting your rankings.
As you can see, increasing your customer base doesn’t have to cost a fortune, it just takes some time. And the more time you put into doing this, the more you’re likely to get out of it.
