4 Proven Ways to Attract New Customers to Your eCommerce Store

If you’ve already set up your eCommerce store and filled it with amazing products, you probably think most of your work is done. Unfortunately, you can’t just sit back and wait for customers to find you. Running a successful eCommerce store means you always have to think about customer acquisition.

Finding new customers for your online business can be an uphill battle at times and it will require a lot of hard work and dedication. However, as long as you know the best tactics that will keep bringing people to your website, you have nothing to worry about.

Begin with search engine optimization

Search engine optimization, better known as SEO, is the best way to increase your website’s search visibility. A site that is optimized for search engines uses specific keywords and phrases in its content so Google and other search engines can give it a high-ranking position.

A few ways you can improve your ranking include:

• Writing quality content. One of the easiest ways to include keyword-rich content on your website is to write blog posts. To make the most out of these posts, you should add internal links and use long-tail keywords, but avoid keyword stuffing, as it’s something Google doesn’t like and it can even result in a penalty for your website.
• Link building. Find inbound links to include on your website, just make sure they come from high-quality websites. A bad link from a low-quality website won’t benefit your store at all and could damage your reputation with your customers and with Google as well.
• Optimizing for mobile. One of the factors Google uses to determine a website’s ranking is whether or not it’s optimized for mobile users. Fully optimized websites will always rank higher.
• Increasing your page speed. Slow-loading websites are disliked by your customers and Google. The more time your website takes to load, the more your bounce rate will increase and your ranking position lower. So keep a close eye on your load and page speed.

However, every SEO expert will tell you that this type of optimization isn’t simple at all. Even though there are many ways to boost SEO on an eCommerce website, it’s hard to get a high-ranking position.

Unless you’re an SEO expert yourself, your best chance of getting a high-ranking position is to use SEO services for eCommerce. By hiring professionals, you can rely on their expertise to make your online store visible on the first pages of search engines.

Start a referral program

Marketing trends come and go, but one of the oldest and best ways to attract new customers is through word of mouth. This is why so many businesses have found success with referral programs.

Referral programs are a great way to acquire customers because they don’t require a lot of financial investment, so their ROI is very high. Additionally, 92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know, so there’s practically no reason why you shouldn’t start one of these programs.

What makes referral programs so appealing to customers is that every time they bring a new person to your business, they get a reward.

Here is how you can start one:

• Determine your type of incentive. Referral programs can offer one-sided and two-sided incentives. In the first type, only your referral who brought a new customer to your business gets the reward, while in the second type you give a reward to both of these customers.
• Decide what incentive you want to give. Your incentives can be monetary and non-monetary, but they should always be of some value to your customers. The most common types of incentives are discounts, points, gift cards, and free shipping.
• Announce your program. When you create your program and launch it, bring your customer’s attention to it via email marketing, banners, and attention-drawing headlines on your website. Make sure to detail all the benefits of joining your referral program so you can get a lot of people to sign up for it.

And finally, the most important thing is to make it easy for your customers to spread the word about your referral program to their contacts. Instead of implementing a complicated process, you can simply use a contact picker which will allow customers to send out coupons or share your products with their contacts easily without even leaving your website. Using a picker will almost triple the number of emails sent because they wouldn’t have to type each address manually, a tedious prospect if they’re visiting your store on mobile.

Be active on social media

There’s nothing better than free promotion on a channel that has a large audience, and that’s exactly what you can have if you use social media. With over 3 billion users worldwide, social media has become one of the most popular marketing channels ever.

The key to running a successful marketing campaign on social media is to post interesting and outstanding content on your business profiles.

Here’s how you can attract new customers to your social media pages:

• Open multiple profiles. To find out which social media channel would be the most beneficial for you, do research on your target audience to see on which channels they’re active. The most popular channels at the moment are Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
• Post regularly. If you don’t show up in your followers’ feeds regularly, they’re going to forget about you. It’s important to post at least two or three times a day.
• Post interesting content. While posting promotional content is a given, don’t just use your social media channels to self-promote. Make sure to post interesting content your followers can engage with and use graphics to make your posts more interesting.
• Talk to your followers. Show that you’re always there and willing to interact with your customers by asking questions and replying to all comments and reviews.
• Take advantage of influencer marketing. If you have a large enough marketing budget, consider hiring social media influencers to promote your products to their fans. Some influencers are also willing to promote brands in exchange for free products.

Start an email marketing campaign

Last but not least, we mustn’t forget another extremely popular and effective way of attracting new customers, and that is email marketing. This affordable marketing technique can help you bring in a lot of business to your store, but only if you implement the right strategies.

After you collect enough email addresses, you can start sending out emails to your leads. Here are a few ways to ensure you’ll attract a lot of new customers:

• Segment your list. You can’t send the same emails to every one of your contacts because your campaign won’t be effective. Instead, create a targeted campaign by segmenting your list using factors such as age, gender, geographical location, annual income, as well as hobbies and interests.
• Personalize every email. Just including your recipient’s first and last names can get your emails to be opened since emails with a personal subject line generate 50% higher open rates. You can also personalize by singing every email with your full name.
• Include an incentive. Just like with referral programs, your marketing campaign will be more successful if you intrigue your recipients to purchase something from you with an incentive. This can be something like a special discount or an exclusive offer.

Final thoughts

No matter how many customers you already have, customer acquisition will always be one of your biggest priorities. Keep in mind that growing a business and finding new customers doesn’t have to be hard. As long as you follow the tips you just read about, you’ll always have new people flocking to your website.