If I don’t have a fund for advertising. What can I do to get a customer?
Please answer based on your experience.
Hi Hessa,
Don’t have funds for advertising and still want to grow your online store?
Well, in one word, it’s organic marketing (translation: sweat equity and longer-term build). Let me explain.
(1) EMAIL MARKETING. Make sure that you have set up email capture on your site with a permanent footer subscription form and a pop-up that comes up 5 seconds after the page loads. Next, make sure that you set up a “welcome series” and a “post-purchase series” of email automation. See under MARKETING > AUTOMATION. Shopify makes it simpler if you use SHOPIFY EMAILS. However, you can use email providers (ESP) like Klaviyo. This guarantees that you keep your new email subscribers engaged with your brand through email content, and keep your customers (post-purchase) engaged with getting more out of your online store.
(2) SEO and CONTENT MARKETING. Utilize third-party tools like SEMRUSH, AHREFS or UBER SUGGEST to build out blog content and to audit/improve the SEO quality of your site. Work heavily on high-quality DA (domain authority) backlinks to link deeply into your site (meaning homepage, collection pages and product pages). If you write blog articles on your site (highly recommended), work on backlinks to these blog article pages also.
(3) AFFILIATE MARKETING. Affiliate programs work on conversions only. Meaning that you only pay if the referred traffic converts on your site. Just google “affiliate networks 2022” to find the right affiliate network for you. You can check out SHAREASALE and CJ.com for a quick reference to see if it will be a good fit for you. Typically, 8-12% commission is paid to the affiliate and 3% to the network as network fees. There may be some minimum fees until your affiliate program gains traction.
(4) INFLUENCER MARKETING. You can find micro-influencers on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube that can review your products for either free product or a small fee. The better-known ones may charge you more fees. Some influencers also utilize your affiliate links to get paid additionally on the backend of the conversion (see 8-12% commission).
(5) SMS MARKETING. Check out SMS BUMP in the app store. There are other similar SMS apps that help you build your SMS CRM similar to the EMAIL MARKETING recommendation above. Most product categories are allowed. There are a few prohibited or restricted product categories in the SMS space. Replicate the automation series from the EMAIL MARKETING recommendations above in your SMS campaigns.
(6) GUEST POSTS. Find niche blogs that pertain to your product category and engage with the content in an authentic manner. Then provide a useful link to your content or product that helps solve the issue that is sort after in the post.
(7) YOUTUBE VIDEOS. YouTube is the #2 organic search engine in the world. Most business owners do not realize this. You can produce your own VIDEO content, post it on YouTube, make sure that your Video Description is highly optimized for SEO. Google also surfaces YouTube videos based on relevance on Google.com SERP (search engine results page). You can include links in the description to specific products or blog article pages on your site.
Hope this helps get you started with free/organic marketing traffic.
Good luck with your venture.
Sabir Semerkant
Founder, GROWTH by Sabir
Advertising as it is, is becoming a costly affair for most businesses. I would actually recommend using referrals and recommendations as your promotion tactic.
The good thing is that with apps like Enlistly, you can actually get your existing customer to turn into affiliates for your brand right at the moment they make a purchase. And you don’t really have to only part with commissions, you can customize to offer them in-store credits as well; that way you keep all your spends well-contained on your store itself, driving repeat engagement too.