Strapped for cash? Learn how to market your ecommerce website with a low budget.
Don’t worry. It’s actually a gift in disguise.
Wait…do you think I am kidding? I am not. I am damn serious!
A limited marketing budget can make you feel frustrated. Because huge online marketing campaigns can cost a fortune. But do you know what a low budget can do for you?
A limited budget makes you think outside of the box. It forces you to come up with ideas that are genius but light in your pocket.
In today’s post, I will talk about some simple yet effective ways to market your website. These marketing ideas are super easy and don’t need you to empty your accounts.
So, what are we waiting for?
Let’s start…
1. Trigger Word-Of-Mouth Marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing is the easiest form of marketing for your website. The best part about this type of marketing is that it can be 100% FREE.
All that you have to do is make your customers talk. But, remember, word-of-mouth marketing can be both positive and negative. Thus, beware that you don’t trigger negative word-of-mouth marketing for your website.
Now, let’s talk about:
How can you make your customers talk about you?
To begin with, provide your customers with high-quality products and excellent customer service. No marketing tactic can be helpful if your product and service quality is low.
Another thing that you can do to make your customers talk about you is to give freebies. Small gifts, discount cards, and coupons delight the customers. It makes them talk about your brand with their friends and family.
When customers spread good things about you, it entices people to visit your website and try out your products.
Now, we are going to discuss our next low-budget marketing strategy, which is…
2. Develop A Solid SEO strategy
The best to market your website is on search result pages (SERPs). Millions of people visit Google.com daily to search for products and services. If your website’s SEO is strong, you’ll rank higher on the result pages.
People instantly click on the first top results and visit the website. I am sure you want the same too, right?
For that, you need to optimize everything on the website, including structure, content, web hosting, usability, and content. Your site should be easy to navigate and responsive to mobile devices. If your website provides a poor user experience, it will negatively affect your SEO.
Your website content should contain the right keywords. Make sure to conduct thorough keyword research. It will help you find the words and phrases that your prospects use to look up products that you sell.
But, where will you use these words?
You will use these keywords in your blog posts. This brings us to our next low-budget marketing strategy…
3. Create A Blog for your Ecommerce Website
The majority of the websites have a blog page on their website. They create and publish engaging blog posts for their audience.
You can do the same on your website! It will enable you to use long-tail keywords to improve your SEO.
Put yourself in your buyers’ shoes. Think about the problems they face and create content on those topics to help them.
For example, you sell winter clothing for ladies. What kind of content do you think your audience would like to see on your website? Ketogenic recipes? Or how to take care of winter clothing?
If you are having difficulty coming up with interesting ideas, head over to your competitors’ sites. Check out their blog page and read the blog post that they’ve published. Take a few ideas from there.
Remember not to copy the content! Your blog posts should be 100% unique and backed by proper facts and research.
Once you publish the posts on your website, promote them everywhere. Share the link to your blog post to drive quality traffic to your website. The best channel to promote it is on social media.
Social media marketing is a must-have for businesses. Let’s discuss it in detail below.
4. Get Social
Presence on social media websites is a must. 3.6 billion people are on social media sites. If you want to introduce your brand to a huge audience, social media marketing is your answer.
Joining social media sites is 100% FREE. All you have to do is sign up, create an account, and you’re ready to market your brand to millions of people.
Create awesome and informative content to attract people to follow you. The content that you post on social media shouldn’t be promotional. People do not like to follow pages that only brag about their products.
Hence, keep your audience’s interests first. Create content that they like and that is helpful for them. If people love your content, they’ll visit your website to learn more about you.
Growing your followers on social media takes time. But, if you want to speed it up, you can try the next strategy.
5. Use Influencer Marketing
Social media influencers have a huge following. They create content in a specific niche and interact with their followers.
Collaborating with an influencer will help you to expose your brand to a large number of people. This increases your brand awareness and the number of followers on social media.
You can search for influencers in your niche with the help of Google.
Check the influencers’ profiles. See how much engagement their posts receive, the number of their followers, etc.
Pitch the influencer, plan out your content strategy, decide on a budget, and that’s it.
The influencers will take care of creating engaging content and promoting your brand on their profiles.
Next up on the list is…
6. Create Videos On YouTube for your Ecommerce Website
YouTube is another channel to market your eCommerce website on a low budget. YouTube is the second most visited website after Google.com. It has more than 2 billion users. Just like Social media, YouTube doesn’t charge you a dime to create your account.
So, create your account and upload interesting videos related to your niche. For example, you can create videos on different exercise or yoga regimes if you sell gym wear. YouTube videos rank on the result pages. This means you can attract more audiences and build better brand awareness. Consider adding subtitles to your videos. You can use a tool to transcribe audio to text online to do this, making your videos accessible to a wider audience.
Your YouTube videos should be unique and interesting. Nobody likes to watch boring videos and fall asleep. Hence, think of creative ideas for your videos.
If you don’t have enough time on your hands to create videos, no worries. You can search up for famous YouTubers in your niche and collaborate with them. Ask them to review your products in their videos and encourage their audience to visit your website.
Collaborating with influencers and YouTubers isn’t free. But it’s a fantastic way to reach a wide audience and make them familiar with your brand.
There is one more way to make people familiar with your brand…
7. Sell Your Products On Marketplaces such as Ecommerce Website
Another tip for low-budget marketing is to start selling on marketplaces, such as Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, etc.
Millions of people visit these websites daily to buy the products. Marketplaces make it convenient for people to buy all the items in one place instead of visiting different sites for each product.
People trust the brands that are available in the marketplace and don’t hesitate to buy them. Hence, people can buy your product from the marketplace and become familiar with your brand.
By exposing your brand to marketplaces, you can also rank on result pages. Google lists Amazon products when users search for the products.
The next low-budget idea on the list is…
8. Display Product Reviews
95% of customers read product reviews before buying from a website. In online shopping, people cannot see or hold the actual product to check its quality. They rely on product pictures and descriptions to buy the product.
If you display customer reviews, it makes it easy for people to trust you. Customer reviews also create social proof. It shows the audience that many people are using your products, and they’ve had a good experience with them.
Make sure that you allow people to leave a review on your social handles. Respond to their reviews and thank them. If you receive a negative review, do not delete it. Instead, apologize to your customer and provide them with a solution because 89% of people read the business’s response to the reviews.
The next low-budget marketing idea is to…
9. Use Your Email List for Your Ecommerce Website
You do collect the email addresses of people who visit your website, right? Put that list to use by enticing people to revisit your website.
Yes, my dear reader! I am talking about email marketing for promoting your website without spending a penny.
Many businesses use email marketing to connect with their customers and prospects. It is a highly effective form of marketing. The business can send the emails directly to the customer’s inbox, where he’s less likely to get distracted.
Using an email list provider, whether you’re in Canada, the US, the UK, or any other part of the world, can also make your email marketing efforts more efficient and effective. These providers offer tools and services like list management, segmentation, automation, and analytics, which can help you design and deliver targeted and personalized campaigns, track and measure the results, and improve engagement and conversion rates.
So, make the most of your email list and send highly targeted messages to your audience.
The last one on today’s list of low-budget marketing ideas is…
10. Run PPC Advertising for your Ecommerce Website
Pay-per-click advertising is a brilliant way to reach out to your prospects. Hey, don’t freak out with the word pay.
PPC advertising won’t drain your budget! You don’t have to pay anything to run your ads. You will only pay when a person clicks on your ad and lands on the website. Hence, the name, pay-per-click!
Google ads are a great way to run your ads. With Google ads, your website will rank on the first result page that receives the most clicks.
Isn’t it great? But that’s not the best!
Google allows you to set your daily spending budget. Once you reach your daily limit, Google stops running your ad so that you don’t overspend.
Go Crazy With Marketing Your Ecommerce Website…
In today’s era, eCommerce is at its peak. There are millions of eCommerce stores globally, and with every passing day, new businesses are emerging. Surviving and growing your business in this competitive arena is only possible with a solid marketing strategy.
You can market your brand to a huge audience even when you’re on a tight budget. All you have to do is get creative. Think of ways to expose your brand to a large audience and entice them to visit your website.
Do you know of other eCommerce marketing strategies for beginners? Please share it in the comments below.
