When you’re setting up your e-commerce business, things can get a little expensive. Whether you’re going the self-hosted route or using a platform such as Shopify things are bound to get a tad stressful. The e-commerce industry is huge and thanks to the COVID19 pandemic, shopping online grew even more. There’s a convenience for customers to stay at home where they can take as much time as they want, feel safe, and do all of their shopping with ease. While this is a major benefit for both customers and the seller, marketing is still going to be needed so the seller’s shop can be found. Of course, there are numerous routes when it comes to paid marketing.
You have great examples like Google Ads, finding an SEO agency, hiring copywriters, Facebook Ads, and even old fashion routes such as print advertising. These are excellent options, and they should be utilized. But when money is tight, it’s ideal to look into free ways to market your e-commerce business.
Post on social media
While social media ads cost money, posting content is free. This can allow you to utilize corporate video production, photos, podcasts, essentially whatever you’re wanting to post. Social media posts have the potential to add value to followers. This value can be something such as learning information, entertainment value, being visually appealing, giving away a promo mode, job opportunities, and so much more. This is going to cost you nothing by posting and it allows for the opportunity for others to be following you as well.
Contribute to discussions online
A great tip for your e-commerce business would be to online forums or even discussions on social media. It’s completely free to participate in discussions and there are plenty of forums online where you can get involved. Reddit is a very popular space where you can contribute to discussions. Just be careful to not make your posts come off as too salesy as this is going to make you look bad.
Email marketing
Depending on how many subscribers you have, this can be free. Email marketing services such as Mailer Lite are free for the first few thousand subscribers and afterward, you pay a low monthly fee. Email marketing is a perfect way to reach customers because it’s a great way to reach them directly through their inbox. This way you can let them know when you have sales, promo codes, and so much more. Just be sure to not overuse email marketing. Nobody likes having a whole bunch of unnecessary emails in their inbox, you can get on the unsubscribed list that way.
Try out YouTube
Posting onto YouTube is completely free and it can be a fantastic way to get your business noticed. Just like with social media content, you’ll want to create something interesting that contains a value for the viewer. There are plenty of ways to make intriguing content that surrounds your brand such as having a tutorial, showing the process of how you create your product, some behind the scene footage of what you do, or even get creative with one of those “Work with Me” videos where the viewer can just watch you work.
