Guide to Driving Traffic to Your Online Store in 2024 (Free & Paid Methods) (2024)

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Free Methods:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is often thought of as a long game when it comes to driving traffic to your online stores. Unlike paid ads, results aren’t immediate, but when done right, it’s all worth it.

Working on your website’s SEO essentially makes your store easier to find on search engines like Google. Everyone wants to be on the top results of the first page of a Google Search query— it can make a world of difference in online traffic, giving you a boost in visibility and credibility.

Here is what you can do to improve your site’s SEO:

Use Keywords: Mastering keywords is crucial to SEO. Keywords are the search terms and phrases that people enter into the search bar to find information or products. When it comes to ecommerce SEO, they're the words and phrases that are most likely to lead potential customers to your store and its products.
Content is King: High-quality content is essential for SEO and establishing your brand as a trusted authority in your niche. This means crafting high-quality product descriptions with a great format, using high-quality images and videos, and posting keywords rich blog posts.
Get Backlinks: Popularity matters when it comes to SEO. The more high-quality websites that link back to yours, the more important your site appears in the eyes of search engines. High-quality and relevant backlinks are what matters when it comes to improving your rank and credibility.

2. Social Media Marketing:

Everyone and every brand is on social media, and if you’re not actively participating on at least a couple of platforms, you are seriously missing out. Social media marketing is an essential powerhouse that has been driving online brands forward by improving brand awareness, engagement, traffic, and business. It's no longer just about throwing up a few product posts and hoping for the best. Today's online consumers want engagement and a brand experience that comes from building up your presence and persona on social media.

Here's how you can leverage the power of social media to attract and convert followers into customers:

Pick a Platform Wisely: Don't spread yourself too thin! You can only do so much and your audience is more likely to be more active on one platform than the other, so identify the social media platforms where your target audience hangs out most. Selling fashion and accessories? Go for Instagram. Peddling the latest tech? You may be better off on Twitter.
Become a Content Creator: Social media is a visual playground where you should show off everything you have to offer in the best possible light. This is also where keeping up with trends comes in handy. Right now videos and reels are trendy, so experiment with short-form videos—this can help increase views, followers, and brand awareness. Lifestyle imagery featuring your products in action is also a crucial aspect of social media marketing. Don’t forget to stay consistent and active, engaging with customers regularly.
Storytelling is Key: People have always connected with stories. Brands that know this leverage brand storytelling to captivate and build meaningful relationships with their customers. Use social media to weave a narrative around your brand. Highlight the shared values your brand and its products have with your target audience, share customer testimonials, and offer a glimpse behind the scenes of your business. This fosters an emotional connection, bringing meaning to your brand and what it does for your customers.

3. Content Marketing is Key

As mentioned in the previous section on SEO, content is king, so invest some time in creating valuable, informative, and entertaining content for your target audience to consume. This can include blog posts, infographics, short-form social media videos, or even guides and ebooks.

Content marketing is also fuel for SEO not to mention it keeps your social media content alive and running. Working on content also establishes your brand as a trusted resource and industry leader in your niche.

Here are some tips for crafting great content:

Know Your Audience: to craft good content, you need to know who the content is for. Who is your target audience? what are their interests, pain points, and online behavior? What kind of content are they most likely to consume? These are the kinds of questions you need answers to to craft targeted content that will reach a high-value audience that will drive traffic to your site.
Mix it up: Don't get stuck in a rut crafting only one type of content. Embracing diversity and mixing it up can help you understand what works for your audience and what doesn’t. Experiment with new blog post formats, try new ways to take lifestyle product photography, and post more on Instagram reels. The process of creating content to attract customers to your site should be fun and creative.
Don’t forget SEO Keywords: Remember, content marketing and SEO are best friends. Don’t forget to use content marketing as an opportunity to use keywords strategically across your content. Optimize your content for SEO by making sure to include proper title tags, meta descriptions, and internal linking.
Promote Your Content: Don’t just post content and let it sit there. Promote your new blog post on social media posts and stories, send out email alerts, and encourage the audience The more you promote and share, the more traffic you'll drive to your online store.

Note: Being successful at driving traffic to your online store through content relies on consistency. Secondly, quality counts. Use content to educate and entertain your audience. You’ll establish trust, boost brand awareness, drive traffic to your site, and ultimately convert more visitors into your customers.

4. Email Marketing:

Email marketing sounds old school, but you can’t deny that there is a place for it in ecommerce today. Most brands dedicate a strategy to building an email list and sending out regular newsletters promoting their products, sales, and events to keep customers engaged and coming back.

While not as flashy as social media and its never-ending trends, email marketing remains powerful for driving targeted traffic. Here's how you can use email to drive traffic to your site:

Targeted Campaigns: Gone are the days when every customer gets the same email and promo. Many contemporary email marketing tools and apps are allowing brands to segment their audience based on demographics, purchase history, and other behaviors so that you can execute the right strategy with every customer type and email. Segmentation strategies increase click-through rates and drive more targeted traffic to your site, getting you the right results with the right customers.
Automated Workflows: Email marketing today is now automated and streamlined. You can accomplish a lot by setting up triggered emails for abandoned carts, restock announcements, and special promotions for VIP customers. These emails drive traffic by enticing customers to come back to your shop.

5. Community Engagement

Competition can be pretty fierce in ecommerce—and that’s why you’re vying for more traffic in the first place. Everyone is competing for attention with flashy ads and giveaways, but not enough attention is paid to the hidden gem that is online communities and forums.

These spaces are alive and vibrant, teaming with your target audience who are passionate and interested in your niche. This presents an opportunity to connect with potential customers, where you can also establish yourself as an authority in your niche. The intention in participating in these forums and communities is to help your customers and ultimately (hopefully) drive them to your site where they become your customers.

Here’s a couple of ways on how to leverage online communities for success:

Find Your Communities: Not all online communities are created equal, so take some time to find the niche community that aligns well with your brand. You can find this community on social media or sites like Reddit. There are even specialized niche websites with forums you can join. This ensures that you are reaching a highly relevant audience genuinely interested in what you have to offer.
Become a Valuable Contributor: As we mentioned, this approach should be done to educate and help customers. Don’t just jump in and start promoting your products because this approach seems insincere. Take the time to become a valued member of the community by actively participating in discussions, sharing your expertise, and offering insight. This allows you to foster trust, positioning you and your online brand as credible and trustworthy, leading customers to explore your offerings.

Paid Methods:

6. Pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising:

While organic (free) strategies are the bread and butter for many online businesses, sometimes you need a little boost to see some major traction. Running targeted ads on search engines and social media platforms is one of the best ways to reach a wide and targeted audience. There are many ads and ad types to run, and PPC allows you to target your ideal customer with laser focus. Here is how PPC can help you improve online traffic to your online business:

Precision Targeting: Paid ads allow you to target your target audience through location, behavior, and demographic, making for precision targeting. This targeted approach maximizes your return on investment by attracting high-quality traffic, instead of the odd stragglers. So explore different platforms and advertisem*nt options to find the best solution to driving traffic to your site through paid ads.
Platform Powerhouse: PPC isn't limited to just search engines like Google Ads. Major social media platforms like Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads offer powerful PPC tools as well and you can explore these ad types through your ad manager. Make sure to select the right platforms to target users based on their browsing behavior and interests. This helps you engage potential customers directly where they spend most of their time online.

7. Influence Marketing

You can reach your target audience through the help of social media influencers whose large following also happens to consist of your potential customers. A social media influencer is someone who has a substantial following on a platform and can feature your products in a genuine way to increase brand awareness, boost your social media presence, and therefore improve your online traffic.

People generally place greater faith in other people than they do in brands. Partnering up with an influencer in your niche to promote your products can be a great way to drive traffic to your website.

Find Your Influencers: When you decide to engage with social media influencer marketing to boost traffic to your website, it's important to find an influencer whose values and content align with your brand, and whose followers are likely to be drawn in by your products. Partnering with the right influencers builds credibility for your brand by association.
Creative Collaboration: It’s best to work closely with influencers to develop a collaborative and creative experience. Working closely together to create engaging content that showcases your products naturally and authentically will get you the best results. Make sure to give the influencers you work with the space and freedom to express their unique personality and style while highlighting the benefits of your products.
Micro-influencers: Don’t have the budget for a full-fledged influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers? Try micro-influencers. Micro-influencers are influencers with at least over 10,000 followers, who share content for a small fee, or even if you give them free products or a referral code.

8. Run Contests and Giveaways:

People love joining contests and giveaways for the chance to win free stuff. There’s just something fun and engaging about it for a lot of people. Online competitions don’t have to be so elaborate and costly, but they can benefit small businesses by creating more engagement and interactions for your brand.

Think of it as essentially gamifying your growth. Online contests are some of the best ways to spread brand awareness for new and small online businesses. Here are a few ways you can leverage giveaways and contests to get more traffic to your online store:

Leveraging The Fun: People are drawn to the thrilling potential of winning something. Contests and giveaways tap into this inherent desire, creating excitement and anticipation, ultimately increasing engagement for your brand. It’s definitely a more playful approach to marketing your business to drive traffic. This playful approach fosters positive interaction and also encourages participation in the hopes of driving more traffic to your store.
Use Social Media: Contests and giveaways can be held on social media, like Facebook and Instagram. The rules can be as simple as following your page, liking a specific post, and tagging a friend to get individuals to qualify. You can even have followers share your post in their stories for a chance for them to win freebies. Exponentially increasing your reach and attracting new followers for your brand.

Other Methods:

9. Referral Programs:

Customers are valuable assets all on their own, but you can also leverage them to help you increase traffic to your online store by incentivizing customers to refer their friends, family, and followers to check out your shop through a strategic referral program.

Your existing customers have already experienced the quality of your products and trust your brand, and effective referral programs empower you to leverage this loyalty and translate it into a traffic-generating machine. Here are some ways to turn loyal customers into brand advocates through a referral program that will drive more traffic than ever:

A sweet deal: Referral programs are built on enticing rewards. So offer up discount coupons, exclusive gives, and loyalty points that are redeemable when your customer refers your brand to someone else. As with everything, your referral program and rewards should be tailored to your target audience and ensure they offer real value to incentivize the referrals.
Easy Sharing: Spread the word about your referral program and make it easy for customers to share your brand with their network of family, friends, and online followers. You can do this by simply integrating social media sharing buttons into your site.
Promote the Program: Don't keep your referral program a secret. Promote it across website banners, email newsletters, and even social media posts. Highlight the benefits for both referrers and their friends to generate excitement and encourage participation. This will help drive traffic and engagement to your site. Remember, everyone loves rewards points, and discounts.

10. Optimize Your Website for Mobile:

People spend plenty of time on their mobile phones, whether they’re using it for social media or shopping online. More and more mobile users are completing their online shopping online, so if your site isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re missing out.

The vast majority of online shopping now happens on mobile devices, so make sure your website is mobile-friendly to capture the growing mobile shopping audience and increase traffic to your online store.

Here's how to ensure your website is mobile-friendly and ready to capture the ever-growing mobile audience:

Responsive Design is King: Responsive design means your site automatically adjusts itself seamlessly to any screen, whether a customer is on their computer or mobile device. Make sure to check that elements are not lost or rendered illegible across different devices. If they are, then something needs to be changed. Seamless navigation, clear calls to action, and easily readable fonts are crucial for a positive mobile shopping experience.
Fast Loading Speeds: Websites with fast load times get more traffic than slow ones, and this is also due to SEO and search engines favoring fast sites. Optimize your website images, minimize code bloat, and Fast loading times to keep mobile users engaged, prevent them from abandoning your site, and may even have them coming back.

There you have it, we’ve given you 10 free, paid, and alternative ways to increase traffic to your online store. By using some of these strategies, we hope you can serve more customers in 2024.

Just remember that increasing traffic to your online store is more of a marathon than a sprint. Stay consistent and the results of your efforts will compound over time.

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