Everyone wants to drive traffic
Whether you're a freelance store builder, or work with an agency, you likely know that once an online store is built, the project isn't over. It may feel like the work is done, but in reality, the work is just getting started. Building a store is a pre-requisite for earning online revenue. But it's not enough.
The moment the store is live, the next question is how you drive traffic to the store.
This week, in Last Week in WooCommerce, I want to point you to an article posted this past week on WooCommerce.com's blog.
WooCommerce.com offers three ways to drive traffic to your store
The post on driving traffic on WooCommerce.com is a great one and worth reading.
To summarize, they recommend three efforts:
- Drive traffic via organic search – this means you need to generate content (blog posts, reviews, etc) that Google finds and indexes. That's the content that will bring people to your store. Good thing I gave you a bunch of blog topics yesterday, right?
- Use paid search to drive traffic – this means you might want to spend on Google ads to bring more folks to the store. This can be a great approach, but you have to worry about it getting too expensive and the article gives you some good tips (like using negative keywords).
- Buy ads on social – this means you buy Facebook ads. And there's nothing wrong with this approach, but you'll either need to learn how to do it, or hire someone to do it for you. Also not every kind of store will be able to do it (depending on what you're selling).
Surely there must be more tricks to get more visitors to your store
As you read that list above, you might be thinking – wait a minute, two of the three strategies cost me money without a guarantee that I'll make it back. I'm not guessing. I've heard many of you say the same thing when we talk of those three strategies.
So let's look at four additional strategies that may cost less and not feel as risky.
- You can leverage influencers if they already have an audience – this means you find someone who had the audience you want, and you invite them to evaluate your offerings and share their insights with that audience. You pay them a flat fee, or (better) you offer them a percentage of the deals they bring you. It's an affiliate play, pure and simple, but you're paying them out of your proceeds instead of paying with only hope as your strategy.
- You can use social without paying for ads – If you have a great following, or know someone who does, you can leverage social channels without necessarily spending on the ads. Giveaways, contests, etc are all fun ways to engage an audience (where you spend the money on the prizes instead of the ads).
- Reach out to bloggers and the press – If you have an interesting angle on your store, learning how to tell that story, and engage others in sharing it can get you greater exposure and the additional traffic as well.
- Send free samples – Driving traffic to your store doesn't have to be super-complex. Sometimes you just need a handful of the right folks to enjoy your products. So consider sending them free samples of your products.
Of course, risk is in the eye of the beholder. So the decision is up to you. Either way, now you have 7 ways to drive traffic to your stores.
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