How To Grow Your Business (In 5 Ways)

If you followed my step-by-step guide on how to launch a business, your website should be up and rising by now. What comes next are all the different ways you can drive targeted and quality traffic to it. What does this mean? It's about time you implemented your growth strategy!

In this section, I’ll guide you through the process of making your ecommerce website a lead magnet via:

• Online advertising

• Social media

• Content marketing

• Newsletter

• Customer reviews

All these ingredients are essential to the making of a concoction I call “Successful Online Business”.

Of course, you don’t have to strain yourself by leaping between everything at once. To the contrary: the secret sauce in business management is to master one marketing channel at a time.

Pro tip: Once you get a firm grasp of how X, Y, Z channel works and how it can benefit your business, you can move on to the next one.

Online advertising: Set up brand promotions on Facebook and Google

Online advertising is by far the fastest way to kickstart your ecommerce marketing journey. Setting up your ad campaign on platforms such as Facebook and Google takes less than 10 minutes, and you can wing it with a fee as small as £1. I suggest that you gradually bump up your budget as positive results start to gleam.

Direct consumer advertising is a vital pillar of all online shops. Shopify can set the tone and seamlessly implement your adverts, seeing that it arrives with a built-in advertising platform called Kit. Just as Kit will support your promoting attempts on Instagram and Facebook, so will the plethora of apps attached on the specific platform. As your online brand flourishes and you gain visibility, these apps will amplify and streamline your messaging.

Social media and influencer marketing: Ramp up your organic reach and engagement rates

A robust social media presence tied with word-of-mouth marketing can be powerful weapons in your arsenal. While Facebook and Twitter saw dips in assisting ecommerce stores with their organic traffic, these channels remain instrumental for nurturing a community of brand fans. Pinterest, on the other hand, is growing like mad as a search engine and social network, and can contribute to your traffic so long as you have a proper content marketing strategy in place.

First and foremost, you'll have to develop your social media profile. Once you’re ready to make investments in resources and bolster the reach and engagement of your accounts, it’s worth getting experimental with influencer marketing.

Content marketing: Write SEO-rich material to become a trusted source

Do you want your digital store to climb to the top of the search engine results page on Google, and build an authority for your business? Who doesn't? To achieve so, however, you will have to dedicate time crafting engaging, high-converting content (I can give you a hand with this). Coupled with a fiery search engine optimisation strategy (SEO), content marketing can get your business off the ground. Realistically speaking, this off-grounding may take a while, but be patient and visualise all the benefits your business will reap long-term.

SEO is a broad and mind-boggling topic, so don't worry much about it during the initial stages of your business-building. Simply ease yourself in the process by publishing stuff related to what your customers are interested in most, and how your products or services will resolve their problem(s) or pain point(s).

Newsletter: Build your follower list

If you're on the lookout for more ecommerce marketing opportunities, how about you create a newsletter and automate your email? Some degree of email automation has to be done anyways when you put your ecommerce store together as, for instance, sending confirmation emails after payment. Consider making advanced integrations for your email campaigns only when you receive enough traffic to your e-shop.

Did you know that by running an email list you form another another source of organic traffic? This can complement your SEO execution and social media management so to attract potential customers.

Bottom line: the more the better (in this case).

Depending on your time and technical know-how, you might use various tools to see what suits you best. Klaviyo is the king in email marketing solutions for ecommerce owners. You can tap into the ecosystem of segmentation tools available, which can extract data straight from your digital shop to personalise your email marketing campaigns.

Customer reviews: Breed trust via social proof

The final step in your marketing initiatives is to assemble valuable customer reviews. Not only will this give you glimpses into what people think of your goods, but also it'll showcase your website or utilise your social media advertising as social proof in reassurance of future customers that they're making the right choice when buying from you.

A useful tool to collect and coordinate your customer reviews, as well as set up loyalty and referral programmes, is Yotpo. This all-encompassing UGC marketing platform combines every kind of customer content (reviews, testimonials, FAQ, pictures, etc) to boost trust and sales.

Have you put in action any of the above strategies?

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