Although it didn’t take a long time, it is still an excellent achievement. You are now running your own store as an entrepreneur.
You should also remember that you’ve only figured out how to start an ecommerce store, now you need to figure out how to take it to the next level. Owning an eCommerce business is about trying to improve your sales, customer service, customer experience, and most importantly, yourself.
To create a successful eCommerce store, you’ll need to focus your energy on marketing your store via ads, content creation and building an audience on social media. When combined, those three things can have a powerful impact on your brand in the long-term. Right now, you need to put your brand out there for everyone to see as people won’t just magically find you. Just as Shopify and apps like Oberlo make running your eCommerce business easier than ever before, there are plenty of accessible marketing tools and tutorials available online. We recommend using Facebook Ads to boost your sales. Remember, that it’s best to jump right in to this aspect of your eCommerce business because learning by doing will be more effective than coming up with a complex marketing plan right from the onset.
Write down a list of things you want to achieve with your eCommerce business, and begin the learning process. Begin by committing one hour every day to improving your eCommerce store so that you can further edit your website, find new ways to boost sales, and continue learning how to grow your eCommerce business. With hard work and a sales push on your side, the possibilities are endless. Focus on why you started this eCommerce business in the first place and let that drive your determination to succeed. No matter where your eCommerce adventure takes you, rest assured that you’ll learn so much more about yourself and witness your levels of creativity, determination, and perseverance reach new heights.
Social Media Marketing: Pinterest for Business
How to Drive Traffic and Sales with Pinterest
How to use Instagram for Business: How to Build an Audience of Followers for Your Business
Hopefully you have read The Ultimate Guide to Dropshipping located in the Start Here step in this how to guide. Coming in a close second to adding value as a key success factor is being able to drive traffic to your new site. The #1 problem and frustration new ecommerce merchants face is a lack of traffic to their websites. Too many merchants slave away for months on the perfect site only to launch it to a world that has no idea it exists.
Marketing and driving traffic is absolutely essential to the success of your business and is difficult to outsource well, especially if you have a small budget and are bootstrapping your business. You need to take the personal initiative to develop your own SEO, marketing, outreach and guest posting skills.
This is particularly crucial during the first 6 to 12 months, when no one knows who you are. Following your site launch, you need to dedicate at least 75% of your time on marketing, SEO and traffic generation for at least 4 to 6 months – that's right, 4 to 6 months! Once you've established a solid marketing foundation, you can scale back and coast a bit on the work you put in. But early on, it's impossible to place too much emphasis on marketing.
If you're not a marketing or SEO expert yet, the following resources and blogs are a great way to get started:
SEO Resources:
SEOmoz – One of the most popular SEO communities online. Their beginners guide to SEO is a particularly great resource for those starting out.
SeachEngineLand – Extremely prolific SEO blog, with dozens of new posts each day.
SEOBook – A popular SEO blog and the home of a paid private community for SEO professionals.
Distilled – This marketing and SEO agency has a top-notch blog and a number of quality training courses and guides, many of which are free.
Marketing Resources:
Hubspot Blog – Advice on everything inbound marketing related, from driving traffic with email to social media tips.
Seth Godin's Blog – Solid high-level advice on marketing and building an audience.
Burst Free Product Photos - High-quality product images for popular dropshipping products.
QuickSprout – A blog by well-known entrepreneur Neil Patel dedicated largely to marketing, SEO and traffic generation.
KissMetrics Blog – In-depth marketing posts with a slant toward analytics, usability and conversion.
SparringMind – How to use behavioral psychology to help influence customers and market your business.
CopyBlogger – Content marketing tips with an emphasis on writing effective, compelling copywriting.
Mixergy – Interviews with successful entrepreneurs in the technology and online fields. Not focused exclusively on marketing, but lots of applicable information for aspiring entrepreneurs including marketing and early-stage advice.
Ecommerce Marketing Resources:
Shopify Blog – A comprehensive ecommerce blog with frequent posts on how to effectively promote and market your online store.
ecommerceFuel – Tips from an active ecommerce entrepreneur on how to found, grow and market online stores. Written specifically for individual store owners and smaller stores.
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