Low Budget Marketing For New Web Stores

So you just opened your shiny new Magento or Opencart store.  It looks great, it’s fast and it’s on a great host (Hint #1 use Hawk Host).  But where are all the sales?

Unfortunately your work isn’t done.  Here are some things you can do to get over the hump and start getting your first few sales.

Let The Internet Know You Exist

Eventually Google and all of the other sites like that will find you but you can speed that up dramatically.  First you should use these links (Google, Yahoo, Bing) to submit your site to the big 3 search engines.  After that you should register an account for your site on all of the major Social Media platforms.  I recommend at least Facebook and Twitter but you can do others such as Reddit, Pinterest, and Instagram if they fit your market.

You will also probably want to post a coupon code on sites like Retail Me Not.  Once you submit a coupon there you can bet that it will get aggregated and posted on dozens of coupon sites across the web.

If you’re lucky you’ll start to see some traffic flowing in slowly almost immediately, but chances are you still won’t be getting very many eyeballs so it will probably help to…

Set Up Shop In Online Marketplaces

It may be counter intuitive to set up a whole new shop, especially after you just finished building yourself a fancy new Magento store, but getting sales is priority 1.  Set yourself up with a seller account on Amazon, eBay, and Etsy (If you are making your own products).  Take note that you will have to pay a processing fee on these sites when you make sales so make sure to increase your price appropriately.

When you do get a sale make sure to include promotional materials in the package that directs the purchaser back to your website.  Including a  sales coupon with your URL and a promo code on the invoice is a nice cheap way to do that.

Once you start to get sales on your own site you are going to want to consider severely limiting your product selection on these third parties because you don’t want to be competing against yourself in advertising and on search engine pages.

Build An Email List & Send a Newsletter

Email marketing is cheap or free and it’s a great way to make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck out of the limited traffic you get as you get started.  Make sure to include a prominent newsletter sign up option on your site and ask users who begin checkout to opt in as well.  You might also consider installing an exit intent lightbox.

You can use Mailchimp to send your newsletter for free as long as you have under 2000 subscribers.

Use Free Ad Credits

Google will give you $75 if you deposit $25 Amazon will give you $50 (to advertise Amazon products only) Yahoo will give you $50

Ideally you should use these ad credits towards Product Listing Ads because they convert at a much higher rate than generic text based ads.  These sites will likely ask for your billing information on signup so make sure to keep a close eye on how much you’ve spent so that you don’t get hit with a big unexpected bill.

Set Up An Affiliate Program

Opencart has this functionality out of the box and Magento has several plugin options. This is a great way to force your family in friends into doing your dirty work get your loved ones to help out with your new store.  People love getting paid for working from home and this is a win win if they can send you sales.

Do you have a great low budget marketing tip? Share it below!