4 Robust but Often Overlooked Marketing Channels to Grow Your E-Commerce Business this 2021

There are ups and downs to using paid ads.

With it, you can expose your products to thousands of people overnight, allowing you to generate sales and leads, improve your brand visibility, and even generate audience engagement. 

It’s downside, however, can’t be taken lightly. 

With paid ads, your traffic source doesn’t have longevity. Once you turn off your ads, you immediately lose lots of traffic. What’s more, those using paid ads spend truck loads of money for the ad placements. 

If you’re looking for other marketing channels that will help improve your web presence, generate sales, and grow your ecommerce business, then I’m glad you’re here.

In this guide, we’ll cover four of these marketing channels.

1. Listings and directories

Numerous businesses invest heavily in search marketing. They have dominated both the top organic search results and paid search ads, making these spaces fiercely competitive. 

That’s why, if you’re running a niche store or concentrating on local customers, you’ll do well to leverage a better ecommerce marketing channel for you: local listings and directories. 

Local directories and listings are platforms that record stores according to their niche, category, and location, along with essential information, such as their name, website, business area, contact details, opening hours, etc.

For example, if you’re in the food and restaurant sector, you can register on sites such as MenuPages and Zomato. For automobiles, go to AutoTraders and DealerRater. You can also sign up on general local online directories such as Yellow Pages and EZLocal. 

Other local listing platforms include Google My Business, Better Business Bureau, Apple Maps, Yelp, and many more. 

Although some of these platforms only work if you run a brick-and-mortar branch of your ecommerce store, you can optimize your local SEO and appear among the top search results for location-specific services and product availability. 

(Do that by sprinkling location-specific keywords all over your pages, creating content around issues in your local business area, getting reviews by customers from that place, and others.) 

Listing your ecommerce store on these online directories boosts your online visibility and gives high-quality traffic and substantial sales and profit -- all at low or competitive rates.

2. Quora

Quora is among the best places to promote your business. It’s a question-and-answer and community site known for posting topical queries and getting reliable information from credible persons.  

Questions can be just about anything: whether it’s the latest artificial intelligence trends and technologies, profitable business niches in 2020, and more. 

When someone posts queries relevant to your industry, you can reply with insightful answers, mention your company as an example, and showcase products when appropriate. 

(A word of caution: Do not hardsell. Focus on offering value and organically introducing your business.) 

If Quora members like your answer, they can share and hit the “upvote” button. This shows they found your answers or comments helpful which then makes you more credible and trustworthy.

As you capture their trust, they’re more open to checking out your ecommerce business and recommendation and begin their customer journey with your brand.

3. Digital Coupon Marketing

Coupon marketing is a strategy that leverages your customers’ desire to pay less on purchases to fulfill your marketing goals.

It’s a tried and tested strategy that even the most seasoned of SEOs use. In fact, according to Paul Titelman, “Giving away coupons can turbocharge your sales and conversions, customer loyalty and satisfaction. When used correctly, it can skyrocket your social media follower count and email subscribers.” 

These tactics can even help you beat and get ahead of your rivals as shoppers choose you over them because of the lower prices they’ll get with your coupons. 

In the online space, coupons often go digital and come in the form of codes that customers should type in or select to get discounts, promos, free shipping, and other offers. 

To boost your ecommerce business performance, use digital coupons to: 

• Dispose of slow-moving, poorly selling merchandise. Some products don’t get many sales, so take them off your shelves through huge promos and at least break even. Offering even just 10% discounts can get those products selling wildly.

• Build your email list. Get more subscribers and increase your marketing opportunities by giving discounts in exchange for your shoppers’ email addresses. When they do that, you can send and personalize your promotional emails, motivating them to buy more from your store.

When presenting your coupons on your site, make sure they’re noticeable. Place them on your banner or pop-ups, depending on your marketing goal. 

You should also design them attractively and include call-to-action buttons, so shoppers can respond conveniently. 

You can even add time restraints to drive urgency and propel them to act quickly. Just don’t schedule your offer too far from its closing date so they don’t get complacent and forget your promo.

Here’s a sample coupon displayed on a website banner by Petal & Pup: 

Image Source: petalandpup.com.au. 

Petal & Pup gives away 20% discounts on its flash sale when customers checkout with the code “STYLE20.” 

Conscious Step also shows a visually appealing pop-up with 15% discount coupons for first-time email subscribers:

Image Source: consciousstep.com.

Compel your customers to buy from your ecommerce store with exciting coupons designed attractively and displayed prominently on your site.

Additionally, ensure your website is optimized for mobile-first indexing to increase your site’s and, in turn, your offers’ visibility and reach more audiences.  

4. Video Marketing

Marketing your business through videos can work wonders for your ecommerce business. Whether you’re using a recorded video from your video conferencing software, a short Tik-Tok video, or you’re using Facebook live, your chances of getting engagements from your audience is really high.

Video marketing is that effective.

Videos stimulate humans’ visual, story-loving nature and let them engage with your brand virtually. This makes it easier to get their focus and amplify your brand’s appeal. 

Use your marketing videos to: 

• Demonstrate how to use your product
• Explain its best features
• Showcase your company culture
• Illustrate your brand
• Reveal your new products
• Exhibit how you make your products
• Show what’s going on in your event, etc.

When using videos for your marketing campaign, follow these tips:

• Tell a story rather than being salesy.
• Get to the point within five to 10 seconds.
• Add closed captions.
• Include a call-to-action at the end.
• Incorporate your target keywords in your video tags and descriptions (failing this part is among the deadly sins of video SEO!). 

These video marketing tactics help you instantly capture your customers’ interest, engage and keep them throughout your video, and increase your sales and conversion opportunities. 

Additionally, you can use videos for other content types, such as running tutorials on the online course platforms such as Kajabi or Teachable while also supporting your marketing efforts.

Online course platforms or learning management systems (LSIs) are perfect for housing your videos and lessons if you have info products.

Outshine Your competition with Your New Marketing Channels

If there’s one advantage to marketing your e-commerce shop online, it’s the vast range of promotional channels available at your fingertips. The downside: your rivals are probably already wielding them, too -- and powerfully at that. 

By getting away from popular channels and maximizing unique ones, you can score better leads from specific audiences and kick off with more robust cost metrics. 

Explore platforms with excellent traffic, features suitable to your e-commerce store, and low competition to outshine other businesses and boost your performance. 

You can even track your various marketing channels’ performances with a reliable marketing analytics software. This helps you assess what’s working and what’s not and make the right adjustments to improve your marketing strategies and performance.