If you’re in e-commerce, we’ve got some good news for you. According to a survey conducted by PYMNTS, over 35.7% of U.S. consumers choose to buy online compared to the previous 29.2%. What does this mean?
There’s no better time to invest in driving traffic to your online store than today.
Here are 5 ways you can drive traffic to your online apparel and accessories store. And we don’t mean digital ads.
1. Grow Your Social Media
Social media channels are some of the most popular platforms to market clothing stores. They are used to drive traffic, connect with their customers, and create brand awareness. Regardless of how many social media followers your business page has, it’s never enough.
Why? 74% of people turn to social media before they make any purchases.
And we don’t mean you should focus on the number of followers. You should focus on the quality of your followers. There are plenty of tools out there to help you gain huge amounts of followers, but none of those tools help you secure quality leads. The key here is to grow a loyal social following, which will engage with your posts, buy your products, and share the experience with their network. To achieve this you need to seriously work on your social media strategy.
Here are a few things to include in your social media strategy:
- See what your competition in the fashion industry is doing
Spying on your competitor’s Facebook ads and posts is a great way to see how they’re engaging with an audience similar to yours. Check out what they are posting and draw inspiration for your social media post plan.
- Make time to listen and speak to your audience
Answer any comments you might get on your posts, respond to negative reviews, use a website chat widget to engage with your customers. Any feedback you get from your customers on social media is a chance to improve your product and make sales.
- Include more videos in your posts
When selling apparel & accessories, you probably know that video marketing on social media is important. They bring 38% more engagement than pictures. Don't have a budget for professional videos? it's OK, there are free tools you can use to create a short video out of pictures.
- Let your followers win
Create contests and give out prizes, product samples, discount codes, and other goods. Contests keep your followers engaged and motivated to interact with your brand. Ask your followers to share your content with their friends or tag them.
2. Optimise Your Apparel Store for Search Engines
The good thing is that around 93% of all users’ web adventures start with a search on Google. The bad thing is that hardly 25% of people get to the second page of search results. If you are not on page one, you’re not on Google.
Search Engine Optimisation for an apparel and accessories store is an endless and tiring process. There’s a lot that you need to do and a lot that can go wrong. But here are 3 tips that will help you get started and put you on the right path:
- Link to other websites and get links to your website
Backlinks are links between two websites. They’re like a vote of confidence. If your website links to other websites and also has links pointing back, Google is more likely to rank your website higher than the websites without any links.
- Interlink pages on your website
Make sure you link your website’s pages to one another (where appropriate). This way Google knows that the topics of your website pages are similar and support each other. Go over the pages on your online store and make sure that each one links to at least one other page of your website.
- Optimise your content with keywords
Each page of your website should have one focus keyword. Do your research, find what focus keywords work best for your store, and go through each product page to optimise it.
3. Start Influencer Marketing Campaigns
Influencer marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. The beauty of influencer marketing lies in the simplicity of it. You find people on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, or any other social media platform. Then, contact them or their representatives and come to an advertising agreement that works for you both. Once that’s sorted, send them the products you already have and want to promote.
The agreements between you and the influencer can take any form or shape: you can simply ask them if they want to try your product and, if they like it, post about it on their Instagram for free. You can also ask for an ad on their Instagram regardless if they liked your product or not, but that will most likely cost you some money.
Pro Tip: to find influencers, use relevant hashtag searches on all things related to #makeup, #accessories, #fashion, #winteroutfits, #summeroutfits, #lifestyle, etc. Don’t be hesitant to target micro-influencers as well as the bigger fish - they might be cheaper and their following is usually more loyal and more engaging (which means a bigger return on investment).
4. Turn Mentions into Links
Are you creating content that’s mentioned across the web but not getting any credit for it? Don’t worry. We’ll help you turn those valuable mentions into money-making links.
Unlinked mentions of your brand or content are like half-baked ads. They’re promoting your business but don’t bring any value. We talked about the value of backlinks above and if you’ve been producing quality content, chances are you have some of those mentions already. They just aren’t pointing where they should be - back to your website.
How do you know if there are unlinked mentions?
Scan the web for any websites that mention your brand name. There are many backlink analysis tools out there to help you find unlinked mentions. Make sure you also search Google for variations and alternate spellings of your brand name or any branded products that can be relevant to your online store.
How do you get those mentions linked?
First, you need to decide which mentions are worth getting a link from. Keep in mind: you don’t want links from websites with lower DA (domain authority) than yours.
Once you’ve identified which mentions are worth going after, reach out to people who are responsible for the content on the website (yes, just a simple and polite email usually works). Politely ask them to link your mentions to the web page or a blog post the mention corresponds to.
5. Promote User-Generated Content
UGS (user-generated content) is an endorsement like no other. Just imagine, actual buyers, customers of your apparel and accessory store, are sharing pictures on social media and praising products they got from you.
A dream come true, right? Sure. But how do you get buyers to share content related to your products?
Here’s how:
- Hold a contest
Create a themed contest on social media and ask your followers to post pictures of themselves with your products. Think of a selfless hashtag your followers could add to their posts.
- Use hashtags
Think of a clever and engaging hashtag for your brand and use it on your social media platforms. Soon, your followers will pick it up and post pictures of your product with the brand’s hashtag on their social media platforms.
- Reward users who generate content
You can motivate your followers who generate content for you by giving them a discount code or including them in your loyalty program if you have one. They will appreciate your brand more and feel motivated to produce content for you.
To sum it up
Now, more than ever, you should focus on attracting more traffic to your online apparel and accessory store. The right way to do that is up to you as no one knows your customers and your store better than you.
Some strategies listed above might work for you and some might not. It’s a learning curve. The key takeaway is that all your SEO, social media, and outreach efforts will definitely not go unnoticed.
Keep at it consistently and soon enough you’ll see your efforts paying off.