Viral marketing, just like any category of online marketing campaign, aims to drive as much traffic to a site as possible. It actually leverages on the numbers game: the more traffic that ends up at your site, the higher the possible number of conversions.

Needless to say a viral marketing campaign has to work hand-in-hand with other factors of the page in order to convert visitors.

But what actually is viral marketing and how can you formulate a campaign yourself to assist drive traffic to your store?

Even a problem free shopping cart web store software powered by a dependable yet free shopping cart web store needs help in the marketing department. It takes a bit of work to let people out there know that your store exists (and is worth visiting).

Online Marketing

Online marketing has a lot to do with content. And so it has been said that content is king. But the content has to fit the medium in which it’s used and it has to seize viewers’ interest in order to be of any value. The subject of an online marketing campaign does not entirely have to be a product or service or something that is already being sought-after. It is possible for ad campaigns to generate interest about new products as well as improve brand awareness for existing ones. The wonderful news is that an online marketing campaign need not cost you an arm and a leg.

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is not a hard concept just as long as you know what you are doing. Viral marketing makes adequate use of existing resources on the Internet. This potentially include micro-blogging sites like Twitter, social networking sites like Facebook, video sharing sites like YouTube, and of course e-mail to get the word across. All these resources can get “interesting or worthy” news out fast at an exponential rate. Take the viral marketing campaign for the movie Cloverfield for instance. The marketing team opted for an indirect approach by producing teasers and micro sites instead of just a traditional movie trailer. That created such a buzz that the marketing practically took care of itself after just a few weeks. Keep in mind, the campaign was spread out over a year. Every few months bits of information were released, rumors were spread and theories suggested for the sole purpose of raising awareness and keeping people hooked. Obviously, the strategy proved to be a success.

Of course, this road may not be for everyone. You need to know your target market and what would appeal to them.

What Makes News Or Updates Worthy Of Being Repeated?

Conventionally, people like free stuff and they also like heavy discounts. Needless to say, these free or discounted items should have a high perceived value among the masses for your campaign to garner any interest at all. Let’s say you want to announce a mid-year sale for your online ladies shoe store. You need to remember that many other stores might be doing the same thing as you. You could use the resources mentioned above to promote your sale, while always making sure your titles and descriptions are SEO-friendly. Now, women love shoes. And I would guess that they love free shoes even more. Why not come up with a contest that challenges people to guess the size or weight of a certain pair of shoes. The first 10 correct entries will be given gift vouchers worth $100 each and the next 50 correct entries will be rewarded with a 50% discount coupon. Done correctly, word of mouth about your store and its offer can spread quickly to more and more potential clients.

Another perfect example is a recent viral marketing campaign by an online camera store that is giving 2 very desirable cameras for free to participants at random. The catch: in order to be eligible for consideration, participants must first Retweet or publish on a blog the ad line containing a link to the store. A sneaky way to get links as well as get the word across, isn’t it?

Cost

You don’t have to develop a teaser video like the one for Cloverfield to spread the word. Many artists and companies on a shoestring budget have produced successful viral marketing videos of varying degrees of quality. For instance, The Blair Witch Project (whatever you may think of the actual movie) was a small-budget movie with one impressive viral marketing campaign. The bottom line is that if your marketing materials are captivating enough and you have fully utilized the channels we mentioned earlier, then you can look forward to a bombardment of visits in a relatively short period of time.

Viral marketing is perfect for marketing a new web store. Just make sure you have all your bases covered first. Make sure you’ve first signed up for a worry simple ecommerce shopping cart solution. A feature-rich, easy-to-use free shopping cart e-store like the one from InstanteStore is a good bet. Once you’ve got all your basics done and you have your store set up and tested, you’re ready to allow the world know you’re in business. Good luck!

So you’ve signed up for an ecommerce shopping cart software systems and you’ve got a store running. You also have a healthy pool of loyal customers and everything seems peachy. Sales are excellent..but they can always be more impressive.

A large number of merchants don’t usually consider the obvious when trying to improve sales figures. Always start with the resources you have because they are most probably free, familiar, and do not require much effort.

Statistics have proven that people tend to buy more from a store they have previously purchased from. As matter of fact, merchants can boost their sales by as much as 30% by concentrating on existing customers alone. This is not to say that you should abandon all efforts of getting new customers. Targeting existing customers is merely another avenue to boost sales.

So what can you do to improve your sales figures with what you already have? A typical ecommerce shopping cart provider usually provides ecommerce solution shopping cart software that covers a few helpful selling functions. A relatively large number of merchants overlook these functions because they do not understand the possible impact they might have on their sales. Of course an ecommerce shopping cart software system provider will not have covered these features if they didn’t think it would be useful to their merchants.

So what should you do?

Cross-Sell

Amazon are experts at this. To mere mortals, it may not make much sense to cross-sell, for example, a DVD to someone who has just bought a bar of soap but as it seems it makes a lot of sense to Amazon. Who are we to argue? The point is, cross-selling items boost impulse buying from customers. It tries to milk the “Since I’m already here, I might as well buy this too” frame of mind. It probably can play a role to pitch customers products that are related to what they already have in their shopping carts, though. Try to provide cross-sell items that could be useful in combination with whatever your potential customers are showing interest in.

Up-Sell

Up-selling is a bit of a challenge as it involves persuading a buyer to purchase items which are sometimes more expensive than the item they’ve just bought or are interested in, in order to render the sale more profitable. These items are typically from the same product category and include upgrades, add-ons or non-tangible items like service packages, insurance, apps, or extended warranties. Merchants usually provide the argument that purchasing the items suggested at this juncture will cost less than if a customer buys them separately.

Re-Sell

As mentioned earlier, once a person buys from your store, they will likely shop there again. If the product is a consumable or needs to be consistently replaced (e.g. contact lens cleaners, vitamins, magazines or shaving blades) you can actually make it more simple for the customer by using the recurring billing/product subscription function. This function allows you to re-sell and re-bill the customer for the same product on a fixed timescale. This saves the customer from having to repeatedly re-order products manually each time they need to fill up their supplies.

All the methods above are not only perfect for increasing revenue from existing customers but also help develop the image of your store by making it seem more customer-friendly (one-time related product purchases and product subscriptions save time and money) as well as help build a long term customer following.

Ecommerce Success Checklist

Dependable shopping cart – Check

Keyword research – Check

SEO – Check

Eye-Catching ecommerce template – Check

Products uploaded and in stock – Check

All well and good – but what’s next?

You’ve done everything correct so far – you’ve signed up with a top web site ecommerce hosting shopping cart and you’ve made sure it’s a secure shopping carts at that. You done all your keyword and SEO homework, so now it’s time to make small adjustments to the page marketing aspects of your store.

If you take all your cross-selling cues from Amazon, you might not get the same results as them. Amazon bases their cross-selling decisions on a LOT of constantly updated data which is processed by experts – constantly learning and constantly tuning their recommendations. A relatively large number of shopping cart merchants do not have the resources to try to replicate this. For the rest of us, it’s better to play by a few simple guidelines when it comes to cross-selling.

Below are 4 basic guidelines to assist you make the most out of your cross-selling efforts:

Keep To A Limit

The idea of cross-selling is to suggest products that a customer may be interested in or may not have realized that they need. Proposing too many products may irritate some customers as well as confuse others. The ideal number of recommended products should be between 3 and 5. Remember, make it easy for the customer to make a decision. Remove all other unnecessary factors that might hinder this.

Keep Them Related

Blindly recommending products might relay a sense of desperation or seem unprofessional. As mentioned earlier, most merchants are not privy to the latest information on buying trends that the big players have so it would be a risk to suggest products that are unrelated. The closer the products are linked the easier it is to sell the “need to have” angle.

Product Credibility

Featuring product ratings by customers and experts can go a long way towards building product credibility. People like to be given the assurance that they are spending money on something that is worthwhile. Assurances by other people who have already purchased the product can aid here.

Provide Enough Useful Information

People research before they buy nowadays – not just to see if they can get a perfect bargain but also to find out if the item is best for them. Many merchants have product information in abundance but most of the information is useless. Always keep in mind that any information that you put up must be geared to assist you close a sale. The information that you present should be answers to questions you predict your customers would ask.

As an example, a customer looking for a pair of sports trainers would probably want to know the type of shoe (basketball, running, tennis), what type of gait it suits (neutral, overpronator, supinator), the weight of the shoe, and the expected mileage it offers before it is retired. Be sure to tailor your product information to cater to what you expect your site visitors will want to know.