How to Drive Traffic To Your Online Store: The Six Keys for Fashion Start-Ups

Digital Marketing for Fashion Designers: How to Drive Traffic to Your Online Store

As a start-up fashion designer, your focus should be on e-commerce sales because, without sales, you don’t have a business. If you are not making any money, you have what’s called a hobby. As a fashion coach, it’s my job to get my clients from having a hobby where they’re not making any money to having a full-blown business. It might take a little while in the beginning, but it’s worth it once you get there. Now, how many of you have ever heard the term digital marketing? Strategic digital marketing is ultimately how to drive traffic to your online store.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the world we live in. The traditional methods of marketing like billboards and TV ads and magazine ads are dying because everything is now online. So, as a designer, you have another job, called online marketer, and it’s probably almost equally if not more important than being a designer. Being a designer is very important, but marketing yourself to actually sell is equally as important.

Why You Need Google Analytics

First, you need to have a gauge on who is attending your website and where they’re coming from. So you need to install Google Analytics. If you do not have Google Analytics installed, please install it right now. It’s free, it’s super easy, it’s just a little piece of code that you put on the back-end of your site.You can do it, your web designer can do it, it’s not that difficult. It’ll show you who’s coming to your website, where they’re coming from demographic-wise, geographic-wise, age-wise, what mobile device they are on, and what kind of computer they’re using. It will tell you how they found you- whether it’s Facebook or Instagram or your website or Google search. It literally tells you everything, okay. It also tells you your bounce rate. So, the bounce rate is a record of when someone comes to your website and then they quickly leaves your website- meaning they didn’t find what they were looking for. So, you really don’t want the bounce rate to be very high, you want it to be very low and believe it or not people will make a decision to stay or leave your website within three seconds.

The Six Keys: How To Drive Traffic to Your Online Store

1. Social media.
2. Email marketing
3. Video.
4. Backlinks
5. Keywords
6. Blogging

Social media

Google is constantly looking at all the shares, all of the likes, and all of the comments. This is why I’m constantly asking you guys; hey, can you share my video, can you comment, can you like stuff, because it actually helps your page get higher in Google. Additionally, you’ll be noticed more if your Instagram is more aesthetically-pleasing. Let us help you build up your profile with our Instagram Starter Package!

Email marketing

Email marketing is still the number one way to reach people, so as much as people love social media, email marketing is still 40 times as effective as social media. So, you need to start collecting all of the email addresses from all of your fans and followers. If Facebook decides to shut down your page or Instagram shuts down your page tomorrow, you will lose all of your followers like that and there’s no way to get them back! Your tribe should also be on your email list one way or another. If you think about it, how many times do you go throughout the day without checking your Facebook, but still check your email? Even if you don’t read the emails, you still swipe across to delete it. You’re seeing that email, you’re seeing the name, and the name is now being implanted in your mind. So you want that person to have your name in their mind. You want to be at the front of their mind every single day or maybe not every day because you don’t want to bombard them to the point where they unsubscribe. But you want to provide them with really good content and we will talk a little bit more about that later. Please don’t use your Gmail account or your Hotmail or Yahoo for this; it is not professional. You are a professional business owner and you need to start acting like one! So, get a professional email marketing service; MailChimp is free. Get MailChimp, Constant Contact, or Covert Kit. There are so many different email marketing systems that you can use. Why it’s so Important to Use an Email Marketing Service Technically, you can’t email someone without getting their permission. This is stated in the CAN-SPAM Act. If you add too many people to your list that didn’t approve and they unsubscribe, you can actually get your email account shut down. This is why you can’t just send an email from Gmail or BCC everyone because it’s considered spam. You can possibly be penalized for it if you continue to do it that way.

Video

Google now owns YouTube, just like Facebook owns Instagram. A video is super, super important for SEO or search engine optimization– which will help your site get higher on the list of Google when someone is searching for something you are offering. It’s crucial to have the video on your website and you want that video to be on the home page, if not other pages as well. And you can incorporate it into the blog, but definitely, have it on your homepage!

Backlinks

A backlink occurs when someone else posts a link to your website on their website. Google loves backlinks because the more backlinks you have, the more relevant your website will be in Google’s eyes. If everyone’s always commenting or referencing your websites like CNN or Huffington Post, then it’s going to put your site higher in Google and that’s why those websites like Huffington Post and CNN are really top in the Google list. Bonus Tip! An easy way to get backlinks is to do what’s called a blog swap. So basically, you offer to write a blog for someone else’s website. They offer to write a blog for your website. You each post the blog. You each post a backlink to the other person’s website and now you have a backlink and it’s literally a win-win situation for both of you, okay. So, if you need some backlink (which you do); you want to have at least 15 of them to get your site in a good place to start. First, figure out who is a similar- not a competitor. You don’t want someone that does exactly what you do, but you want something that’s synergistic. If you have a fitness line, maybe you contact a yoga studio with a great blog or maybe you contact a health food store.

Keywords

None of this really doesn’t matter at all if your website is not built properly. Building a website is like building a house and part of building a house is building your foundation and if your foundation is not set up right, it doesn’t matter what you put on top because everything will come crumbling down. The foundation is your keywords- also known as your semantic core. So, back in the old days when the internet first started, Google was very heavily keyword driven. If you were selling let’s say women’s shoes, that could be a keyword for you. Now, Google is a lot smarter, way smarter. They’re not just looking for one-word phrases anymore. They’re looking for long-tail keyword phrases, which basically means four to six words grouped together into a phrase. If you think about it when you’re ready to purchase something, what are you typing into Google? You’re not typing in women’s shoes, you’re typing in red stiletto pump size 9 women shoe, right? You’re getting super, super specific because you don’t want the size 8 shoes, you don’t want the blue shoes, you want red, you want size 9, you want a stiletto, you don’t want a wedge, you don’t want a flat, right, so you’re getting super, super specific when you’re typing into Google. Google is now rewarding people that are getting super, super specific and using these long-tail keywords. So, you want a solid group of those long-tail keywords in order to make up your website’s semantic core. Remember that semantic core is a group of words and phrases that tell Google what your website is about.

Building a Strong Semantic Core, Your Website’s Keyword-Based Foundation

Remember in the olden days when you would search for something on Google and you get all these random websites that had literally nothing to do with what you searched for. Have you noticed that over the years that’s gotten better? Google has gotten better. It’s because their main purpose is to make sure that when you Google something, the first website that pops up contains the information that you want and is exactly what you’re looking for. They’re not doing your job if you have to fish down the list and look at website number 10 and website number 20 and go to page 5 of Google. Google’s main job is to get you what you’re looking for. Their goal at the end of the day is to serve the consumer. So, think about what the consumer is typing in to find whatever it is you’re offering. Therefore, you want to come up with your semantic core and there are several different tools that you can use to do this. The Google keyword planner is a free tool. So obviously, I recommend, that one. It will show you the demand and supply. Basically, it breaks down the number of websites that are ranking for that keyword and it will show you how many people are typing in that keyword. There are also ways to find out what your competitor’s keywords are, which I really recommend you do and then you can start ranking for those same keywords so that you can get above your competitors. Now, of course, once you find the keywords, you have to know exactly where to post them on your website so that Google will recognize them. You have to know exactly where to post the keywords on your website, which I actually talk about in my Mastering Digital Marketing course online.

Blogging

The last digital marketing method strategy is blogging. In my opinion, this is the number one example of how to drive traffic to your online store. Blogging is super, super important. For one, Google loves fresh new content.  So, every time you’re posting a blog, you’re updating your website and Google will notice that and they will say, hey this website must be super important because they keep updating it and then they’ll rank you higher. Now, I know you’re thinking, “Do I have to blog every single day?” No, you don’t have to blog every single day, but the more often you blog, the higher your site will be on Google. Also, Google doesn’t recognize photos and video. Yes, they recognize that you have a video, but they need the physical words. Google doesn’t read your website, it scans for the keywords and that’s why the keywords have to be in strategic places and that’s why you need words or text or copy on your website. You don’t just want photos and if you do have photos, there’s a way that you can incorporate those words on the backend so that Google knows what those photos are about. I teach all of this in the course as well.

Why Blog? People want to buy from people that they know, like, and trust. If your best friend is selling something, you’re buying it. So, it’s the same thing here. People want to know, like, and trust you before they buy. Thus, a blog helps them to do that, okay and then don’t forget every time someone is coming to your website to read your blog, there is an opportunity for them to go to the shop and shop around. The blog is the way that you draw them in– it’s like fishing. As you start implementing these six tips, you’ll notice a dramatic increase in your online sales.

If you'd like to learn how to drive traffic to your online store even more in-depth, once again, I highly recommend our Mastering Digital Marketing Course. It covers everything from social media content to semantic core planning to logos and taglines. And for weekly fashion biz tips, join our Fearless Fashionpreneur Facebook Page! 🙂

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