Congratulations, you’ve started an online data store and are actively selling your valuable data products! However, getting your ecommerce data shop up and running is only half the battle. Once you’ve created an online shopfront and filled it with data products, you’ll have to find ways to make your new business discoverable and drive traffic to your products.

In this guide to driving traffic to your ecommerce data store, we’ll go over some of the most effective methods that you can practice to improve visibility and findability for your new data business.

Leverage social media channels

Your current social media audience is a great place to start when you are trying to find interested buyers. Your current followers are already invested in your company and interested in what you do, so they’re more likely to be interested in investigating your new data business venture and purchasing a few data products.

To effectively leverage your social media channels, you’ll want to make sure you post on every available channel and grab your audience’s attention with posts that highlight the value and solutions that your data brings to the table. Post about your new data store on your company Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and any other channels you think would generate interest. Craft social media posts that bring attention to how unique and valuable your data is—highlight what new and exciting data products you have stocked your store with and emphasize how easy and fast it is to purchase that data.

Ask your employees and partners to post about your data store as well, since they are extensions of your network that could draw in new audiences. The more people are posting about and sharing your data store, the more likely your data business will land in front of interested buyers.  

You can also try posting about your data store through community channels, like Reddit. You can find “subreddits” on almost any subject, so finding a subreddit that relates to your industry and the data you are selling shouldn’t be too difficult. You can also comment or join discussions on relevant blogs, Twitter threads related to your industry, Facebook groups, Youtube videos that relate to your community, etc. Engaging in an online community and dropping a link here and there to your data store is a great way to leave breadcrumbs for interested buyers to follow and find the data products they need.

Offer free data samples to entice buyers

Everybody likes free samples! One way to generate interest and excitement for your data products is to offer small sample data files that allow your customers to test out the quality and compatibility of your data. Promote that you are offering zero-cost samples of data to increase the engagement on your data business website and give your customers a taste of the valuable data that you have to offer.

Once a prospective buyer has tested a free data sample, they are much more likely to turn into a customer, because they’ll trust the data that you are providing and be inclined to purchase other data products as well. Offer a handful of zero-cost data sample products on your data ecommerce site and be sure to make it clear that they are free to use and are a sneak-peek into the data products you offer for sale.

Bring attention to your data business with press opportunities

The first step to engaging the press with news of your data business is to write and publish a press release. Be sure to publish that press release to your website, social media, and circulate that press release on sites like PR Newswire, eReleases, PR Web, etc. Your business community will be more likely exposed to the news and hopefully check out your new store!

During press opportunities (like panels, webinars, interviews, podcasts), be sure to mention your new data business and promote the valuable data you offer to buyers in your ecommerce data storefront. If you’re invited to speak about your industry or your business, don’t forget to mention the data commerce aspect of your business. It’s a relevant part of your company’s mission and growth, so give it a portion of the spotlight and get people talking.

Practice good SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of adjusting your website to follow the rules that will increase its chances of ranking highly in search engine results. SEO is an important part of any ecommerce store’s success, so you should be aware of the best practices when you are creating your online data shop and the products within it.

It’s important to make sure you are giving your data products good titles, writing effective meta descriptions for your products that include keywords and key phrases, providing images for each product, and including internal linking to and from product pages and category pages. We’ve also written a great SEO guide for promoting your data business and products that goes more in-depth into SEO best practices and a guide to writing effective product descriptions for your data products.

Some other tricks to help spread the word

Once you’ve leveraged your social media channels, created free data offers, made the most of your press opportunities, and enhanced your SEO, there are still a few things you should be sure to do in order to spread the word that you’re selling valuable data. Here are a few ideas that you should be sure to try:

• Include an announcement about your new data business in your company newsletter.
• Add a new page on your website that links to your data store and offers an explanation on what value your data is bringing to the data commerce world.
• Include a button or link to your data store in your company email signature.
• Send an email announcement about your data business to everyone on your email list.
• Write a blog post about how different companies or industries can use your data.
• Hold a meeting with your entire company or send a company-wide email to explain your new data business and encourage employees to spread the word.
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