How to get more clicks for your products online

Image credit: Tech in Asia’s Kathrinna Rakhmavika

If you are selling your own handmade products online or if you are running a company selling products on ecommerce platforms, this article is for you.

Getting your products online is just the beginning of the marketing journey. The next step is to get the attention of your target customer. This is not easy. But don’t worry! Online platforms are trying everything they can to get you more clicks.

Indian ecommerce player Snapdeal announced yesterday that it is coming up with its own ad platform ‘Snapdeal Ads’ to help “sellers drive discovery of their products and increase revenue through targeted advertising tools.”
Snapdeal Ads features a simple panel integrated into the seller platform where sellers can purchase ads and begin promotions without any prior campaign management experience. The platform provides campaign analytics and measures impact and return on investment.

In March this year, India’s biggest online marketplace Flipkart had acquired AdIquity, which is a mobile ad network that helps app developers and mobile publishers earn revenue. Basically, Flipkart will get revenue from selling online advertising for its seller base.

In August 2015, Snapdeal acquired Reduce Data, a Silicon Valley-based advertising platform. The Snapdeal product team, which includes the Reduce Data team, have developed the Snapdeal Ads platform in house and it will have a team of 20-25 people on board. Delhi-based Snapdeal has over 200,000 sellers on its platform.

Globally, eBay and Alibaba have similar ad platforms to help their sellers gain more traction.

If you are a small or medium scale online business, there are various ways by which you can catch the attention of your target group:

Product listing or promoted listing

Image credit: 10ch

Through this, you can promote your product campaign by buying slots from the marketplace itself. EBay and Flipkart have introduced it for their sellers so that ad buyers’ products will get highlighted on the sites, making it is easy to get the attention of the customer. This will make sure that your product gets more visibility in the crowd and help you get more clicks. When you get more clicks, there is higher probability of a buy.

The advantage of this sort of promotion is that it won’t look like an advertisement. This is very similar to native advertising (a disguised form of ads which is hard to differentiate from the original content).

With online marketplaces adding hundreds of sellers every year, this is a cost-effective way of advertising for many sellers.

Google AdWords

The biggest benefit of Google AdWords is that you can target your customer according to region – countries or even cities. It is also an affordable way of advertising because you can start with small budgets, like INR 1000 (US$16) per day. This works on a pay-per-click basis. So you are really spending only when you are gaining something.

Facebook adverts

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