Print on demand is one of the most fascinating business concepts in this current world. So, it’s natural for new and rising marketers or designers to be interested in Print on demand. And why wouldn’t they? Through Print on demand, you can sell products without needing an inventory. Now the question is how to sell print on demand products with free traffic?
You don’t even have to worry about printing anything because the printing responsibility falls under your fulfillment partner. You’re just here to design and market which will ultimately lead to selling your first product online! Marketing is one of the core pillars of a successful POD store. No matter how good your product is, if your audience isn’t aware of its existence, it won’t sell.
If you want to sell your products, you must drive traffic to your store via different marketing methods. The visitors must enter your store and show interest in your products. Most of the new store owners who just began their POD journey do not have a lot of capital to invest.
Generally, it’s below $50, and most of the time you will run out of money while you are listing products in your online store. So, what do we do then? The trick here is that if you are just a beginner who just began their POD journey, you should not pay for ads or use paid traffic as a medium of advertisement for your store. It will not be feasible to promote your designs this way.
How do we drive traffic then?
There is a method called free traffic where you don’t have to spend a lot of money to bring in visitors to your store. It’s a universal fact that the best source of traffic is always organic traffic. It’s completely free and you don’t have to force your audience to visit your store.
They will come by naturally once you execute the free traffic strategies perfectly. One of the major factors is the platform itself where you have set up your online store. The top POD service provider sites like Printify or Redbubble already have built a strong reputation.
Therefore, the users know that these platforms can offer like the websites already get enough organic traffic on their own. You just have to optimize your store. So how do we do that? Below we have listed the ways by which we can drive visitors through free traffic methods.
1. Optimize Product Contents in the Store
When it comes to SEO, every element has to be optimized as search-friendly so that the search engines can easily crawl through your content. Once they find that your site and content are well optimized, you will have a better chance of ranking at the top of the search results.
When it comes to a traditional website, there are many elements of the website that need to be optimized. However, for our online store in a POD platform, two important elements need to be well optimized – product description and product image. There are ways to optimize these two elements.
Product description: The product description is very important as it features what the product truly is. In order to make the product description SEO friendly, you have to add relevant keywords to your niche in the description.
The keywords will help the search engine locate your product content. That being said, if the niche you are working on is even moderately competitive, then you can expect hundreds of other store owners are also focusing on the same niche. The more competitive your niche gets, the more effort you have to give in.
In order to rank at the top, you have to work with both short-tail and long-tail keywords. You have to understand that a keyword whose search volume is the most will have the highest competition. Every business will try to rank for that same keyword. That’s why you must work with all sorts of relevant keywords that have good search volume.
Moreover, working with both short and long-tail keywords will allow you to explore more of the untapped regions that many businesses fail to notice. Online users use different keywords at different times, but most of the searches have a similar pattern. That’s why long-tail keywords come in really handy many times.
Product Image: Most of the time we collect our images from various sources and use that as our product images. However, when we collect those images, the elements inside the image such as alt tag, source, destination, size, image name, etc. are not suitable for our store. That’s why we have to optimize/tweak/change those elements to match our store.
Surprisingly, many stores either forget or are unaware of these things. Therefore, when they upload the unchanged images, the SEO cannot relate them to the store. There are many factors when it comes to optimizing images. Some might even wonder why to give so much effort into optimizing a single image.
The answer is that images help you rank as well. They are part of the content and site in which the search engine crawls. Therefore, the more SEO friendly the image is, the higher its chances of ranking high in the search results. Moreover, image optimization also leads to a better user experience. The optimized image takes less time to load in the browser and the quality looks better.
2. Encourage Reviews, Comments, and Feedback
Any type of customer reviews, customer comments, and customer feedback is extremely important in SEO. These types of content are considered natural UGC (user-generated content). Positive UGC is very valuable to SEO. Every comment and review is relevant to making a site visible in front of the search engine.
The way SEO views are that it sees a two-way connection between your brand and your customers. Not only you are serving your customers but they are also talking about your brand and its products. They are also responsible for creating long-tail keywords that are relevant to your niche. They create the search value, increase the search intent, and help a brand rank in low competition keywords.
3. Blogging
Blogging is one of the best ways to sell your products. Why? Because it earns you organic traffic for completely free. Every good e-commerce store has its own blog where they share information and write various things about its brand and its products. It is an effective free traffic source. Organic traffic tends to have a higher conversion rate.
It’s much better than paid ads on social media or websites. Blog posts are the most ideal form of content that can raise curiosity about the brand and its products. Blogging is a great way to interact with your customers through the addition of sharing information and talking about the possibilities and benefits of the service you provide.
Moreover, good quality blog post earns you tons of backlinks! A number of high-quality backlinks will increase your site’s domain authority. It’s a positive sign for SEO and it will increase the chance of ranking high in the search results.
Furthermore, if the quality of the article is very good, then you can share them in the social media communities and forums as well as niche-specific industry communities. This will help you to reach a wide range of potential customers as well as industry experts as well. Never forget to add the important features and keywords in the blog so that the SEO gets benefits as well.
You can also add important links like the link to your store or any part of your store. If any reader gets intrigued by reading your blog, he/she can immediately go through the link and purchase what they wanted.
4. Build an Email Subscriber List
When you run an online business, your success can largely shift depending on how you build your mailing subscriber list. In today’s corporate world, Emails are an ideal method to promote and market your products and services to a wide range of people. It is especially helpful in print on demand. This is how you generate leads.
However, before you can reach them and carry on with the process, you need to know who they are! Your email list will help you bring success to the remarketing campaign. Remarketing is usually done to those potential customers who showed interest in your product but did not purchase it or abandoned it from the cart.
It takes less effort to convert them into ideal customers because they have already interacted with your brand. They are familiar with it and they probably know what kind of products you sell. It takes more effort and time to convert someone who has never interacted or isn’t familiar with your brand.
According to a study, an average marketing email has a 21% open rate. On the other hand, a remarketing email has an open rate of a massive 57%! That is more than twice the percentage. It’s the same case in terms of conversion as well. It’s 30% for remarketing emails and 5% for an average email. Moreover, it’s very cheap and emails are considered to be one of the most effective methods to generate leads and increase conversion.
Conclusion
While free traffic method alone won’t always guarantee 100% growth of your business. But it’s the ideal way for someone who just started or someone with low investment. In the long-run, free traffic methods will earn you massive organic traffic and will keep your content SEO friendly.
Free traffic along with paid traffic together can help grow a business from being small to a large business. The more traffic you drive to your store, the more leads you will generate and the more sales you will make.
The free traffic methods mentioned above won’t cost you anything but it’s time-consuming. It will take some time for everything to fall into place. That’s why it’s best to have patience while you’re dealing with free traffic methods alone.
Hope now you know how to sell print on demand products with free traffic. Instagram is another effective platform for print on demand business. There are some specific processes you have to follow to sell print on demand products on instagram.
