Ecommerce Encyclopedia

‟Ecommerce is a powerful means to connect the unconnected to global trade” - Arancha Gonzalez

Top free traffic sources for marketing

Traffic sources are one of the major factors that directly affect the effectiveness of a marketing strategy. For small businesses and even large enterprises, free traffic sources are always welcomed since they provide potential leads and do not cost any money. In this article, we will explore the best free traffic sources that you can utilize to attract more customers to your online shop.

What are traffic sources?

Traffic sources are the location from which your website visitors originate. This method can be paid for or for free. Generally, you can be broad with your traffic sources and categorize them into paid, social and organic visits or be more specific and look for the granular feature of the sources. 

What are the best free traffic sources online?

  • Social media: With billions of users using social media in this technology era, you can easily attract prospects by marketing on Facebook pages or Twitter accounts. As people spend hours on this medium, you can use that habit to collect data about customer behaviors and preferences. Furthermore, on social media you can interact with a larger base of audience.
  • Email marketing: Provided with a list of customer addresses, you can send emails to them for free to advertise your products. While it can encourage new people to buy your products, it can also help create a loyal customer base.
  • Discussion forums: The two most common discussion websites we would say are Reddit and Quora. There you can post about everything and ask all kinds of questions. You should take the chance and when a person asks for recommendations (which happens quite often), subtly suggest your own brand.
  • Search engines: organic sources such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. play a large part in driving customers, however simple it may sound. When a user searches for a term or phrase that are related to your store, it can easily appear on the front page and catch the user’s attention. Of course, it is a lot harder than it looks because in order to get to the front page, you have to build up your website and get high ratings. The search engine will list out and feature the best websites according to its algorithm.