You've done all the hard work of defining your niche, creating your brand and building your on-line store. As you can imagine, if you don't let people know your store exists, you'll never sell a thing.
On-line promotion is a broad and sometimes complex category. Yet, without promotion, you'll find the road to success a very, very long and expensive journey.
Advertising
If you think you can "build it and they will come," guess again. Even with incredible search engine optimization (see below), it will take weeks, perhaps months for your site to appear on the front page of Google searches - if at all! The competition for "organic" search engine position is fierce. And despite what the spam e-mails you get promise you, no one can promise you front page position on all the important keywords you need. Not without using tricks and techniques that could end up getting you banned for life from the search engines!
Until your search engine optimization pays off, there is the opportunity to attract large numbers of potential customers to your site: advertising.
While you can consider traditional advertising, such as billboards, print ads and direct mail (depending on your target market, these may well be very viable media), you can take advantage of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising on Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Facebook and other venues. PPC means you pay only when someone clicks on your ad, which is linked to your site.
PPC advertising is complex, so be prepared to spend some time learning the ins and outs. It's very easy to jump off and spend thousands of dollars attracting thousands of visitors who don't buy from you. For instance, if you're selling "fishing lures" and you buy ads for "fishing," your ad might show up for people looking for "fishing trips," "fishing rods," or, even, "fish recipes." If your ad even slightly suggests the possibility that your site would provide them the answers they want - and click on your ad - you pay for that click.
Alternatively, mishandled, you might spend very little advertising and end up with few customers, even though you're offering exactly what thousands of people are looking for.
There are firms that will help you with PPC advertising. Most are pretty pricey. Some (again, ahem) provide more reasonably-priced services designed to coach you along, while teaching you how to manage your ads yourself. Never spend money upfront with a PPC management firm until you have proof they understand your advertising needs and can provide some proof of their expertise.
Search Engine Optimization
One of the least understood and most abused concepts of on-line marketing is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The idea is that by adding some key elements to your Web pages, you can achieve a higher ranking position in the major search engines.
That's only part of the truth.
Google, Yahoo!, Bing and other search engines disclose very little about the mathematical algorithms they use to rank sites for various keywords. Yet, they share a common goal: to deliver to their visitors links to sites that are the most relevant to the user's keywords. Some even have mechanisms for predicting a user's intent beyond the few keywords entered (sounds kinda scary, eh?).
Search engines often use more than just your site content and coding to determine relevancy. Some include popularity: how many other sites on the Internet link to your site. More important than quantity is quality: what words are used in these links to describe your site? Are these keywords germane to the page they link to?
As you consider how to manage SEO, we suggest the following:
- Avoid expensive SEO services. At least in the beginning. If you partner with the right e-commerce provider, you should be able to manage your SEO efforts yourself with a little training and coaching.
- Always confirm the value of offers. You'll receive lots of offers (generally spam e-mails) for special listings, directories, etc. promising to increase your "Page Rank." Most are bogus.
- Choose an optimized store front. Perhaps the most difficult to judge. We've seen scores of shopping carts and hosted stores that purport to be SEO Optimized, yet upon closer inspection, their systems provide little in terms of modern SEO techniques.
Earned media
Earned media is not a term used very often these days, but in the pre-Internet ages, it referred to those means by which a company gained exposure through methods other than paid advertising, such as press releases, favorable reviews, interviews, etc.
Today, the buzz is all about Social Marketing, which is, indeed, an important consideration. The use of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks can be both useful and dangerous. Using social networks to promote your company and products can be quite beneficial. However, if used incorrectly, the backfire can end up harming you far beyond any potential gains.
Controlling your message is the key to gaining customers through earned media. Learn how to use social networks, but also consider these tried-and-true methods of getting your message to the masses:
- Press Releases. Not only do press releases cost almost nothing to distribute, they can turn into interviews or reviews. There are several low-cost press release distribution services, but don't forget to fax or e-mail your press release to all your local media. They're the ones most likely interested in doing a feature on a local business, even if your market is national or global. Include your press releases on your Web site, as well.
- Newsletters. Your own customers, as well as your visitors, should be given the opportunity to subscribe to a regular newsletter. By providing helpful advice, new product announcements or special offers, you can often turn existing customers into new orders. Satisfied customers, when reminded, will often refer friends and colleagues, too.
- Reviews. You may want to provide product reviews in your store. Even if a product received less than a top rating, the review itself can help bring visitors. Search engines love linking to reviews and many customers includes "review" in their search keywords.
- Testimonials. We have often offered special gifts or discounts to existing customers if they write us a testimonial. Testimonials on your site give your site credibility. However, never fabricate testimonials. Unless you're very, very skilled, fake testimonials are easy to spot and, in many cases, illegal.
Put it all together
Once you're built and populated your new store, prepare to spend a lot of time drawing attention to your new site. Create a regular schedule to address the major areas of site promotion and stick to it. With perserverance, training and ongoing advice, you can quickly make your site attract the right customers.
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Resources
You'll find lots of on-line resources to help you promote your brand. Some require a few; many are free. More important, however, is your own creativity. Consider off-line methods, as well.
Advertising
For many reasons, we have yet to find an ideal PPC management solution that is both automated and reasonably priced. There are many services that will take personal care of your PPC campaigns, but new e-commerce vendors may have difficulty finding one since most require minimum monthly ad spends of $100,000 or more.
Raven Internet Marketing Tools, mentioned in the next section, as well, contains several tools that can help you develop PPC strategies.
Perhaps the most helpful tool we've found is not a "tool," but a book. Winning Results with Google AdWords by Andrews Goodman has given us more information than any one source we've found to date.
Novusweb does provide a PPC management service for our clients. It's a very reasonably priced service to not only increase your PPC effectiveness, but also to teach you how PPC advertising works and how you can manage your campaigns yourself (if you wish).
SEO
If you're serious about managing your Search Engine Optimization, consider purchasing a software program or a Web-based service to help. Keeping track of your SEO activites, finding possible inbound link sources, etc. can be a daunting task.
Naturally, we like Web-based services. Web-based applications will work on PCs and Macs, and are consistently updated without you having to download fixes. Our favorite on-line SEO tool, by far, is Raven Internet Marketing Tools. It's inexpensive, yet includes a wide selection of great tools to help you measure and manage your on-line marketing.
If you prefer a software program for your computer, there is one very, very good program called IBP. Unfortunately, it's only for the PC.
If you only use Macs, you might consider SEO PowerSuite. It's not as well integrated as IBP, but it does contain quite a few nifty features. This suite also works on PCs.
Note: Although software applications can be convenient at times, give both Raven SEO Tools and IBP (or SEO PowerSuite) a try utilizing their free trial periods. One thing to carefully note is that while you buy the software only once, you will be required to buy quarterly subscriptions for updates to their search engine database. Within a very short time, you will spend much more on software than you will with a Web-based service.
Press Releases
We have used Express-Press-Release.com in the past to distribute press releases for our companies. They have a nominal $29/release charge. While you may not be picked up by USA Today, your press release will appear on dozens of sites, blogs and social media sites.
The dominant player in this field is PRWeb. They charge from $80-360/release, depending on the scope of your desired distribution. While you will probably reach more traditional media outlets with PRWeb, you may want to consider them only for your most important news releases.
Steps to On-line Success
