I was looking around the net for a good forum to get good info on eCommerce sales. Just found DP. I started a handmade art/craft website for artists of Southern Oregon and Surrounding areas. I am ready to sell on the site I just need a SSL and activate my payment system. I don't have a PPC budget until next month and need to focus on Gorilla like marketing tactics. My questions: Best ways to find your target market that really converts? What I have: -Facebook with 150 fans -Fresh Twitter Account -Website that is not Ready to Sell on -Basic Brand Developed -Somewhat Active Blog with Helpful Posts. At this point if you were in my shoes what would you do? Is it okay to post a link to my site for review as well? I am new here.
(a)Facebook page (invite artists to post/join/etc) (b)Pinterest.com (great for images) Make a board for each type of product/artist even Southern Oregon. Maybe a "group" board (invite Artist to post onto board) (c)Lurk this forum.. plenty of Gorilla like marketing tactics, King Kong style! Welcome to the forum Wishing you succe$$ Not sure about posting link with your posting count but maybe try signature.. just don't post to bring up your posting numbers.
If you can fire off a link I will be happy to tell you a bunch of stuff. What platform the site is built on is helpful to know as well. Nigel
Thanks guys!! I am using Wordpress and Woocommerce. Site is still under construction and still need to get a few more products and product details. http://soormade.com/ is the URL.
I would recommend opencart. That would launch your website in 10 minutes and you can be accepting payments via paypal in less then 10. Is your target market local/national/worldwide ?? That would also define the number and the type of facebook contacts you have. Whats your target audience age group. You can start with SMS blast if your target is local or national
Honestly, I would start creating awesome content. That's one of the most powerful and cost-effective ways to build yourself and audience and rise in the search engine results. Attaching a blog to your site is going to help your SEO situation tremendously, especially if you can update it on the regular with content that's relevant and decently high in quality. Write and create content that relates to your niche. Remember, it's important to avoid simply marketing yourself. To really leverage your content in an advantageous way, create content that helps to improve your audience's live. Entertain, educate, advise, and do these things as much as you can. And when you do this well, your content helps to give your brand a lot of important things: originality, positioning, and a voice. Not only this, but a constant stream of good content helps ensure that potential customers are thinking about your site all the time...and might even wind up buying something when they weren't necessarily intending to do so. Hope this helps! You're more than welcome to PM me if you'd like a bit more advice. _ Sean
As you are selling handmade art/craft, social media platforms like facebook, pinterest should a good place for marketing. You can follow SocialMediaExaminer or Hubspot Blog for some useful tips on SMM. Besides, you are establishing an ecommerce store, don't forget to add live chat plugin to your site, which helps you convert visitors into customers. You can try Live Person, Comm100 Live Chat, etc. Good Luck.
I know you don't want to go for Google adwords but as per my experience, i strongly recommend going for Google product listing ads. It can give good ROI and CPC is always low.
This is a really good point. And there's some pretty recent research that totally backs it up. Just the other day, I read this article on eMarketer: "Google Sees Success with Product Listing Ads." http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Google-Sees-Success-with-Product-Listing-Ads/1010581/1 This is a comprehensive guide to PLAs, from CPC Strategy: http://cpcstrategy.com/product-listing-ads/ Hope this helps! _ Sean B. Solid Commerce
Yes, i have also published a detailed article on product listing ads here http://www.jigneshgohel.com/blogs/create-google-product-listing-ads-pla-campaign-5-simple-steps-26
I would do more on Social networks. There are lot of other SM to take advantage on - Pinterest is one of my favorite!
This is very good advice, and definitely applies to the independent and/or hand made art scene. What's important to remember is that Pinterest is a lifestyle curation site. So in addition to showing your inventory and the things that you sell, it's very important to curate and share images and pins that cater to the general lifestyle of your customers and audience. If all you do on Pinterest (or any social site, for that matter) is talk about yourself and your products, you'll start seeing a very low follower count, indeed.
I would suggest that organic search results are always going to be the leading aspect when it comes to selling on-line, but there are other things to consider when thinking about this too. Your social media presence is now a very important factor, Google is looking to see how you engage your visitors and how they share your content through social media. Blogging is one of the best ways to build a following and gain SE traffic. This is one of the easiest ways to encourage those who have an interest to use other aspects of your site or business. Once you have their trust as a blogger, you are more likely to have their trust as a retailer. Google and other SE's seem to favour sites which operate blogs and provide daily content in their field. It's another aspect of keeping a site fresh and relevant. I would suggest daily blogging, and I would suggest that you support this with social media profiles for your audience to connect with. Adding new products also helps, so if you are tempted to add ten new items on one day, be a little more patient and add them over five days instead. This will encourage more interest in the site from Google and others, rather than giving you a spike one day and then several days of less fresh content.
This is some great advice. Coming up with a content plan, following it, and blogging regularly is a GREAT way to get yourself and your website noticed not only by potential new customers and audience members, but by Google as well.