Can e-commerce sites survive on their own or do they need a lot of advertising? I am of the opinion that the products of an established e-commerce store sell themselves. They need not be advertised seriously. Any other opinion?
From experience I can tell you it depends on the niche and type of goods/services provided. You will always have advertising costs, sometimes they are time related like posting/answering questions in forums (What I am doing right now) and sometimes they are financial and you purchase placement. I have a client who runs a sporting goods store in Canada, he doesn't spend a single dollar on advertising, but he plays softball 5 nights a week and this is how he advertises by being involved in the community that uses his product. Eventually your goal will be to convert customers into evangelists for your brand/store however this takes time and commitment. Attracting that type of loyal customer base becomes even harder if you are a purely online retailer because usually the only emotional connection online shoppers have with a brand is when things go badly.
I have to agree with the above point - it really depends on the niche you are aiming for. All businesses require some form of marketing, even if it is word of mouth (i.e. customer recommendations). Some forms of marketing will be more effective for certain products than others, again depending on your target market. My advice is experiment some different marketing tactics both online and offline and see which ones work profitably for you. An established e-commerce store may be able to sell themselves, but you have to advertise to get customers to your site to buy (unless you have a well established brand that people are already looking for, but even then advertising can drive incremental business!).
It won't work without marketing - but some business concepts with an attached shop should reduce the marketing. Like B2B with long term customers who buy and get to know you for a long time. But still .. to get new customers, it demands any form of communicating that you're out there.
This depends on several factors: Type of products you are selling. Competitiors you have for your products in the same niche. Your target Market. How new is your brand to people (buyers) Last but not the least, Platform you are using for your eCommerce Site. If it is Magento then it will need less SEO Effort because Magento is a SEO friendly open source platform. Hope this help you. Considerring the current trend, every big gaint is advertising their eCommerce site not because they want customers but because they want to maintain the continuity of their brand visibility to people. The more we see, the more will aware.
I believe that any new product/service, needs to be initially marketed so that at least the target audience is aware of your existence as a seller/service provider. But that would also differ from the type of product and size of target audience. If the product is something generic, then scale of marketing should be higher than what existing competition is doing, if the product is niche, then scale of marketing can be limited specific to the relevant target audience. eCommerce sites also need to be marketed so that the consumer thinks of your site when he plans to buy the product, be it from you or your competitors. Marketing will help you gain a 'Top-Of-Mind' position with the consumer.
Yes, I think so. There are lot more ecommerce site ready to provider best prices, if you need to compete with them, you need to advertise your brand. No other way.
I think yes it requires a lot of advertising as e-commerce sites requires you to buy a product and for that it needs huge advertising.
My answer is yes! Even if it's an established ecommerce website, it requires a lot of maintenance in terms of marketing and SEO. You need to track your competitors, track your positions in search engines, support these positions with new links, co-citations, etc. You still need to do a lot of reputation management & brand identity work. This is a never ending process! Let's take for example, a Template Monster. The company has been around more than 10 years, it sells hundreds of hundreds of products, but the marketing work never stops. Almost every day I find: - a new article written by a Templatemonster contributor/columnist/writer; - dozens of banners placed on different websites; - a lot of guest articles written in favor of TM; - new offers and specials from TM; - never-ending google adwords campaigns; - etc..... It seems like they never sleep, not counting the process of web templates development)
This is a nice observation. Very true, you should treat an ecommerce site like a real business if you want it to do good. This requires a lot of advertising and marketing, especially at first.
I ran several ecommerce stores and they need a ton of advertising. I did PPC mostly. I was very surprised that people would overpay for some of the Physical products I've sold when the exact same thing can be bought at ebay or amazon for a lot cheaper. It is best if you don't try to compete in offering lowest prices or selling everything under the sun (like ebay and amazon). But differentiate your ecommerce store by offering a set of niche products that are related to each others.
An e-commerce site needs marketing, seo and a good price to sell plus demand. After all it is a business and no business runs itself no matter what domain you choose.
Ya eCommerce site need a lot of advertisement as there are may retailers give instant offers inorder to get lot of customers and people will know only through the means of advertisement.
Yes, cost of acquisition of a ecommerce site in India is about Rs1500 , its very high. With so much competition cost have gone up drastically. Your advertisement has to be a mix of various strategies , online, offline, email,social All the best
Unique problem with ecommerce sites is typically most simply use the manufacturers names and descriptions so you simply have duplicate content. Trick is as others have said, pick a niche and develop your own content - unique photos (or rename / resize them), titles, descriptions etc. User reviews will help provide additional human written unique content. I'd run limited adsense ($100 / month) for the first 6-12 months and then push for organic - especially via social media sites. Often it is like physical retail stores where word of mouth generates new users.
Of course, it requires a LOT of adversiting, especially if you are competing with big online retailers. As someone already said, it is best to find a very specialized niche that isn't in a crowded market. If you have a popular product that you want to sell, you almost won't make it as there are hundreds of thousands of other merchants with deeper pockets that you'll have to compete with.