I have a new website, www.apettag.com I offer a FREE PET ID TAG with the purchase of a collar. The collars are priced below a local pet store. And, I have really cool jewel collars that would be hard to find at a local pet store. I need to get pet owners (in the USA) to my site. I have done an email campaign to thousands of animal shelters, dog breeders, kennels, and dog clubs. I have had about 12,000 hits to the site, but only 1 order. I want to get traffic from pet owners. I want to email campaign pet owners in the USA, put articles on Pet Blogs and forums, and other places on the net that pet owners would visit. Any ideas?
This is kind of backwards for me...I usually find the market first and find out what they want to buy, then I offer it to them. Since we don't have that luxury here, my best recommendation is to capture your leads and spy on your competitors. 1. Put an opt-in form on your website, collect the e-mail addresses of the visitors and follow up with them with an autoresponder like aweber. This works best if you can offer them a free gift in exchange for their email address, but it could be something as simple as asking them to sign up for special offers and coupons. 2. Go to spyfu.com and type in the url for your top competitors' websites. If you don't know who your top competitors are, go search for some of the keywords in your market. Spyfu will tell you what keywords are the most effective for your competitors. With those keywords, you can launch more effective PPC ad campaigns. What I like to do with those keywords is to publish keyword-optimized content on my website, on 3rd party sites like hoobly, hubpages and squidoo, and in article directories. 3. Go to google.com and type in links:competitor's website address (so if your competitor is dressedtothecanines.com, you would search for links:www.dressedtothecanines.com). This will show you what other companies have websites with links to your competitors. With this information, you can approach these other companies to - place an ad on their website, do a joint venture where you offer a special deal for their customers only, or even arrange a simple ad swap. There are tons and tons of ways to drive targeted traffic to your site; the key is going to be meeting your prospects where they're already hanging out. Hope this helps! SaRita
Display Ads on pet owner forums and blogs. Perhaps small mom & pop pet stores. Might try the big box boys but the advertising costs there are bound to be $$
What would be nice is to continue with an email campaign targetted at pet owners that recently moved. They would need a new I.D. tag with new address. Anywhere to find that type of information?
You are not thinking about the needs of the customer. Do you have any idea of how many people already have Pet ID's? Where did they get them? Why did they buy them? Offering something "Free" with purchase isn't really going to be effective unless that freebie has real value in the eyes of the customer. If you were a VET that offered free id tags it might be a good branding promo. But if all you are doing is trying to sell collars online you have huge competition. And you need to be targeted... dog or cat. Pick and run with it. Pets is too vague.
He must be in some way. The same amount as the people who have cars and buy new ones. He should know where people shop for pet products. Works for 10,000s of others... Yes & yes he does. Walmart Kmart Target & 10,000 supermarkets sell both dog & cat collars, why does he need to pick one??? Not for nothing, but you might want to touch up on the marketing education a bit....
Instead of trying to do an email campaign to businesses, just build a list of pet owners. Write a few reports on pet care or pet food care and give them away in order to get opt ins, then market your website to those that opt in. You will get 100% targeted traffic, all free (besides aweber costs), and you have the opportunity to increase conversions because you can connect with your traffic before they find your offer. You can give them value, show them you care about them and their pets by giving them good products, and then you can sell to them.
You have, what, maybe 12 products in that entire site? Ya think maybe that is the reason? Damn, son. Work on the site, THEN work on advertising.
First off I would do some SEO to your site. Your site is in some desperate need of SEO work. Gets some links and some SE traffic coming in. While your site and links are aging starting working on getting traffic from other sources.
I know that I only have 12 products on the site. That is for right now. My main product is that I am offering the FREE pet tag with the collars. That is the first thing most pet owners need. I can add tons of products from the wholesaler I use: dog bowls, dog training devices, leashes, clothing (shirts), hunting clothing, boots, etc. I have to start somewhere. I don't feel that putting tons of stuff on there until I get orders for pet I.D. tags. I agree that working on these items will help at some point. I appreciate all the advice. And I have decided that I will work on the following: 1. Place ads in as many free classifieds online sites as possible. Hitting the pets sections. 2. Do some articles and place those around. 3. Build some links with pet organizations and shelters. 4. Continue my emailing to pet organizations. I do want to find help on placing the ads and articles.
Hey, cool website!! I would do a few things to upgrade it. I would use the dog picture across the top or something, make it more memorable, its a GREAT PICTURE!!! I would also somehow get more of the collar into the scene, but its a nice website for a real product.
I would put a "buy now" button or something under each product to cue your prospects to action. They are used to seeing order buttons...to me it just looks odd not having them there. Like others have said, put an opt-in box on there and offer a free short report or a monthly newsletter. Meta tags, title, and description would help too.
Good idea. I will tell my web guy to put the "BUY NOW" on each product. Otherwise, I was thinking about creating partnerships with other pet related sites where they could sell I.D. tags and collars on their websites, and I will provide the service. That way they can offer another product/service and make 50% from the order. Thanks for the ideas!
Yes on the Opt-In list. I just emailed my web guy to add that, as well as the "Buy Now". I am looking to build links today. Thanks for the advice.
The absolute best way to do this is to write articles with your website link in the resource box. Go to google adwords keyword tool and find keywords related to "pet owners" and "buy dog collars" etc. etc.
So they have to buy something to get that tag, right? ... "...with the collars"? And in your first post you said So, again, you have very little inventory. Very little inventory means no sales. No sales, means no getting free tags. Does something this painfully obvious really need to be explained?