Showing posts with label marketing techniques. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing techniques. Show all posts

Friday, 28 September 2012

Marketing tools for the big, the small and the just getting started

eBay are looking to expand the number of customers and eBay stores within the martetplace through the release of a television advert within the UK. The advert is used to not only promote the eBay brand as a whole, but identifies the ability for customers to make purchases on their tablets and mobile devices. While eBay are spending a substantial amount of money to have an advert appear on UK prime time television, what can you do to help promote your business through various marketing channels?

Obviously, what marketing avenues you can use are going to depend on the amount of money you have within your marketing budget and how much you are currently making through online sales.

If you don't have much money to put towards an advertising budget, there are a number of different free marketing tools you can take advantage of:

  • Social Media - Create accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn. This then allows you to not only build up your brand, but generate a larger customer base who you can then advertise your store and products. This will increase the traffic and sales you store will generate, while helping you increase your social media presence, creating a positive public image.
  • Forums - Similar in the sense to social media as it allows you to build up your own public brand image. However, rather than using the platform to essentially sell yourself, you should look to engage with other users by answering questions they ask in threads or just engaging with other users in an informal manner.
  • Blogs - A great tool for not only promotion your store and engaging with your customers, but also allows you to build up a regular readership and also improve your SEO standing. What you choose to write about is entirely up to you. It could be an informal diary discussing the problems you have faced in your store and how you overcome them or they could be on the latest news and information about the particular product types that you sell in your store. When deciding what to write about, you should look to include keywords that users will search for in search engines. 
  • Word of Mouth - One of the most traditional and effective way of growing your business. When a customer makes a purchase, if they are happy with the overall product and service, they will recommend your store to their friends. While you can't control whether a user decides to share your store with their friends, you can encourage them to share it with their friends by placing social sharing buttons and your site such as Facebook and emails.
  • Emails - Email marketing is one of the most important parts of any business, however, in order for them to be free you must send them out yourself, rather than employing a email service to send them out on your behalf. What this means is that there can't be too many emails for you to send out to your customers as sending out thousands of emails will literally take you hours to do. Your emails should vary in content ranging from the latest news regarding your business to any new products or offers you are currently running. All of these emails should contain the relevant links to draw customers back to your store.
  • Local Trade Shows and Meetings - This might for be for every business, but if you run a store that specialises in selling goods or services to other businesses, this is something you should definitely be looking to take advantage of. Throughout the year there will be a number of breakfast meetings and trade shows that you can attend to interact with other business owners and form professional relationships. This initial meeting allows them to become aware of your business and could possibly lead to future  transactions.
If you have some money to play around with to help market your business, there are a few other channels you can look to take advantage of. However, even if you do have a larger budget, you should still look to take advantage of the free marketing techniques I mentioned above as they will all help increase your brand awareness and sales:

  • Forum Sponsorship - One of the cheapest types of sponsorship you can do and allows your business brand to be seen by literally thousands of people. Most forums will allow you to sponsor one of their sections for around £50 a month, allowing you to have your link placed on the site, any banners you would like to add and some even allow you to create a thread advertising the products you have for sale.
  • Prizes - This is one of the best ways to drastically increase not only your total sales, but your social media follows and what's more, it won't cost you much at all. You could decide to run a promotion where one person who follows you on your social media page will win a specific item from you store. This encourages a number of people to then follow you on your social media pages in order to have a chance of winning the prize. Whether they win or not, many of these people will then visit your store to see what products you have for sale and some of them will make a purchase.
  • Banners - Banners are a great tool to provide a visually enticing promotion for users to see. Where you decide to place the banners is up to you. You can place them on forums, blogs and other websites.
  • Retargeting - When a customer visits your website, the data regarding the products they viewed is then stored within cookies within the browser. Retargeting then places adverts for your business and those particular products on to various websites that the user visits. This allows the user to be constantly exposed to your business and may result in them returning to your store to make a purchase.
If you run an ecommerce store with an established brand image and you have maximised all of the marketing channels previously mentioned, you may decide it's time to take advantage of some of the biggest marketing platforms you can use, similar to what eBay have recently done with their television advert:

  • Television Advert - Should only be attempted if you are a large successful business with a number of customers and sales as this is a very expensive avenue to go down. However, if you find that your business has achieved great local success, you may decide to create an advert that only appears on local television.
  • Radio Advert - A local platform that allows you to create an audio advert for your business. However, before deciding to embark on a radio advert you should remember that a radio advert is quite a generalised form of promotion and rather than aiming it at a specific demographic. This form of blanket marketing may result in you not seeing the results you would have liked as the message was just too generic.
  • Editorial Pieces - Unlike a radio advert, an editorial piece is a great way to market your business to people who have a specific interest in what your business provides. You would pay a publication related to your business a fee to have an editorial about your business appear within their magazine and on their website for that particular month. This is a great way to have your brand reach the type of demographic you want to reach, however, it can be quite expensive with some publications charging in excess of £1,500 for the service.

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Tuesday, 7 August 2012

How to create a successful marketing campaign

Whether your a small ecommerce business, a large corporation or a charitable organisation, creating the perfect marketing campaign is something that we all strive for. We want to create something that makes a number of people aware of what the business is, creates an interest in the products or services that business offers and then compels them to visit your store or site to act on this impulse.

If you are running a small ecommerce store, the success of your various marketing campaigns is going to determine how successful your store will be. When planning out your marketing campaign, you should look to consider four key areas which have become synonymous with all marketing campaigns: 

  • Attention - Grab the attention of your audience. This doesn't have to be anything specific to do with your business, it could simply be something that is entertaining and compels users to view it. Essentially, it is the hook that will draw them in, giving you a chance to then advertise your product. Some of the most innovative marketing campaigns have created this attention by simply showing the craziest and most random things that they possibly can.
  • Interest - After you have drawn them in to your marketing campaign, you next need to create an interest. This is where specific audience targeting comes in to play. If you create a campaign and then send it to anyone and everyone, you are going to find it much harder to create high levels of interest. What you need to look to do is aim your marketing campaign at individuals who you know will have an interest in your product. This will ensure that you are focussed on creating as much interest as possible. However, there are exemptions to the rule. For example, if you run an online eBay store that provides a wide range of clothing to males, females, small children and babies, then you target demographic is going to be anyone and everyone. In this case you should look to broaden your campaign to really as many people as is feasibly possible rather than focussing on a specific target audience.  
  • Desire - Now that you have peaked their interest, you next need to create desire within your audience. This essentially means that you need to make your audience think that they have to have an item or service from your store. Depending on the type of products that your business offers, the way in which you create those levels of desire are going to differ. If you run a store that offers a number of different goods, you could look to offer products at a discount or make your audience aware of unique items you sell that your competitors don't. The first two steps have essentially got the crowd in and set the stage, now it's up to you to promote your products to your audience in a way that is going to leave them with no other choice but to purchase from your store.
  • Action - There is no point getting your audience all worked up over a product and then leaving them with no place to go. After you have got them hooked and ready to give you their money in exchange for goods or services, you then need to point them in the right direction to complete the transaction. The end of your marketing campaign should give users some form of action to purchase an item from your store. This generally involves providing the address of your ecommerce store, eBay store or Facebook store.
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Wednesday, 1 August 2012

Marketing Promotions: Go for Gold by creating your own Olympic themed promotions

Coming up with a number of different promotions to attract customers to your online ecommerce store can be difficult and time consuming. One of the most popular and easiest ways to come up with fresh promotion ideas is to build one around a topic that is currently popular. With the London Olympics currently in full swing, this is a perfect time to build a promotion around it. But be warned, you won't be alone in this type of promotion, there will be a number of different businesses who will all be looking to use the Olympic hype to attract customers.

The success on your promotion will be entirely dependant on how innovative and appealing the promotion is to the customer. The Olympics only come around every four years and as it seen as a majestic event, your promotion needs to reflect this sense of grandeur.

The next question to look at is what type of promotion you should offer? Depending on the promotion you choose, this will end up costing you a varying amount to set up and will result in different outcomes. 

Discounts


There are many different routes you could take when offering your customers Olympic style discounts. You could just choose to go the tradition route and offer a discount purely because it is the Olympics. While this would be appealing to customers, it wouldn't really help you stand out from your rivals as they will most likely do a similar promotion. However, the discount would be a fixed rate meaning that there would be no risk unlike other types of offers. You would know exactly how much you were making and how much the offer would cost you.

Money Back Offers


Another option you could do would be to offer a money back special based on how well Great Britain performs within the Olympics. For example, say someone purchases an item from your online store, you could then offer money back in the form of store credit for every gold medal that Team GB wins. This is a different promotion that will increase sales and encourage repeat business through the use of store credit. However, the uniqueness of the offer will mean that even if people do not decide to go with it, they will still know about the offer and the store that's running it. This would mean that in addition to generating sales, the promotion would help in greatly improving your brand awareness.

When planning out this promotion, factor in how many gold medals Great Britain are predicted to win. Obviously, if they are projected to win a number of gold medals, you need to check to make sure that their success wouldn't result in you making a loss on the promotion. Working out how much you are projected to bring in and give out in offers is key to deciding whether to run the offer or now. However, with this offer there is always a potential risk and a potential greater gain. If Great Britain end up getting a significantly lower number of gold medals than you originally factored into your projections, it is going to result in you making more money on the promotion. On the other end of the spectrum, if they end up performing above and beyond expectations, you could end up with a lower profit return or even a loss. 

Limited Edition Products


Creating products that are specifically to do with a special event can become appealing for people who are both fans, collectors or people who just simply want to get in the spirit of a special event. A great example of this would be products sold during International football competitions. When England are playing in either the European Championships or World Cup, there is always a sharp increase in the sale of replica shirts, flags and other related products.

While these items will only be popular during that specific event, selling novelty products and items is a great way to get a number of sales over a short period of time and also make more people aware of your store.

Increased Checkout Speed


Rather than looking at only offering special promotions on your products, you can also look to offer promotions through other aspects of your online store. One of the examples of this could be your delivery process. Keeping with the Olympic theme, you could look to offer a faster delivery service free for customers who spend over a certain amount of your store. This is a great promotion which would not only be unique, but could possibly encourage customers to spend more than they previously would have in order to reach that total for faster delivery. 

When looking to carry out promotions based on a special events or trends, innovation is key. The more appealing and original your promotion is, the more popular it is going to be. As more people get caught up in the hype and euphoria of the event, they will become equally excited in your offer, resulting in greater exposure and traffic.

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