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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Everything you need to know about email marketing

The success of your online store relies on the ability for you to correctly market both your products and brand in order to create an interest in your customers, which then results in them visiting your store and making a purchase.

One of the most important aspects of promoting your business, especially if you are a small business looking to establish yourself is through email marketing. This form of marketing allows you to not only make people aware of your business who may not have come across your store through other channels, but also allows you to constantly engage with your current customers in order to help them become repeat buyers.

A recent infographic produced by iContact, has proven that despite what some people may think about email marketing, the marketing technique is very much growing from strength to strength. While there are now a number of different ways people can communicate with each other through social media, mobile devices and other communication tools, many people are still using email as one of the primary sources of communicating with both individuals and businesses. This is underpinned by the fact it is predicted that there will be close to a billion new email accounts created within the next four years. Although the vast majority of these obviously won't be customers to your ecommerce store, it just demonstrates the potential email marketing still has in being able to effectively engage with your customers to generate sales.

The most attention grabbing aspect of this infographic is the statistic showing the average return on email marketing. For every 1 dollar that a store owner spends on their email marketing, it will generate on average $44.25. For any business, whether it's a large established business or a small online store looking to get on their feet, this ROI is unbelievable and substantially better than what you would find through any other paid marketing channel.

However, you shouldn't just use email marketing to bring in new customers. You should be using this channel to send content to people who have already purchased from your store on a regular basis. This means sending them surveys on how they found the purchasing process, the latest news about your store and any promotions or offers that you are currently running. This will not only help you create relationships with your customers, but it also actively engages them and encourages them to come back to your store time and time again.

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Mobile Marketing vs Online Marketing

Although many people now consider mobile commerce to be the new face of online selling, many people are still shunning this form or marketing, choosing to stick with traditional methods as they believe it is these tried and tested ways that will bring the best results. Although online marketing is still a strong promotional tool to increase your business's brand and customers, mobile marketing provides you with just as many benefits, if not more.

vs Email Marketing

When you send out an email marketing campaign, you will find that on average, 88% of all the emails aren't even opened by the recipients. If you send out the same message via SMS marketing on mobile phones, 98% of all messages will be opened. As you can see from these percentages, the amount of people who will become aware of your brand and your message is substantially more through mobile marketing than email marketing. 

However, although the open rate for mobile marketing is much higher than in emails, you may find that the percentage of those people who do open the message, tend to read the information in the email more than they would do in the mobile message. Generally, most mobile users have the predisposition that if they receive a text message that is not from a friend or someone they know, they instantly open the message and then delete it straight away without reading it. In comparison, people who open up an email marketing message, tend to do so after becoming interested in what the email contains, through the subject heading. As opposed to opening the text message to then delete it, people open up emails because they wish to find out what information the email contains. 

vs Social Media

One of the huge benefits of social media is the ability to interact with a huge audience in a number of different ways. 49% of all people in the UK use Facebook on a regular basis. In comparison, 91% off all adults use mobile phones. When you compare these two numbers, you can see the how many more people use mobile phones everyday as opposed to social media sites. While social media's user numbers are less than those who use mobile phones, it is still a substantial audience that you should be targeting for your small business as it is a platform that you can use for free. Whereas, mobile marketing will cost you a certain amount of money to first set up and then employ a third party company to send the SMS marketing messages on your behalf. . 

While I'm not saying abandon online marketing and only market through mobile phones, you need to ensure that you spend a substantial amount of time researching the various marketing campaigns and tailoring your output to suit both platforms. Emails, social media and mobile messaging all have difference audiences which require a different style of output and a different type of message. Tailoring your message to each platform is going to give you the best possible chance of engaging as many customers for your online store as you can through each marketing tool. 

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Facebook Vs. Google Display Network

For most (wise) businesses, there advertising expenditure must be perfectly selected to make the most out of their marketing budget.  Many companies may decide to target customers via social media giant Facebook, or the widely used Google Display Network, both of which target a huge following of consumers.  But who to choose?

A new infographic from Wordstream discusses the differences between the two networks, to highlight which is of the most value to businesses. 

Your Social Media Voice

I think it's safe to say that everyone now understands how important social media is when creating interest and awareness in your business.

However, simply creating accounts on various social media sites isn't going to be enough to make your business a household name. 

What you post, when you post it and what voice your posts are in are all important in generating interest and followers for your social media content. 

The first thing you should do is generate content on a daily basis. This may be articles you have written yourself, articles shared from other users or offers and promotions from your business. Posting content every day allows you to create a regular following who will revisit your social media accounts each day expecting new content. 

While you are a professional business, your posts and status updates don't have to be written in a formal fashion. In fact. writing in a authoritative voice is likely to make users feel less comfortable about visiting your site. Writing in a personal style allows you to relate to your audience. This creates almost a conversational tone, which instantly makes users comfortable on your page.

The beauty about social media is that it is a two way interaction platform. Normal marketing avenues are simply one way communication with you sending a message to the consumer. Sites like Facebook and Twitter allow not only you to communicate with your followers, but for them to communicate right back. Taking the time to respond to any questions, queries or comments your followers have is a great way to not only get some customer feedback to help improve your business, but is also a great way to build up personal connections with consumers. The more personal connections you create, the more potential customers you will be generating for your online business.

Although many businesses look to separate their online and offline marketing into two different strategies, you shouldn't overlook the benefits in advertising one platform across another. The best example for this would be Twitter's use of hashtags. It's obvious that when looking to build a Twitter following, the majority of your followers are going to be people who have seen the content posted on your Twitter feed and then decided to follow you. However, placing your Twitter address of 'hashtag' on other promotion items will also have a large impact on your social media following. 

Many businesses have taken up this concept of offline advertising for an online platform by placing the addresses of their social media sites on store windows, posters and even television adverts. Placing your social media identities anywhere and everywhere can only be a good thing. Not only does it increase your online following, it creates extra avenues for brand promotion.

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Online Marketing: What Not To Do

Although it is very unlikely that any online marketing will seriously damage your ecommerce store or business, some marketing campaigns can be more successful than others.

The last thing you will want to do is spend a your time planning and implementing a marketing strategy, only for it to have little or no affect in raising the awareness of your brand. 

When carrying out your marketing strategy you should look to avoid the following mistakes:

• Marketing to a large demographic - Sending out your marketing promotions to anyone and everyone. Not only will this take a lot of time and potentially resources, you could be sending them out to people who have no interest whatsoever in your business. This is a waste of time to both you and them.
• What you should do - Focus your marketing promotions on a niche audience. These are people who you know will be interested in your product/service to some degree. This greatly increases the amount of traffic and awareness your business receives. 

• Basic, cheap looking website and promotions - While you may be looking to save as much money as possible, the look of your website and marketing promotions is very important. If you have a website that looks cheap and unprofessional, the likelihood is that it will put off any customers from visiting your store.

• What you should do - Assign a budget for your website and promotional material that is not too expensive but still allows you to create something that is professional and appealing to visitors. Remember, first impressions count, so make the right one with inviting promotions.

• Poorly written content - The home page for your online store is the first port of call for all potential customers. If you have a website that has a number of different spelling, punctuation or grammar mistakes, it is instantly going to make your business look unprofessional and unappealing.

• What you should do - Once you have completed your website content, ask a number of people who you trust to read through the content and see if they can see any mistakes you have made. This then allows you to make sure all of the content is spelt correctly before it is published.  

• Not monitoring website traffic - Knowing how many people are visiting your site, how many of them stay on it and how many are going to other pages on your site is vitally important. If many people are visiting your home page and then leaving straight away, it tells you that something about your home page is putting them off. If you don't monitor your website's traffic, you will struggle to truly maximise the potential traffic and business your site can achieve.

• What you should do - Use Google Analytics. This is a free service that you can link to your website. This then allows you to sign into the Google account and monitor all of the traffic on your store. 

• Not using social media - Believing that simply using emails, leaflets and other promotion material to advertise your business is only going to get you so far when creating a brand awareness. Within online marketing, social media is everything. With millions of people using social media every day, it is a form of marketing you cannot afford to ignore.

• What you should do - Create accounts for your business on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Create details about your store including what services you offer and how people can access your site. Generating followers across these social commerce platforms will result in your business gaining a large amount of public awareness in a very short space of time. 

There is a fine line between success and failure when carrying out marketing campaigns. Make sure you take the time to correctly plan your strategies to ensure the best possible results.

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A Starter Guide to Online Marketing

Starting your own online ecommerce store but don't know where to start? Well don't worry, help is at hand!

The image below provides you with all the information you could ever need in telling you how to optimise your business's marketing strategy.

Whether your looking to embark on email marketing, social commerce or search engine optimisation, there's everything you need to know to help take your business to the next level.

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Email Marketing

When exploring the different avenues you can take for advertising your ecommerce business, one of the key promotional tools you should always look to use is email marketing.  Email marketing is not only a much more cost effective form of advertising than some other methods, but it also allows you to contact an unlimited number of potential customers all at once. 

While email marketing allow you to attract potential new customers, it also allows you to build up relationships with your current clientele, keeping them up to date with any potential offers or sales you may be running. 

Sending out a monthly newsletter to your current and prospective customers, allows you to provide users with information about your business such as new items for sale. You can also look to gain feedback from your customers by providing surveys for them to complete. From the survey feedback, you to make changes to how your business is run in order to enhance the experience customers are having when buying from your store. 

Emails to your customers also allow you to interact with customers automatically without taking up a large amount of your time. Setting up automated emails allow you to send an email to a customer when they make a purchase or when an order is dispatched. This type of email takes minimal effort on the part of the store owner and keeps the customer in the loop through the entire process. 

When creating an email for prospective customers, you must look to create a layout that is not only friendly, but informative. People receive a number of different advertisement emails on a daily basis. The last thing you want is for your time and effort to be wasted by someone who chooses to simply delete the email rather than taking the time to properly read it.

Starting your Business Online

Starting your Business Online

Tips to help your Business Succeed in a Digital World

Beginning your online business can be one of the most rewarding and difficult tasks that your business will encounter. The first step is to come up with the idea, without a good idea, a good product or service, good content and good support anything else that your business does will be surplus to requirements. Producing ecommerce solutions for your business will only be successful if the concept is commercially feasible.

The online market has become the busiest market in the world, however by having a website should be a whole lot more than just replicating existing advertising. Your online business should take advantage of all the networking force of the internet including ecommerce software and a Facebook store.

With the online market being a highly competitive industry, it is vital that you are able to come up with a business idea that not only has a potential customer base to purchase your products, but also is a market that has room for your business to develop and grow. Once you have come up with your business idea you must look to carry out meticulous research to find out how many businesses out there already provide a similar service and how many people would be potentially interested in your business or services.

Within online marketing, social networking is a factor that has become paramount in helping your business achieve a brand identity and greater success. Creating stores on sites such as eBay and Facebook is a great way to easily setup your own ecommerce site and tap into a readily available customer base.