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Next step for marketing my sites?

by tbk125
14 replies
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Hi everyone, I run two sites, one sells clothing/athletic equipment & the other sells plumbing stuff. I have been doing IM for less than a year and so far have only used Google product listing ads and made Pinterest pins for products. I have considered creating a blog for SEO but since I am using BigCommerce for both sites I don't believe it could be on page. Please advise me on what you think should be my next steps in marketing these sites.
#marketing #sites #step
  • Profile picture of the author Solid Commerce
    This really depends upon your budget.

    What kind of growth are you hoping for? What are your goals for your advertising & marketing in terms of exposure, traffic, etc? What are you seeing now, and how would you like to improve it?

    All this information is kind of required to give you an actionable advice about which direction you should move in next...

    _ Sean
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    • Profile picture of the author tbk125
      Currently both sites get similar amounts of traffic about 5-20 visitors a day. The Plumbing site has about 10 sales a month and the clothing site has about 5 but it has far less products. What I am looking to do is just continually increase traffic and conversions on a national scale. I supposed Some bench marks could be getting to 50 visitors a day or 100 and hopefully getting my conversion rate closer to 2%

      I know those are really general goals but my knowledge is still pretty basic on this stuff.
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      • Profile picture of the author Solid Commerce
        No, that's all really good information -- because your next step is figuring out what tools and methodologies you're going to want to use to make sure you can realize those goals.

        For your clothing site, I'd think about hosting a lifestyle blog. If you've got some good writing/curating abilities, you can perhaps just do this yourself. Otherwise, hiring a blogger/social marketer to run an online community based around your store might be a great way to cost-effectively build yourself an online presence. A lot of the things you can do to get more visitors, influence, and traffic are free...but you'll perhaps have to pay someone for the time and expertise required to actually DO those free things.

        But a lifestyle blog with great content will definitely help you a) get more traffic, b) build your influence, and c) boost your presence in Google's search results -- provided that you've got yourself a good keyword strategy and that you stick to it.

        Another thing you can do that's close to free? Take advantage of your happy customers. Find ways to connect with satisfied and/or repeat buyers. Get them to leave testimonials, evangelize for your store, and interact with you on social media. Social proof is the idea that folks are a lot more likely to do stuff if they see other folks also doing that stuff.

        So use your happy customers to harness the power of social proof with things like reviews/testimonials/social shares, etc.

        It sounds like this type of social and grassroots marketing campaign is your best bet, given your current scale and budget.

        When you start to get a bit bigger and begin to have a budget to throw around (and heck, you could already; I don't necessarily know), it'll be a good idea to start looking into actual advertising.
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  • Profile picture of the author xpesos
    You can collaborate with big social media users in your niche
    Like you can contact some big users of twitter, facebook or pinterest to JV with you or something like that
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    • Profile picture of the author Mateenyall
      Hey tbk,

      This is great your making some sales,

      I've been doing IM somewhat successfully for the last 6 months and am on track to make around 4k profit this month so hopefully my advice has some value!

      If your clothing store has anything to do with custom clothes, I think you may find some success with facebook if you can get to the right demographic. Maybe even google PPC. This all depends on your profit margins and if your making more then $10 a sale then I think you can test it out.

      Again, if your clothing store is niche related, try putting up some teespring campaigns. Teespring allows you to customize your own shirts/jumpers and you can make some serious money with it.

      Reddit gets some great exposure so try posting there in the most relevant subreddit.

      Also, you NEED to be collecting emails. If you have people that have bought your stuff, that means they like your stuff, (obviouslY lol), so why miss the opportunity to re-market to them when you got new stock?

      Make your site socially shareable. You end a base to market to your customers when you get new items or have news updates. Emails & social posts are great for this.

      Well, this is what has worked for me so hopefully, it can be of some benefit.

      All the best,

      ~ Mateen
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  • Profile picture of the author henrycalvin
    I think that if you are having trouble with SEO, then i think you should ask someone else to do it for you.
    Obviously if you don't know how to fix your car then you go to the mechanic to have your car repaired.
    So you should hire professional help you in SEO.
    And having Live Chat also helps in promoting the page a lot. Live Chat customer service is always prepared in working online and they work to make a better image of the webpage and to help in increasing the ROI of the page. Plus Live Chat software also helps in collecting data of your customers and how much they are involved in your website, and on which specific page.
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  • Profile picture of the author WorldIR
    get target traffic to your site via social media like facebook twitter blogspot etc
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  • Profile picture of the author NetCram
    Even if you can't integrate you eCommerce directly to your blog you can still put it on a sub-domain. you should definitely blog it will set you apart form the other stores. And then maybe use a plugin like this one for worpress. WordPress › Bigcommerce « WordPress Plugins
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  • Profile picture of the author tbk125
    Thanks for all the great advice, just to follow up here are some of the things I've since tried:

    reddit postings- got me lots of traffic but my post ended up being deleted for self promotion, +I didn't get any conversions
    reddit ads- which brought me average traffic but still no sales
    Facebook campaign- is about the same as the reddit campaign I made decent clicks but no sales yet, it's still running
    normal adwords text ad- not sure how this will work it's the first I have made

    I am also currently working to get the help of a blogger & promotion from an established blog..
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    • Profile picture of the author melonsmusic
      Originally Posted by tbk125 View Post

      Thanks for all the great advice, just to follow up here are some of the things I've since tried:

      reddit postings- got me lots of traffic but my post ended up being deleted for self promotion, +I didn't get any conversions
      reddit ads- which brought me average traffic but still no sales
      Facebook campaign- is about the same as the reddit campaign I made decent clicks but no sales yet, it's still running
      normal adwords text ad- not sure how this will work it's the first I have made

      I am also currently working to get the help of a blogger & promotion from an established blog..
      HI I just wondered where you went to access the blogger and established blog please?
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      • Profile picture of the author tbk125
        Originally Posted by melonsmusic View Post

        HI I just wondered where you went to access the blogger and established blog please?
        Just looked up some popular blogs on Google and then emailed them directly asking if I could get my product reviewed on their blog.

        Thanks for all the responses I greatly appreciate it.
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        • Profile picture of the author Solid Commerce
          I don't mean to be contrary, but I WOULD try attaching your blog to your website in any way that you can.

          Pumping your blog full of quality content is the same as pumping your website full of quality content when your blog is attached to your website.

          Google just so happens to LOVE this sort of thing. They love it when you bring your audience high-quality content that's relevant to your given niche.

          This is also how you go about linking up with other blogs. Write a lot, and have something to say. Develop a strong and unique editorial voice, or consider working with a blogger or writer who can help you do that.

          Also, contribute to the discussion as much as you can. When you're running a blog, your social media channels become a lot more effective, because they basically become spokes leading back to your main hub -- the blog.

          Basically, you can use social media to advertise to, engage with, and get feedback from your audience. When you've got a blog, you've got ONE good place to send people for your content. Develop a strategy that sees you using your social channels AND your blog in a unified effort so that they complement each other.

          When you start doing this, it becomes a lot easier to plug yourself into the online conversation in a way that gets you noticed.

          Reach out to writers of popular blogs and ask if you can contribute. Help out. Focus on creating value that goes both ways (ie, help people in exchange for helping you), and you'll have a relatively easy time getting your influence to spread.
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  • Profile picture of the author webworksbd
    as solid commerce said, for your site you can make wordpress blog for lifestyle and promote your product there as blog post with some nice graphics . when you are doing this you need to also think about that you site is more visible and share able to social medias
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  • Profile picture of the author amcg
    Originally Posted by tbk125 View Post

    Hi everyone, I run two sites, one sells clothing/athletic equipment & the other sells plumbing stuff. I have been doing IM for less than a year and so far have only used Google product listing ads and made Pinterest pins for products. I have considered creating a blog for SEO but since I am using BigCommerce for both sites I don't believe it could be on page. Please advise me on what you think should be my next steps in marketing these sites.
    The blog doesn't need to be on your BigCommerce site - in fact, it's probably best it isn't anyway. Using Tumblr or Wordpress will allow you to have the best blog in the industry, and you can always link to and from your ecommerce site.

    There's a bunch of things you should be doing to market your site; the next most important is email marketing. Use Mailchimp or a similar service, I believe you can integrate this with BigCommerce.

    After that, there's social media, SEO, content, online ads etc that you'll want to do. Above all, remember to use analytics software e.g. Google Analytics and test the hell out of everything you do.
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