Who here has knows Ecommerce marketing?
Summary: Client is a family member starting a solar ecommerce website. As always, he's blown through most of his marketing budget on bs tactics. Consulted with me for advice.
I'm not familiar with ecommerce websites and frankly, I don't like them. But I'm up for a little challenge so I took the meeting.
He went on about his traffic and sales concerns, and some tactics he's already tried with no success. Facebook PPC, Seo, all the main techniques newbies get baited in to.
He doesn't have much of a budget at all...which is actually why I took the case. He can't do much more than $300/mo as the website has only made a couple of sales.
He's way ahead of himself as far as marketing goes, thinking he can conquer the world with his website. I initially suggested he slow down, and re-target his thinking. Here are some preliminary thoughts of mine.
- Re-think target audience. Zero in on a small market
- Focus on an active Facebook profile
- Blog - I like to use blogs to fill the network with content. Creating blog posts, case studies, free reports, and circulating them with social networking. Creating sponsored facebook posts, drawing targeted traffic to the posts.
- List using the little bit of traffic received from the above, begin building email list. Segment lists based on interest. If user opted in on a form placed for solar lighting, auto-responded series should be based on lighting. Target emails at the subscribers based on which form they opted in on. Also build list based on past purchasers.
He wanted my video ranking service, but I feel that at this point, that traffic would be wasted since he doesn't have any traps set in place. Their only option is to buy or leave. I also don't believe that's the best way to spend his budget especially since it's pretty competitive. I did however think about targeting local areas for the same keywords and narrowing down the market, and competition.
I'm admittedly more of a drive traffic & study conversions type of guy. I'm also use to working with larger budgets. I typically don't accept little clients like this. However, as I said I'm always up for a challenge and to me...this is a challenge.
What steps would you take to ensure the best use of such a small budget?
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