Help with a marketing strategy

Tough challenge you have.

How is your website doing? Is it getting traffic? Do you have a marketing plan involved for that?

I would say you write a GOOD story about your brand, company, services, etc... and start sending this around to editors, press release firms, etc.

The social media stuff is ok, but once you actually have the following.

Looks like you're in a no good situation.. Let me help you a bit with my opinion (and I hope you find it helpful)

facebook and twitter, I think they're clueless for increasing sales.. They're for proving authority. When a potential buyer sees that you have a goon fan base and followers, it'll assure them to buy your brand.

But if you're looking for sales, stop just hanging around in facebook fan page and followers. First you build them for authority and good brand image in the potential buyers head.
The next phase after you sell some good numbers of products, I think your buyers will follow your twitter and your fan page, from that moment you can send free ad and get sales from twitter n fb fan page.
So, I think right know you need targeted traffic that will see you that you have a good brand awareness because they see your fan base n twitter profile.

Do a fb paid ppc ad, or free promotion like youtube, seo, etc.

Good luck

A way of marketing your business for free would be for you to write blogs or articles about your niche and posting it on your site. Putting good content would provide your readers/site visitors an idea of what your site is all about. And it also increases site interaction which in turn affects your PR rating in a good way. You could do the same with your FB - post updates about your business or events you maybe starting. Giving away freebies is also a great idea, then again as you said, it backfired on you. You can also try posting on message boards/forums and such to promote your site to a wider range of audiences.

All these suggestions are good.

But I think the best thing to do, is figure who you REALLY want to sell these items to.
Are you competing with Fredrick's?
Are you trying to target the house wives?
Is your product geared towards younger people?
Etc...

Then build a few different plans to attract those buyers.

Without going much into detail, I would spend time trying to find channels that can distribute content for you. Bloggers, fashion people that are passionate about the subject. Find the ones with an audience that you would see as fit, and talk to them. Explain your situation, maybe even offer them some freebies.

Check out the book in my sig if you have time, it contains some more methods on how to push your products for free and might send you in the right direction. No money doesn't necessarily mean you can not reach people. I'm very skeptical about the give-aways either way, seeing they don't attract valuable response most of the time, as proven in your story.

Good luck!

Try to liquidate to whole sellers and distributors at a discount. Thought about it?

I would also indulge and try Pinterest. Get my products there and perhaps, find affiliates who can promote your website.

Great idea. Target the female social forums.

Social media is the digital way of "word of mouth" - because its an inexpensive way of spreading the word. The most important thing to do is build the relationship with your customers & once they've accepted you, you can then show them your product/services. Yes, your right social media is not a quick fix but another tool to reach out to someone. Good luck!

I don't know if this thing will work for you.. manta.com can get you some good traffic. Go to fiverr.com and get some real followers and likes from rated sellers.
Add pictures on pintrest and then just spread it everywhere. Don't forget instagram. webstagram.com for cheap advertising. Also on fiverr.com search for a gig called "I will find you 50 high traffic keywords in your niche" Grab those keywords and then move to freelancer.com for $2 a piece article written or if you can write then write 5 a day.. Post them on wordpress.com not any other blog and see traffic roll in.
I hope this will help.

Feel free to PM me and we can come up with some ideas.

If you have a physical product then I would be using coupons to sell them on FB.

Build up your following, get testimonials, run a contest to get them to post pics of themselves in the stuff?

I get emails all the time from old navy and have to admit I use the odd one because it's a nice coupon!

I would wait abit until you have shopping cart working. When you target blogger, i would first just give away some products and says it would be great to review, but not necessary (and definately positive or negative, you donj't want blogger to feel paid off.) You can mention also that you would be happy to offer additional for contest.

Pintrest is also great for that because you have nice picture (probably) of lingerie, but i would still wait until you have checkout so you dont lose potencial customers.

Also i would try affiliates fro the product - if they don't sell you don't have to pay but also here you need checkout already.

if blogers dont answer back see how more you can get hem. Maybe try in your hometown to locate local bloggers to start there, especily if they have big follow, and also, target medium bloig, not big blog, those are hard to get. and good luck!

I would look at all other (groups companies) in my niche on facebook
Get the software to download the individual email addresses
launch a campaign in facebook targeting those users
First you need a fan page (keeping advertising inside facebook is much cheaper)
Highly targeted traffic for a very low cost
Andrew (I link therefore I am)

I love the idea of promoting your products to female social forums.

Give pinterest a go, anything visually appealing for women will do well!

I think bloggers is the way to go, offer them free samples to review or to giveaway.

Just make sure they have a strong following, check their followers/social media followers and email them a friendly email, many of the bigger bloggers will get a lot of these emails every day, make sure yours stands out!

This is how the Cambridge Satchel Company Started and they're doing pretty well for themselves!

https://www.cambridgesatchel.com/our-world/

Cross promote with other businesses who are already reaching your ideal customers.
People with good income. Higher end furniture, jewelry, luxury car dealers, cosmetic dentists, plastic surgeons, vanity photography, florists...

Sponsor charity events.

Educational videos - such as bra fitting - on youtube and your website.

Giveaways - no. You want to attract people who have money and are not going to buy lingerie from Wal-Mart. VIP treatment of your data base of potential customers - yes.

Local print media geared towards your buyers. Advertising and/or submit helpful articles.

Bra Fitting Experts in Denver - SOL, Store of Lingerie - Denver, C

Dan

You are doing this all backwards.

Before you even begin to think about selling this lingerie you have to sit down and get a few things clear to yourself, so you can market correctly:

Who is your market?

What are their demographics?

What language does your market use when talking about lingerie?

Those first three questions will determine where you go from there.

You need to dig into the question of "why do women buy lingerie." Some obvious answers are: It helps them to feel more sexy. It's something they know pleases the men in their life.

These are just the obvious surface answers and you need to dig, dig, dig.

Once you find the solution to who your ideal market is and more specifically why exactly they buy lingerie, you can put together the promotional material in the language that your market uses thanks to your research from the third question.

For example, if you do find that the reason your target market buys lingerie is to feel more sexy, especially for sexual encounters, now you can start writing all kinds of link bait:

10 Sex Positions that Will Drive Your Guy Wild in Bed

5 Ways to Make Sure You Both Get What You Want During Sex

Understand though that if your demographic is women who are married in their late 20's-30's your promotional material will be worded way differently than it would be for women who are single and in their late teens to mid twenties.

You get enough original content like this written up and offer it to big time player bloggers with a lot of traffic; offer it to them as exclusive content so long as they allow a link to your site, and/or FB page at the bottom of the content, now you're onto something.

Make an infographic of some sexual facts. The last one saying something about how much better lingerie makes sex, or the large percentage of men who love lingerie on women. Oh, wait, what's that under that last fact. Oh, cool, it's a url to your lingerie site, what a convenient place to put it....I just read how awesome lingerie is, oh, here's a link to a lingerie site....Did I mention that infographics are really hot, and get passed around a lot on social media sites. Especially high quality ones?

What sets you apart from the other lingerie? (I understand you're up against the cheap shit, you want to see someone who does an awesome job at explaining why his leather products (a very competitive market) is better than everyone else? This makes the price resistance of his products go *poof.* He even has a clever quote on his site: "Buy the best, cry once" - Pasquale. go here: Quality Built to Last Want to see real balls? He even links to his competition: Our Rivals)

Yes, you should have an affiliate program too. Mention that to the bloggers you offer the link bait content to. If they understand that not only do they get free content, any sales that are made from the link of that content, they'll make some cash too. It's a double win for them. They get content and cash.

Start trying to find some JV partners who can promote your products to their list for a cut of the profit.

Start looking around the web for forum owners, blog owners, websites, etc. who are in your niche and see if they would like to become a partner. Tell them that all they need to do is schedule/send an email (that you will provide) to their lists and you will give the X% of total sold from that email blast.

It's a win/win for both since you are selling some of your products, generating some cash flow, building a list and the partner gets some cash because of his list and credibility. He doesn't have to do anything else and will be some of the easiest money he ever earned. Plus, if it goes well they will be reaching out to you to do it many times again in the future.

Hope that helps!

There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread. Here is what I would focus on:

1. Reach out to fashion bloggers (there are a ton of them, just look in the comments of any fashion blog, they all comment on each others' posts.) Offer them a free product and get them an affiliate link if possible.

2. Write articles on lingerie-adjacent sites. In your credentials list that you have your own lingerie line and link to your site.

3. Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram: Create accounts on all three and tag your images #lingerie #fashion and maybe #sexy or other related tags. People on these sites often view photos by tags.

4. Targeted buys on Facebook. Pretty good bang for the buck here from what I've seen.

Hope you check in and let us know what is working and not working for you!

Sponsored story would be a good idea.