What do you think of our strategy on getting the first sales on our website?

8 replies
Hello!

My wife and I started a website that offers survival kits and supplies for families. Our niche that we've chosen is families that live in areas where disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and forest fires happen.

We have been part of our target niche. We used to live in Southwest Missouri where an EF5-rated multiple-vortex storm that reached nearly a mile wide went through a town not too far from us. That prompted us to get a survival kit together but we found building our own to be expensive, time consuming, and frustrating. We discussed this with several of our friends and they found that to be the case as well. Thus the idea to start this type of website.

Our website is at https://mainelysurvival.com.

Our strategy to market the site is to reach out to various blogs that are for families that we feel would be interested in our products. We could guest post for them or possibly pay for a feature on their website. We are also in the process of adding blog posts to our own site for seo and buyer education.

Our budget for paid ads is very low so we wanted to focus our efforts in other areas that could possibly be more effective.

Does this seem like a viable strategy? Also, does our website complement this strategy or would you suggest changes to it?

Thanks!
#sales #strategy #website
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  • Guest blogging is one of the good strategy. You may want to try other social media marketing methods like FB page, Instagram & Pinterest.
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  • Profile picture of the author DURABLEOILCOM
    You can also sell on Ebay, Craigslist, Back page, Offer Up, Let Go, Mercari. Make sure to join survival forums, answer questions on Quora and Yahoo Answers. Get tons of followers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Be sure to find the top survival hash tags include them on each post in your social media.
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    • Profile picture of the author OptedIn
      Originally Posted by DURABLEOILCOM View Post

      Back page,
      For the 10th time, BackPage.com no longer exists. Apparently you enjoy continuing to give worthless information.
      Signature

      "He not busy being born, is busy dying." - Bob Dylan • "I vibe with the light-dark point. Heavy." - Words that Bob Dylan wishes he had written.

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  • Profile picture of the author Monica Meiers
    It's good to get endorsed by local blogs! That's a great way to start.

    If you can, though, and I think it's a bit difficult to do, you can do instructional videos on how to use your survival kits and market them in your target areas.

    In fact, create content that showcases how useful your products are. If you get buyers, never forget to get testimonials about your products. If you can conduct test case studies to showcase the efficacy of your stuff, I bet I'd buy that even if I wasn't from your target area.
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  • Profile picture of the author markfitz
    high-quality advertising doesn't have to be expansive!
    Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are great places to gain customers.

    1. Post on Instagram every day, make it a habit! like DURABLEOILCOM said above me: " Be sure to find the top survival hashtags include them on each post in your social media." Facebook groups related are great places too.

    Very important: That's a tip I give to everyone and you're no exception. Save all your customers and all of the people you have interacted with, this will produce sales later on with email marketing.

    2. Guest blogging is great, Forums related are great too.

    3. Another great tactic will be Email marketing.
    I suggest building multiple mail scripts and send them to all of your leads.
    Great topics for research: SMM (social media marketing), Email marketing.

    Good luck!
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  • Profile picture of the author christyjpp
    Interesting business and back story. I'd think that would help you sell it - you're not just some faceless company, but real people with the same concerns as your customers, so you created a solution!

    If the budget is really low, your own survival blog and swapping guest posts and ads/links with other survival blogs is a great start.

    There's also big followings of this type of stuff on Pinterest and Instagram - get photos of your survival gear up on there with links to your blog posts that link to your buy pages (or maybe just directly to the buy page - would have to test that).

    You could also post on online classified sites in the areas prone to the issues your survival kits are designed for.

    Also, would school and organizations be interested in buying your kits in bulk? Maybe an option to check into, though I don't know if there are certification requirements you'd need to meet.
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  • Profile picture of the author Myrgeddin
    Love the website! Only thing I suggest is offering some sort of incentive to get people to subscribe to your list. Write a free report on survival tips and tie it into your products in some way. Just an idea
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  • Profile picture of the author Rick Tinson
    As long as the guest posts are posted on quality sites, you'll get some of their SEO juice and it can only help your domain. Best of luck!!
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  • Profile picture of the author affmarketer101
    Listing your products on multiple local marketplace. This was the method that I made first sales.
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