Marketing your Miva store

[harvest-moon]

Hi,

So I thought the hardest part of running a business was the startup phase, but I was wrong. I've spent the same amount if not more on marketing strategies and campaigns. I'm curious what other's have done in terms of free and/or cheap marketing campaigns. Here's what I've done, maybe you can give me some feedback, comments, or whatever.

1. I started using Google Adwords about 2 months ago, and $60 later, no orders that were generated from this.

2. I am running a couple of banner ads on two very specific niche websites, a place where mom's chat, and a natural products directory, both at about $12.50 per month. One month later, no orders.

3. I started using Froogle about 3 days ago, and although the service is Free its been nothing but headaches. The bulk upload works, but apparently Google has been having problems with this service, hence the "beta" tag attached to this free service. No orders generated from this since I've only been using it for 3 days.

4. Coupons and Email Marketing via Constant Contact at $15 per month. I've put a lot of work into this with not much return. People read the messages, forward it, but I've only generated 4 orders in 2 months from this service.

5. I've started posting a few items on eBay, and this may be something that will generate some sales because of the high traffic on it, but I've only been doing this for about 4 days. Our traffic did improve a bit from all this activity. We're at about 12 unique visits per day average (360 per month).

6. I?m using my signature as advertisement on a couple of board that relate to my products but no orders have been generated from this activity.

For Miva users, what have been the most cost-effective means of advertising your products and services? I feel like I know a lot, but I'm sure there's a lot still to learn.

Thanks much in advance,

HMB

[immy79]

Hey there,

Here are a couple thoughts I had on your post. They may help, they may not. But it's feedback nonetheless...

1. Only $60 in two months? You should be spending a lot more than that for an effective AdWords campaign. Sounds like either your rankings aren't that high up or nobody finds the ads compelling enough to click on.

Evaluate the keywords and phrases you use for your ads, the copy for your two lines of text, and the landing pages you send people to. There are a ton of resources out there. There are even some articles about PPC on the MIVA Small Business website.

If a general campaign for your site isn't working, try focusing on just one product and make sure your ads link to that product's page in your store.

2. Make sure you are using tracking on your banner ads. If you don't want to spend a lot, or anything, Google Analytics is a decent free option to check traffic.

3. Don't know much about Froogle. Try Yahoo! Shopping also. I believe they take product feeds for free as well.

4. I believe the industry average is 1-2% conversion rate on email marketing. Look at the messages you are sending and what the customer types are. Are these people who have bought from you in the past? What would they be interested in? New products? A monthly special? Maybe try a newsletter or baby tips or organic living articles to get their interest and drive them back to your site.

5. Don't know much about selling on eBay. But when someone wins, try to direct them to pay for the auction at your website. That way, they may be inclined to browse the rest of the store.

6. This is a good idea. Keep it up and maybe join more communities on the topic. Maybe try different signatures on each board and see which one gets the best activity.

As a side note, your products look like they would be perfectly suited for the Hollywood types, especially with this recent celebrity baby boom. Maybe look into getting your products included in an awards show goodie bag or given away on a talk show. It might be pretty expensive, but could be a great opportunity.

This seems like a niche that you are well suited to take control over. I hadn't heard of Organic Baby Clothes before I saw your site. People in LA would go crazy for this stuff I bet.

Hope some of this helps...

[d_host]

... what Jimmy said, and just to confirm some of his comments - expect to spend a *WHOLE LOT MORE* than $60/month on adwords and banners and other marketing to get noticed and to get any results. These days everyone and their dog thinks they can run a web site and sell things online - it's not the '90s anymore. You are now competing with thousands or millions of others with a similar idea. If your product is trully unique, you stand higher chance of surviving, but you still need to get the word out so that people know you are there and where to find you.

As they say, it takes money to make money. It may take many thousands of dollars to get noticed, and depending on your product, simple adwords may not even be the 'best' option, but if your product is unique enough - sure, that would be a great opportunity to monopolize on keywords others won't have. More creative propmotional options may also be required - as Jimmy suggested, perhaps a celebrity endorsment of some kind, or perhaps sending some samples and a write-up about your company to a hip or 'green friendly' maternity magazine, etc...

When visiting your site, it's hard to say that your site has something "unique"... if your mission is to push "organic baby clothes", perhaps make a big bold statement somewhere at the TOP of the page(s), rather than a simple, almost generic statement at the bottom of the storefront page. The things you list at the top are as "generic" as you can get on e-commerce sites - just about every store offers or claims the same thing - but few sell "organic baby clothes." Stress that part at the top, make that is the angle to make people browse your store, rather than "free shipping" and other items which many people either simply expect or know they can get just about everywhere else, too. Many stores offer these options, but few, if any, sell "organic baby clothes" - and that part is not too obvious when visiting your site.

Hope this helps.

[harvest-moon]

Jimmy,

Thanks for the feedback. Here are some follow-up thoughts...

1. We've been with Google Adwords from Apr 13 to Jun 18, 2006 with 225 clicks, average position is 5th, so I know this is getting good exposure. We had 140,853 impressions, so that's a 0.15% CTR, but I think you may be right, maybe I'm spending too little on this. I'll definitely reconsider the amount.

2. Yes, I'm tracking my banner ads from within those accounts, and also on my website, I can see where folks are coming from by looking at my Webalizer stats (a cheaper version of Google Analytics)

3. I'll have to check out the Yahoo feeds, I didn't know they too were free

4. We've been doing monthly specials, but that is a good idea, have some short articles about some specific baby topic, something that will make the customer want to open and read each and every newsletter, looking forward to relevant content.

5. I don't think you can redirect someone from eBay to pay on my site since eBay prohibits linking a product to an outside web store. Normal process of payment on eBay is via PayPal and that is a separate process from paying on a Miva store.

6. Good idea on trying different signatures on different boards, sort of placing it in context. I'll try that.

Your comment about Hollywood very interesting. I've not thought of our products as fitting into that "genre" of people, but it’s worth a shot. I'll look around and see what I can come up with that.

It was very nice reading your comments, I very much appreciate the time you took to respond.

Best, HMB

[d_host]

BTW, when I wrote "everyone and their dog"... please don't take that the wrong way. I'm a huge dog lover and have an awesome chocolate labrador retriever myself. Simply meant that as a figure of speech.

[harvest-moon]

Remik,

You know, now that you mention it, I totally see it … I’m not making it clear to my customers that we’re a truly organic store specializing in organic clothes and such. I will move that message up at the top as soon as possible.

The ideas you mention are great. I will definitely follow up on most of the things posted here. I’m glad this board is here, its really good to bounce ideas and see how other folks feel about these things.

Best, HMB

[harvest-moon]

BTW, when I wrote "everyone and their dog"... please don't take that the wrong way. I'm a huge dog lover and have an awesome chocolate labrador retriever myself. Simply meant that as a figure of speech.

No worries Remik, I didn't take it personally. I really appreciate your comments, so no need to clarify.

But if you want to make it up to me, you can pass around my link :D

Cheers, HMB

[d_host]

BTW, one more comment after browsing your site - there's no way to contact you! :-) Well, you have a 'contact' page with an online form, but many people like to either call on the phone, or email you, or at the very least, check out the about us/contact us pages to see if they can find a real address for a real company and real person. Sites with no contact info, phone numbers, email, etc, tend not to do very well with the general buying public. It's like opening a store but keeping the customer service desk and all sales people walled off, away from the buying public. They may have questions - make yourself available, and not just through the contact form (which tends to be a little impersonal and few people will fill it out just to get in touch with you).

[immy79]

Another idea, check around your community for opportunities to promote your site. Maybe a store like Whole Foods will allow yuo to post flyers or maybe do some sort of consignment. Or look around for local Farmer's Markets. Those are generally the type of people that go for organic anything.

Don't focus all of your marketing efforts on just online marketing. There ar a lot of creative things you could do to get the word out about your product. Because it is such a unique niche you've filled, you have a good shot. Get creative, think big (which means spend big, too), and you should do well.

Also, on Remik's point, play up the organic thing on your website. Maybe a big banner or image at the top that says "Organic baby clothes? Why?" that links to a blurb about the benefits and such. You want to showcase your uniqueness. Your site is not jsut another baby clothing site. Organic stuff is huge now. Take advantage of that.

And on the eBay topic, you can definately send your winners a link to your store to pay online. You're not linking from the auction on ebay's site. It's just a link sent to the winner to pay online. Just happens to be your store. There are a few modules that can add functionality to accept ebay payments. I'm sure someone will chime in with a link to one...

BTW, great topic. There should be a whole forum for this.

[harvest-moon]

Remik,

Well, you have a 'contact' page with an online form, but many people like to either call on the phone, or email you, or at the very least, check out the about us/contact us pages to see if they can find a real address for a real company and real person.

1. I thought about placing a phone number on the main page, but I still need to get a dedicated line for the biz, or may just place my cell phone number for the time being. As volume picks up, I may need to think of getting an 800 number.

2. The form send me an email and I usually respond within 10 minutes, but I did not think to place an actual email address/link on the main page, up at the top perhaps. I was trying to avoid being spammed. I checked out your contact page and it looks good. Is that what you had in mind? A more "trusted" contact page with a real address/phone?

3. Also, our biz at this point is home based, so what should I do about the address? Do I post my home address for all and their dog ;) on the WWW? Or do I get a PO BOX? I was torn on this one, so I currently only include the address on my return form, a PDF link off the Returns and Exchanges link.

Thanks, HMB

[d_host]

eBay: there's External Product Purchase (http://www.mivacentral.com/Merchant2...=WCW-EXTERNAL5) that may work for this purpose.

[d_host]

1. A toll-free number is the only way to go - it's cheap, and ensures that people who won't call you because it's long distance (even though it's only 2 cents a minute) will pick up the phone to reach you. You can probably even get a toll-free number redirected to your cell phone, too.

2. Contact form - thank you. Yes, something along those lines. To make sure you don't get spammed when you post your email address online, there are a few things you can do. There are email address obfuscation type scripts which make the address visible to people browsing your site, but web bots spidering sites for email addresses will get nothing but junk script. Or, you can embed an image with your email address. Not as convenient as people won't be able to click on it or copy-and-paste, but that's better than nothing.

Note: if you use an image, do not surround it with the 'mailto' HTML tag as that will reveal your email address to webbots.

3. Address - that's a tough one. Generally PO Boxes are sort of frowned upon, as they clearly indicate it's not a "real" business or has something to hide. However, if your company angle is also "small business", it may be okay. Or, to find a happy medium, see if you can find a PO Box type place that is not run by the USPS and offers a more 'standard' type mailing addres, sort of like:

123 Main Street, Unit #24

ie: physical address of the mailbox place, with your box number as a unit or suite or something along those lines. Many places that offer mailboxes will let you do this, while the USPS will be pretty strict on using generic "PO Box 24"...

[harvest-moon]

Jimmy,

Another idea, check around your community for opportunities to promote your site. Maybe a store like Whole Foods will allow you to post flyers or maybe do some sort of consignment. Or look around for local Farmer's Markets.

I did do one round of posting flyers and coupons at organic/natural market places. I posted in about 10 locations, took about 4 hours. The only thing about marketplaces is that they take down all the posts after two weeks, which is not bad, but with gas prices these days ;) well, I don't have to say much. But I will try Farmer's Markets and I will find a spin to get in, some kind of creative promotional thing, maybe partner up with some merchant that sells organic veggies or something like that...

And on the eBay topic, you can definitely send your winners a link to your store to pay online. You're not linking from the auction on ebay's site. It's just a link sent to the winner to pay online. Just happens to be your store. There are a few modules that can add functionality to accept ebay payments. I'm sure someone will chime in with a link to one...

I'll check a mod for this, sound very intriguing.

BTW, great topic. There should be a whole forum for this.

Yes, great topic, totally agree! I'm surprised there isn't more on this board on this...

Cheers,
HMB

[harvest-moon]

There are a lot of good things to work with here. This is great! You guys are awesome!!!

Thank you so much.

HMB

[immy79]

Happy to help. Good luck!