Sometimes promoting your online business seems all but hopeless. What can you do? Where do you begin? It's all so confusing! But it doesn't have to be. If you set aside a specific time each day, or even just once or twice a week, and spend an hour of serious effort, then as the days, and weeks, and months, pass you will find more and more people finding their way to your little place on the 'net.
Whether its a Main Street Mall Online store, an eBay UK shop, or your own website, the process is the same. YOU need to take responsibility for YOUR business and make it happen. If you just sit back and wait for business to come your way, even on the busiest of sites, you may find yourself just sitting back and waiting. Success comes to those who work their business. This article will offer a selection of excellent places you can go, and things you can do, to promote your online business.
If you sell on eBay, and have a store, one of the most important things you can do is run auctions to drive traffic to your store. The way eBay's search works the lower cost store listings don't get as much visibility as the higher priced auctions. Be sure you have a clearly visible link to your store in all your auction listings. You can find free button makers in the utilities section of this site you can use to make buttons to link to your store. It can also be just a simple text link as well. Something as simple as "Visit My Store" or even "Buy This Item Now in My eBay Store" will work fine.
For those of you who have an eBay store you can use the eBay Store HTML Builder to create HTML links if you don't already know how. If you don't have an eBay store this link will take you to the page to sign up for one.
Many selling sites offer built-in cross-promotion capability. Some work better than others. eBay's has a tendency to be less than consistently reliable. Most store sites and many site-builder websites allow enough editing capability to put your own cross-promotion links in place if they don't already offer the service. You do need to be aware of any restrictions before linking to listings that are not your own or to sites other than the one you are on. eBay, for example, does not allow you to link from your listings to any off-eBay sites. Main Street Mall Online, on the other hand, encourages you to link from your store and/or listings to other sites. I've seen cross-promotions between multiple MSMO sellers. For example, one seller who creates and sells first communion veils cross-promotes with a jewelry seller who has gold and silver crosses on chains. They both benefit from this.
There are third-party cross-promotional tools and utilities available as well. Check the utilities section of this site for some of these.
Where ever you sell online you don't want to limit your promotion efforts to that site alone. Sure, you do want to post in the site forums about new items you list or specials you may be running (if those kinds of posts are allowed) but you also need to spread your efforts outside of your actual selling site to work on bringing more traffic to your store -- not waiting for it to arrive on its own.
Google, and other search engines, have what are known as sponsored results which usually cost but get you extra exposure in search results. Since nearly 90% of people looking for a specific site or product will use a search engine, sponsored results can put you at the top of the list and greatly improve your exposure.
For example, if you were looking for a particular photography site in Fairhope, AL, that features the work of local photographers but you couldn't remember the name of the site or the URL, you might search Google for Fairhope Photographers and you would find Beautiful Fairhope, the site you were looking for, listed in the first few spots. But there is a block of ten "Local business results for photographers near Fairhope, AL" listed at the top of the page, above the regular search returns. You can pay for exposure in this kind of sponsored results list.
You can also purchase ads on many websites. Active, popular, blog sites are often well worth the cost of an ad banner, often costing as little as $10.00 to $35.00 for a full month of exposure. Look for links on the site that say Advertise Here, Come Advertise With Us, or something similar. If you find a site you think would be worth advertising on that doesn't seem to offer this don't hesitate to ask the site owners. You may find them open to the idea and being the first one there can be quite good.
On selling sites use your Custom, About Me, or Profile pages to tell people about yourself, your business, and your products and/or services. This can increase your search engine ranking as well as these pages get indexed into the various search engines. Be sure to link from these pages to your store and listings. eBay has a useful page on how to Optimize Your eBay Store. There are some good ideas there for other store sites as well.
eBay's eBay Stores To Go (formerly called the eBay Merchant Kit) provides a way to add your eBay listings directly into your website, social networking site (where allowed), or a free website like webs.com.
You should submit your listings (whether from a selling site or your own website) to Google Base, a free service of the popular search engine. This is a way to guarantee great exposure for your items in Google search returns. Sites like Main Street Mall Online and eBay have built in processes for this. If you don't have this on your website you may want to hire a qualified website designer to create an interface for you. Besides Google Base there are other bulk listing and listing comparison sites you can submit your items. Some, however, require a fee.
RSS feeds are also a great way to get exposure for your listings. Read more about them in other articles on this site.
Participating in a variety of forums can get you great exposure. Where permitted be sure to have a link to your store(s) and/or website(s) in your signature that is displayed at the bottom of each message. Many people will follow this/these link(s) back to your site(s).
Some sites allow you to use a small graphic as a part of your signature. This graphic is often called a siggy. They may also allow another graphic to represent your account on the forum. This graphic is referred to as an avatar. You should use both of these to create an identity. A yellow Tweey-bird or some Japanese kitten may be cute but they likely don't represent your business. Develop a graphic that represents you and use it in all your promotional material so it becomes recognized as YOU.
You can gain excellent promotion for your online business by joining web rings and discussion forums related to the kinds of things you sell. Look for special group promotions such as Share Your Wares (MSMO) or Sidewalk Sales (eBay) or other store owners co-operative efforts.
You should develop your own blog. You don't have to write well, or a lot. Just write about things that interest you and write frequently enough (at least once a week) so that others will come back. Make reference to new things you have listed. Be chatty. Share things you've heard or like. It's easier than you might think. Be sure to link from your blog site, and individual blog articles to your store, website, or a specific listed item.
Include a link to your store or website (and other sites) in your email signature. Most email programs have a way for you to put this in once and it will automatically append to each new email you send.
One person I know recommends using your business name and/or logo on items to promote your eBay store suggesting you could wear a shirt or carry a tote bag imprinted with your store name, logo, and/or domain name, on it. This is a great idea and a good reason to get a short, memorable, domain name for your business!
You can also get a bumper stickers, a license plate frame, or a magnetic sign, made with your store name and domain. Window cling letters that that require no adhesives can go across the top of your car's back window without blocking your view but are readable from cars following behind you. Check, of course, that your state and local authorities allow this sort of thing in your car windows.
This is just scratching the surface and already you are exhausted! There's much more you can do and I'll be posting it in another article to follow this one.
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