4 More Tips to Increase Online Sales

If you sell online (or anywhere else for that matter) you should always be looking for ways to sell more. The following tips can help you gain more sales from both existing and new customers with little to no out of pocket expense.

1. Clearly list all products and services your business offers on your website, even if you don’t offer them for sale online.This one often stumps many businesses that sell online who also have brick and mortar locations. For example, let’s say you sell dresses on your website but also offer alteration services at your store locations. Not mentioning that you offer alteration services for your local area customers on your website is a huge mistake. Just think about how many more phone calls, store visits, and ultimately sales such a simple piece of information could generate for your business.

 

2. Send an email newsletter to people on your email subscriber list and make sure to include a reminder of the products and services your business offers.It isn’t uncommon to receive email newsletters from businesses that are about one specific offer that is of no interest to you. Now imagine if that same newsletter sparked your interest by mentioning another product or service offerings you were currently shopping for. Bet you would visit the site to check it out. Especially if it’s from a company you have done business with before and you trust.

 

3. Use an email signature on all outgoing emails such as customer service emails and shipping notices that describe your product and service offerings and provide a link back to you website.Think about how many emails your business sends every day. Now imagine if each one told the recipient of all that your business offers and allowed them to click a link to immediately go to your website. As basic as this may sound, it’s amazing how many businesses are still not maximizing this simple marketing tool.

 

4. With every order you ship, sell in store, or service you provide, give your customer a flyer that also provides an overview of all of products and services you sell along with your current promotional offers.This is one of the easiest ways to increase sales. For example, a customer may have bought a dress on your website, at your store, or had you do alteration work and not known you sell other items that they would like to buy. Keep in mind that flyers are also viral – they can easily be passed around and shared with others.

Remember, if you’re not clearly telling people of all that you offer and how you can help them, they’ll take their business elsewhere. How many of these ideas are you applying and maximizing?

Read Full Post »

Online Press Releases for SEO Link Building

When one thinks of building links to their website to increase Google PageRank and visibility in the search engines a lot of ideas come to mind, such as blogging, submitting links to directory sites, social bookmarking, etc. However, one of the oldest and easiest ways to build links to your website is through online press releases. Yes, press releases may not sound as cool as many of the social media marketing opportunities available on the internet today, but they work.

After you have decided upon the topic for your press release, you will need to define what the primary keyword phase is that you want your press release to target. Take the time to research to find a popular two-word keyword phase to optimize for with a keyword tool such as Google’s Keyword Tool. Also, make sure the keyword phrase you choose is both the primary focus of your press release and relevant to your site.

Once you have settled on a topic for your press release, and you have done your keyword research, it’s time to write. When writing your press release, make sure to use your primary two-word keyword phrase in the title of your press release and a few times within the body content.

Keep in mind that no matter how well your press release is optimized from a keyword perspective, it is of no use in your SEO efforts without links pointing to your site. When using press release services that allow you to place links within the copy, make sure you are using optimized keyword text links related to your product or service offerings, opposed to generic words such as “click here”. If a press release service doesn’t allow you to link within the content of the release, make sure that you link back to your site in the “contact box” or “about section” of the release.

After you have written your press release submit it to a variety of press release services. Although, there are some very good paid press release services such as PRWeb.com, there are also a lot of free services that you should consider. Ultimately, the more services you submit your press release to, the more links you will build to your website to increase your Google PageRank and link popularity.

If you’re serious about improving your search engine rankings, online press releases are one of the fastest and easiest ways go gain quality inbound links to increase the visibility to your site.

Read Full Post »

Social Media Marketing Success Takes Time

As more businesses turn to social media marketing to grow their brands and increase sales, they’re quickly learning that real results require a significant investment of time. As a rule, those who commit the most time are the most likely to be successful.

According to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report published by Michael Stelzner, data shows that time invested in social media increases with experience. It has been found that new participants of social media spend about 2 hours a week, those that that have been involved for a few months 10 hours a week, and those that have been at it a long time 20 or more hours a week.

The data implies that after gaining experience with social media marketing, it was found to be effective and worth the investment of additional time. It also implies that new entrants into social media underestimated the amount of time required to develop and maintain a successful social media presence when they first started out.

According to the Social Media Marketing Report, experience with social media marketing leads to greater time allocated for development and participation. The report’s findings are as follows:

• 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week
• 39% for 10 or more hours weekly
• 9.6% spend more than 20 hours each week with social media

Couple the above figures with the fact that 72% of Stelzner’s 900 respondents had only been using social media for a few months or less, which reinforces that more experience with the medium leads to greater time allocated.

Hopefully these findings will help businesses to better understand social media as a cost-effective marketing tool, and of the investment of time required to make it a success.

More information on the Social Media Marketing Industry Report
Like our blog? Follow us on Twitter!

Read Full Post »

Good Economic News – Consumers Are Buying Online

Regardless of what we hear about the economy these days, the web is still hot. According to ComScore, online sales totaled $10.9 billion in January of this year. Among the categories that grew the most were sports and fitness, up 42% vs. a year ago; books and magazines, up 37%; and home, garden and furniture, up 14%. Yes, you read those numbers correct – sales increases of 14% to 42%!

The economy is driving record numbers of consumers online as opposed to in-store retailers. According to AdAge, web sales are growing at five times the rate of traditional brick and mortar stores, which is a trend that is expected to continue for years to come.

Ecommerce is proving to be better capable of handling a recession since more people are turning to comparison shopping sites now than in the past. Also, most of these comparison sites lead consumers directly to ecommerce websites. This being the case, it is critical for marketers to engage potential customers through online channels where people are actively researching and buying products and services.

If you want to grow your business in today’s price conscious world, you’ve got to be where your potential customers are most likely to be. What is your business doing to succeed and grow in these challenging times? Hopefully the Internet is at the very top of your list.

Read Full Post »

Get Your Small Business Online in 2009

Despite a slowdown in the economy, leading research organizations including eMarketer are forecasting online shopping to grow at approximately 6% over the next year, while in-store retail sales continue to decline.

At a time when all businesses are trying to maximize every sales opportunity, it is amazing to find that nearly 40% of small businesses still do not have a website. However, for the other 60% that do have a website, most of them are planning to continue their online marketing efforts full speed ahead according to eMarketer. The main reasons cited where the costs of doing business online being significantly lower than traditional selling channels and greater sales opportunities.

If you happen to be one of 40% of small businesses without a website, here are some advantages to selling online for you to consider.

• Cost savings. Websites do not require high overhead costs such as rent and staffing that a retail store location does.
• Selling online reduces order processing costs – customer orders can be placed online without phone calls or in-store interactions with your sales staff.
• Reaching a wider audience, thereby increasing sales opportunities. Even if you don’t have visions of selling nationwide, an effective web site can broaden your businesses reach throughout your geographical region.
• Allowing your company to compete with larger businesses by being able to be found online and generating new business 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• Attracting new customers who would not have found your business by using conventional methods such as the yellow pages for your city or driving by your business location.
• Ability to use your website as an online catalog and marketing tool for your existing customers.

In today’s world, where the average consumer first begins the shopping process on the Internet to collect information or directly make a purchase, your business cannot afford not participating. If you’re seriously looking at growing your business and reducing costs, bringing your business into the Internet age isn’t only an option – it’s a necessity.

Read Full Post »

Social media is just word of mouth advertising – the new back fence chat

Social media is being talked up everywhere as the newest thing in internet marketing, but it isn’t really new…  The only difference between online social media and old school word of mouth is the speed at which the word is spread. Modern social media allows you to grow your business faster through accelerated word of mouth marketing applications like social bookmarking sites and consumer blogs.

Online customer reviews and rating systems are just the larger scale, online version of asking a friend for a recommendation. This is among the oldest and most widely proven forms of social media marketing, used by the most successful shopping sites. Internet retailers like Amazon.com and Best Buy encourage customers to directly post reviews of products, whether negative or positive, because it converts online shoppers into buyers at a much higher rate than product pages that don’t have customer reviews.

Shop.org and Forrester have reported that just 26% of surveyed online retailers offered customer ratings and reviews on their websites, but 96% of these retailers rated the feature an effective method for improving online sales conversion rates. 96 percent!!

Look at a Best Buy page with reviews, such as their Small Business Lap Tops page. Note all of the reviews with stars. Which lap top would you be more likely to buy, a three star or a five star? You get the idea. Now, imagine how this would increase sales on your own website.

The ultimate goal for any online retailer will always be to drive qualified traffic to their site. With the rise of social media tools and social shopping sites, such as on-site customer reviews and ThisNext.com, this is becoming easier. Shoppers from such sites are already largely presold on what you’re selling before they arrive to your site. Once you have them, it’s a serious matter of the effectiveness of your online store. Is your store optimized to convert these valuable visitors into buyers?

In today’s increasingly social online shopping environment, your overall marketing strategy must address the socialization of the Internet shopping experience. Ecommerce retailers that do this effectively will continue to see great success well into the future. Conversely, those that are not making solid plans to step into the world of social media with a clear strategy will ultimately end up struggling to stay in business – or fail completely.

In order to be successful in social media and social ecommerce technologies, you must have a clear and preplanned strategy for your implementation. The core strategies your online business must apply include internal social media tools such as on site product reviews, as well as off site, customer-generated content such as customer comments on social shopping sites and blogs. Keep in mind that the greater the participation of your customers the greater will be the return on your efforts.

All of these things are not as easy as they sound. Chatting with your neighbor across the back fence was easy – your neighbor knows you. Effectively participating in social media to grow your business requires a significant amount of effort and skill, just like any other endeavor that leads to success. However, the sooner you begin taking steps in the right direction, the sooner you will build a brand that is promoted by your most important stakeholders; your customers.

What is your social media plan and what are you doing to make it happen?

Read Full Post »

SEO (search engine optimization) vs. PPC (pay-per-click)

Surprisingly a lot of people involved in ecommerce have heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising, but they aren’t really sure how they work or which is the best for promoting their website.

SEO refers to the natural search engine results which are free, opposed to PPC ads (sponsored results) which are charged on a per click basis. In other words, every time someone clicks on your PPC ad it costs you money, whereas natural search results cost nothing other than hiring an SEO professional to develop.

What are the benefits of SEO, other than being free?

It’s a proven fact that SEO provides a higher return on investment than PPC ads. Also, many studies confirm that 70% of all search engine traffic is generated by natural search and only 30% by pay-per-click (see InternetRetailer for more details). Although natural search engine rankings are free, you still have to hire a proven SEO professional to significantly improve your website’s visibility in the search engines. However, once this is achieved, traffic volumes to your website are far greater and much less expensive than PPC marketing alone.

What are the benefits of PPC if it isn’t as good as SEO?

The major benefit of PPC is that it produces immediate traffic to your website. Even with the best SEO strategy, it can take as long as 3 to 12 months to obtain a position on the first page of the natural search results, depending upon the competitiveness of your industry. Whereas PPC produces immediate traffic to your website.

How should SEO and PPC be used?

PPC should be used in the beginning of any online business to generate immediate traffic until they become established in the natural search results. However, it isn’t recommended to stop your PPC marketing campaigns once you’re successful in the natural search engine results since you would be eliminating 30% of your potential customers that still click on the PPC ads.

As for maximizing your overall traffic and growing your business online, you need to apply SEO and PPC together as your primary marketing mix, with the goal of driving more traffic to your website through your SEO efforts than your PPC campaigns. As a general rule the most successful businesses online use a combination of SEO and PPC together. For example, if you do a search on Google for “books” you’ll usually find Amazon.com listed in both the natural search results and the sponsored (PPC) results. You may want to think of this as the 70/30 rule. Again, 70% of search traffic is generated by natural search and 30% by pay-per-click, both of which are too large not to take advantage of.

Read Full Post »