Recently I received an enquiry from one of our members asking me how to advertise her online store. I thought this is an interesting discussion and thus decide to discuss it in our blog today.
First, here’s her question:
————————————————–
Hello Kenneth,
Firstly, I want to tell you that your blog is awesome. Its content is extremely rich. I can spend hours reading your posts and I learned many things with.
I’m Emilie To. I have just acquired this online store www.NiceDigitalGoods.com.
My questions are:
1) To take advantage at most your advertising system, do I write an ad for the whole shop or for a single category or for a particular product?
2) As there are 32 categories and over 380 products in the shop, how to determine in what category, on which product it is necessary to concentrate the efforts of advertising?
————————————————–
Who is your target audience?
As an advertiser or a marketer, the very first question you MUST ask yourself is “Who is your target audience?” or “Who will buy your products?”
(Take a look at her website and see what she is selling www.NiceDigitalGoods.com.)
One extremely common mistake that online store owners make is to think that their target audience is EVERYBODY.
If you are targeting everyone, you are getting no one. Trust me on this!
You mentioned that your online store has 32 categories and 380 products. But seriously, who is likely to buy a dog training ebook from your online store? Someone who wants to train his dog or someone who wants to buy the Master Resale Rights of that ebook?
From my assessment, I feel that your target audience are internet marketers looking to buy MRR (Master Resale Rights) and PLR (Private Label Rights) products for their niche websites.
If so, the answer to your first question would be:
You do not write an ad for the whole shop, single category or a particular product. Instead, you need to write an ad to target internet marketers looking for MRR and PLR products.
What is the Unique Selling Preposition of your website?
Before you start to advertise your online store, you must establish a Unique Selling Preposition (USP) for your website.
Basically, you need to ask yourself, “What’s so special about your website? Why would someone bother to pay attention to it?”
Without a refreshing and attention-grabbing USP, your online store is just another online store started by a newbie who simply install a script and load some products into it. And if I’m a visitor to such an online store, guess what I will say: “DON’T WASTE MY TIME!!”
When deciding on a USP, you need to know what is REALLY a USP. For example, a website selling MRR and PLR products is not a USP. But a website selling such products at $0.99 each may be a USP.
Just to give you some idea, a good USP will make people say: “wow, that’s a great!”.
With that, let me answer your second question:
Forget about the 32 categories and over 380 products in your online stores. You should concentrate your advertising effort is delivering the USP of your online store. You need to tell me people “hey, I’m different. Take a look at me!”
How to get people to opt-in?
I probably repeat this a hundred times, but I still need to say this again… build a list!
This is especially true if you are running an online store.
Look, you may be selling hundred and one things in your online store that people have no need at the moment. But one day, they may need one of your products.
What’s the best way to make them remember you when they need your product or service?
2 answers: Either you keep on spending money to advertise in front of them or get them into your list so that you can remind them of your existence, for free.
Which way do you prefer? The second way of course!
How to get them to opt-in is another challenge. But first, you must make list building your top priority and make sure every visitor is presented with the opt-in offer.
Thanks again for an excellent post Ken. The points that you make are the rudiments of running a successful online store, and we all need to be reminded of their importance.
I just like to include that running an online store requires solid seo behind and a good technical team is required for this.
Some of the points you made here are very nice.
Hi Ken
This post has come at the right time for me.
I’m just in the process of setting up an estore.
My problem was deciding on whether to have a general eproduct store or just a one niche theme.
The store will be used to get optins by offering free products.
My thoughts have crystallized.
Thanks for the excellent question submitted to you and even more thanks for your take on the situation.
Jim
Hi Kenneth,
Simply too huge, your answers! That makes 5, 6 times that I reread this posts which I will still reread. I am going to try to set up your relevant advice by knowing that it will not be simple. It is really generous from your part to take your time to study my online store and to draft these so useful tips.
Thank you very much.
Emilie.
Hi Kenneth, thanks for these tips. As a relatively newbie in online marketing, I can now see some things I’ve been missing out.
Kenneth, thank you for the guidance on marketing an online store. I have 2 of them that I’ve never put much time into, since my other sites are reasonably productive for me. Soon I’ll be concentrating on the stores, and your advice is a good starting point for me. Thanks again.
Don
Hi Kenneth,
Thanks for that. I am thinking of setting up an online store and so your blog post is quite timely for me!
Regards, Malc
I use this………
http://www.unlimitedtrafficsite.com
Great post as usual Kenneth
I agree with you when you say “If you are targeting everyone, you are getting no one”
And I like this USP concept
Thanks
Mike
Nice post, Kenneth. In fact, this online stores are very problematic for me precisely because of the great amount of categories and products to sell. It’s like the overload information; you don’t now what to do or where to start off from. So, your post is very illustrative. Thank you.
Jesus M.
How about a Real online store with real products?
Thanks
Sylvia
Same idea applies. You still ask the same 3 questions.
good and additional revenue from this program which exist in this Internet
Kenneth,
Do you know what really attracts your followers? Your direct answer approach. You tackled the question well and provided excellent views. Also you didn’t suggest to buy this or buy that which most gurus would.
Most of us newbies who just ventured into internet marketing only see our views but seldom put our shoes in the eyes of the customers. You’ve put up a good point…..See it in the customer’s perspective not in our perspective. Thanks again for the USP concept….a very refreshing idea.
I purchased niche blueprint to try to set up my own goods site through dropshipping. but i was so overwhelmed that I asked for a refund and abandoned that opportunity. It’s true that as noobs we tend to think that our target market is everyone and thats what causes us to fail.
I’m so glad you brought that up. Working with drop shippers and updating physical products and running your marketing campaigns is more than a full time job. It takes a lot of dedication and NEVER giving up! Oh yeah learning from your many mistakes even with a mentor!!
Good point about list building, but for me initially i would concentrate on just looking for one or two products that don’t have the same level of competition in the search engines,run some search queries and check out the competition.
(PPC)do your research and target long key words, you are much more likely to get sales through this method, also target the Adsense Content Network and combine your Adsense account with your Analytics to drill down your target demographic.
Only over time will you build up USP, it takes time for people to know you and you can only do this if you get active on the forums and social networks.
USP is important but not urgent if you want to make money quickly.
Hi Bill,
I think your definition of USP is Branding. My definition of USP is simply something that make you stand out from the rest. It may change from ad to ad. As far as advertising is concerned, USP is important from day one, especially in every ad you post. When visitors come to your website or see your ad, if you can’t make them immediately see that you are different from the rest, you are likely to lose the traffic.
I kind of agree with you, the title could be more personalised. If its for seo reasons then why not use “Clean Slugs” which takes out the stop words but leaves the visual title intact.
You can install from WordPress plugin admin, just input “clean slugs” into the search box.
Hello My Friend.
Greate Site.
I’m a Newbie.
http://www.webstarts.com/moneyline
To Your Success
Kennedy
It’s partly for SEO, but adding a ‘your’ does not much harm. I’ve added it in. Thanks.
Very good advice to follow, just started marketing my webstore and this gave me very good ideas on what to concentrate on.
Regards,
Francois
Hi Kenneth
Good and useful post.I think that those techniques
it’s a very powerful for any affiliate marketer
Hi,
I have found a great list over 50 ways to advertise your website at:
http://www.omnistaretools.com/best-ways-to-advertise-your-website.htm
I started using these are have been able to increase my sales.
Mark
http://www.dcdesign.com
Thanks for your great idea on what to concentrate in Ads. I ‘ve just started my Online business website and blog and your info is very useful for me.
nice plog put this on your plog http://www.NeedEarn.com/aft/f8624f28.html free to join
I agree with your tips about How to get people to opt-in because we may be selling hundred and one things in our online store that people have no need at the moment But one day, they may need one of our products.
The best way to make them remember us when they need ourr product or service is to get them into our list so that we can remind them of our existence. We can use this service from Aweber, Getresponse or Icontact etc.
Hi Ken,
Enjoyed your answer to Emilie’s question. I looked at her webpage. I may be blind but her graphics are too small and what she had written in the blocks where the graphics are didn’t make sense to me. Maybe I’m not only blind, maybe I’m dumb also.
I think her best bet would be to sell her business.
In fact, this online stores are very problematic for me precisely because of the great amount of categories and products to sell.
Thanks for your great idea on what to concentrate in Ads. I ‘ve just started my Online business website and blog and your info is very useful for me.
Hi!
My store is http://www.nichewebsitestore.com ! What are the changes of advertise and get costumers to this mrr MINISITE store!?
Best Regards!
GR
Advertising online nowadays became very easily, there are many options starting adwords and ends with social networks.
Definitely, I actually would suggest to try social networks, facebook advertisement program offers very precious audience targeting tools.
i would go for facebook too, with them you can target very specific audience, they got many filters like age, gender, interested, education and many more.
Beside paid advertising, the good idea would be to work on SEO to get higher ranking @ google, it should bring you targeted traffic for free.
There are thousands of without charge promotion places for online stores. I promote my production 200 times three times a week for free of charge. There are so lots of free yahoo groups that you be able to join and they are now for promotion.
I am a newbie, i have company website http://www.hnxxtraffic.com ,i also want to find some way to attract customers.can you tell me ? thank yo.
Keeping track and giving special attention to you existing customer base will provide you a chance to use their interest as advertisement too.
Have in mind that building an online presence in search engines, creating profitable PPC campaigns or running successful social media campaigns takes time so you need to be patient before making any concussions. If you have a functional e-commerce website and good products then with patience you can achieve good results.
So useful. While building my store I used quite a few of these tips and they worked quite well. Nice article!
Amazing Blog. I really appreciate your work & efforts. Thanks for sharing this kind of informative blog that people know about the best ways to make your first online sale. Keep up to the good work
For me I get my first sale online from my email list. I have built lists using social media and forums.