Internet Marketing 2

Quick reminder of the previous post, Internet Marketing 1.

 

• Having a mobile friendly website is fundamentally important.
• The way someone visiting your site behaves when they are on a mobile is completely different to how they behave on a desktop.
• Attention span is reduced on a mobile.
• Email marketing is less effective due to bombardment of spam but still worthwhile.

Solutions

Mobile optimisation

• Include a click to call button
• Generate and capture leads with speedy follow ups

As mentioned previously email campaign effectiveness is reducing due to lower open and click rates which means that other methods should be utilised to engage with your visitors as well as emails.

If you’re running an ecommerce site as I presume the majority are,  you cannot now depend on emails as your only source of contact. Capturing an address and mobile telephone number allows you extra avenues for connecting, for example, you could send a postcard or a flyer offering a discount or other type of promotion or even a direct mail monthly newsletter. If you do manage to get a mobile number, texts work out as a very effective method of getting your message noticed, who doesn’t check their text messages and read them even if they see that it’s an advert?

Open rates for text messages to mobiles are very high at the moment but this may change in time as we become accustomed to them like we have with emails.

Ecommerce – the immediate sale

Here again I have to emphasise that having a mobile friendly/optimised website is crucial to getting sales along with a really simple checkout process.

It’s fairly safe to say that a fortune is contained in your checkout page and having too many steps in your checkout could prevent you from obtaining it.

Multi step order processes guarantee high cart abandonment – the more hoops you get your buyers to jump through, the more likely they are to leave without completing.

Try testing your own shopping cart to see how easy it is to buy something and remove any unnecessary fields that may be adding to it. The ease of which it is to pay for things using PayPal and how fast they have grown because of it sort of proves the theory.

Try different wording and colours for your ‘Buy’ button and also test it on different mobile devices to see how they differ.

Quite Probably The Most Important Ecommerce Business Strategy

What is it?

Good old offline marketing!

Printed newsletters, discount coupons and even just a quick letter to say ‘hello, how are you?’

Direct mail fell out of favour a bit with the increase in popularity of emails but, as fast as they rose, their decline is becoming even more apparent. Give it a try, you might be surprised 🙂

Remarketing

Again, what is it?

Have you ever clicked on a website and then visited another site and seen an advert for the previous site you were on? This is remarketing advertising. When you visited the previous site a small cookie was placed on your computer which allows the advertiser to track you and display his advert to you on another site. This gives the impression that the advertiser is spending lots of money and advertising in many different places when in fact it is only being shown to you.

The cycle of remarketing is:

• you visit a site
• you are tracked
• you leave the site
• you see the ad on various other sites
• you go back to the first site because you are reminded that there was something you liked
• you buy! (Or don’t buy 🙂

All clever stuff! 🙂

Is online marketing a good option?

With many websites, it is probably the only way to get substantial traffic to your site.

It’s a sad fact that only 1% of ecommerce sites are doing a reasonable amount of business. SEO (search engine optimisation) is a slow process and no guarantee of first page results; after all there are usually only ten first page positions in the Google search results  and even then if you’re listed past position five, your traffic is significantly reduced – page two or more? Forget it!

Investing cheaply in online marketing will destroy a business but, saying that, it would be advisable to learn as much about Google and Facebook ads as you can, learn the tricks and you maximise your investment by showing your ads to the most relevant audiences. Linkdin is another alternative but mostly if you’re involved in B2B (business to business) but, as a rule, Google and Facebook are your best options.

Odissa

I just have to get a plug in for Odissa here! 🙂

Marketplace websites are increasingly useful areas to get your products out there and seen for a modest cost. Sites like Etsy and Amazon are growing all the time; who doesn’t think of Amazon these days when shopping for items?

Odissa is the Guild’s niche jewellery designer/maker marketplace – take a quick peek to see if you like it and if you think it would be worthwhile for you 🙂

Risk free months trials now available!

Your Web Designer

He/she isn’t usually an online marketer and may be able to create the most beautiful looking site for you – but what use is that site if nobody visits it? If they visit it and there are no lead generation magnets on your site to attract your visitor and encourage them to give you their contact details, how are you going to build up a relationship with them in the future when they are more inclined to buy?

Visitors to your site aren’t necessarily looking to buy, they are looking for information. Offer a tutorial ‘how to…’ (eg. How to take care of Pearl Jewellery) in exchange for their email address and contact details, grow your lists and let the selling begin! 🙂