Guest post: The 4 first steps when marketing your new business online
by James Agate
The following is a guest post by Joseph Eitan founder of Photo Paper Direct. Joseph started the business a few years ago which now sales a selection of Inkjet media from large format rolls to cartridges.
Congratulations! You’ve opened your business, got your website up and running and now you can’t wait to start selling. Unfortunately, the sheer size of the web and the competitive nature of those selling within this medium means you’ll have to invest both your money and your time. Here are 4 steps which will get your online marketing up and running and hopefully for a small budget.
1. Promote your products and services on Google Merchant - To start selling your products on Google Merchant all you need is some time to prepare a data feed and a Google user account. Also known as Google Base, this free service from Google allows businesses to list products or services on its first page results. In most cases these will appear just below the paid results and will include an image, title, price and direct link to the product or service. It’s free and takes couple of minutes to set up so you might as well try.
2. Start AdWords for free – Google’s AdWords is by far the biggest paid ads medium. If you search hard enough you may come across a free voucher which will charge your account and let you use Adwords at no cost until the funds run out. Your bank might offer such voucher when you open an account or when you attend a Google university course (which is free and managed by Google). The way AdWords works is very simple. You bid on keywords which best describe your products and each click will be chargeable based on keywords competition and your website. If you are new to AdWords, help is at hand using AdWords online help tutorial or you can sign up to attend the Google AdWords University (you’ll need to email AdWords for dates and locations).
3. Sell on 3rd party sites – Sites such as eBay, Amazon, Pixmania, Etsy and Play.com will allow you to list your products for a small charge and compete over customers who use their site. Because they already have high levels of quality traffic and you don’t (yet) you are able to put your offers in front of the right target market quickly. Start with one 3rd party site based on your target market and products to test the waters first and see if it works for you.
4. Use social marketing – If you decide your business will benefit from social media traffic, it will require investment in terms of times, rather than money. The trick to dominating the social media is to become an authority figure in your industry by using the likes of Twitter to share relevant information, answering question on forums and Q&A sites such as Yahoo Answers and overall have a web presents across the various social sites, for example facebook business page. Also consider placing a social sharing button across web pages on your site which will prompt visitors to share your pages with others. The two leading social buttons are Sharethis and Addthis.
What are your online marketing tips for new businesses?
