I have recently launched my online store… selling a wide range of SIM Free Smartphones and Accessories. I have appointments made with Social Media Gurus to assist me with the development of a social media strategy. I have a small PPC campaign which I run once a month, a small Facebook Ads campaign and I m also updating the website with new products etc on a daily basis.
However, there is surely a lot more to the online world than this. My SEO, does need some attention - however I find this to be a very dull area altogether as there are over 600 products on the online store. I am also looking at making the website responsive - however this won’t be an easy task.
The question I am finding myself asking is should I be doing more??
[FONT=verdana]Are you actually running this store yourself, or are you only responsible for the website? In other words, is it your responsibility to actually process the customers’ orders and get the goods out of the door?
If so, I would suggest that it will be much more important to get those aspects of the business right, rather than worrying about social media and SEO - at least, to begin with. Your business will stand or fall on the quality of your customer service, so it’s essential that you can process the orders quickly and accurately, package the good safely, negotiate the best prices with your carriers, and have efficient systems in place to handle customer complaints.
Get that right first, then start thinking about SEO and the like.
I am the owner/founder, director, delivery guy, customer service and so on. I have had excellent feedback and we have had a rather good couple of months in terms of sales etc. Think on estimate we’ve turned over just over £1k in 2 months since we’ve been live - which isn’t too bad. Customer complaints - now that is an area that we could look at just in case, I’m always on the ball with the customers mind as I know they are the asset that can make or break the business.
As I say we’re very new, around 2 months old and I’d like to ensure that the company is a success and not a failure… hence the question…
Content is the most important aspect of any internet marketing campaign regardless of the niche. You need to create a lot of unique content if you want people to enjoy their experience on your site.
Also, you should beware of any internet marketer who refers to himself as a “guru”. In my experience, most people who talk like this have their head up their a$$ and are often scam artists (whether they know it or not). Any seasoned internet marketer will know that there is always someone out there who knows more than him/her about something. If anyone tells you otherwise, they are either unwilling to learn (thus a bad internet marketer) or they are trying to scam you.
Sounds like you’re going about it the right way. You got a good foundation to build on.
I wasn’t suggesting that you ignore SEO and social media entirely - but, rather, that you should not make them your highest priority. Having a high-traffic site with lots of interesting content - that’s good. But it’s not your ultimate goal.
Think about the customers you already have. When you supply a phone to a customer, do you enclose a small leaflet advertising your accessories? Or, better, do you include a voucher for so-much off their next purchase? Do you give them the opportunity of opting in to your mailing list? Do you ask them for their feedback on the quality of your service (with their permission to use their comments in your advertising)? Those are prime marketing techniques that should get priority in any business.
Regarding customer complaints. Of course, I hope you won’t get any. But, if you do, just remember that even a complaint is a marketing opportunity. Be sure to deal with it quickly and fairly. More importantly, be sure to learn from it, and use what you learn to improve your business.
Sorry - you probably already know all this. And I haven’t answered your original question. I’m just trying to make the point that SEO and social media is only one small part of a much larger marketing scene.
This is fantastic advice. Internet marketing stretches far beyond Search Engines and Social Media. You should make sure that all of your customers are happy and ensure that the reason they don’t buy something isn’t because they don’t know you carry it.
As your business expands, you should Hire people to help with a few tasks like order processing, adding new products to the website regularly,
make sure that the inventory is complete and so on…
SEO and social media are very important.
I have had a show store which initially targetted low keywords and I was just acting like a affiliate to amazon and other stores…
But later on when I started to get huge traffic to my site ( I was targetting lot of low competition keywords with good search volume), I opened a shoe store myself and
earned very good money.
Use coupon Codes, vouchers, give freebies to regular customers, ask people to opt-in to your email list so that you can send them latest deals.
One strategy I use consistently is :
Create a nice image on facebook with my logo and then in the image I mention about a contest or something where
people need to download that image on their desktop and then tag my page and 5 of their friends to that page.
I will choose a random user and give his friends discount coupons and so on…
It helps me to get viral and get new fans to my fanpage…