Smallfish marketing guide

So your shop is now live! Now what? We've put together this handy guide to help you on your way to a successful and profitable online business.

The most successful online shops are those that combine both online and offline marketing to draw people to their site. Bricks and mortar stores can rely on a bit of foot traffic, but the internet doesn’t offer that luxury. Over time you may generate traffic from search engines such as Google but to get started you will be relying on more direct methods, such as past customers, word of mouth, social networking and traditional advertising.

Trust is a critical component of a successful e-commerce shop. You can have a great product at a great price, but if the customer doesn’t trust you with their hard-earned cash then they will shop elsewhere.

Smallfish has done most of the work for you, providing a robust and professional shopping experience for your customers. The important part for you is the content. Do you have information pages that describe your business, origins, guarantees and return policies? Will the customer feel confident they could track you down if you didn’t deliver? These are the types of checks a customer will do before purchasing from an online shop for the first time.

Your banner is another clear message of quality. Is it clear and attractive or fuzzy and squashed? We recommend asking some honest friends for feedback to see if there are ways your banner can be improved. Do you need help? Enquire about our banner design service.

Register your shop with major search engines and directories. This will help bring new customers to your shop, especially as your shop's online reputation grows. Here are a few key ones to get you started -

1. Google - http://www.google.com/addurl
2. Yahoo - http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
3. Bing - http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WHWL
4. Open Directory Project - http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

Embrace Facebook. Our analysis of our most successful shops highlights one common theme, almost all of them have embraced the power of social networking to build a community of interest around their products. At this time Facebook is the most important social network to embrace, so we will cover that in some detail here. Once you have that up and running you may wish to investigate others. Twitter is another very popular social network.

Some people make a personal choice not to engage with social networks such as Facebook. That is fine for individuals, but for people wanting to run a business online it is a must have. Social networking can be intimidating at first, but if you are passionate about your products then it will quickly add value and enjoyment to your online venture. It provides an engaged audience to whom you can actively promote and discuss your products, specials, tips and tricks.

To get started, sign up for your Facebook page at the URL below.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php.

Once you have created your page, contact all of your friends and regular customers and ask them to ‘like’ your new page. You may be surprised how many are happy to oblige. Now you can start posting news, products and updates to your Facebook page and encouraging discussions with your friends and fans.

Also remember to add your Facebook page to your Smallfish shop via the Connections page in the Manage Shop area. Visitors to your website will see your link and be encouraged to view and join your community. Seeing other customers actively engaged with your business will build their trust considerably.

Here are a few great examples of Smallfish shop owners who have created a community on Facebook –
http://www.facebook.com/myvintageloveshop
http://www.facebook.com/GracieLouLimited
http://www.facebook.com/LeEsscience
http://www.facebook.com/DoYouLoveNailPolish

At Smallfish we have our own Facebook Page. Take a look, both for inspiration and to stay current on new and upcoming features at Smallfish, at http://www.facebook.com/smallfishnz

Monitor your visitor numbers and sources. Tracking how your visitors arrive at your site can help you focus your marketing energy. Not to mention it is a lot of fun! Smallfish supports the integration of Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free service that produces very detailed reports about visitors to your site including how they found your site and what geographical region they came from. See the Google Analytics section on the Connections page in the Manage Shop area of your shop. Be sure to check out the other features available on the Connections page, such as Facebook and AddThis integration.

Remember to include your web address on all stationary, letters, etc.

Search engines rank popular websites higher than others. So the more websites that link to your shop the higher your site will appear in the search results. One way to do that is to offer to put a link on your shop to another site if they will do the same for you.

Do you know anybody who writes a 'blog'? If so, ask them to include a message about your site. This is a great way to get people to your site and helps your site rank higher in search engines (e.g. Google).

Include keywords in the text on your pages, particularly near the top of your page. For example, if you sell art then make sure you use the word 'art' a few times in the text of your page. This will help your site rank highly when people search for art sites.

Paid web advertising is available. Google Adwords is particularly popular. You can expect to pay a small fee for each person it brings to your shop so we recommend you trial it for a short period to see whether you get a return on your investment. You can tightly control the amount that you spend on advertising by specifying a maximum budget per day ($5.00 for example) and stop/pause it at any time. See http://www.google.co.nz/adwords for more information. Facebook also offers a similar advertising scheme. They are particularly useful for building fans of your Facebook page.

Contact your local community newspapers about your site. Perhaps they will print an article about your new venture.

Create ads in online and printed business directories and classified. Appearances in online directories may help boost your search engine ranking.

Whenever you make a sale through alternative channels (auctions, markets, etc), ensure that you inform the buyers about your site. Ideally include a business card.

Email all your friends and tell them about your site. Ask them to share with their friends too. This is also a great way to get feedback.

Try to have a point of difference. It is important to think about why a customer would come to your shop instead of the local shopping mall or another site. Do you have unique products, great prices, something that can't be found in stores? If your products are unique then marketing is especially important as customers won't know to look for them!

Website products and specials. Consider offering your products online at a slightly lower price than through other sources. This helps build customer loyalty. A good example is any items you sell by auction. By letting the customer know they can get the items at a lower price directly from your site then they may come straight to you next time, instead of back to the auction site where they could be side-tracked by other offers.

Consider free shipping. If it appropriate for your products then consider free shipping, even if it means raising your product prices to compensate. A lot of shopping carts are abandoned when the customer sees the shipping price added during the checkout process. Free shipping is a powerful message to include on your promotional material too.

It can take a while for internet business to build up. For example, the search engines and directories may take days, weeks or even months to add your site to their directories. Don't lose heart if there are no sales immediately. Keep at your marketing and you'll start seeing great results.