Successful,Online,Gift,Shop,Ma marketing Successful Online Gift Shop Marketing - Part 1

Automation technologies represent a fundamental aspect of any modern industry. The major types of industrial automation solutions, such as DCS, PLC, SCADA, and MES, are used on a large-scale in process and discrete industries.DCS technologie Awhile ago, I got an email from one of the "gurus" I follow and it shocked me. The gist of it was this person wanted to trade services for a household item.To say it floored me would be an understatement.What was worse was a few days later t

With all the great wholesale companies available, virtually anyone canthrough up a WWW shingle and start a gift shop. Additionally, there arethousands of wonderful gift shops online specializing in everything fromapple art to zebra prints. How do you compete with your online giftshop?Success Promotions has spent five years building successful internetbusinesses and we'd like to share some valuable information with you.Not every online business can afford a full time internet marketingemployee or an outsourced internet marketing service.If you go to any search engine and search for gifts you will getthousands and thousands of returns. For example, a search run onAltaVista.com today for the search string "gifts" returned 12,332,556results. After narrowing the search by adding "women's" to the searchstring AltaVista returned 12,499,266 results. Incidentally, this searchreturned so many jewelry sites in the first results that if you sellwomen's gifts and they aren't jewelry you need to choose your keywordsvery carefully. Needless to say, the sites not in the first 20 to 30results aren't getting a tremendous amount of traffic fromAltaVista.com.Here are some tips for internet marketers and gift sellers alike to helpbuild a more successful online business.1. Specialize and CategorizeIf you are selling two gifts or 3000 gifts you need to manage them incategories. Think about it. Would you be able to find anything atWalmart if they mixed the shoes with the electronics with the craftswith the hardware? You'd walk around aimlessly for hours searching fora pair of size six sandles with salmon colored strings. Don't make yoursite visitors and potential customers search aimlessly around your site.It helps to have a search option, but for this to work you must keywordeach product under every imaginable search word. Shoes alone wouldn'twork for sandles. You'd need to also have it pop up under footwear,summer wear, women's attire, etc.Furthermore, once you begin to break your gift site down into smaller,more manageable categories, you can market EACH page to the searchengines under different keywords. Its great if every single item yousell can be managed under a keyword or category from your main doorwaypage. But why not create a sub-category doorway page for each productcategory and each product line? Then you can submit all doorway/frontpages to the search engines and instead of appearing as search return#1,456,825 you can be in the top ten for shoes, and footwear, and socks,and sandles, and gifts, etc.Lynn Korff, of Korff's Ceramic Originals, http://www.korfforiginals.comknows this works. Her products vary from ceramic piggy banks to dinnerware to candle holders. She breaks them down not only by product butalso by glaze patterns. Shoppers can readily find anything and thenfind matching products making her site more shopper friendly and moremarketable. If you don't believe me, go to any search engine and searchfor "ceramic piggy banks". Lynn is always right up there at the top.Additionally, besides being more search engine friendly and successful,your site can also be more shopper friendly. How many times have youfollowed links for search engine returns that required you to go throughfar too many multiple pages to find the search engine return you wereactually looking for? How many times did you stop searching theparticular site before you got to the object of your search?Don't fret if this sounds like a major site re-design. The improvementin marketability and shopability is worth every second of work.There is no limit to the amount of products you can sell. But make themeasy to find and you will sell a lot more of each one.2. AdvertiseNo surprise to find this one, huh? If you don't advertise, you don'tsell anything. People don't knock on your front door to see if youmight possibly have free puppies unless there is a sign. Don't expectweb site visitors to knock on your front URL to see if you maybe havethe exact gift item they are looking for just because you sell gifts.You can advertise on other gift sites that market to similar nicheswithout selling the same products. You can advertise in online andoffline publications. You can advertise on any imaginable site thatcaters to the same people you are catering to. Going back to the freepuppies analogy, suppose that you sell embroidered puppy collars.Wouldn't a site run by the Humane Society also cater to people withpuppies? Wouldn't they be happy to swap links if you could help drive afew puppy shopping families to their web site?Where all you could advertise depends entireally on what you sell andwho you are attempting to sell it to. But be creative. Go to anysearch engine and do a search on some of your own keywords. See ifthere are special interest groups, clubs, or other organizations whocomprise of members who are your potential customers. If you sellsportswear, start hitting little leaguers, co-ed leaguers, etc. As fastas the internet is growing, and as many new users as appear online everyday, you should never, ever stop looking for new places to reachpotential customers. While you are advertising, remember to keep yourmessage simple and specialized. Don't just create a big banner thatsays "gifts" in eight flashing colors. Tell potential visitors whattype of gifts you offer. We all have to have traffic to sell, but thewrong traffic doesn't create sales.Rose Clark of the Cabot Mall, http://www.cabotmall.com helps all hermall merchants do this. She offers free ezine advertising to each ofher merchants, generating more traffic and brand name awareness for eachof them. Additionally, Rose's mall does a superb job of categorizing.3. Market to your visitorsThink of all your advertising and marketing efforts on a Return OnInvestment basis. It costs far more to get a customer than it does tokeep one.You should be obtaining contact information from every one who visitsyour web site. Email addresses. Phone numbers. Snail mail addresses.Keep marketing to these people. Tell them about new products, sales,specials, etc. Remind them why they surfed into your site in the firstplace and invite them back. Contests are great ways to do this. If youcan give away one $5.00 widget a month and obtain 500 new contacts forevery widget given away, that is a high return on investment. Some ofthe people who register to win your widget will buy one if they don'twin. And they will come back monthly to re-register. Especially if yousend a reminder to them to do so.Cyndi Steinmetz of CDK Enterprises is very efficient in thisdepartment. When you shop at her site, register for her contest, orsimply visit and supply your email address you enter her mailing listfor life. Monthly reminders from CDK tell me about new children'sgifts. And with four children in my home, scarecely a month goes bythat I'm not looking for something for them! Cyndi is always on my mindbecause she reminds me to think about her regularly by sending meemails. Her reminders of products keep me thinking of new ways to shopwith her all the time.This is especially useful if you sell collectibles that are released andretired on a regular basis. If you collect Beanie Babies, you want toknow when each one is retiring and make sure that you have it. If youcollect Longaberger Baskets, you want to be reminded when the Mother'sDay Basket is sold each year to be sure that you add it to yourcollection.4. Mail, mail, and mail some moreEmail specifically. Email is the cheapest form of advertising known tomankind - except for word of mouth. If you aren't sending emails tocustomers, leads, contacts, etc., on a regular basis you are missing outon a very powerful form of advertising. Its fast. Its easy. And itsfree. Case in point. When Success Promotions has a small lull and isin search of customers, I can obtain far more with far less effort bycontact past customers. They know what I do. They know it works. Andthey may have been planning to start marketing with me again, but justhaven't gotten around to ordering. Susie Glennan, of The Busy Woman'sDaily Planner, http:/www.thebusywoman.com, knows this works. Shemonthly sends reminders to people who haven't ordered in the past 12months. Her products are consumed, if you will, on an annual basis.She generates more sales by reminding customers to come back andre-order.Think about the life cycle of your products and do the same. Perhapsyou have a birthday product. You know one year later, the gift giverwill be shopping again. Send them an email inviting them to come backand shop with you.5. Plan ahead for seasonal salesOf course Christmas applies here. But what about Valentines Day,Easter, Channucka, Flag Day, Voting Day, and hundreds of others? If youhave gifts that apply to all occaisions generically or to specificholidays you have to plan in advance to get your marketing message infront of consumers at the appropriate time.It might be hard to think about Santa Clause, cold weather, reindeer,and jingle bells in July; but that is when you need to start planning.Especially if you will be running special discount campaigns. Don'twait til the last minute this year. Right now, get out your calendarand make note of every holiday that will effect your business. Backtrack anywhere from two weeks to six months in your calendar and make anotation to begin planning and implementing campaigns for theseholidays.6. CampaignPolitics or not, we all must group and categorize our advertising insome manner. If you develop entire campaigns for products andoccaisions, then you are ready to roll each time with ad copy,brochures, sales messages, etc. Don't short change yourself here. Thisis where it is at for every business. And gift shops aren't anydifferent. If you plan to roll out six new necklaces this year, oneevery two months, then you really should find some sort of campaignmethod to link and organize yourself. Market them in a uniform andpre-planned manner. And by all means, have a campaign for every newproduct. Don't just clandestinely add it to your site and hope thatsomeone notices. Add it with a bang, and a campaign. Article Tags: Successful Online, Gift Shop, Search Engine, Think About