Successful Online Gift Shop MarketingUser Rating: / 0

PoorBest Starting up a ShopWritten aOlernKienOP air jordan 1 retro black blue Adidas Adipower or Adidas Powerlift 2 by Shannan Hearne Monday, 30 June 2003 09:51

by Shannan HearneWith all the great wholesale companies available, virtually anyone can throw up a WWW shingle and start a gift shop. Additionally, there are thousands of wonderful gift shops online specializing in everything from apple art to zebra prints. How do you compete with your online gift shop?

Success Promotions has spent five years building successful internet businesses Air Jordan 11s and we’d like to share some valuable information with you. After narrowing the search by adding “women’s” to the search string AltaVista returned 12,499,266 results. Incidentally, this search returned so many jewelry sites in the first results that if you sell women’s gifts and they aren’t jewelry you need to choose your keywords very carefully. Specialize and CategorizeIf you are selling two gifts or 3000 gifts you need to manage them in categories. Think about it. Would you be able to find anything at Walmart if they mixed the shoes with the electronics with the crafts with the hardware? You’d walk around aimlessly for hours searching for a pair of size six sandals with salmon colored strings. Don’t make your site visitors and potential customers search aimlessly around your site. It helps to have a search option, but for this to work you must keyword each product under every imaginable search word. Shoes alone wouldn’t work for sandals. Its great if every single item you sell can be managed under a keyword or category from your main doorway page. Her products vary from ceramic piggy banks to dinner ware to candle holders. She breaks them down not only by product but also by glaze patterns. Shoppers can readily find anything and then find matching products making her site more shopper friendly and more marketable. If you don’t believe me, go to any search engine and search for “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 air jordan 2010 white black red more shopper friendly. How many times have you followed links for search engine returns that required you to go through far too many multiple pages to find the search engine return you were actually looking for? How many times did you stop searching the particular site before you got to the object of your search? Don’t fret if this sounds like a major site re design. But make them easy 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’t sell anything. People don’t knock on your front door to see if you might possibly have free puppies unless there is air jordan 5 retro white emerald grape a sign. Don’t expect web site visitors to knock on your front URL to see if you maybe have the exact gift item they are looking for just because you sell gifts. You can advertise on other gift sites that market to similar niches without selling the same products. You can advertise in online and offline publications. You can advertise on any imaginable site that caters to the same people you are catering to. Going back to the free puppies analogy, suppose that you sell embroidered puppy collars. Wouldn’t a site run by the Humane Society also cater to people with puppies? Wouldn’t they be happy to swap links if you could help drive a few puppy shopping families to their web site?Where all you could advertise depends entirely on what you sell and who you are attempting to sell it to. But be creative. Go to any search engine aOlernKienOP air jordan fusion 5 white red black Looking At The Root Cause Of Toe Nail F and do a search on some of your Air Jordan CDP own keywords. See if there are special interest groups, clubs, or other organizations who comprise of members who are your potential customers. If you sell sportswear, start hitting little leaguers, co ed leaguers, etc. As fast as the internet is growing, and as many new users as appear online every day, you should never, ever stop looking for new places to reach potential customers. While you are advertising, remember to keep your message simple and specialized. Don’t just create a big air jordan 5 v retro ls lifestyle black university blue white banner that says “gifts” in eight flashing colors. Air Jordan 13s Tell potential visitors what type of gifts you offer. She offers free ezine advertising to each of her merchants, generating more traffic and brand name awareness for each of 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 On Investment basis. Email addresses. aOlernKienOP air jordan 7 vii retro white french blue Matching Mens Shoes with Suits or 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 first place and invite them back. Contests are great ways to do this. If you can give away one $5.00 widget aOlernKienOP air jordan 7 vii original og cardinals Tips for Picking a Jacket for Tall W a month and obtain 500 new contacts for every widget given away, that is a high return on investment. Some of the people who register to win aOlernKienOP air jordan future dark concord dark concord white MA English Literature your widget will buy one if they don’t win. And they will come back monthly to re register. When you shop at her site, register for her contest, or simply visit and supply your email address you enter her mailing list for life. Monthly reminders from CDK tell me about new children’s gifts. And with four children in my home, scarecely a aOlernKienOP air jordan v grape white new emerald grape ice blue Printed Shoes 3D Printi month goes by that I’m not looking for something for them! Cyndi is always on my mind because she reminds me to think about her regularly by sending me emails. Her reminders of products keep me thinking of new ways to shop with her all the time. This is especially useful if you sell collectibles that are released and retired on a regular basis. If you collect Beanie Babies, you want to know when each one is retiring and make sure that you have it. If you collect Longaberger Baskets, you want to be reminded when the Mother’s Day Basket is sold each year to be sure that you add it to your collection. 4. Mail, mail, and mail some moreEmail specifically. Email is the cheapest form of advertising known to mankind except for word of mouth. If you aren’t sending emails to customers, leads, contacts, etc., on a regular basis you are missing out on a very powerful form of advertising. Its fast. Its easy. And its free. Case in point. When Success Promotions has a small lull and is in search of customers, I can obtain far more with far less effort by contact past customers. They know what I do. They know it works. And they may have been planning to start marketing with me again, but just haven’t gotten around to ordering. She monthly sends reminders to people who haven’t ordered in the past 12 months. Her products are consumed, if you will, on an annual basis. Perhaps you have a birthday product. You know one year later, the gift giver will be shopping again. Send them an email inviting them to come back and shop with you.5. Plan ahead for seasonal salesOf course Christmas applies here. Especially if you will be running special discount campaigns. Don’t wait til the last minute this year. Right now, get out your calendar and make note of every holiday that will effect your business. Back track anywhere from two weeks to six months in your calendar and make a notation to begin planning and implementing campaigns for these holidays.6. CampaignPolitics or not, we all must group and categorize our advertising in some manner. If you develop entire campaigns for products and occasions, then you are ready to roll each time with ad copy, brochures, sales messages, etc. Don’t short change yourself here. This is where air jordan xx3 white black red it is at for every business. And gift shops aren’t any different. If you plan to roll out six new necklaces this year, one every two months, then you really should find some sort of campaign method to link and organize yourself. Market them in a uniform and pre planned manner. And by all means, have a campaign for every new product. Don’t just clandestinely add it to your site and hope that someone notices. Add it with a bang, and a campaign. 7. OrganizeTo a great extent, we’ve been covering this all along. But it can’t be emphasized enough. Don’t make me, the shopper, search high and low on your site for a statue that perfectly matches my wizard logo. Combine the wizard, sorcery, magical, knights of the roundtable products together. Think of every way that someone like me or any other shopper might go looking for them. And make them easy to find by organizing. 8. MonopolizeMany merchants worry that this is a taboo form of marketing. air jordan force 5 white orange blue But every day since then they have been selling like hotcakes. And if you offer American patriotism in the form of products on your gift site, then you need to monopolize on the new American patriotism. For years merchants have monopolized on Christmas, Mother’s Day, and every other gift giving occasion. Let’s face it, Hallmark and American Greetings would go belly up if this year we all decided to boycot our moms on Mother’s Day. So how do you do this? Jog your memory by looking at everything we’ve covered. Specialization and categorization. Organization. Preplanning. And if you see them, you need to monopolize on them if you want to run a successful gift sales business. did this year. A rather unstable economy kept people from aOlernKienOP Air Jordan 1s Same Height Party spending quite as freely as they have in years past. Rather than give up all together, merchants increased their specials and discounts. And didn’t we all buy at least one thing this past holiday season not because we or our gift recipient needed it, but rather because it was too inexpensive not to buy? 9. Design Your Site CarefullyThis could be an entire article on its own. Speed of loading and ease of navigation are aOlernKienOP air jordan 14 xiv retro light graphite mid navy BEST CHRISTMAS 2012 SHOPPIN required to get visitors air jordan 7 vii original og hare jordan where you want them to end up the order page. Aesthetically pleasing visuals make shoppers happy and turn them into buyers. Perhaps even offer a free gift as the incentive. See how long it takes them to find what they are looking for and order it. Do they get frustrated? Do they smile or frown? Re think your gift site design accordingly.10. Market Every DayWhat no holidays or Sundays off? That’s right. You should always be prepared to hand out a business card or zap off an email when you see a marketing opportunity. And you can be marketing even when you aren’t marketing. Your signature text in your emails should ALWAYS contain a link to your business site. Every thing you ship should have your URL printed everywhere. When you leave a pen at the bank, it should have your business contact printed on it. If you stop at a yard sale and see that someone obviously likes Teddy Bears, you should tell them how to get to your Teddy Bear Site. When aOlernKienOP air jordan 14 sport blue wolf grey white sport blue portable BlueTooth spea you ship a product, always include at least THREE of your business cards, one for the recipient to keep and two to give away. Affiliate programs are a great way to get people to sell for you. But there are tons of them.11. Utilize Every Contact as a Potential Marketing ContactOne category of products that I sell is gourmet coffee, tea, and snacks. It has absolutely nothing to do with my primary business, . However, it is very successful in its own right. Why? Because I tell everyone about it. For example, every time I get a free cup of coffee somewhere, I leave a couple business cards and web cards. When I meet someone who sells any type of home party product whether it be food/kitchen oriented like TupperWare or air jordan 13 xiii original og white black true red completely different like PartyLite Candles or House of Lloyd, I tell them about my business. It is easy to recruit for and easy to promote. Almost everyone I know drinks coffee or tea. I give away samples. I invite neighbors over for gourmet coffee. Drive the car that you sell. Drink the coffee that you sell. Their positive logoed apparel fits my personality and I enjoy sharing their messages of hope with anyone who takes the time to read my clothing. At least twice a day, when wearing Sirr Max apparel, someone will comment on how much they like my shirt or admire the message on my tote bag. I’m always prepared to give a business card to them. Ordering from this online giftwear site is easy. But potential customers have to get to the site to order. Make sure they are prepared to tell their friends how they can get some too.12. NetworkThe dreaded “N” word. aOlernKienOP air jordan spizike knicks orange Flip the liner over the top edge of the sh This has nothing to do with multi level marketing. So do it wholeheartedly. Join the email lists. Advertise. Donate time, products, services, etc. Make yourself visible enough within the group that your networking is accomplishing something. The contacts will be invaluable. Make an effort to utilize these suggestions in the way most appropriate for your business.