Marketing your online store involves more than just registering your Web site with a couple of search engines and waiting for the world to beat a path to your door.
As the number of shoppers on the Internet has grown, so too has the number of Web sites and land-based businesses clamoring for a piece of the multi-trillion-dollar e-commerce pie. As many Internet companies have discovered, even with a multi-million dollar marketing campaign, it’s difficult to get the attention of Internet users – even for just a split second. After all, Internet users are bombarded with so many advertisements every day and see so many Web sites, it’s hard for any one firm to stand out.
One of the most difficult jobs you’ll have as an e-commerce merchant is figuring out what blend of offline and online marketing techniques to use to promote your Web site. If you’re a small business, that challenge is even greater on a tight budget. The right marketing mix depends on many factors, including the types of products you are selling, the types of people you are trying to target, and, of course, your marketing budget.
In this guide, we’ll review a variety of different techniques for raising the profile of your online store and attracting shoppers to your Web site. Marketing your Web site is not an easy task, nor is it a short one – you’ll need to work hard and work continuously to make sure that your online store doesn’t get lost among the billions of pages of information on the Web.
(1) Know Your Audience!
The key to successful marketing is very simple: know your audience. Before you spend any time or money on marketing, you need to know who your target market is. What types of customers are most likely to buy the types of products you are selling? For example, males or females? What age bracket? What income bracket? Are you trying to reach people with certain interests or skills? Once you know the profile of your typical customer, you need to find ways of reaching customers with that demographic profile. This may involve online advertising, offline advertising, or a combination of the two. But don’t even begin to think about spending money on marketing until you’ve spent time thinking about who you are trying to reach. You may even need to do some market research to uncover this information. We can’t emphasize this step enough. Your marketing efforts won’t be successful unless you are spending your marketing dollars in the right places.
(2) Your Brand Name
One of the most important marketing assets that you have is the name of your online store. Give it careful consideration. You should pick a name that’s easy to remember yet distinct from other similar names on the Internet. Closely related to the issue of picking a name is choosing a suitable domain name. The domain name is the part of your Web site address that appears after “www.” For example, the domain name for the Office Depot is officedepot.com and the domain name for Eddie Bauer is eddiebauer.com. Office Depot’s Web site is at www.officedepot.com and Eddie Bauer’s Web site can be found at www.eddiebauer.com.
To avoid confusing your customers, you will want to have a domain name that is as close as possible to your organization’s name. This will also make it easier for customers to find your Web site. For example, customers looking for Eddie Bauer’s Web site would probably start by typing www.eddiebauer.com into their Web browsers. In addition to being close to your business name, your chosen domain name should be short, easy for your customers to remember, and intuitive.
Finally, keep in mind that you don’t have to have “www” in your Web address. Some organizations have chosen to drop it entirely, e.g. CBS promotes itself simply as CBS.com.
In addition, you can, with the help of the technical folks who support your site, sometimes use words or characters in front of your actual domain name, and get an extra “identity hook” that might be unique enough to draw attention to your site. One such example of this is the Web site Beer.com, which gained some attention during the 2000 Olympics. It ran an ad that used the address mmm.beer.com – indeed, during the commercial, the graphic showed the “www” flipping over to become “mmm,” as the announcer mimicked the “mmmm” or “tastes good” sound. There was a huge increase in traffic to the site.
It’s important that both your brand name and your Web site address be as distinctive as possible to avoid confusion with other similar companies selling on the Internet. There are tens of thousands of merchants on the Internet all vying for attention, making it difficult for online merchants with similar names to get noticed. Even if the domain name you want is available, you should find out if similar names currently used by online stores might compete with yours. Many online merchants have found it necessary to change their names because their names were being confused with other similar names on the Internet.
When trying to come up with a name for your online store, consider getting a group of friends or colleagues together to brainstorm with you. Alternatively, you could hire a market research firm to hold focus groups with consumers.
Issues to Consider When Choosing a Name for Your Online Store
● Can you get a Web site address (i.e., domain name) for that name?
● Is the name too long?
● Is the name easy to pronounce?
● Are there other Web sites or online stores with similar-sounding or similar-looking brand names or domain names?
● Is your name unique or distinctive enough?
● Is your name memorable and does it make an impression?
● Is the name consistent with the image you want to project?
If you really want to have a domain name that someone else has already registered, you could approach the owner and see if he/she is interested in selling the domain name to you. Many companies register domain names but never activate them. Even a company that is using a
domain name may consider selling it to you for the right price.
Finally, if you believe that someone else has registered a domain name that infringes on a trademark that you own, you can pursue legal action against the owner of the domain name in question.
Alternatively, an appeals process exists for domain names, and it might be possible for you to launch an appeal to see if the other party can be forced to give up the name. To learn about this option, visit a domain name registrar, and read about the international domain name appeals process. You can also visit the ICANN Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy site at www.icann.org/udrp/udrp.htm for more information.
Which raises an important point – it might be a good defensive maneuver for you to register as many domain names as possible early on, related to your store name, your product names, or other words and phrases that, when used as a domain name, might help drive traffic to your store.
How to Get a Domain Name
To get a domain name, you can go to any one of the accredited domain name registers on the Internet, including Register.com (www.register.com). You can get a complete list of accredited domain name registrars on the InterNIC Web site at www.internic.com. The list can be viewed alphabetically or by geographical location.
You don’t need to have a Web site in order to register a domain name and most registrars will hold your domain name for you until you are ready to activate it on your online store. Many browserbased storefront solutions allow you to set up a domain name for your online store when you are setting up your account. This removes the need for you to go directly to a domain name registrar.
Once you have registered a domain name, you want to make sure that no one is registering similar names, or taking out a trademark similar to your name. To automatically track your name, consider using a service like NameProtect (www.nameprotect.com). One of NameProtect’s services will constantly monitor new US trademark applications and domain name registrations for you and flag any applications/registrations that are identical or very similar to your domain name. It’s a great way to keep informed of any potential threats to your brand name. This service will also help you identify companies that may be trying to register your domain name as a trademark. This is a potentially serious situation as you could lose your domain name if a trademark similar to your brand name is granted to someone else.
(3) Offline Marketing
Perhaps the most important piece of advice we can give you in this guide is this: Don’t restrict your advertising and promotional efforts to the Web. Online stores often rely too heavily on online advertising at the expense of more traditional advertising vehicles that may actually produce better results.
Throughout this guide, we’ll review a number of different ways for you to promote your online store on the Web. But it’s important not to get too dependent on online marketing for your success. Think about the types of customers you are trying to attract and what the best methods would be to reach those customers. Rather than spending your money advertising on the Web, you may find that a more effective strategy would be to place advertisements in a couple of well-targeted magazines.
For example, Noggintops (www.noggintops.com), an online hat retailer, has spent very little on Internet advertising. Instead, the company did some marketing research and identified a number of magazines that appealed to the company’s target market: outdoorsmen. Ads featuring the company’s Web site address were then placed in those magazines. In fact, the bulk of Noggintop’s marketing budget has been spent on offline ads. Our point is that you shouldn’t ignore traditional advertising
vehicles. Think about how you can use both print (e.g. newspapers, magazines, journals) and broadcast media (radio and television stations) to reach your target audience. Be realistic with your expectations. In years past, many Internet companies invested millions in television ads with often disappointing results. Many companies quickly learned that brands can’t be built overnight. It can take years to build a successful and recognized brand name.
That being said, if you develop any print or broadcast advertising, make sure that your Web address is featured prominently in your ads. You may want to even consider purchasing advertising for the sole purpose of promoting your Web site.
It is important to use your imagination when looking for ways to raise awareness of your Web site.
Don’t limit yourself to radio, television, and print media. Why not advertise your Web address in buses or subways, or on the transfers handed out by your local transit authority? How about on newspaper polybags (the plastic bags that newspapers are wrapped in when they are delivered to your front door)? Or in movie theatres? Some organizations have even gone so far as to include their Internet addresses on bananas! The possibilities are endless.
In many respects, marketing a Web site is no different than marketing any product or service. The challenge is to find innovative ways to get the word out.
(4) Your Retail Store
If your business has a brick-and-mortar retail presence, use it to promote your online store aggressively.
Include your Web site on your receipts, invoices, and shopping bags, and print it on your catalogs and sales literature. Make sure that your Web address is advertised prominently both within your store
and outside if you can. Many retailers, unfortunately, don’t leverage their retail presence in this way.
(5) Gift Certificates
Brick-and-mortar stores give out gift certificates, so why not online stores too? Consider offering an online gift certificate that your customers can give to a family member or a friend. Gift certificates purchased online make great last-minute gifts because they can be sent by e-mail to arrive almost instantly. The recipient can then visit the store’s Web site and apply the gift certificate toward the purchase of any products offered by the store.
How does it work? Online stores that offer this service let you pay with your credit card and the gift certificate is delivered to the recipient by e-mail as soon as the payment is authorized. The gift certificate is essentially an e-mail message with a number attached to it. The recipient can redeem the certificate on their next purchase at that online store. When the recipient proceeds to check out of the store, they will be asked to provide their certificate number. The value of the gift certificate will then be deducted from the total amount of the purchase. Electronic gift certificates not only make great gifts – they’re a great way to drive new customers into your online store!
(6) Cross-Selling
You should get in the habit of cross-selling products in your online store to increase sales. This means that where possible, product pages on your online store should feature accessories or complementary products that your customers may be interested in. For example, consider what Smith & Hawken has done in their online store (www.smithandhawken.com). Whenever a customer views a product, complementary products are displayed on the right-hand side of the page. For example, a customer may select a bench. Smith & Hawken realizes that customers who are interested in purchasing a bench may also be interested in purchasing a matching chair or table.
That’s why there is a section called “Also Look At:” where complementary products are displayed, including an armchair and table. As you might expect, if you look at the Web page advertising for the armchair, the bench is recommended as a complementary product.
The idea here is to try and upsell customers. Eddie Bauer employs a similar strategy on its Web site (www.eddiebauer.com). Customers looking at a specific piece of clothing can ask to see coordinating products by clicking on a link. As you can see, cross-selling is an excellent strategy to increase overall sales in your online store.
Many people find out about Web sites through word of mouth. So make it easy for your customers to tell other shoppers about your online store.
For example, as customers are browsing through your Web site, they may come across products that their friends, co-workers, or family members may be interested in. Or they may want to tell a friend or family member about a product they would like to receive as a gift. That is why you should make it easy for customers to refer friends and relatives directly to specific product pages on your site. For an excellent example of how this can be done, visit RadioShack’s online store (www.radioshack.com). At the bottom of every product page on the site is a graphic that says, “e-mail this page to a friend.” Customers who click on that icon will be taken to another Web page where they are asked to provide the name and e-mail address of a friend. The recipient will receive an e-mail message that invites them to visit RadioShack’s online store. A referral mechanism like this is an effective way to bring more people into your Web site.
(8) Affiliate Programs
Many online merchants have built successful affiliate programs for their online stores.
An affiliate program involves paying owners of other Web sites a commission for referring customers to your online store. In other words, you reward other Web sites for sending new customers to you.
The idea is to find Web sites with visitors who are likely to be interested in your products. To this end, Web site owners usually try to find merchants who sell products or services related to their own Web sites. A Web site with movie reviews may try to affiliate with a merchant who sells movies, and a Web site devoted to golf may align itself with a Web site that sells sporting goods or athletic apparel. It’s in a Web site owner’s best interests to identify merchants with compatible products because it will increase the likelihood of making lots of sales. For example, suppose you sell travel guidebooks. You could sign up travel agencies to your affiliate program and invite them to create links from their Web sites to yours. You would then pay the travel agencies a commission on any book sales and/or leads you get from their customers.
Online retailers with affiliate programs compensate customers in different ways. Some merchants pay affiliates strictly for sales (pay-for-sale), while other merchants compensate affiliates simply for sending a potential customer their way (pay-per-lead). Other programs may compensate affiliates if a person clicks on an advertisement, regardless of whether that person turns into a lead or ends up purchasing a product. This is called a pay-per-click program.
Affiliate programs can be extremely powerful because they allow you to increase your revenues by having your brand name displayed on dozens if not hundreds of complementary Web sites. There are literally thousands of affiliate programs on the Web. For an example, visit the online store for Staples (www.staples.com) and read about their affiliate program. Web sites that sign up can earn a percentage of every sale for referring customers to Staples.com.
There is no cost for affiliates of Staples to sign up, but they must first agree to the program’s terms and conditions and then complete an online application form that requests information about their Web site. If a Web site is approved into the program, Staples will provide the owner with a selection of Staples.com graphics that can be placed on the Web site and linked to Staples.com. Every time omeone clicks on the link and proceeds to buy something from Staples.com, the Web site owner will be paid a commission. Staples.com says its affiliate program has been a success, with over thirty thousand Web sites signing up since the program was first created.
My Affiliate Program www.myaffiliateprogram.com
Commission Junction www.cj.com
LinkShare www.linkshare.com
The commission that you offer your affiliates is up to you. Some firms, like Staples, offer a percentage of sales; other firms offer flat fees. Commission structures can range from less than 1 percent to as high as 50 percent. Flat-fee commissions, on the other hand, can range anywhere from $0.05 to $50.00, or more.
Affiliate programs are popular because they’re an inexpensive way of attracting customers to your Web site. In essence, you are getting other Web sites to market your online store for you. Moreover, it doesn’t cost a lot to get such a program underway. Best of all, you may only have to pay affiliates if they generate sales or leads for you.
Affiliate programs do have a number of drawbacks, however. It can be a burden to keep track of all of your affiliates and process all of the commission checks. Keep in mind that the number of affiliates you have really has no direct bearing on how successful your program will be. For example, even though Staples.com has over thirty thousand affiliates, what really counts is the number of affiliates that are sending significant amounts of business to Staples.com. A lot of online stores have found
that many of the Web sites that sign up for their affiliate programs bring in very little business. That is why when you are setting up an affiliate program, your focus should not be on signing up as many Web sites as possible, but finding those Web sites that can generate the most sales for you.
Obviously, it’s hard to screen Web sites in advance but eventually you will discover which affiliates are valuable and which are immaterial to your business.
As you might imagine, setting up an affiliate program can take a lot of time and effort, especially once you begin to sign up hundreds of affiliates. You need to screen applicants, track sales from each affiliate, prepare commission checks, and spend time on other administrative functions that take you away from running your online store. For this reason, many online retailers hire organizations called affiliate program providers that specialize in running affiliate programs on behalf of online stores.
We’ve listed some of the more popular affiliate program providers in the table below.
Affiliate Program Providers
The cost of using an affiliate program provider varies depending on the affiliate provider. For example, some companies charge a one-time fee plus they receive a monthly commission based on a percentage of affiliate sales. Others may charge a one-time setup fee, an annual renewal fee, plus a percentage of your payout – the amount of money you pay your affiliates. Still others have no set up fee, or commission charge but have a flat monthly fee. Which affiliate program provider is best? It all depends on what you are looking for. Services and program features vary from one affiliate program provider to the next, so make sure you carefully consider all your options before making a final decision.
One of the major benefits of using an affiliate program provider is that these organizations will help you find Web sites that can begin linking to your online store immediately. If you’re a small business with very little brand name recognition, how is anybody going to find your Web site to learn about your affiliate program? Affiliate program providers maintain a directory of participating online stores so that interested Web sites can quickly find merchants they want to work with.
If you’re interested in setting up an affiliate program for your online store, start by getting in contact with the various affiliate program providers we listed earlier in the guide. When comparing affiliate program providers, think about the following questions:
● How much does the affiliate program provider charge you to set up an affiliate program?
As explained earlier in the guide, affiliate program providers have different pricing schemes, so make sure you understand how you will be charged. Also find out if there is a minimum escrow amount that you must give the affiliate program provider (this money is used to pay commissions to your affiliates).
● What types of affiliate programs are offered? As noted earlier, there are three basic types of affiliate programs that you should be familiar with:
1) pay-per-click programs—you pay a Web site for referring a visitor to your online store regardless of whether a sale results or not
2) pay-per-lead programs — you pay a Web site for referring a visitor to your Web site to fill out a form or perform another action that may lead to an online or offline sale
3) pay-per-sale — you pay a Web site for referring a visitor to your Web site who immediately buys a product or service
● What type of performance tracking is provided? How sophisticated is the performance tracking?
What information do the performance reports contain? How frequently are the reports updated?
Are the reports delivered by e-mail in addition to being available on the Web?
● How user-friendly is their affiliate management software? What account management features does their software offer? How easy is it for you to update or replace the ads being served by your affiliates?
● What tools exist for communicating with your affiliates, both through the affiliate program provider’s Web site and by e-mail? Can you target certain affiliates with special offers?
● Who issues the commission payments to your affiliates? Do you have to, or will the affiliate program provider do that for you?
● How does the affiliate program provider guard against fraud? For example, what happens if the same person clicks on a link to your Web site 50 times – do you have to pay for that?
● Is there any flexibility with regard to payout rates? Can you customize payout rates for different affiliates or do you have to give the same commission structure to everyone?
● Does the affiliate program provider offer any client services to assist you with the implementation of your affiliate program, or are you expected to do it on your own? What technical support is available for both affiliates and merchants? Are any consulting services offered?
● How easy is it for Web site owners to join an affiliate program and create links from their Web sites to yours? To get the answer to this question, we recommend you visit some of the leading affiliate program providers’ sites and try signing up with some of their merchants. By doing this, you’ll get a first-hand look at how the process works from an affiliate’s point of view.
● What types of link options are available for your affiliates?
● Does the affiliate program provide support for e-mail-based affiliate programs? For example, how easy is it for an affiliate to include links to your Web site in their e-mail messages to customers?
● How many affiliates are part of the company’s network? What is the company doing to recruit new affiliates into their network?
If you decide to work with an affiliate program provider, don’t rely solely on its Web site to promote your program. You should also promote it on your own Web site and get other Web sites excited about the possibility of joining your affiliate program. For a good example of how this can be done, visit the Web site of Shari’s Berries (www.berries.com) and read the section on its affiliate program.
One final note about affiliate programs: many merchants, in addition to running their own affiliate programs, have become affiliates of other Web sites in order to generate some extra cash. If you are thinking about becoming an affiliate of another Web site, we recommend that you proceed carefully.
Having an advertisement for another company on your Web site can compromise your image and credibility. Sometimes, the mere presence of an advertisement on your site can make you look unprofessional to potential and existing clients, especially if it promotes products or services unrelated to your current line of business. Accepting advertising for another company is an implied endorsement for that organization and its product or services. Make sure that you are prepared to make that type of public statement. Keep all of these factors in mind when considering whether to accept advertisements for other merchants on your Web site.
This advice may seem contradictory since the whole purpose of an affiliate program is to get other
Web sites to display advertisements for your company. Won’t they look unprofessional by displaying advertisements for you? Maybe. When you create an affiliate program, you have to keep in mind that you’re inviting other companies to display your brand name on their Web sites and it’s never a good idea to let another company take control of your brand name. Sometimes it’s hard to control how your affiliates display your advertisements, and in what context. When launching an affiliate program, make sure you carefully screen your affiliates. In addition, you may want to build some rules into your affiliate program so that you have some recourse in the event that an advertisement for your company is being presented in a way that you find objectionable.
(9) Permission Marketing
You may have heard the term “permission marketing” before. It refers to a method of online marketing where the merchant asks permission from online shoppers to market to them directly by e-mail.
Permission marketing is also known as “opt-in e-mail.”
Permission marketing follows two main principles. First, you only market to those customers who have specifically told you that they are interested in receiving e-mail messages from you. Second, you must give away something in order to get a customer’s e-mail address. In other words, shoppers are more likely to give you their e-mail address if you give them an incentive or reward for doing so.
This incentive could be a discount on a future purchase, entry in a sweepstakes or contest, or just the promise of relevant advice by e-mail.
The easiest way to undertake permission marketing is by establishing a mailing list that customers can join. You can then use the mailing list to send out promotional messages to your customers.
The trick is to give your customers an incentive to join your mailing list.
For an example of how a permission-based e-mail marketing program can be implemented, consider what Payless ShoeSource (www.payless.com) did on their online store. They ran a contest on their home page for a “dream trip to Tahiti.” Customers were invited to enter their e-mail address into a box on the screen. Once a customer entered his/her e-mail address, a new page appeared inviting the customer to join Payless ShoeSource's mailing list. The contest was the “hook” to get customers
to spend a few minutes filling out the form that is required to join the mailing list. Once customers joined the Payless mailing list, they were automatically entered into the vacation contest.
Keep in mind that if you are going to set up a mailing list for your customers, you should clearly tell your potential customers how they can leave the list, and about any other conditions that might apply to the list.
Don’t restrict yourself to your Web site when collecting e-mail addresses from customers. If you have a retail store, have your salespeople at the checkout counter ask customers for their e-mail addresses. Similarly, if you have a call center, collect e-mail addresses from customers when they call in. But regardless of how you collect the information, make sure you let customers know how you intend to use it. For example, if you have a retail store, have your salespeople say something like this to your customers: “We frequently send out notices of sales and other promotions by e-mail.
If you have an e-mail address, Mr. Smith, I’d be happy to add it to our database so that you’ll receive advance notice of our special events”. By asking customers for their e-mail addresses in this fashion, you’re clearly stating why you’re asking for the information and giving the customer an incentive to provide his or her e-mail address to you.
AltaVista . . . . . . . . . . www.altavista.com
AOL.COM Search . . . . . search.aol.com
Ask Jeeves . . . . . . . . . www.askjeeves.com
Google . . . . . . . . . . . . www.google.com
Overture . . . . . . . . . . www.overture.com
Excite . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.excite.com
FAST . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.alltheweb.com
HotBot . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.hotbot.com
Lycos . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.lycos.com
MSN Search . . . . . . . . . search.msn.com
LookSmart . . . . . . . . . . .www.looksmart.com
Open Directory Project . . .www.dmoz.org
Yahoo! . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.yahoo.com
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