Best way to sell new product online

[bharris]

Hello all,
I am after a bit of advise on how to go about selling my home made beauty soaps, creams and balms online. I have been selling at markets and to friends and family for a while now. I have my own website that i can take orders from (this is new and i have only had a couple of orders). The problem i seem to have is i am finding hard to get Google ads to appear, even if i temporary increase my bid to an extremely high level they don't appear very often. Google just displays the same 3-4 ads no matter how many pages i go though. Bing seems to work fine but i cant get my head around why Google isn't displaying the ads. Quite a few times no ads are displayed at all. Very odd.

My next question and maybe more important is there any other sites i can sell my products though (this is a small scale business)? I have thought about ebay and Amazon but i wonder if it is worth doing as no one would search for my personal brand. Is it possible to have your products coming up if someone is searching for natural soap etc. and how likely is it you will get a sale without being a known brand? The obvious way to find out is to try it, but is there a special way to sell your own unknown brand on ebay, Amazon and anything else?

Sorry to waffle on.

 

[Carl Barlow]

Have you tried Facebook advertising. A product like yours I would expect to work really well if you do it in the right way.

Also may be worth checking out Ryan Deiss at Digitalmarketer.com he has some REALLY useful tips for facebook ads, and his freshkey tool is good to see what people are searching for in Amazon, ebay and google.

Can you post a link to your website?

 

[silvermusic]

Give Etsy a try, I have a business acquaintance who sells their own soaps on there and does quite well, certainly far better than I would have thought.

 

[Alan]

I don't think Google ads is a place you should be especially as you are inexperienced in it and probably don't have the budget to work out what works ( typically you'd probably need to invest at least £1,000 or advertising and at least £400 for expert advice to really understand what ads would be cost effective, for a hobby business I can understand that is a big amount to 'risk')

Facebook would be a far better environment for you to be in.

 

[bharris]

Thanks Silvermusic i will try Etsy. Thanks Llocally and Carl I didnt think google ads would cost so much, how can anyone with cheap products ever make money using them? Isnt Facebook very expensive to advertise on? I thought it was even more costly than Google ads when you do ads, don't you also have to pay to have your posts displayed on all of your followers news-feed? how much does this cost?

 

[fisicx]

I have thought about ebay and Amazon but i wonder if it is worth doing as no one would search for my personal brand.

Your brand is not important. What people search for is homemade soaps or organic soaps or perfume free soaps and so on. Look at how other people sell these products and do the same (but with your images and words). If they don't sell you haven't lot anything but you will have learnt what doesn't work (always a valuable lesson).

 

[Carl Barlow]

You can pay on a cost per conversion basis which would work better. It really depends what you're trying to achieve in all honesty. I can't see it being worth while if you're trying to sell a bar of soap for say £2. Look into ways of viably getting your product in front of people, I have no clue what your margins are or sales prices.

In my experience FB ads are much cheaper than Adwords at this point in time. I've been paying somewhere in the region of 45p per conversion which isn't bad when I'm targeting small business owners.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Maybe Seo is the answer to a few of your questions, isAdwords looking for better content, keywords etc.

Dont pay a fortune on here to a so called expert but do it yourself and see how it goes, the most important thing about a site is its ability for the potential customers to want to buy from it, which means great images, good description and clearly pointing out its unique selling points

Its no good having a thousand visits a day if they dont like your goods or see no difference to whats on display at another more well known site

Look Back on this forum for Seo and learn and apply, then consider Adwords but start very low price per hit and per days spend and experiment, sometimes your ad will appear mostly not, make sure your landing page is correct going to the product not the home page

 

[Shirlyn]

Hi,
Search engine ads are worth to get quick traffic for your website you just need to develop a good adwords strategy with quality ads to get good adrank according to adwords protocols. Set a quality affiliate payout syatem this will definitely help your website to grow fast.

 

[beasty]

There are many small chains of pharmacists that could buy this in decent quantities

Online marketing for such low value stuff will be tough, one of the Irish Dragons runs a smallish pharmacy with 15 locations, convince her buyers and you have a nice deal.. i would chase those personally rather than just do the usual

The usual being

seo works
try googleads
website could be better
thought about fb
how bout twitter

etc
There are more ways to do things..

 

[antropy]

Your brand is not important.

Really?

 

[GoPromotionalUK]

If you’re looking for a way to get your own products or other companies’ products selling online without having to build your own website, there are websites that allow you to do so for a commission. These websites open the online market for just about anybody. Practical, easy, and almost a requirement for today’s world.

 

[Jeff Nev]

If your business is quite small I would recommend social media definitely, its a lot cheaper and you can do it yourself.

What would your media spend budget be? As SEO would probably be more effective but you would be looking at at least 6 months before you start to see results. If this is ok with you then speak to some SEO agencies and see what they can do for you.

Alternatively, etsy and notonthehighstreet.com thrive on small time businesses such as yourself, Amazon may be too costly, so explore those options and see what you prefer and what works best for you.

Jeff

 

[HazelC]

I think Facebook would be a great place to start, you have a website so start blogging. 1 or 2 blog posts will really help your website rank higher on search engines.

As much as you can deliver your stuff all over the world (in theory), sell yourself as the 'local company' as this makes marketing cheaper, easier to get higher on search engines and it's a nice touch too - perfect example of this is the Cambridge Satchell Company!

 

[japancool]

Thanks Silvermusic i will try Etsy. Thanks Llocally and Carl I didnt think google ads would cost so much, how can anyone with cheap products ever make money using them? Isnt Facebook very expensive to advertise on? I thought it was even more costly than Google ads when you do ads, don't you also have to pay to have your posts displayed on all of your followers news-feed? how much does this cost?

Facebook advertising is best suited for niche products that can be highly targeted. The fact that you can define a target audience based on their interests is FB's biggest advantage over Google, and it helps reduce the number of wasted views. Optimise the adverts for clicks also increases your conversion rate, as the ads will target people who are more likely to click on ads. You can spend as little as $1 a day on FB and still get good results.

 

[japancool]

Your brand is not important. What people search for is homemade soaps or organic soaps or perfume free soaps and so on. Look at how other people sell these products and do the same (but with your images and words). If they don't sell you haven't lot anything but you will have learnt what doesn't work (always a valuable lesson).

That's only true as far as first time customers and people arriving at your site via organic search. Once the business develops and more sales are done via word-of-mouth, the brand is important. Depends on the market, but we get a lot of business from forums and communities, and name recognition is important. The majority of our clicks come from people searching for our name specifically.

 

[Andriusgr]

Focus on social networks launch your own website, doesn't have to be professional, but still a website though, ask your costumers for email addresses so you can always keep them up-to-date with your products. Write some HOW-TO's articles on ehow and over site a put a back link to your website.I can give you more advices by Personal message if you want I am specializing in digital marketing and I am also seo specialist for London companies

 

[Viktor Miller]

I would recommend you these ways, it depends much on your budgets, so choose the most suitable for yours:
- create facebook ads for your products: target customers in your country.
- create a big promotion or reward points program that can make your brand well- known, then start to nurture customers by follow up email, calls.
Hope it can help.

 

[Jason L]

There are a number of reasons why your PPC ads may not be showing – bid options, ad relevance, quality score etc – but it may just be that it’s a competitive space where you would have to spend significantly more to get your ads into a good position. It can be very hard for some businesses to generate a return on AdWords because there is just not enough margin in their products. Good that you are trying Bing Ads though – just get your conversion tracking and analytics in place and see how engaged those users are, how well they convert etc.

Some of the suggestions for alternative places to sell are good – I would just make sure that you keep investing in your own website as ultimately that is where you would want people to buy from. And people who buy from Amazon Marketplace etc may even google your brand to make sure you are an established store before placing their order there anyway.

Something else to consider – with every order shipped put some kind of flyer in to promote your own store – so if you are selling through Marketplace or any other platform you are still advertising your own site too.