Ecommerce PR/Promotion?

[Paul_M]

Hi Everyone!

I was after a little assistance if anyone has time?

Basically I have been running a small online e-commerce business for a few years now, I have had a little publicity over the past few months and had some of my custom products stocked in a large department store (in one city not nationally.)

I'm currently about to go more mainstream with my stock and do a full re-brand of the site and such.

My main question is what routes can I chase down or use to promote my store more, is it worth using a PR company for small businesses? Or would it be better sending sample packs to magazines/newspapers etc...?

What is the best way to market and promote my store?

I'm drawing blanks now and any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks in advance

Paul

 

[webprojectuk]

The most important part of any E-commerce business is to invest time and money in good Search engine optimisation via link building, blogging and social media. This will ensure you have a constant flow of new traffic to your site at minimal costs. Along side you need to run Pay Per Click ads targeting the keywords for which you site is not doing so well in the searches. However, you should not approach the Pay Per click without getting a good reporting system to track conversion rates.
Yes, PR is very important for your business and every business owner needs to take advantage of this for brand building and awareness. Please remember PR is not about advertising your prices, products or services. It needs to focus on a new worthy story such as 'One business owner, turns £1 into a million'. It's the headline which attracts the reader to keep reading, and provides the newspapers and magazines with good stories and in return free promotion for you.

If you can sell your products on Ebay and Amazon then do so however only use these sale channels to attract more buyers to your site.

 

[Prestige-SEO]

I have to agree with webproject UK, SEO is the best option for a e-commerce store, I know small businesses that turn over 10k + a week just from SEO, PPC is also a option but costs quite a bit and can dig into your profits.

 

[Paul_M]

Thanks for your replies webprojectuk and Prestige-SEO.

SEO isn't really an issue, I'm a web dev by trade and the site's SEO and SERPS are very good and 90% of traffic is organic.

PPC I have tried but had limited success, but its a route I'm willing to give another try

I suppose I'm looking to build more of an offline "buzz" or presence really, I have found the little publicity I had offline converted much better than online methods so was particularly keen to try that path mainly. But I'm struggling to think of methods to really "exploit" this angle.

Cheers

 

[mirudula]

I highly recommend reading up on ecommerce promotion strategies to get a real grip on how to advertise to online consumers. There are five basic steps you can put into motion if you want to build your business on the internet.The newest type of advertising, attraction marketing, is a way to build a following on your social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter) by becoming an expert in your own product niche. Your followers, who have bought into your plan, spread the word, as well as sales, when they point to you as the leader in this field. Using the social networking sites is a powerful way to build an in house buyers list, not to speak of the followers of your signature style of selling.

 

[Paul_M]

Cheers mirudula.

The online and social side is fine, the store has thousands of twitter and facebook followers I regularly interact with.

It's more the offline site I wanted to work on

 

[eukhost]

The best way to increase your online is to get banner advertisement where people mostly visits such as social networking sites (facebook advertising) and relevant forums in your niche. May I ask what help exactly do you need for your offline site ? We will be glad to help you out.

 

[F1ink]

Get press articles, newspaper, magazines, specialist magazines?

Reporters are generally lazy, write the article yourself (or get someone to do it) and submit to the news sites.