If you had a £5k budget

[zippy123]

Hi there. A brief overview . My ebay store is reasonably sucessful on ebay , turnover is minimum £10k month for last 7 months.

I have a website built, in house. I want to promote this strongly. Its been up for 3 months and probably get 3-10 sales a month only.

What would peope here advise the best form to promote this woth s £5k budget.

 

[NewGardenStyle]

What products / niche are you in?

 

[zippy123]

Its general home decor items. Dont have biche product. Items are readily available on competitors site.

The main avantage i have is buying power however even that doesnt make me want to compete with some guys when they offering free postsge etc and must be working on such narrow margins

 

[DanielGillen]

I used to run a home decor e-commerce store for the USA market. I've found that for e-commerce advertising (and this applies in the UK too) you get the most 'bang for your buck' from Google Shopping ads. Those are the pictures you see of products with prices next to them when you search for a product on Google.

I hope that helps, good luck!

 

[NewGardenStyle]

If you don't want to compete with guys selling the same items, readily available and on low margins you'll find it difficult to compete at all. Sounds like you'll have to use your buying power and compete and price. As mentioned above, you can try google ads but it's a very competitive market and you might struggle to get a return on the money you spend. Certainly worth checking out though. Your eBay sales sound healthy..are you competing solely on price on there?

 

[Robin_Denis]

i would suggest adwords but it is up to your keywords. If they are too generic then forget about adwords as it will be very expensive. Facebook ads might be helpful as you can select your target market and it is way cheaper than adwords

 

[directmarketingadvice]

The main avantage i have is buying power however even that doesnt make me want to compete with some guys when they offering free postsge etc and must be working on such narrow margins

Then do you have an advantage at all?

For example, why should someone buy from you? Could they buy the same - or comparable - things from B&Q, Homebase, or some other big name retailer?

Steve

 

[zippy123]

yes you are correct. and common sense would say that also.

But I am happy with my current margins I am making on ebay and wish to take it further and hopefully have a successful website without ebay fees.

 

[Ace Light]

Hello Zippy123.

From the little information provided, I have to agree with DirectMarketingAdvice. No niche, not wanting to compete on price, and you sell what your competitors do; so how exactly are you differentiating yourself? Your catering to everybody then you won't be memorable to anybody. Somethings got to give.

If you are not willing to change any of the aforementioned things; I would seek out general home decor forums, and give free advice to people when they ask for opinions on things you feel able to give good advice on, unless you just sell the things.

I am unable to check out your website, so I dont' know if you have a Pinterest and Instagram accounts to promote yourself through social media. Facebook is a given.

As for your budget, I would say Facebook Ads, just like Robin_Denis suggested. You can target the ads based on purchase behaviour, and I see they have categories like Home and Garden, and Household products.

Cheers, Ace.

 

[boring-friday]

I'd sign up for mailchimp and start saving the paypal emails. You could try adwords but with a lot of products to test you'd have to burn most of that £5k before even thinking about being able to profit from it. Tough starting a site with no real niche, you're in direct competition with amazon etc

 

[LowPrices.uk]

I would spend it on YouTube videos. Get a good presenter, and make the video engaging. Not easy to do, but it will be worth the investment if you get it right. The key is getting a hook or particular spin on something that will engage people and generate interest. How To videos are quite good.

 

[zippy123]

Boring friday - savig the paypal emails will that have to be done manually or is there an easier way?

I will research mailchimp

 

[makeusvisible]

The key difference between eBay and your website is that on eBay, shoppers are in the main simply comparing your prices to other sellers on eBay.... via your website they are generally comparing your prices across multiple websites.... so it will be tougher to convert.

Keep in mind that you may be able to mark down your prices slightly on yours website.

In terms of whee to spend your £5k....as the others have said, it really depends on several things. You say you currently get 3 sales per month.....how many visitors do you get? If you get 1,000 visits and only make 3 sales it would indicate a conversion rate of 0.3%.... if you generate only 100 visits and have 3 sales you conversion rate is 3%.

You should aim to have a conversion rate of at least 1%.... so for every 100 or so paid visits you should make one sale. If you have a very low conversion rate currently, then throwing £5k at online advertising isn't going to be worthwhile. You first need to get a decent conversion rate..... or you have no chance.

If you don't have enough traffic to establish what your conversion rate is....then Google Adwords would be a great solution. A good Adwords Management Company should be able to setup a campaign for you, and help you to analyse the traffic, and determine if it is converting at an acceptable rate. If it boils down to price, you might need to rethink.

Hope that helps.

 

[ronnie7272]

Hi there. A brief overview . My ebay store is reasonably sucessful on ebay , turnover is minimum £10k month for last 7 months.

I have a website built, in house. I want to promote this strongly. Its been up for 3 months and probably get 3-10 sales a month only.

What would peope here advise the best form to promote this woth s £5k budget.

Spend a small portion of your £5k budget printing flyers (to promote your website) to go into the packaging you send out with your Ebay orders. Offer a discount code for the first website order. Perhaps include more than one flyer with a discount code and encourage your Ebay clients to give these flyers to their friends or family. Basically work out ways to leverage your Ebay client base to provide repeat sales, referrals and reviews. In this way you not competing on price, you are growing your website sales via word of mouth referrals.

 

[david64]

Much of the above advice is good in my opinion.

Without seeing the site it is not possible to give much specifics, but I would certainly lean to testing with Google AdWords and Google Shopping advertising. That way you can get a better idea of how your site converts, i.e. 1 in 100 visitors = 1%, as mentioned above.

Once you have some details from Google AdWords, you can then know how much you could make from organic (unpaid) listing in Google; and how much you could make.

Though I think your first call after that would be trying to improve the conversion rate of the site, before SEO; and also trying to build repeat customers via good service and communication - that is, if repeat customers are common in your market.

I buy all my food, bar what I grow, via the internet; and over the years I've tried at least fifteen different companies. The ones, and there are many, that are simply unorganised, with haphazard communications, confirmations and unreliable delivery, are not somewhere I tend to buy from again. And if I do, its only because of cheaper prices, but after a few orders, they also tend to get dropped or go out of business.

One of the most important aspects is building trust, for which people tend use things like good ratings on TrustPilot, mentions of security and so on. It is difficult to build trust. And also, there are little tweaks, some very simple, that you can make to your site that will aggregate and improve sales. Google: [conversion rate optimisation].

Also, people are suckers for special, limited time deals, if you have repeat customers.

You can probably work n your AdWords and improving the site in-house, or with a bit of light consultancy.

If you can use these and see potential in your site, I would only then begin to look at SEO.

So to begin with I would spend the money; and it could be done for less than £5k pm; on AdWords and tweaking your site and coming up with good incentivised offers. If that is viable, the next step is more difficult, as spending money on SEO has many more options.

But if you want to have a chance for staying around for years, make sure your SEO is higher-end, no-spam, authority-focused and long-term. And there is too much to be able to write anything worthwhile here.

Most of the companies and people I knew who have dipped their toe in eCommerce are out of business. Some lost money, some had it good for a while. Most of those left do a handful of orders. It is ultra-competitive, with very little chance of success.

 

[deewn6]

Loads of good advice here. I would go with leverage your ebay sales with flyers and a discount code for your website, and then recurring discounts to build loyality. Plus i would also go organic seo, content development, alongside improving conversion rates. Long term strategy but one that can be sustainable over time.

 

[Parcelhub]

Buy email data and sign up for Mailchimp, then implement carefully thought out remarketing campaigns on AdWords, Facebook and Twitter.

 

[Martins-Adwords-Solutions]

I'd try with "look-a-like" audiences and Google retargeting based on emails and/or user id's. The advantage is that you can target similar audience to those who already bought from you.
Also you should retarget everyone who already converted (bought).

I'd also invest in email marketing, starting with a subscribe list with segments that indicate users' interests. Most important is that you get your buyers on this list. That would kind of tell you what matters to them, what they want, what they need, is it articles, how to's, wide range of products ,... (this options could be used as segments in list) to give you clue, what to do next.
I'd start email with 5 topsellers per weak (every thursday) for better price (minor loyality discount). And ignore those segments at first, untill your list gets big enough.

 

[ZaraAllen]

Buy Sell Ads is a great place to promote your site through targeted audience. They have sites with lots of unique traffic.