Marketing advice for a new online store

[Matthew_GMM]

Hi there,

I have worked for a few years now in retail with a bricks and mortar shop selling mens and women fragrances.

I have the suppliers, so can offer competitive pricing for high-street, recognised brands.

I think i can just about get my head around creating a Shopify website to sell the products.

But how can I market this effectively?

I don't want to just create a nice looking site, if nobody can see it!

Looking for some help.

Many thanks

M

 

[The Byre]

One very effective method is to set up an eBay shop, but show punters that you also have your own on-line store.

Here is an excellent example http://www.ebaystores.co.uk/Rhino-Steel-Cladding

If you look at the brochure, you can see how to go directly to their site.

 

[TotalWebSolutions]

Create blog articles with good relevant content.
List the business on business and ecommerce directories (especially those that allow the url to be added).
Gather reviews from your customers.
Incentivize customers to recommend you.
Get your friends/family/customers to spread the word about your website via social media.
Sponsor local events/sports team

 

[Mr D]

Hi there,

I have worked for a few years now in retail with a bricks and mortar shop selling mens and women fragrances.

I have the suppliers, so can offer competitive pricing for high-street, recognised brands.

I think i can just about get my head around creating a Shopify website to sell the products.

But how can I market this effectively?

I don't want to just create a nice looking site, if nobody can see it!

Looking for some help.

Many thanks

M

Spend money to market it.
It can often work out far more money spent on marketing than on getting website set up.

 

[Nochexman]

I have worked for a few years now in retail with a bricks and mortar shop selling mens and women fragrances.

I have the suppliers, so can offer competitive pricing for high-street, recognised brands.

Are you saying that you can compete competitively with bricks-and-mortar retailers from your website.

Can you compete effectively with other online retailers from here and around the world who already have competitive pricing?

 

[fisicx]

Spend money to market it.
It can often work out far more money spent on marketing than on getting website set up.

^^^This!

There are already loads of online stores selling fragrances. To compete you need to do more and do it better. It's not going to be easy. You might have some luck on social media if you can build a following - but this isn't quick and will mean putting in a lot of effort.

 

[Lee Oakley]

Hi there,

I have worked for a few years now in retail with a bricks and mortar shop selling mens and women fragrances.

I have the suppliers, so can offer competitive pricing for high-street, recognised brands.

I think i can just about get my head around creating a Shopify website to sell the products.

But how can I market this effectively?

I don't want to just create a nice looking site, if nobody can see it!

Looking for some help.

Many thanks

M

Matthew, as others have mentioned it might be an idea to look at the likes of ebay and amazon market spaces as they offer the consumer a little more protection than a standalone start-up e-commernce.

I think you will find that whilst you may be able to shave a few pounds off the high street cost of a bottle of perfume, the high street offers the consumer the assurance of a branded and authentic product.

There are just too many counterfeit perfumes that most people would not risk saving £3-4 on a bottle of £30 perfume (with an online start up at this late stage in the game) if they are unsure of the risk and to get over that concern you would need an absolute first rate website, and not a template or DIY build, plus a lot of time and a lot of budget.

If you do get a great site together, SEO for e-commerce is a little different as you cant have 500 word articles on all your product pages as it clutters the site but just to put this into context consider the following example.

If you look perfume-click.co.uk, it has a very good website profile for a small to medium business, (things like domain and page authority) has nearly 10million back links, over 9000 Trustpilot reviews, but still doesn't outrank HarveyNichols website for "calvin klein perfume" and is on page 5 of the Google results. They been in the game 10 years.

HarveyNichols website is also on page 5 and even Wikipedia is 4th page for "calvin klein perfume" the level of competition is so high.

Good luck which ever way you go

 

[Matthew_GMM]

Matthew, as others have mentioned it might be an idea to look at the likes of ebay and amazon market spaces as they offer the consumer a little more protection than a standalone start-up e-commernce.

I think you will find that whilst you may be able to shave a few pounds off the high street cost of a bottle of perfume, the high street offers the consumer the assurance of a branded and authentic product.

There are just too many counterfeit perfumes that most people would not risk saving £3-4 on a bottle of £30 perfume (with an online start up at this late stage in the game) if they are unsure of the risk and to get over that concern you would need an absolute first rate website, and not a template or DIY build, plus a lot of time and a lot of budget.

If you do get a great site together, SEO for e-commerce is a little different as you cant have 500 word articles on all your product pages as it clutters the site but just to put this into context consider the following example.

If you look perfume-click.co.uk, it has a very good website profile for a small to medium business, (things like domain and page authority) has nearly 10million back links, over 9000 Trustpilot reviews, but still doesn't outrank HarveyNichols website for "calvin klein perfume" and is on page 5 of the Google results. They been in the game 10 years.

HarveyNichols website is also on page 5 and even Wikipedia is 4th page for "calvin klein perfume" the level of competition is so high.

Good luck which ever way you go

Thank you for this, that is very helpful.

Do you know of a good place to get backlinks from?

I'm not entirely sure how its done in the best way.

Would really like to avoid a huge trial and error exercise at this stage.

 

[MaureenP]

If you want to sell your products at the competitive price then you should list your products at e-commerce platforms for example Amazon. After listing your products at this type of portal, you should have to do marketing of your brand in the market to reach your products to the people.

And for that, you can take the help of social media platforms like Facebook. Over there, you will have to create the page of your brand and after that should have to share your product's link (which are listed on eCommerce portal). This way you can build/market your brand name in the market and ware people your yours products.

 

[fisicx]

Do you know of a good place to get backlinks from?

Building links isn't going to work. It's going to cost a huge amount to get the ones that make a difference. Forget SEO, it's not to going to work for you. You need to pay for advertising - which will probably wipe out your profit margin.

 

[iDigLocal]

Entering a competitive market with an e-commerce store will take some time and some effort.

If we assume that your e-commerce store is set up correctly and all good SEO practices are followed then it comes down to building your brands presence on the web.

The first thing to think about is what is going to be your USP? Decide on this as it will set the tone of your overall marketing.

What you need to do is get people talking about your store. Social media is obviously one of your friends here, instagram & pinterest (if its a female audience) , facebook. If you can interact with social media influencers then that is also a bonus.

Forums are also a good place, mumsnet for example (?) but make sure you are not spammy, take some time to build a profile.

Offer coupon discount codes

Create blog posts - "new perfumes for 2019" etc... if appropriate but ensure you keep it on message.

If you can compete on price for major brands then a goggle shopping adwords campaign may also be helpful (be careful though so you don't spend too much money).

Building a brand from nothing can take time where their are already a lot of players.

 

[antropy]

I have worked for a few years now in retail with a bricks and mortar shop selling mens and women fragrances.

I wrote a short eBook that explains how to take your retail business online:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Take-Your-Retail-Business-Online-ebook/dp/B00REHJHO2/

Paul

 

[justinaldridge]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned PPC (Adwords). As others have pointed out, from an organic search perspective you would have a serious mountain to climb if there is a lot of competition.

Of course, with PPC there will also be competition but the campaigns can start generating sales very quickly and you can get a lot of data back about different products, keywords, etc.

You can waste a lot of money with PPC if it isn't set up and managed correctly but, depending on your budget, may be the way to go initially.