Marketing an online Adult Store

[ohsaucy]

Hi
I have just started my own adult online store ohsaucy.co.uk and was wondering if anyone has any marketing and adevrtising tips they could give me for this type of industry. Your help would very much be appreciated x

 

[AllUpHere]

What's your budget? Do you have a strategic marketing plan in place that's been written by a professional?

 

[ohsaucy]

I am currently writing my own strategic marketing plan. Budget is small so currently have just started working on social media and Google ad words.

 

[AllUpHere]

You have some very well funded and established competition, many of whom will be bidding on the same keywords. What do you see as your advantage over these competitors?

 

[ohsaucy]

The points of difference I want to stand out with is that I want my site to be more approachable to the novice. I want my customers to feel secure and comfortable and that they are being taken care of.

 

[Ian J]

I want my customers to feel secure and comfortable

Then make your company name and address more prominent as I had to hunt around for it before finding it tucked away on one of the pages that no-one ever reads

 

[AllUpHere]

It's not a bad point of differentiation to have, but it's an expensive one. Essentially, customers are only going to find out these things when they actually use your site or buy something from you. You are going to need a clever plan or a hefty advertising budget to make that stick.

 

[garyk]

You will probably need to spend on paid traffic. That presents a challenge as facebook won't let you run ads for adult toys (only contraceptives) and google are fairly strict as well, I think you can advertise vibrators with them.

I had a chance to buy an existing adult ecommerce store and declined mainly as the challenge is:

a) You are competing with 1000s of dropship sites so hard to differentiate as well as established players like lovehoney and ann summers
b) For the reasons above you can't go mainstream paid ads

If I was opting for paid traffic I would probably look to do PPV (pop-ups) where you can target high traffic websites using someone like 50onred, leadimpact or mediatraffic. That said with these providers you are looking at $500/$1000 deposit to get started but you can get traffic for a few cents.

In short you can't do small budget unless you get some product in and go party plan which is how Jacqueline Gold grew Ann Summers from a back street seedy sex shop to an international chain. That is a slow burner though.

 

[Mike W]

"Your order will be delivered in discreet packaging giving you piece of mind"

Does it shout at them for being so naughty?

 

[Nochexman]

The points of difference I want to stand out with is that I want my site to be more approachable to the novice. I want my customers to feel secure and comfortable and that they are being taken care of.

How would that set you apart from www.lovehoney.co.uk for example?

This is a tough market to succeed in and you need to consider how you would perform against better funded competition. Come back and share your thoughts - lots of helpful advice here!

 

[Mr D]

The points of difference I want to stand out with is that I want my site to be more approachable to the novice. I want my customers to feel secure and comfortable and that they are being taken care of.

Ann Summers and Lovehoney do that already. Likely many more.
Think of what they do not do or what they do not do well that you could bring to the buyers.