Marketing on a budget

[thehappyappy]

Hi, I'm new to this forum so apologise if I'm asking this in the wrong place.

We've recently launched a new comparison website that allows people to filter and search for products via things like price, ingredients, weight etc. The site's gaining a great deal of momentum on Facebook but today that hasn't translated into sales from our site yet.

The problem is that we have a very limited budget and didn't know the best way of marketing this. We have a mailing list of just over 3000 email addresses but having looking into email marketing this would cost nearly £2k with MailChimp so at the moment can't use that.

What's the best way of getting our site out there so that people are aware of us?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[mattk]

Is your site receiving a lot of traffic from your "momentum on Facebook" and you are struggling to convert traffic to sales or are you not getting any traffic to your site?

 

[thehappyappy]

Is your site receiving a lot of traffic from your "momentum on Facebook" and you are struggling to convert traffic to sales or are you not getting any traffic to your site?

We're getting a bit of traffic but it's not converting to sales. Last week we had around 150 hits and no sales

 

[S Isaac]

Not sure how complex your emailing campaign would be, but does it have to be via mailchimp?

I used to have a nifty little excel tool that you'd past all the email addresses into and it would generate an email to each individual one and fire it off via Outlook.

Kind of like a mail merge but for emails.

The two concerns I'd have of using this would be GDPR - not sure of the implication to current mailing lists and your hosts email limits. But the limits could be doing it in batches of around 50 a hour or so (or whatever your host allows).

 

[S Isaac]

Although I'm not a fan of 'like & share' this post for xxxxx

It may be an opportunity to email everyone asking them to do just that with the change to win whatever you think is suitable.

I believe the 'like & share to win' is against facebook guidelines/rules though. But I still see it being used all the time.

 

[Nochexman]

We're getting a bit of traffic but it's not converting to sales. Last week we had around 150 hits and no sales

Why not add your URL to your profile and then people can take a look at your website?

 

[webgeek]

PPC short term to get quick sales and buyer awareness.

Lead capture on site to build your list, when people do or don't convert.

Emailing 3,000 people should be cheap as chips. Look at SendGrid. If you scheduled 100 per day, you could send your full list for FREE each month. Building your list to 9,999 - you could send monthly to the full list for a tenner.

Organic SEO should be in your medium to long term plan and started immediately. As you find what converts via PPC, you put those terms in your SEO work queue and eventually rank/own them without any recurring PPC cost - at which point your ROI goes through the roof.

Throw in a bit of social syndication whenever you post on the site and for a few quid per post you'd be able to expand your audience and get some fresh eyes on the site. Keep the budget tiny, and spend most of your cash in the pursuit of search conversions - not display/social, where the conversion rates are often fractional.

If you're needing cash flow and to move merchandise, go PPC to gain turnover.

If you've got time and operating capital, ignore PPC and go long on organic SEO - the long term ROI will be massively greater.

Give Tin (Ray) the moderator on here a shout and get him a few days each month - and in 6-12 months you'll be thanking me.

 

[Dutch Digital]

Facebook is not the right marketing channel for you to get sales. You can use Facebook to create brand awareness and then re-target them with AdWords. People on Facebook are not really pulling their credit or debit card to purchase things.

I agree with Webgeek and start using SEO and content marketing. Make sure your website is fast and SEO optimised. Write interesting content that people want to share on social media.

 

[Jessica A.]

Try hiring people to get traffic into your site. There's a lot that you can find at Onlinejobs at a reasonable price.

 

[HazelC]

Unless you are sending daily emails to your list via mailchimp it will come nowhere near this cost... not sure who has quoted you this?

I send to a lot more than this number, once a month or twice a month in some cases and it's less that £20 a month?

 

[fisicx]

We've recently launched a new comparison website that allows people to filter and search for products via things like price, ingredients, weight etc. The site's gaining a great deal of momentum on Facebook but today that hasn't translated into sales from our site yet.

What makes you think people on facebook are likely to be customers?

Have you considered that the items you are comparing are not the things people want to buy right now?

It's also possible that people don't like your website.

But I suspect the problem is your marketing. Launching a comparison site needs a decent marketing budget. You can't do it on the cheap.

 

[WithinSocial]

While everyone seems to have offered help with your side of efforts think from customers point of view. Not converting a single customer out of 150 visits website is bit worrying.

 

[Dan Izzard]

Are people just 'comparing' prices on your site then buying direct?

The trust built up on an established e-commerce business may be enough for someone to jump ship and head to a largerretailer. Do you offer any benefit to the buyer other than a discovery platform?

That Mailchimp estimate seems way too high too. Lots to think about.

 

[webgeek]

While everyone seems to have offered help with your side of efforts think from customers point of view. Not converting a single customer out of 150 visits website is bit worrying.

Not converting 1 of 150, if you only have had 150 visits, is not worrying based on my conversion rates. If, after 15,000 you haven't converted at your target 1% or whatever your target conversion rate is, that's another matter. You've got to have enough sample size to draw conclusions.

When we're driving mad traffic for 'brand introductory' campaigns, I expect conversion rates to go down. When it's seasonal slowdown time, again conversion rates go down.

Just make sure you have enough sample size to draw conclusions.

If your CTR is excellent and your bounce rates aren't bad, then either give it some time or change up the offer or way the offer is presented.

Low CTR = bad advert or ranking for erroneous organic terms. High bounce rate indicates offer doesn't jive with the ad or organic SERP title/description (or your priced out of reason).

 

[WithinSocial]

I appreciate your views webgeek, the opinion is based on driving traffic for a sale which has been successful now once they've visited what assurances or confidences have they left with? We do not know if the website is an ecommerce or comparison only post which the subject is given a choice to buy this approach is getting out of trend from landing point until offering is over visitors should be reminded of what we are selling how easy is it with us and something like one click order on Amazon not something everyone should do but I am stressing on innovating and presenting something unique as if selling something already being done will only be successful if experience and feel is different. please ignore my writing style it may not have grammar or structure.

 

[webgeek]

If you're wondering about the post-visit performance and wanting to try and drive awareness of your features/benefits/advantages, and trying to drive repeat visits, then you definitely need a senior marketer.

Expecting a college graduate to know anything about lead capture with drip-fed marketing automation posts designed to build rapport and awareness of your USP's - is not realistic in the slightest. Many experienced online marketers know nothing of these things - they're leading edge.

As far as driving repeat visits, again, don't expect a college grad to know anything about remarketing/retargeting in Adwords and social media channels. Expect even fewer of them to know about remarketing for search, a relative newcomer to Google. And if they do know anything, expect it to only be conceptual, none of it practical.

It takes months of daily A/B testing, constant studying of best practices and competitor research to get a feel for what works on marketing automation and remarketing.

Remember, hiring someone to do the job is not the same as hiring someone to profitably do the job. A college student will burn your cash like it's a fire sale, while a seasoned marketer will at least have a good shot at making you some money.

 

[Highland Spring]

There is also a flaw in your strategy, building a business focussed based on web traffic but not having a budget to market online. Sadly Google has moved away from the little guy and now favours big money players. So you've got your work cut out..

 

[dan19900]

lol PPC isn't going to work, I expect your cost per click will cost more than your referral commission even if you convert every click which obviously won't happen.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

If I want something I tend to google it and look in shopping

What does your site do better than that and how many items does it have to compare wirh