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Marketing Your Dropshipping Business
There are literally hundreds of
ways you can market your e-commerce business! In this chapter we
will cover about 20 of the most effective ways. Essentially,
when you are marketing your e-commerce business, you are driving
targeted traffic to your site and converting that traffic in to
sales. There are good ways to market and not so good ways to
market. Usually in e-commerce the more money you invest in
marketing the more sales you produce. This is the goal at least.
We will show you how to test, track and reform your marketing
strategy to produce the maximum return on investment.
The
most effective way to market your online business is through
direct search engine traffic. If you are in the top ten in the
organic results for your specific niche you will make money. The
only problem with this is that it can take years to make it to
the top ten for your niche. So when you are starting out you
have to invest and basically buy your traffic to your website.
This isn’t a problem because you can still make loads of money.
Please note that this is not the case with all niches but is
true for most.
The first and most popular marketing tool
for e-commerce is pay-per-click (PPC). This form of marketing is
where you bid on specific keywords for placement and you pay per
click when a person clicks your ad. The amount you pay is based
on supply and demand for that particular keyword and also the
industry you are bidding for. For instance, keyword bidding is
significantly higher for lawyers than it is for tennis shoes.
While they are both competitive niches, lawyers have the
financial capital and will to pay more for customers than shoe
sales companies are. This is highlighted by the point that
lawyers charge a larger amount of money for their service.
Throughout this chapter we will explore a host of marketing
and SEO strategies that will drive targeted traffic to your
website and convert that traffic to paying customers.
NOTE:
Before setting up your PPC campaigns you will need to go live
with your store. Before going live make sure you read and
understand the principles outlined in this chapter.
PAY-PER-CLICK MARKETING (PPC)
There are
three main marketing channels we will focus on for your pay per
click campaigns. These are Google AdWords, Yahoo Search
Marketing and MSN AdCenter. The most popular and best performing
is Google and you will want to focus on this one the most.
Google pulls in about 70% of search volume on the internet while
Yahoo and MSN pull in nearly the rest.
The scope of this
book is not to teach you AdWords. Various authors have written
300 plus page books. We have included a PPC guidelines eBook
that is packaged with the Dropshipping eCrouse. If you are not
familiar with PPC campaigns you should read that book right now.
We will go through the basics of setting up keywords for a
campaign. We will also go through common terms that relate to
pay per click marketing. For more advanced techniques it is wise
to buy a book on Google adWords.
If you learn Google
AdWords you will be able to use Yahoo and MSN PPC marketing with
ease. All three are very similar and you can even utilize the
same keywords for each.
GETTING STARTED WITH
GOOGLE ADWORDS
To get started using AdWords and
begin driving traffic to your site you want to visit
http://adwords.google.com
and sign up for an account. You should use the email that you
started in chapter 5. You will link this account to your
business checking account.
Setting it up this way will
make AdWord directly debit your checking account. Usually you
will be charged after your balance reaches $500. Google charges
you $5 to begin using adWords and you will be able to use this
$5 towards clicks.
Since you signed up with Volusion you
get a FREE AdWords credit based on the package you chose! If you
signed up through BrynWebDesign you will still get the same
credit. You can apply this credit in your account settings
page. You will now have between $50 and $130 to begin driving
traffic to your site. You should easily get multiple sales from
this free credit.
In this eCourse we will not be showing
you how to create campaigns but we will show you how to change a
few simple setting that will save you literally 100’s of
dollars.
When you setup your AdWords campaign you have
many options to target different customers. There are 3 ways
your ads will be displayed on Google’s ad network. Firstly, they
will be displayed on Google searches on the top and sides of the
search results. Secondly, they can be displayed on “Partner
Sites” like Ask Jeeves and others. We suggest you DO NOT use the
partner sites option. Thirdly, you can display your ads on the
“Content Network.” The content network is basically displaying
your ads on other people’s sites. Your ads will only display on
related content sites. You will need to lower your bids for the
content network since they do not usually convert in to sales as
well. This isn’t always the case and you will need to decide if
you want to target the content network or not.
Google has
a new interface that simplifies and streamlines the AdWords
system. We will be covering the old system since many people
still utilize this old system.
When you are first
setting up your campaign you will come to a screen that looks
like this…
Notice we have selected the
Accelerated Delivery method because we have no use of spreading
the budget out throughout the day. Customers search at all
different times and we want to be in front of them when they
search our keywords.
The next setting you will see is the
Networks your ads will be appearing on. You definitely want to
check the Google Search and possibly the content network. We do
not recommend the Search Partners option because in our
experience they bring in sub par results. Un-checking this
little box could save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars!
We have tested the “Search Partners” setting on over 50 sites
and have always had less than desirable results. BUT you
will have to decide if you'd like to advertise on the Search
Partners or not. Some people do achieve satisfactory
results with it.
The content network is a great idea
because it will pull in some highly targeted traffic, but you
will want to lower your bids for the content network.
This book is not intended to teach you AdWords but to advise you
on techniques that will improve your campaign.
Another
important setting that you will want to change is in your
keywords for your Ad Groups. There are keywords called negative
keywords. Negative keywords keep your ad from appearing when
certain words are typed in to Google’s search bar. You are not
interested in giving anything away for free so you probably want
to create a negative keyword for the word “free”. This keeps
your ad from appearing when someone types in the word free.
Another huge improvement for your campaigns is conversion
tracking. A conversion is when a customer clicks your ad and
then makes a purchase on your site. Enabling conversion tracking
will allow you to see your conversion rate for every keyword in
your campaign. It will also show you how much you are paying for
each sale.
NOTE: Let’s say someone
clicks on your ad and then likes what they see and want to
purchase a few of your products. Well, then they decide to call
your business and place the order over the phone. Your
conversions won’t be tracked for phone sales simply because
there is no way to do it.
Once you have enabled
conversion tracking in Google AdWords you will be provided a
small javascript code. You will need to place this javascript
code in your Volusion store at the following location.
Once you have went to Design >>
Website Text you can scroll down to article number 130. Click on
the 130 and then paste the code in to the ArticleBody field and
then press save changes at the bottom of the page. Now you are
setup for conversion tracking.
Now that we have showed
you a few tips when setting up your online campaign it is time
to refer to the book we packaged with the DropShip Code. The
eBook is entitled PPC Campaigns Overview written by seobook.com.
It is a phenomenal guide on the basics of PPC marketing and it
is only 44 pages.
After you have read that book you will
be ready and prepared to tackle just about any PPC marketing
campaign.
YAHOO SEARCH MARKETING
Now that you have setup your Google AdWords campaign you
want to visit
Yahoo Search Marketing to get a campaign setup there.
Setting up this campaign is very much similar to Google’s
system.
You will setup your ad groups and keywords just
like you did with Google AdWords. The difference here is that
your keywords will be cheaper because Google controls 70% of the
search volume on the internet. You will want to distribute 15%
of your PPC marketing budget to Yahoo Search Marketing, 15% to
MSN AdCenter and 70% to Google AdWords. The price you pay per
click will be significantly less with Yahoo and MSN in most
cases. Make sure to lower your bids for these two.
MSN ADCENTER
Just like Google AdWords
and Yahoo Search Marketing,
MSN AdCenter will be close to the same interface. You will
want to bid on the same keywords and make sure to lower your
bids from Google.
To get started, visit MSN AdCenter and
create an account. Also setup your daily budget and begin
creating your ad groups just like you did in Google and Yahoo.
For MSN AdCenter your ads will appear on Microsoft’s three
main search engines, MSN, live.com and their new one Bing.com.
PAY PER CLICK OVERVIEW
Pay Per
Click is absolutely the fastest and best way to pull in traffic
to your new website. The goal is to convert that traffic and you
will want to constantly test and refine your keywords and ad
groups. You may find that you are spending too much money in
some places but not in others and will want to adjust
accordingly.
Keeping on top of your keyword performance
is crucial. You should login to the three PPC sites daily and
check your performance.
If your keywords are not falling
in the top 5 spots you will need to up the bids to make them
fall in those spots. Preferably, it’s even better to be in the
top three at all times for all of your converting keywords.
PRICED PAYED PER CLICK AND LANDING PAGE
A landing page is the website page a customer comes to when
they click on one of your ads.
The price you pay per
click is partially based upon the quality of your landing page.
Usually your landing pages are going to be your category pages
of your site. Sometimes a landing page may be a specific product
if it is a popular product.
You need to make sure to edit
the META data for every category and product in your Volusion
admin. Make sure the descriptions are keyword rich and high
quality.
Another tip is to look at all the keyword you
are bidding on for a specific landing page. Take all of these
keywords and place them in the keyword META data section on your
Volusion store. This will increase the quality score of your
page and you will pay less per click.
Overall, your PPC
search marketing success depends on you testing and constantly
refining your keywords and ad settings. Trying different setups
will allow you to hone on the setup that is absolutely most
profitable. Make sure to read the “PPC Campaigns Overview” eBook
that came packaged with this eCourse.
In the next section
we will go over search engine optimization and how you can
improve your SEO.
SEARCH ENGINE
OPTIMIZATION
Search engine optimization, or SEO,
is the process a website owner takes to increase his or her
ranking in the organic search results. Organic results are those
you see in the free results area.
Each search engine is
different and determines where a site will fall in a different
fashion. Thankfully, we are using Volusion and it is built
extremely well for SEO. Search engine spiders will be able to
index and crawl your site with ease.
You should have
already enabled SEO settings in your Volusion store but if you
have not then browse to the following page and set it up.
Make sure to check both of the
boxes. In Step 2 you should also fill in the Meta Data for your
site. This is the Meta Data for your home page.
Your goal
with SEO is to eventually fall in the top ten for specific
keyword searches. This isn’t easy to do and can take a long time
to achieve. If you are successful in doing so you stand the
chance to rake in millions of dollars per year.
The rest
of this chapter is basically on how to improve your SEO and also
bring in as much free traffic as possible.
SHOPPING FEEDS
There are dozens of shopping feeds on the internet and you
can tie your Volusion store right in to them with ease. Shopping
feeds are sites that are essentially price comparison shopping
from many different companies. An example would be Google
products
http://www.google.com/products
These allow you
to target thousands of extra customers, usually at no cost. Some
of the shopping feeds do charge a fee and you will need to
decide if that fee is worth your time.
You can easily setup
your entire product list to feed right in to Google shopping by
visiting the following link:
http://store.volusion.com/kb_results.asp?ID=326
Another extremely popular site is Shopping.com. You will
definitely want to have all of your products listed there as
well. To setup the shopping.com feed in a few easy steps you can
visit:
http://store.volusion.com/kb_results.asp?ID=326
Another popular feed is Yahoo shopping and you can easily
integrate your products by following the steps here:
http://store.volusion.com/kb_results.asp?ID=74
You
will also want to use the PriceGrabber feed as well. To get
started using it visit the guide:
http://store.volusion.com/kb_results.asp?ID=146
Two
other great sites are shopzilla and bizrate. To get started and
add your products to these you can visit
http://store.volusion.com/kb_results.asp?ID=146 and get
everything setup.
There are many shopping feed sites on
the internet. The ones above are the absolute best and you
should use those at the bare minimum. This gives your products
and site maximum exposure to sites that pull in millions of
visitors every single day. The best part about the shopping
feeds is that they pull in free traffic and you cannot beat free
traffic.
In the next section we will explore using the eBay
option.
EBAY AS A SALES CHANNEL
Should you use eBay as a sales channel? Well that depends
primarily if you want extra sales and if you are willing to
significantly lower the price on your products.
Teaching
you how to sell on eBay is beyond the scope of this book but we
will tell you it is fairly easy. Selling your products on eBay
will definitely bring in more revenue but you will have to
decide if it will bring in more profit. If you have to discount
your products so much that you are only left with a 2% or 3%
profit then it is probably not worth your time. Now, if you can
pull in a 10-20% or higher profit then you should be setting up
an eBay store right now.
If you decide to
setup your ebay store it is important to name it the same as
your domain name. So if your domain name is myDomainName.com
then you will name your eBay store AND eBay user ID myDomainName.
This increase your exposure on search engines and will probably
increase your SEO score.
You have already setup a PayPal
account so you will be able to sell through eBay with no
problems.
To add your products very quickly it is a
great idea to use Turbo Lister. Turbo Lister allows you to bulk
add products with ease. You can find how-to’s and lots of help
on the eBay site to setup your eBay store.
YOUTUBE MARKETING
If you plan on having any
videos on your site we suggest you use youtube.com. Not only
does youtube provide free hosting for videos they also provide
you a large network of people that may find your video and then
go to your site.
You can also use what is known as viral
marketing to spread the word about your business through youtube.
There are many ways to do this and you will need to decide if
youtube marketing is for you or not.
If you plan to have
video content on your site then you can use your google account
to sign up for youtube and start posting videos.
TWITTER MARKETING
Marketing on twitter
is a relatively new concept. It is a great way to spread the
word about a specific idea very quickly.
If you are not
familiar with Twitter.com we suggest you go there and check out
what they have to offer.
You may find a nice marketing
niche for twitter and it may work great for you.
YAHOO ANSWERS
Yahoo answers is a service
where people ask questions and other yahoo users answer those
questions. You can join yahoo answers and answer questions
relating to your website or niche. Make sure to point people to
your site.
The plus to this type of marketing is that it
placed a free link to your website that stays there for a long
time. Google and other search engine also index yahoo answers
very well so this builds the SEO of your site.
FACEBOOK MARKETING
Facebook is another
PPC search engine where your ad will be displayed on people’s
pages that share the interest of what you are advertising.
You will be charged per click and the price is usually very
low! If you are selling products that are geared toward college
students or the younger crowd then Facebook ads may be a great
choice for you.
NOTE: We once setup a
clothing line that was targeted towards the younger crowd. Once
the Facebook ad campaign was build sales shot up by about 200%!
It is unlikely you will achieve those results but if you are
selling products that you think college students or the younger
crowd could benefit from then by all means utilize Facebook. To
get started you can visit:
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/
At the bare
minimum you should create a Facebook page for your business. You
may already be familiar with Facebook, so making this page will
be easy. If not, setting it up is very simple. Make sure to
change the security settings so search engines can find your
page.
MYSPACE MARKETING
In
addition to Facebook you will want to setup a myspace.com page
for your business. Setting this up is very simple and can be
completed in a matter of minutes. Make sure you set the security
setting to public and allow search engines to index your page.
Make sure you place a few links on your myspace page that
point to your website. When you are designing the page you can
try to make it look like the home page of your site to keep your
brand awareness.
SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION
Once your site is live you will want to submit to search
engines. Doing this does not guarantee that the search engines
will crawl and index your site but there is a very good chance
that they will.
To submit to Google go here:
http://www.google.com/addurl/
To submit to Yahoo go
here:
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/ssb.php
To
submit to MSN:
http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx
It is really
not necessary to submit to smaller search engines since the big
three get about 95% of all search traffic.
In addition to
doing a free search engine submit you can also upload a sitemap
to the search engine.
A sitemap is a map of the links on
your site. This will help the search engine index your site. It
is highly recommended you complete the steps to do this.
To submit you sitemap to Google you can view the following
guide:
http://store.volusion.com/kb_results.asp?ID=135.
To
submit your sitemap link to Yahoo you can visit the following
link:
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
MSN does not
have an option to submit a sitemap but their spider should
pickup your sitemap location in the robots.txt file.
LINK BUYING AND LINK TRADING
Getting
links to your site is a very important way to improve your SEO
score and there are a variety of different ways to do this. Over
time, if you stick to a consistent plan, you can build thousands
of links to your site and you will be on the top of all the
major search engines. The time you invest trading links,
building links and buying them will pay off greatly for you. If
you do not gain links to your site you will be buying traffic
forever.
You can approach other website owners and ask
if they’d be willing to trade links with you.
You can
post links on different sites like directory sites (we will show
you how to do this later).
You can also buy your links.
When you buy links you are renting out a section of another
person’s website to place a link. The higher that sites page
rank and popularity, the more you will pay. There are many text
link brokers and the most popular is
http://text-link-ads.com.
You can buy links from popular sites and set your budget to
whatever you would like to spend.
You want to post links
on sites that have relative content to yours! This is very
important. If you are selling power tools you don’t want a link
on a site that is selling clothing. You can go ahead and trade a
link with that site but do not buy a link there.
Link
trading, buying and creating is a way to boost you Google Page
Rank and your position within the search engines. But be
careful to get quality links to your site. Quality links
trump quantity in most cases.
DIRECTORY
SUBMISSIONS
Submitting to directory sites is a
fast and easy way to build links to your site. There are free
submissions and there are paid submissions. The great thing
about directories is that once your link is posted then it
remains there forever. Search engines also like directories
because they are a great place to spider and find tons of sites
very quickly.
One of the most popular paid directories is
the Yahoo directory. It is somewhat pricey at $299 but it is
well worth it! Most of the time this will boost your Google Page
Rank to at least 2. To learn more about the paid Yahoo
submission you can visit:
https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/
There are
literally hundreds of other paid directory sites. You can search
for a list of paid directories and measure if they are right for
your business.
Luckily, there also many free directories
you can submit your website link to. We have always utilized a
software program to do this because it saves a ton of time.
Before you try the software you should visit
http://dmoz.org and create a
listing there. Sometimes it takes a long time to get listed on
dmoz and you may want to sign up to be an editor just to get
your site listed. Dmoz is a human edited directory and it is the
largest and best directory available.
To get started
listing to directories with ease you can download this powerful
software: Submit Eaze. You
can download a free trial and use the trial to submit to a few
directories. You will want to buy this software because it saves
you so much time. It is truly one of our favorite tools!
CREATING A BLOG
You will want to
create a blog for you site because it is easy and quick. You can
create a blog with you Google Account. You can visit
http://www.blogger.com and
setup your blog for free. Make sure you name your blog
myDomainName.blogger.com. This will get indexed quickly and
provide a nice link to your site. Make sure you place a link to
your website with your blog.
When writing blog posts keep
them short (under 1000 words). The topic of your post can be
many different things such as how to choose the best “widget”
company or how to select the “best widgets”. This gives your
readers a guide on how to select your products and also builds
trust.
There are many free blog sites that you can
utilize to build links to your website and expand your exposure.
We suggest you use as many as possible.
PRESS
RELEASES
Writing a press release is a great way
to tell the world about your business. There are many sites
where you can submit a press release for free and it will be
indexed in a matter of days.
There are tons of sites
where you can write and submit a press release and one of our
favorites is
http://free-press-release.com because the listings get
indexed very well.
Make sure always include the link to your
website in your press releases. You can also hire third party
content writers for press release. This is a cost effective and
quick way to get tons of press releases on the internet.
Press releases are a very important tool to tell the world about
your business and also build search engine optimization. It is
highly suggested that you have a few press releases.
ARTICLE SITES
You can utilize
article sites to tell the world about your business. You can
also use these sites to write how to articles just like you did
on your blog.
Just like press releases you can have a
professional content writer do these for you. Below is a list of
a few very popular article sites that will pull in traffic to
your website and build solid back links.
2.
GoArticles
3.
WebProNews
5.
SearchWarp
6.
PubsACS
7.
ArticleBase
8.
Isnare
9.
Buzzle
10.
ArticleCity
11.
IdeaMarketers
12.
Site Reference
13.
Article Alley
14.
Web Source
15.
Amazines
16.
TheWhir
17.
Excellent Guide
18.
Directory Gold
19.
Articles Factory
20. SelfGrowth
You should utilize as many of these as
possible to gain solid links to your site.
Remember the more
quality links you have the more quality free traffic you will
bring in!
AFFILIATE PROGRAM
Volusion has an awesome affiliate program built right in to the
system. An affiliate program gives a commission to a person or
business for referring a sale to your website. To setup your
affiliate program in Volusion you can go to the following page.
It is also automated on your frontend where
people can sign up for your affiliate program. You will have to
approve their application and then they are given a unique id.
You will be able to set the commission for the sale. For retail
a good commission is anywhere between 5%-10%. The affiliate
commission you setup will depend on the profit margin of the
products you are selling.
You can also get setup with
CJ.com. CJ.com is the largest affiliate network on the internet
and some of the largest companies use their service. You can
target a large number of people for your affiliate program by
signing up as an advertiser on CJ.com.
It is a great idea
to implement an affiliate program because it is a very cost
effective method for bringing in sales. It also passes the
marketing responsibilities to your affiliates, saving you time
and money.
EMAIL MARKETING THROUGH
NEWSLETTERS
You can utilize the powerful tools
built in to Volusion to stay in constant contact with your
customers. People can signup for your newsletter on your site
and they are placed on your newsletter list. When a customer
places an order he or she is also placed on your newsletter
list.
Volusion allows you to send out as many as 5,000
newsletters via email every single month. This is up to 5,000
potential sales you can gain for free!
We highly suggest
you implement a monthly newsletter in to your business model.
You can do a weekly newsletter if you choose.
You can
find information on the newsletter program by reading about it
at the following link:
http://store.volusion.com/kb_results.asp?ID=427
DIRECT SALES
Depending on the type of
products you are selling a direct sales model may be appropriate
for you. Direct sales are where you call on potential clients
who may be interested in your products or services.
You
create a sales pitch and tell the client why your products will
benefit their company. You can only call upon businesses when
utilizing direct sales because of telemarketing laws.
Of
course if you are going to be utilizing a direct sales method
you will need a list of customers to call on! This is where a
listing and data mining company come in to play. You can get 100
leads for free and try out the service to see if you like it. If
it turns out that it works well for you, you can buy as many
leads as you need. The service allows you to target only the
customers who are interested in your products. You can also
filter out your list by company size, geographic locations and
much more.
To get started and get 100 free leads right
now you can visit
Info USA.
DIRECT MAIL
Another part of
direct sales is direct mail marketing. You can send postcards or
brochures to your clients to build interest in your product or
service.
Before using direct mail you will want to
measure if it is right for your business or not. That will
depend on the type of products you sell and who you sell them
to.
Postcards work very well for most businesses. We
suggest you use a service like UPrinting to have your postcards
printed, addressed and mailed. This way you never have to touch
them or mail a single one. You just pay the fee and the
postcards go to your potential clients.
There are
literally hundreds of ways to market your online business and
you will discover many more than are listed in this book. If you
simply utilize the ones listed in this book you will produce a
significant amount of money in a short amount of time.
The key to marketing an online company is to continually test,
track, report and reform your tactics to produce the highest
level of profit.
In the next section we will be tying
every thing together and make sure your store is ready to make
your first sale. You will also learn some important day to day
operations essentials that will keep you on track at all times.
The True Web Money Dropshipping eCourse Outline
Start Here - Introduction
The Power of the E-Commerce
What is Drop Shipping?
Why You Should Drop Ship
Getting Started
Setting up a Temporary
Contact
Picking a Niche Market
Getting Started with a Plan
Business Structure and Legal
Picking a Domain Name
Product Sourcing and Finding
Suppliers
Building Your Website
Branding Your Business
Finding a Merchant Service
Provider
Marketing Your Business
Putting it all Together
Sales Strategy
Defining Business Systems
Conclusion
Step by Step Checklist
Website Resources
