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February 3, 2011
This week’s link love is a 2 parter. I was so busy last week I forgot to share links and I have a backlog of great reads to share.
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January 21, 2011
Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:
This content is copyrighted. See my content sharing policy here.
January 7, 2011
Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:
Reminder: The Valentine’s Day co-op is about to get started. If you’re thinking about joining, sign up today! Our ads start running Monday and our newsletter goes out to over 3,500 subscribers on Friday!
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January 6, 2011
Even if you’re single and hating it, there could still be an upside for you when it comes to Valentine’s Day: CASH! Every year people spend big bucks on gifts for their sweeties. Some people even buy Valentine’s day treats for their parents, children or platonic friends. To make the most of your V-Day sales, you have to start preparing now. Here are a few things for your to do list:
1. Red Hot Ad Campaigns
It makes sense to spend a little more on advertising when you know people are in a shopping mood. If you’ve been thinking about running an ad on your favorite blog or giving Adwords a try, now is a good time to give that a go.
If you’re on a tight budget, I Shop Indie’s Valentine’s Day ad co-op is a great way to reap the benefits of over $600 worth of advertising for only $65.00. (Unilke most other ads, the co-op comes with email marketing and social media marketing!)
When you’re designing ads, think about promoting your products as Valentine’s Day items. Feature products that come in red or evoke a flirty or romantic mood. You might even want to have your ads link to a special landing page featuring Valentine’s Day themes items.
2. It’s All About Merchandising
Make tweaks to your website so that Valentine’s Day products are easy to find. Think about featuring V-Day themed items on your home page. Create gift guides with suggested products for guys, girls and even singles and kids.
3. Start Promoting
If you sell online, you’ll want to promote products early so customers have time to place orders and receive products by mail before February 14. Come up with a schedule to promote your Valentine’s Day products and offers via your newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc.
You may be able to boost sales by offering a special deal like a coupon code or a promotional price on a V-Day related product. Even an event like a contest is a great way to drum up traffic and interest and hopefully convert a few sales.
4. Get Some Press
Pitching your products for inclusion in gift guides and magazine articles is a great way to attract new customers and boost V-Day sales. Although it is too late to pitch monthly print press, there’s still time to contact weekly and daily print outlets. You also have time to pitch your products to online outlets like blogs.
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November 24, 2010
To make your business a success, it’s important to keep your eyes and ears open. You want to pay attention to what’s going on around you, what customers are saying, what industry publications are saying and what your competition is up to. Studying the competition can be an incredibly valuable tool for growing your business. Here are a few things you can learn from them:
Marketing Ideas
The internet is full of great marketing ideas, and you can get some especially great tips from your competitors. Follow their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. Subscribe to their newsletters. If your competitors are running new promotions, you can be the first to know. See how they conduct contests. Notice the type of coupon codes they use. Are they doing discounts? Are they requiring a minimum spend to use a discount? Are they doing free shipping? Are they hosting a giveaway and if so how are they asking customers to enter to win? Are they doing a customer loyalty program? Are they promoting flat rate shipping? While I don’t recommend copying your competitors’ playbooks, you can generate ideas of your own, based on what they are up to.
You also want to see what they do most often, because that suggests it’s working for them. If you see them always doing free shipping offers, that means it’s probably driving sales. If you see them constantly doing giveaways for newsletter subscribers, that suggests that those giveaways are effective at growing their subscriber base.
Content
If you’ve spent more than 5 minutes reading about online marketing, you’ve run into the phrase “content is king.” What this means is that having great content is an important part of online marketing. It’s good for SEO and it’s good for generating interest from humans too. Having interesting content on your blog and social media accounts matters a great deal. It can help keep customers engaged and many online marketers are theorizing that your traction in social media may soon be more important than traditional SEO when it comes to online marketing success.
The trouble is, coming up with great content is difficult. We try to do it every day for our online retail website and it’s not always easy. One way to draw inspiration is by following the competition. What do they say on their blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. What kind of videos do they put on YouTube? What’s in their Flickr stream? You can use this information to get ideas for your own content. You not only want to see what competitors are doing, but you want to see what their customers respond to. Does another jewelry designer’s blog posts about recipes get a lot of comments? Does another screenprinter’s Tweets about news of the weird stir up a lot of replies and retweets? You want to get a feel for what customers like seeing, and let that guide your content generation.
Media List
Getting a relevant comprehensive media list can be challenging, but it’s an invaluable tool in your PR arsenal. One way to look for media outlets to contact is by checking out competitors’ press pages. See what magazines, papers and blogs featured them so you can get an idea of which ones might feature you.
Trends
Staying on top of trends is essential when you’re trying to sell products. You need to know if polka dots are in. You need to know of nautical themes are out. You’ll want to study a variety of sources for this information including magazines, design blogs and of course the competition. Some online shops even say what their best sellers are. This is kind of information can help you keep track of where trends are headed and help shape your design aesthetic in a way that’s profitable.
Product Ideas
Make sure to look beyond the designs, when you look at competitor product offerings, and notice what they are actually selling. Is another illustrator selling their prints on mousepads? Is another wallet designer doing business card cases? Is a company that normally prints on t-shirts now offering screenprinted scarves? You’ll want to notice these product offerings to come up with ways to enhance your own product line.
Website Usability
Having a user-friendly website can make or break sales. Websites come with all sorts of interesting design challenges. How can you convey that the product comes in different sizes? How do you communicate shipping policies in a way that customers will absorb? How can you best display product photos? Should the checkout process be 1 step or 2? There are no absolute answers to questions like this, but you can get ideas by studying other websites.
Earlier this year when I did my website usability makeover, I studied a ton of different websites to come up with the best new design. I also took note of website usability trends, like tabbed navigation. As certain user experiences become popular on the web (tabbed navigation is an example of this), users become more comfortable with them and used to using websites in new ways. You want to make sure your website can be used in a way that is comfortable for your visitors so they enjoy shopping on your site.
Further Reading: 5 Ways to Spy on the Competition
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October 12, 2010
If you’re trying to improve your SEO, increase sales, and gain brand awareness, nothing beats a media placement. Or does it? Not all media placements are created equal so it’s important to understand that difference between pitching for quantity vs pitching for quality.
Quantity
Do you want hundreds or even thousands of blogs to review your products? No problem. Just about anyone can make this happen. There are millions of blogs out there and finding some that will write about your brand isn’t all that difficult. Many of these bloggers may want a free product sample to review, but aside from that, getting press from them is simple. These are blogs with low readership and they don’t get pitched all day, so getting to the front of the line isn’t difficult.
In fact, many bloggers got into blogging just to get free stuff, and they have a simple pay to play system. You send them stuff, they write about you. You can find a lot of these bloggers looking for freebies on lists like HARO. They usually say they are looking for products to “review,” and by that, they mean they are looking for free products in exchange for a review.
Personally, I don’t bother with this numbers game and here’s why:
1. Pitching is time consuming. I’d rather spend my time on higher profile media outlets even if I get a lower response rate.
2 The SEO benefits are minimal. Getting links from any reputable site contributes to your SEO. So getting 1,000 small blogs to review your products will give you a little SEO benefit. However, the emphasis is on little. Links from higher traffic websites provide far more SEO benefit. That means it’s more beneficial to get linked by the New York Times than a blogger site with 10 visits a day.
3. The cost of freebies adds up. Bloggers with very little readership demanding free samples can leave a serious dent in your wallet. There’s the cost of the products, plus the cost of postage. Do that a few hundred times and you’ve easily lost thousands of dollars.
Quality
Pitching high quality media outlets is tough. They get a lot of pitches so getting their attention is going to take some doing. You’ll need a combination of a well-crafted pitch, timing, targeting and plain old luck. If you can get a handful of these placements each year, you’re doing well. This is the type of placements I focus my PR time on and here’s why:
1. These placements convert and convert and convert. If you get a placement from a major magazine or website, not only will you probably get a rush of orders when the placement goes out, you’ll continue to get conversions for months or even years to come. My clothing company got a write up on Gizmodo a couple of years ago. If you aren’t familiar with this site, they’re number 4 on Technorati’s list of top blogs. They get over 15 million page views each month and are considered a go-to blog in the tech world. To this day, my website gets traffic and sales from that placement, even though it was quite a while ago.
2. The SEO benefits are outstanding. Getting links from a site with millions of visitors causes search engines to start ranking your site higher. A few links like this provides greater benefit than a bunch of links from sites with no traffic.
3. The branding benefits are tough to beat. When a media outlet that has a lot of readers plugs you, your brand awareness grows. Even if they don’t all purchase, they’re still becoming aware of your brand and may be spreading the word about you in ways you’re unaware of.
Further Reading: Tips and Tricks to Build Your Press List
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September 20, 2010
Small businesses are operated by small staffs, maybe even a staff of one. That’s why it’s important to be insanely efficient with your time. A few months ago I wrote about 5 common time sinks for small business owners, and today I have 5 more tips on tweaks you can make to your current routine to get even more efficient.
1. Your PR Strategy:
Remove media outlets that aren’t a match for your work from your media list. If you’ve got a media contact you’ve pitched repeatedly over time and they ignore your pitches or constantly reject your work, get them off your list. Instead use that time to seek out and build relationships with media contacts who will give you press.
2. Your Social Media Strategy:
While networking with peers is fun and can sometimes lead to useful opportunities, don’t make fellow business owners the focus of your social media efforts, unless your target market is your peers. Instead use your Facebook profile, YouTube account, Twitter profile, etc. to generate interest from your target market. Connect with the kind of people who would buy your products or services. Connect with media contacts who would give you press. If you’re going to connect with peers, do it in a way that has an end goal in mind like cross-promotion or collaboration. Amassing thousands of other business owners as friends/fans/followers is probably not the best route to increasing sales unless you’re selling a B2B product or service.
3. Your Content Creation Strategy:
Don’t create blog posts, Tweets and Facebook updates that are all about you. Customers don’t want to read a constant stream of “Just listed this new item on Etsy.” Instead create content that fits in with your SEO strategy AND piques the interest of your target market.
4.Your Ecommerce System:
Don’t spend all your time wrestling with a slow or inefficient method of getting your products posted to your website or online shop. If your goal is to sell a lot of product, get an ecommerce system that’s easy to manage and doesn’t take a lot of time. In my case, we have over 1000 unique products on our website. If I tried to list all of that on Etsy I’d never have time to do anything else! That’s why I use an ecommerce system that offers great efficiency when it comes to product management. I can post new products to my website with 1 click and easily get reporting information on sales data. I don’t spend time pouring over excel spreadsheets or trying to keep track of order status in a manual way, my ecommerce system does it all for me. (Hint: Looking for a new ecommerce system? One of my favorite blogs has reviewed hundreds of them! You can see those reviews here.)
5. Your Time Management System:
Lose the post it notes and myriad of to do lists you may be storing on your computer or desktop. These types of lists are difficult to keep track of and don’t allow you to truly organize. Instead find a task management system that can store all of your to-dos and allow you to easily sort, update, delegate, prioritize and expound upon all of your tasks.
http://smallerbox.net/blog/branding/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-cross-promotion-but-were-afraid-to-ask/
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August 27, 2010
Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:
This content is copyrighted. See my content sharing policy here.
July 30, 2010
Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:
P.S. My ebook giveaway is ending this week! Did you enter to win a free copy yet? Details here.
This content is copyrighted. See my content sharing policy here.
June 29, 2010
These days everyone wants to know what celebrities are wearing. They pop up on TV, in magazines and on celebrity gossip blogs decked out in the coolest clothing and accessories. Small designers dream of getting their own creations into celebrity hands. But how do you go about it? Here are a few tips:
1. Pick the Right Celebrity
It doesn’t matter if Chace Crawford is your favorite because he’s so beautiful and appears on your favorite TV show. He may not be the right person to give your products to. Choosing a celebrity who’d genuinely appreciate your products is the first step in a successful gifting to celebs. That means doing your research, so…
2. Follow Your Celebrities
Pick a few celebs that you think would be a good choice for gifting. If you aren’t sure where to start, begin reading magazines with celebrity interviews. They often provide insight into their personal interests and taste. Notice what celebrities wear when they’re not working (you can often find candid pictures of their day to day lives in gossip magazines and on gossip websites).
If you sell vegan shoes, take note of which celebrities have said they’re vegetarians. If you sell Christian jewelry, start paying attention who which celebrities are public about their Christian faith.
Once you’ve chosen a celebrity whose taste or interests match your products, find ways to make contact…
3. Get Online
These days lots of celebrities are online and you can contact them through their Twitter or blog. Celebs that make themselves publicly accessible in this way are also great because you can see what’s going on in their lives and find a perfect moment to offer them a gift.
Pay attention to whether or not the celebrity has an upcoming birthday. Are they getting married soon? Are they expecting a baby? Look for moments like this as an excuse to offer them a special gift.
4. Reach Out
If the celebrity you are hoping to give a gift to is online, reaching out might be as simple as sending a Tweet, email or blog comment. If your target celebrity is a little more elusive, check out Contact Any Celebrity. This paid service hooks you up with contact information for just about any celebrity.
If you have deeper pockets, another options is gifting suites. These are suites that are set up at Hollywood events like Emmys or MTV Music Awards, where business owners/representatives gather in a room and hand out free swag to any celebrity that happens by. Be forewarned that these events can get expensive, and you won’t necessarily know who will show up. On the plus side, you’re likely to be able to actually snap a picture of a celebrity with your products, which helps create proof that the celebrity owns your products.
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