Marketing

A Webshop is similar to a physical shop in that it’s existence needs to be communicated to your target audience, otherwise you will not receive many visitors.

Offline
All of your offline marketing activities should publish your Webshop Domain name as a minimum in order to encourage online visitors.

Online

• Paid Advertising
• Free Advertising
• Link Building
• Webshop Facilities
• Marketing Add-Ons

Your Webshop can be promoted on numerous online directories that require some form of subscription, eg: Yell.com etc. As a general rule, you should always ask yourself, do you customers use this directory, how many hits to their directory do they get each month? Is there a trial period in which you can monitor traffic from their site?

Google Adwords is one of the most popular form of paid advertising methods, commonly referred to as Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising. This involves bidding on the keywords that you think your target customers will use to find your product/service on the Internet. Beware, this can be very expensive if you bid on the most commonly used keywords. It is important to align the keyword to the Google Advert, which in turns lands onto a relevant page, not the Home Page in all cases.

Free advertising is still out there but you need to make sure the quality of the site is worth being associated with, and is used by your target market. Beware of reciprocal links, as they could benefit from you, more than you do from them.
Search Engine Optimisation uses link building as part of it’s strategy to gain a higher page rank for your Webshop. This can be time consuming, but well worth the effort if links are forged to high ranking sites. Note, this method should be viewed as an ongoing exercise, with a medium term result. Over time this method should reduce the cost of CPC and paid for advertising.

Banner Adverts can provide stimulating content to entice customers to explore your Webshop and may be used on other websites as a means to bring more traffic to your Webshop.