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"5 Creative Ways to Generate Website Sales through Online and Offline Promotion"

Having a successful e-commerce website involves attracting a targeted group of people and offering them something they really want or need. In this article, we’re going to talk about the first part—getting the right people to your website. Now, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is by far the most effective means of creating sales-generating traffic, but it’s not the only way. There are many other strategies, both online and offline, that can drive qualified traffic to your website that results in sales.

However, before you execute any of the following promotion strategies, you must first know your market. What’s an average day for them like? What are their hopes and dreams? What entertains them or annoys them? What gets their blood pumping? Once you know these things, you’ll be equipped to creatively engage your market to drive traffic and sales on your website. Here are five such strategies to get you started:

1. Participate in your potential customers’ blogosphere and message boards: Blogs and message boards are where people interact on the Internet, and there’s probably at least one for every niche interest out there. What does your company sell? Automotive detailing products? There’s probably one or more blogs or message boards dealing with automotive detailing for each and every major make and model vehicle. Find the ones you’d like to talk to most, then begin participating in the forums. Offer your knowledge and advice. Over time, you’ll position yourself as an expert, and people will turn to you for more than advice. They’ll want your products and services.

2. Advertising in targeted newspapers and publications: Having an e-commerce business, you may think that advertising in print is passé. Not so. Your market may be a very specialized group, or it may be fairly general and more defined by geographic location. Whatever the case, there is a print publication that targets your market segment. Ninety-five percent of the magazines out there are targeted at niche markets, and there’s likely one that your market reads. Newspapers, meanwhile, are very geographically oriented, so if certain geography is a characteristic of your market, newspapers are a good bet.

3. Publish articles online: You offer a product or service that helps your market solve a problem they can’t solve (or solve as well) on their own. That makes you an expert, so promote your expertise by writing articles that deal with topics related to your product or service and publish them in the many free article publication sites on the Internet (just do a search for “article submission” to find them). Many will consider your contributions valuable and solicit further help from you—that means business.

4. Create an attention-grabbing, curiosity-inciting direct mail campaign: The message should be simple and your mailing list extremely targeted—preferably one you’ve compiled on your own. Using postcards for promotion is an activity that begs for creativity. There’s nothing worse than getting a postcard that tries to say too much. Be clever and punchy. Curiosity-inciting. That will get your market to keep your postcard handy and not toss it in the trash.

5. Find creative ways to promote your domain name where your market will see it: This kind of promotion begs for creativity, too. Sponsorships of, well, anything that needs sponsoring works here: youth sports teams, charitable events, public broadcasting, etc. But before engaging in a promotion of this type, make sure the people who’ll see your promotion belong to your market. If not, the promotion is a waste of money.

Reelpoint’s marketing experts are ready to help you create these (and other) types of promotions for your website. To learn more about Reelpoint’s services, call us today at 800.345.2266 or email us at info@reelpoint.com.