How To Sell Your Products Online: Branding and Marketing Sales Tools
Learn How To Sell Your Stuff Online!
You have products that people want. You have a great product and you are selling it at a fair market price. One problem: Your stuff isn't selling! No matter what you try, sales just wont increase.
It's probably not the product. It's your Marketing Campaign. There are many little things that can determine success in your business. If you are using a website online to sell your goods (you should be!) then there are a lot of little things that make a difference.
In this article we will cover a variety of ways that you can increase your sales and revenue. No matter what your product is, the formula for success is the same; get people to see and purchase your product! And then get them to spread the word...
Learn How To Sell Your Products Online
Learn More About Selling Your Products Online
Creating a Brand for Your Business and Products
When I say the word "Brand" what first pops into your head? I tend to think of companies such as WalMart, GAP, Walgreen's and a variety of other stores and brands. What is their secret? They have their household brand that competes with other brands. When you go into these stores you can expect to find products that only they offer; this is their brand. Once a brand's reputation is good, customers will share their experiences with friends and neighbors and will become your best marketing tool; word of mouth from an actual customer. If the experience is bad, they will definitely convince their friends not to shop at a particular place or why they shouldn't buy a specific product.
Your brand should have a clearly stated promise. A Brand Promise. Make sure that it is realistic and sincere because your reputation is at stake. Don't promise things you can't fulfill. A successful brand will reflect everything about your company and the products you sell. Quality of product, sales interactions, experiences in dealing with your employees and a range of other things will fall into what becomes your brand. True branding success means you have a Loyal Customer Base that will continue to visit your site, buy your products, and share their interactions with others.
Creating a Brand Is Important To Your Business: It's How People Recognize You and Your Professional Reputation
Creating a Brand is Simple and Complex
Creating a brand for your business is both simple and complex. It is simple because if you pay attention to your products, business, employees and customers, maintaining your brand is easy. It is complex because there are many variables that come together to make up your brand.
Some things to consider when understanding what your brand is all about:
- How was your customer's overall experience?
- Did you Survey them? Offering a brief survey to your customers is a great way to get feedback on what works and what needs improvement. It also shows the customer that you value their opinions and are willing to make some changes where need be.
- Ease of Access: How easy is it to find your product on your website? On the Internet?
- How was the customer's experience with your employees? Where they polite and knowledgeable about your products and services? Where they honest? Too pushy?
- Marketing and Branding are 2 different aspects of business that are often confused. Marketing is the Sales aspect of your business and how you advertise your products. Branding is everything accumulated about the reputation of your business, it's employees, policies and products. It's a snapshot of your reputation as a business.
- With that said, your brand is not just a company logo, a mascot or catchy sales pitch. Those are merely aspects of your visual appearance as a company or product. Remember, Branding is a summary of sorts that sets you apart from your competition.
- All Employees and Company Policies must be on the same page every time to create an effective brand. If employees do not use the same approach while explaining your products and services, there will be misconceptions about your company. Each person should communicate the same message about your business or products being sold. It is wise to train and evaluate employees on a regular basis to maintain proper compliance throughout.
Make Money Selling Your Products Online
Back Up Your Brand: Have A Satisfaction Guarantee
Every successful brand has some form of Guarantee or Promise. This is the spine of your company. Keeping your word is important if you want to create a respected brand. News travels fast. Bad news travels faster. Having a guarantee on your products and services insures the customer that they will get what they are paying for and if there is an issue with quality, your company will resolve the issue. Here are some things to consider about your brand:
- What do you Guarantee?
- How well are you known in your industry?
- Do you have a good reputation both online and locally?
- What makes you stand out from your competitors?
- How will you market and advertise your brand?
- You see your brand differently from outsiders. Find out what they think about your brand and what type of improvements or enhancements you can make to attract more business and sales.
Get Your Brand Out There on the Market
Starting Over: Start Your New Business On a Clean Slate
If you have tried and failed at other businesses there are two ways to look at it: You either messed up or the timing just wasn't right. That's OK because you are starting all over again from scratch. You get to learn from your mistakes.
One problem: You are still connected to your past reputation. Your failed endeavors are public and it will hurt your reputation as a new business. What can you do to clean up your name? Here are some tips for clearing your name:
- Delete all outdated or inappropriate blogs, videos, pictures etc. Anything with poor quality should not be connected to you. If you use Google's Webmaster Tools you can have old links removed from the web.
- Keep up With Comments. When your customer leaves a comment you should read it and thank them for participating and leaving feedback. Your customer is your best asset. Pay attention to them.
- Engage in conversation with your clients and customers. Listen and speak with them. Tell them why your product is important to them and how it can improve their lives.
- Monitor and Update your content regularly. Continue to add content as you develop more experiences. New Content gets noticed in search engines. Update your content often.
- Share your products on Social Media Networks and find a Targeted Audience. Those are the people that are searching and looking for your products, solutions and services.
Do You Have a Product To Sell? Try Selling Your Stuff Online!
Online Marketing and Sales Strategies: SEO, PPC, CPM and CPC...What Is That All About?
What are all those acronyms? What the heck do they stand for and what do they mean? Those acronyms are abbreviations for how earnings are calculated on a website.There are many ways to make money online, here are a few of the best strategies you can employ to make money selling products online:
- You can sell your own products through a website or an Online Auction like eBay or QuiBids. Another great site that caters to home made products is Etsy. You will have to figure out shipping costs and fees for selling and include in the price of the item listed.
- You can create web pages that are Search Engine Optimized (SEO) that promote a product or service. You can make money by allowing Ads (Advertisements) on your pages if you are an Earnings Affiliate with advertisers such as Google AdSense, Amazon, eBay, and many others. You will get paid per click, meaning you get a payment when someone clicks on an ad on your website.
- You can become an Advertiser yourself. If you sign up for Google AdWords you can pay for Advertisements that will be placed on other people's content when people use search engines to find information or products and services related to the products you are selling. Google AdWords allows you to create custom Ads and you can set a budget on how much you are willing to spend daily to promote your Ads.
Smart marketers will use a variety of different methods to draw traffic to their pages and products. You can create several different pages that reflect back to each other. Think in terms of a spider building a web. There is an organizational aspect where the entire web is spread out. The product or service can be considered to be the center of the web. When a fly comes along, no matter where they enter the web, they will be connected to the center. They will find your product.
What Do All Those Acronyms Mean?
Acronym
| Principle
| Explanation
|
---|---|---|
SEO
| Search Engine Optimization
| If a website is Search Engine Optimized it means that it is likely to be found when people search for the information on your website.
|
PPC
| Pay Per Click
| Refers to the amount of money earned from a click on an ad on your website.
|
SEM
| Search Engine Marketing
| A compilation of variables related to marketing a website online; a summary of the elements to a successful advertising campaign.
|
CPM
| Clicks Per Mille
| Average cost of an ad per 1,000 site views
|
CPC
| Cost Per Click
| The average cost to an advertiser per click on an ad.
|
Google Keyword Tool Steps (Via HubPages Learning Center)
Do You Hold the Keys to Your Future?
What Are Keywords? How Important Is It To Research Keywords? How Do You Research Keywords for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
What are Keywords? Keywords are the words that will be used by search engines to find, allocate, and index your website. Keywords should appear throughout your web page and most importantly, in your Title. Before you choose a title you should research what keywords are commonly searched, how much competition there is for particular keywords, and of course, what the keywords are worth in terms of advertising revenue.
The best tool on the market for Keyword Research (which also happens to be free) is the Google Keyword Tool. It isn't that difficult to use once you understand the basics. It will show up-to-date statistics on what a keyword is worth and how many searches there are per month. It will also show you the competition on specific keywords. Here are some things to consider when choosing keywords for your title and article:
- You want to try to use exact search keywords in your title. That is, exactly what people are typing when they search for something on a search engine.
- People are more likely to click on a link if the words are exactly what they typed into the search query.
- Using "Long Tail Search" is a great way to get traffic from specific searches. For example: If you are trying to convey something definitively you will want to use Long Tail descriptions: "How To Make Fat Free Donuts At Home" is long tail becouse it represents certain distinctions of your article:
- How To Make
- Fat Free
- Donuts
- At Home
Do you see how each phrase is something that can be searched separately? By bringing it all together and creating a "Long Tail" title, you will be able to cash in on all of the keywords coming together for a superior article or website. You have just found your Targeted Audience.
Picture a word that you want to use as a Keyword and imagine that word is a key to a door. The more Keys (keywords) you have the more doors you can open. But there's a catch...you can not stuff keywords into titles and articles. If you do, the search engines will identify you as Spam.
So what can you do? You can do research to find out what words and phrases have value in relation to potential earnings from your content. When you research your important statistics before you write you will save time and energy. Researching gives you insight to what will make you money and how you can set up a successful advertising campaign.
Learn Why and How To Share Your Blog Articles on Social Media Sites
- How To Share Published Hub Articles In My Social Networks With Facebook On Twitter Pinterest Marketi
Are you new to HubPages? Maybe you have been around for a while and want to learn how to generate more traffic to your Hubs. There are several ways to get more traffic and there are even more articles trying to teach you how to get more traffic.
The Importance of Using Social Media Networks To Gain More Traffic and Sales: Facebook, Twitter and Google+
Why should you get a Facebook Account? Why join Twitter? Great questions; easy answer! If you don't know it already, our society is getting closer because of the easy use of Social Media Networks. Social Media allows you to share content with the push of a button. You can add Photos, Text, Videos, Links and just about anything.
Remember when we mentioned a "Targeted Audience"? If you can build bridges and create associations with people that share your interests on social sharing sites then you have found another Targeted Audience. Here are some other Social Networks that can Increase Backlinks and Traffic:
- Pinterest: Share you photos from your published articles and you can include a link to your original source.
- Facebook: It speaks for itself... It's your personal link to everyone you know. It also can be a useful tool for a company or entity trying to sell products or services to a Targeted Audience. There are over 500 million registered users! That's a huge audience!
- Blogger: Maintain a blog that you update regularly and can share your products and websites. Remember the Spider Web? Blogs are a perfect platform for creating backlinks to your Auction Listings, Articles, Websites and Products.
- Twitter: Twitter is simple and fast. The site automatically shortens your link and you can write a brief description about what your page is about. You can also use hashtags (#hashtag) to relevant topics. This will allow people who are looking for specific information. For example, if you wrote an article about gardening, you can use the hashtag (#gardening) and your link will be categorized under that topic.
- Google+: A great and fairly new edition to Google's portfolio. Google Plus is similar to Facebook but a lot different. There are less ads and the site is more organized. You can video chat live, text chat and do so much more. You can create a professional profile and share photos and videos as well as links to your sites.
- For more suggestions check out the link above to the right.
Hard Work Pays Off
The bottom line for any success with marketing and selling your products online is hard work. You need to be patient and have a desire to learn and the ability to change. You will work many hours researching and developing your content. You will spend countless hours creating your brand and marketing it to potential customers. That is why most businesses fail in their first year; people just give up or they don't have a business plan and model.
For those who don't quit and stick around for the long hall, they will eventually reap the benefits of their hard work. All that hard work will create your brand and once your brand has a good reputation you will experience growth and wealth over time. Hang in there! Never give up on your dreams. Success is a journey, not a destination.
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© 2012 JS Matthew