Personal Website - Erika Garnica

Personal Career/Resume Website - Erika Garnica

Five Unique Ways to Launch Your Store Products Online

It's a good thing this blog post isn't entitled "Five Ways to Launch your Store Product Online."

If it had just been “5 Ways to Launch your Store Products Online”, I might have been massively overwhelmed and panicked.   
After all, how could I possibly pick only 5 ways to launch your store products online? And how could I have limited myself to only 5 ways when there are dozens if not hundreds of ways to accomplish this task? 

But ah, what a fortuitous circumstance this is, to only discuss 5 “unique” ways to launch your store products online.  Now I can scour the inner recesses of my mind and come up with what I hope will be considered fairly unique ideas and suggestions for this endeavor.   

First, however, I'd like to clarify that “unique” doesn't necessarily mean “completely new and unheard-of”, so don't hate me if the ideas I propose are ones you've heard before.  

Instead, by “unique”, I mean to discuss ideas and methods that aren't usually the first or primary methods most people currently use to present or market their products online. They should be, though, and hopefully this blog post will help make that happen in some small way.

1. Social Networking, baby! Unless you've been off-planet for the past 2 years, you've undoubtedly heard of social networking.  You may not know it by that name, but if I give you clues like “Twitter” and “Facebook”, almost every living, breathing soul over the age of 10 better know what I'm talking about.  But as popular as social networking is these days, believe it or not, most people haven't yet discovered its worth as a business/marketing tool, or even as a retail business website itself! One of the most wonderful developments in social networking recently has been Facebook's decision to allow its users to create pages from which other users can actually purchase products! Who needs to pay webhosting fees anymore, when Facebook is giving you the keys to the kingdom?  But even without one of these fantastic new Facebook ecommerce pages, the marketing benefits of social networking are astronomical.  It's all about getting the word out, right? And nothing can do that quite so quickly and easily as tweets and Facebook posts.
2. Shopping Comparison Sites – Shopping comparison sites are a wonderful benefit for online buyers, giving them a way to compare products and pricing across various ecommerce sites.  But what many people don't realize is that shopping comparison sites are just as beneficial to sellers and merchants as they are to buyers.  After all, wouldn't it be great if your items were among the ones people saw when they were searching for products on comparison sites like Shopping.com, Pricegrabber, and Froogle (aka Google's Product site)?  Believe it or not, it's not that difficult or expensive to sign up as a merchant on a shopping comparison site and ensure that your products are indeed among those that appear to buyers.
3. Articles – Writing articles scares a lot of people.  After all, they say, I'm a businessman (or woman), not a writer.  Why should I have to write articles in order to sell my products? Well, you may not have to, actually.  I'm not saying that you can completely forego article writing in your marketing efforts – you definitely shouldn't do that – but it doesn't actually have to be YOU who's writing the articles.  Most article sites, such as Ezine Articles, offer services in which you can pay someone else to write the articles for you.   And believe it or not, it usually doesn't cost very much to do so. But whatever you do, don't discount the importance of articles and other original content in your online marketing efforts. Articles can give you incredible search engine exposure in a way nothing else can.
4. You Tube – Video is the future.  Have you heard that yet? If not, you will soon. Putting video onto a website, eBay listing, hub page, blog, etc., can give you great online exposure in a way nothing else can.   Even if you can just create a basic marketing video for your business and upload it to You Tube, that's a great start! We humans are very visual beings, for the most part, and watching a video (even a bad video) will draw our attention much more than just reading words will.   
5. Ebay Classifieds – eBay's Classified Ads are among the most underutilized, undervalued vehicles on the site, yet they're extremely beneficial and full of great potential, and can offer you some wonderful freedom and marketability normal eBay listings never can.  You see, most of the restrictive policies that govern regular eBay listings (both auctions and fixed-price listings) don't apply to Classified Ads.  This means you have a lot more freedom to “toot your own horn” (so to speak) and to spread awareness of your name, your website, your product offerings, etc., without worrying about eBay pulling your listings and accusing you of promoting an off-site sale. 

Obviously, this is only a partial list of useful ways to launch and market your products online, and utilizing these methods certainly doesn't excuse you from using some of the more mainstream, well-known alternatives, such as Pay-Per-Click advertising, Search Engine Optimization, and listing items for sale on eBay and other ecommerce sites.  But one of the best ways to give your business a leg up is to recognize when new marketing trends appear and to jump on them right away. 

SEO Copywriting Philosophy

The key to writing good online copy is to garner exposure, elicit interest, and improve sales conversion, and there are different SEO copywriting techniques that are targeted to help you attain each of these goals.

First and foremost, good keywords are essential.  Good keywords are perhaps the most important factor in garnering exposure for your website and attaining the first goal mentioned above.

Any good SEO copywriter knows that your writing needs to contain about 2-3 instances of your main keywords or keyword phrases per page (more than that could be counter-productive, as it could be deemed keyword stuffing by Google and the other major search engines).  

Naturally, the number of keyword instances must also be gauged based on the overall keyword density of the page itself, as proper keyword density must be maintained.

As far as determining which keywords to use, it’s crucial that they be relevant to the overall content and purpose of the website, as relevancy is one of the main factors search engines use when ranking websites.

Of course, this principle applies not only to the visible text on the website, but also to the Header Tags, Title Tags, Meta Tags, Alt Tags, and underlying HTML used to create the site.  

The second fundamental principle of good copywriting addresses the other main factor used by search engines to rank websites -- trust.

A good copywriter understands how indispensable establishing trust is, and that one of the best ways (if not THE best way) to achieve a sufficient level of trust is through link building.  A recent study found that 7 of the 10 most important ranking factors deal with links.

The more links to your site (backlinks) that appear on other websites, the more “votes” you have for your website, and the more exposure you’ll receive in search engine results.

The next important principle of good copywriting deals with attaining the second goal listed above, eliciting interest.  Achieving sufficient online exposure is just the beginning.  It’s imperative that you take advantage of that exposure by then eliciting enough interest that people actually take the time to click on your ads.

To do this, you have to consider your competition, as well as the pre-conceived expectations of your viewers.  In other words, in your Adwords ad copy, email blasts, and links your content should be fresh, creative and different.  They shouldn’t look just like your competitors’ content, but should stand out to anyone viewing a search results page with numerous related listings.  

There are many techniques you can employ to make your copy stand out and elicit enough interest, but some of the most effective are as follows:

• Humor
• Call to Action/Incentive
• Enthusiasm
• Sense of Urgency
• Use of Popular, Relevant Keywords
• Plenty of Links

Of course, the last technique depends entirely on the nature and location of your ad copy.  Obviously, you’re extremely limited in a Google PPC ad as compared to an email blast, blog post or article.  

The last important principles of good copywriting to be discussed here are clarity and brevity, which often go hand-in-hand towards turning mere interest into action, whether that action involves obtaining a sale, a lead, or even just an inquiry for further information.

Once someone has found your website and has shown interest by going to it, your main focus needs to be on “closing the deal”.  To do this, just as important as what you say is how and where you say it.  

Keep things simple, clear and easy to understand and follow.   Always emphasize current promotions, deadlines, and/or limited availability.  It’s imperative as well that there be at least one call to action/incentive clearly visible on the page.  

Generally, the most important information you want to convey needs to be the most visible, which entails one or more of the following:

• Above the fold
• Contained within links and/or buttons
• Within header, header tag and/or title tag
• In large prominent font
• Set apart from other text

Clearly, all of this information is by no means comprehensive, but it can provide copywriters with a strong foundation upon which they can build strong, effective online copy.