Best and most effective advertising and Marketing methods and practices
Digital Marketing Agency in Toronto
1. Set a goal, Know what you want and a Budget for your project needs.
This is the hardest part of a business. Entering online business has its own risks, ups and downs and requires tons of energy, study, analyzing, patience and budget.
For example if you really want to be competitive and be among top thousand companies that are selling the same product you are offering, investing in ads could start anywhere from bottom $4,000 a month up to $10,000 a month.
If you are having the thoughts of starting an online business, know that sometimes you need to invest more into the advertising, marketing and branding than the physical product.
2. Build Your Influence
What is the niche of your product or service.
Why would anyone need your products.
What was the need do to create such a product.
Why is your product better than your competitor`s.
What drives people more towards your product than your competitor’s product.
These are the first steps of even starting to sell a product online. The main difference between a physical store and an online business is that you could be seen in the street while people drive or walk around, but you would not get noticed much in online world while big companies are pushing smaller companies or start ups down.
Do your due diligence first before thinking about building an online business.
Building your influence means telling everyone around you that you and your product or service exists; And using your product or service could benefit them either financially, time saving, life saving or comforting.
3. Blogging all the time
Blogging and writing your daily work, reviews, work in progress, new product publishing and expanding the business.
Let me break it down for you in sections. Have a blog on your website, start writing something about your product 2-3 times a week.
This could be a story you heard from a customer, your personal experience, your imagination, reviews on Google, reviews on your competitors website ( a bit of tweaking in it won’t hurt no one).
Some research and conclusion in the market that could include Google Analytics, Customer Saving sheets that could be done by Excel and tons of materials that could be pulled off reddit or other websites.
4. Keyword Research and Implementation
Keywords are the most important part of a SEO plan ( Search Engine Optimization). What is SEO? SEO is the terminology in your website that makes sense for search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.
In other words, a search engine, looks into your website, crawls into pages, finds words that makes sense to it, and it starts understanding what your business is about.
Most of the marketing companies think repetitive words means SEO, but they are wrong, they get you and your website penalized because of misusage of keywords.
A website that is penalized, would not get the proper performance even while running on Google Ads or adwords.
Keywords should be used in appropriate places, relevant to sentence, different in structure and embedded deeply in website and up front in home page.
You could use your keywords in Image Alt texts, Meta fields, Detail pages, H1 to H6s ( more important ones in H1 and less important ones in H6), about us, reviews and your blogs.
5. Affiliate Marketing
Always look for other ways of finding business for your product. Think out of the box.
Let me give you a real example of what I experienced 8 years ago.
I was working in 2 different businesses. One was a Quartz manufacturing company and second one was a furniture manufacturing store. I was looking to expand the furniture store business into the local market, so I went to my other worksite and asked if they could cut and fabricate Quartz for a kitchen dining table?
The answer was yes, so I went back to the furniture business I was working at, and told them add one more product to your listings, Quartz Dining tables. For few years it became a trend in Toronto to use Quartz stones on dining tables.
Never underestimate yourself, your business and always think of expanding and outreaching in a way that no one has thought about.
If you are a successful business, always look into any local business that could help your business and you could help their business. When local businesses get connected, they create an alliance that could work for both ends to expand and reach out to new and more clients.
Get on podcasts, host a podcast, get involved with customers, get professionals into your circle, create an audience, ask your local businesses to advertise you, advertise them in your website too.
Backlinks and referral links work fantastic in getting your website more known to the community you are trying to service.
Do not use fake backlinks, you would get penalized and you could get buried below billions of websites because of it.
6.Listen, Learn, Survey and Research
Listen to your customers and their needs, be on time, ship on time, responsive, responsible, always consider giving away free perks, send personalized emails once in a while.
These could help you understand your client needs and would help you establish a family friendly business.
For example there is always big stores like Walmart, Freshco, Sears, Home Depot, Walmart, Macy’s and other stores around you, but there is one specific tiny store that sells something that all these stores above sell it too.
The only reason you are going back to that business is the relation you have created and the recognition you have gained in that store that you would never get that in a big franchise.
Always see you business as a small store that customers rather choose you over a big store, serve them well and always keep in mind that they choose you for few reasons, but you should keep them for hundreds of reasons.
Research your competitors. They either have been in the business longer than you, or they are offering something different in their business that you are not.
Check and see what it is that you are missing. Is it quality of your product? Presentation? Location? Advertising type? Channels that they are offering products on? Budget?
These items could help you understand their business, but more importantly lets you know what is missing in the equation.
7. Test Your Landing Pages
Test your landing pages before you advertise. Always make sure everything is functional in your Google Ads, Google Merchants, Google My Business, Amazon Brand Registry, Ebay Product Registry and all the platforms.
Let’s say you are advertising a product on your website without checking Your Google Ads, Google Merchants, Google Analytics and Metrics.
What could happen is that for any new product, it takes 3-7 business days for Google to understand the product, understand and compare the PPC( Price Per Click) with your competitors and placing it in the right category. For the first 2 days the ad will show 1-50 Impressions.
Most likely 3rd day it will charge you anywhere between $3-$4 per click, which is too much for any type of campaign, and after 7 business days is gone and you are left with a hefty bill of $400-$500, Google Merchants will tell you the product is not approved( even though they charged you for the advertisement and it was approved that it was advertised).
Later you go into your Google Merchants account and see the image is either too small or low quality. Just because it was never checked you lost 7 business days, $500, another week to get it approved again into Google Merchants and Google Ads, another 7 business days of testing and placement time for Google ads, another $500 for the newly approved listing and so on.
Always prepare everything first, then execute and advertise it.
10. Stand for your company ethics and your product and services
Always believe in your products, your services and your ethics. If you don’t believe your product is the best, stop your business right away.
It will ruin your business, your reputation and your mindset. If a company owner does not believe in their story, product, knowledge of the product, solution for that specified community, they would never be able to convince a client or customer to purchase.
Never argue with your client online or on phone, always have an alternative for a product replacement and return, try to be nice while standing by your product.
11. Social Media
Register in different platforms everyday. Always look for a new platform to be a part of it. Nowadays trends change daily. Websites are developing but some start ups are catching up too.
If you do have a physical product, make sure to register and upload your product details in that platform.
I always suggest a LinkedIn account for start. LinkedIn introduces you more to businesses. Second register your brand on Amazon if you are a brand owner. If you are a reseller, make sure you have all the rights to sell it on Amazon platform ( This could take 6-8 weeks).
Then register it on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Ebay, Etsy and other platforms.
Increase reviews by giving customized coupons for customers such as 10% off, buy one second one 50% off or free shipping. Reviews are so important in an online business. Get gadgets to get reviews from various sources from customers.
Run campaigns that offers free products to top 20 clients in order to gather reviews.
Conclusion
There are a lot of factors that could change your business, sales and reputations.
We will try to discuss more into these aspects weekly and see how else you could grow your business.
Author, Amir Afshar CEO of MarketingMyProduct.com
Visit us at www.MarketingMyProduct.com
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Also read: Product Marketing changes in 2022