Reddit #1 Confused On Where To Start With Online Marketing?
Sometimes it's worth taking a look on Reddit to see what the questions are surrounding e-commerce. The chances are that you have the same issues yourself, or it's a topic that you have some experience in and believe that you can add to the conversation.
Having a browse around as we often do, I came across this question.
"Confused On Where To Start With Online Marketing"
How many of you can relate to this topic? I bet that quite a few people who have opened an online shop have some empathy. What makes this interesting is that the individual who originally posted goes on to say that their bricks and mortar store does extremely well, but the conversion to online sales just seems to be dragging.
Been There, Read That.
How many articles have you read that list the things you need to be aware of, but don't go into specifics? Quite a few probably.
I think we all know by now that yes, you need to be aware of Facebook and social networks like Pinterest and Instagram.
You need to explore and master SEO or the art of optimising your product descriptions, tags and blog posts to make them super friendly for search engines. You absolutely must understand how Google AdWords works and so on and on again.
You absolutely must know how Google AdWords works and so on and on again.
The trap we often fall into is in thinking that once you understand what these things are and do, they will undoubtedly work for your store. In doing this, we quite often set ourselves up for a fall because this is not a case of one size fits all. Everyone will have a unique experience.
We are quite an impatient lot. Some of this is down to dwindling resources and finances and is realistic because we can only bang our heads against a wall for so long before we give up. Our seemingly great idea doesn't seem so grand because no-one is coming to your store and those that do don't buy anything. Half of the ambition comes from our initial burst of excitement and the expectation that we are going to make some serious cash and build a stable empire on the web. That dies down a bit in the face of a serious reality check.
We read inspirational articles about some entrepreneur who made a killing with gaming glasses or micro-scooters. The reality, as always, is that for every one you read about that succeeded, hundreds of others have fallen by the wayside. No-one wants to PR that.
The only constant seems to be that a good idea, persistence, commitment, the ability to adapt and a healthy dollop of luck come into play when a shop starts to 'kick off' and the business becomes validated by steady traffic and sales.
Back To Reddit.
Ging back to the original post on Reddit, I'm going to list the topics in the post and attempt to answer each one in a series of posts right here on this blog.
ehcanadian30 's bullet points:
- How many keywords and phrases is enough?
- Should I have different keywords for every product?
- My site doesn't show up with the "www" does that hurt how google crawls my site?
- Facebook ad thoughts?
- Paid Ads on google?
- Google webmaster tool tells me I have no links to my site, but with the backlinks I have a ton sites I interact with that should show up.
Let's explore each of these points together, because I'm pretty sure that they relate to us. Let's try and get to the bones of what is going on so that we can form our strategies in such a way that we can answer these questions and act upon them together.
Next post:
Reddit #2 How Many Keywords and Phrases is enough?