Advertising a Storefront
If you’re going to be marketing a storefront or a website with numerous products, you have to assess the “world that you’re marketing in”. I’ll explain.
When you market one thing at a time, your competitors will be “smaller”, individuals like you, independent reps, or small companies most of the time. When you market AS “An Internet Mall with Numerous Products” your competitors are giants in the industry: Walmarts, BestBuy, Amazon.com, etc. etc. Billion dollar companies with tens of thousands of products, advertising budgets in the millions, and bells and whistles all over their websites that literally make your head spin. Do you really want to market yourself as a company that is every bit as good as them and can compete with them on all levels? If so, you better be prepared to fork out millions or to have your little storefront get “sized up” as being completely inferior, lacking in numerous ways, and inadequate in comparison to the big guys. This is not to scare or depress you, this is to help make you successful by competing in a different way.
I’ve had success with my storefront by marketing one-product-at-a-time and by working on one-customer-at-a-time. There are various books at the bookstore that will tell you the same thing. You have to find products at your storefront that are unique in some way or have a unique selling point (the price, the overall quality, can't find it anywhere else, etc.). Then you can single out the individual pages that promote them and market those individual products specifically. For example, if your storefront sells items that are “As Seen on TV”, you can create search engine listings for those products alone, describing their best points, and you can target the name or description of the product as keywords to list under. This is an example of one way to get customers to your storefront with a specific product they have in mind, and this will also introduce your storefront to them, with the chance that they’ll buy other products.
Another option for avoiding direct competition with the Walmarts of the world, is to specialize in a particular line of products. For example, if you want to specialize in Internet-based, communications, or technology products, Cognigen is an example of a specialized high-tech storefront with an incredible amount of power. Specializing levels the playing field some because customers feel a sense of security by buying from a storefront that is specialized in a particular area.
If you’re convinced that you have good advertising ideas for how to market your storefront AS “A Big Mall with Numerous Products”, then more power to you! I’m not saying “not to” if this is what you want to do. I’m just trying to prepare you for the jungle that is Internet Retailing. Do you remember the last time you went to Walmarts or BestBuy and your tires ran over that beetle in the parking lot? Probably not! Well, that bug could be your storefront!
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