Online Opportunities

Now we move on to consider online opportunities for promotion of your product or company.

ONLINE OPPORTUNITIES

e-commerce website

You will need to set up a site that allows clients to purchase your product online to take full advantage of all the online opportunities that are available now.

Posts on social media

This can sometimes be a very targeted and cost-effective way of advertising your product. It feels more contemporary and calls for a much less formal approach. You can publicise events and promotions, keeping your clients in the loop with events around your product, rather than a hard sell.

Promote new products and services by announcing and sharing on social media. If you’re using the tactics we are discussing, share details of them on social media. If you find that customers are posting about you on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, share those photos and posts with your own followers

Run a competition on social media

Social media competitions are a fun, easy way of connecting with customers and are known to be a great way of attracting more social media fans

Internet marketing

Online advertising is widely used on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, where ads are delivered by an ad server. There are many types of online ads on websites including banner ads, keyword advertising, contextual ads on search engine results pages, blogs, cross-platform ads and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam.

A problem with online advertising now is that many online users actively avoid advertising, by using ad-blockers in their browser, and spam filters, to eliminate ads.

Opportunities for paid online advertising:

Pop-up ads are windows that literally “pop up” and display an ad as a user views a website. Many people regard these as a nuisance so they may not be very effective

Banner ads are similar to ads in a magazine, and sit next to content on the page. They are often rendered ineffective by ad-blocking software.

Search engine ads appear at the top (or along the sides) of search engine results when a potential customer searches for key words related to your product. Some search engines offer results-based payment schemes – that is, you only pay if people click on your ads – making this option a smarter bet than other online forms of paid advertisement.

Add to gift guides

Many people look to gift guides for inspiration when they are searching for gifts for friends and family for birthdays, anniversaries and so on.

There are gift guides that cover every occasion you can think of. The user goes on to search engines and keys in phrases like “gifts for mothers “or “personalised gifts”

Research which ones rank high in the search engines and contact them to see if you can list your product on them.You may be able to drive the traffic directly to your site, or list distributors and retailers.