Category Archives: eMarketing

What Is A Good Name For A Bakery-Style Bath And Body Business?

eMarketing, Names + Taglines, Starting Out

It will be an online bath and body (hope to open a store later). Handmade, natural soap, scrubs, creams, bath bombs, etc. High end. Theme is bakery style healthy confections for the body. Any ideas?

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Jay’s Answer: Since you’re looking for an online business, I scoped out some available domain names for you. Hopefully something will inspire:

  • CookiesNCremes.com
  • AhABath.com
  • TimeForMyself.com
  • BatheWithLove.com
  • 1LovingHand.com
  • ALovingHandful.com
  • ScrubARub.com
  • BeautyPatisserie.com
  • BeautePatisserie.com (Beaut?© is French for beauty)

Is My T-Shirt Blog Effective?

eMarketing

We have just started a blog (www.coupleshop.blogspot.com) selling couple tee and basically i need your help to advise on the following:

  1. Feedback on whether the blog is attractive? If not what are the areas that we can improve in?
  2. How can we get more visitors to our blog?
  3. We are also looking for distributors around the world but we do not know how to go about it. Is there any website that we can post an ads?
  4. Are our products attractive? Is it price reasonable?

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Jay’s Answer:

  1. Your blog needs some work. I’d suggest that instead of showing the packaging and the t-shirts flat on a white background, show them being warn by an attractive couple that are having fun. Since the site is for selling, make it obvious. A strong banner, clear pricing (don’t ask people to email you an order – create an online order form, or as as a minimum, use Paypal to handle the order processing for you), clear return policy, etc. I wouldn’t expect a business to have a url for a blogspot. Invest $50-$60/year to get a domain name + hosting for your business. Also, put the images on your own site, don’t use photobucket to display them.
  2. You have some statistics (StatCounter), but I’d use an analytics program to give you more information, not just counts. Where did visitors come from? What were they searching on? To get better ranking organically, you’ll need links to your site from other high-ranking sites. List your site with various directory sites. Also, consider posting responses to couple-related blogs adding real value, but also a link to your site.
  3. Here’s one online resource for distributors: Tradekey. Also, consider putting your images on self-publishing sites such as CafePress. Let them handle everything – you don’t have to even print the shirts!
  4. As for price, I don’t have a clue what it costs in local $ (I’m in the United States), so I can’t comment.

What Is A Good Domain Name For A Global Warming NGO?

Clubs + Associations, eMarketing

The requirement is for a new NGO launching in concern with GLOBAL WARMING so need a few names and theme/ tag to go along with it. We had hell of options but either these names already exist or the website is blocked. e.g. We thought of H.E.A.T as in Hotter Earth And Troposhere – this one’s already taken.

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Jay’s Answer: Here are some available domain names:

  • HotTimesAhead.org
  • MyHotPlanet.org
  • FutureHeat.org

As far as a tagline: you need to define who specifically you’re trying to target, and how your NGO will be different from all other organizations to date. These pieces define your unique offering and is the “meat” of your tagline.

How Can I Promote My Social Website?

eMarketing

I wanted to solicit your opinion on how to promote a site that I recently launched: www.goosca.com. This site is a social networking platform that allows its users to purchase real gifts for themselves or for other users (without knowing the recipients addresses in the latter case). Our company or affiliated vendors will do the delivery. Users who do not object to receiving gifts from others provide their addresses at the account registration time. These addresses will be kept confidential and will be used only for gifts delivery purpose. In your opinion, what would be the best way to promote the site and its ideas?

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Jay’s Answer: As you know, creating a new social networking platform isn’t hard – attracting people to it is. There are a huge number of sites competing for people (for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites)

It appears that the sole purpose of the site is ultimately ecommerce (and the way you generate revenue) – sending/receiving gifts to people whose address you don’t know. Your privacy policy doesn’t adequately describe the safeguards you place for ordering and storage of confidential user information. Also, sizing / color choices will be hard for people. Ideally, you want to say, send my new friend this thing, and have the friend choose the color/size to make sure the gift will be received in the spirit it was sent.

To build an online community, you first need critical mass – enough people online (of your target demographic) to attract more people of the same demographic via word-of-mouth. The first round can be your friends, people you know in a club, etc. You want a new visitor to visit and see lots of “action” online.

I’d strongly suggest teaming up with an existing networking site that already has active membership, and attempt to integrate your Goosca patent into their environment.

For a new business, it’s much easier to improve an existing offering than trying to create a new one from scratch.

How Can We Expand Our Greek Business?

eMarketing, Publicity

We have been in business for a few years and is looking for some new ways to expand our business. We do not have a store front and have done most of our business through word of mouth and show style events. However, we feel a need to grow into the area of online sells. What is the best way to begin doing business online?

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Jay’s Answer: Create a website. Take pictures (both low and high-resolution) of the things you want to sell and create great descriptions of them. Allow people to order things and ship them (charging appropriately based on distance, customs, etc.). Use the keywords in your site that people are searching for. Have other businesses (including online directories) link to your new site.

Does Your Website Jingle?

Creative Business Ideas, eMarketing, Publicity

Jingle Generator Logo

Because people are being saturated with marketing messages, your message needs to be on-target but also worth remembering.

To keep your website’s content memorable, incorporate more than text to your site: photos, videos, audio, surveys, widgets, etc. The goal is the different components should “fit” into a larger picture for your marketing strategy’s success.

For example, the free Jingle Generator is an attempt to use interactive media to build extra interest in the company’s offerings. The core idea is to attract small business owners to create a canned jingle (for a radio spot). The experience is fun. Here’s a jingle it generated for Many Good Ideas:

The marketing campaign attracts the target market (small business), but it doesn’t connect the jingle (the piece) with how the company can help improve your business (the big strategy picture).

You don’t just want website traffic. You want traffic that wants to pay for your products or services.

Do You See What Everyone Else Sees On Your Website?

Creative Business Ideas, eMarketing

Your website is up and running. It looks great, and you get an email from a website visitor: “I wanted to let you know that your graphics on your site look strange…you might check it out.” How is it possible that your site looks fine to you but wrong to someone else?

You would think that each web browser program (Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) take the same web page information and display it identically. Sadly, you’d be mistaken. Web pages are generally written in (a combination of) HTML, PHP, Flash, or CSS. These are different programming languages that web site designers can use to create a site. While there are standards for how these languages display information, in some cases, the interpretation is open-ended. And there’s the problem.

As a minimum, when you create (or have one created) make sure that the site looks “correct” in the major web browsers. But since each of the web browsers have multiple versions and can run on multiple operating systems, it’s non-trivial to test everything.

Browsershots logo

Browsershots is a free service that takes your web page code and displays it in a wide variety of web browsers in a simple format. Here’s a snippet from using my home page as an example:

Browsershots for Many Good Ideas Home Page

You can click on each of the screen snapshots (and save them to your computer) to see them in detail. However, at a glance you can tell what sites look “off”.

If you have unlimited resources, then make sure your site displays correctly in all the browsers. However, if you have to pick-and-choose, focus on those browsers that are used by the majority of users. These statistics can be found on Wikipedia.

Also, don’t forget to look at your site through the eyes of a search engine “spider”. You want to make sure that in addition to people being able to use your website, that the site is examined by search engines correctly. One such tool is Search Engine Spider Simulator.

How Can I Reduce My Pay Per Click Cost For My Handbag Business?

eMarketing

Hi, I currently sell handbags (mainly) on my site [www.prooz.com] and current conversions seem to be in the 1/300 range. I was looking into certain pay per click services out there, however the average cost per click of most of these services are between 0.35 and 0.40 cents per click. Now if I take 0.35 * 300 it is equal to a cost of $105 per sale. Even with a site that converts at the usual 1 in 100, the cost would still be $35 per sale. Given that most of the handbags are only $60, how on earth can anyone call this a viable method of advertising. It just seems impossible.

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Jay’s Answer: Start by first improving your conversion rate.

For your organic searches: make sure that you’ve got your site well keyword optimized. For example, on your site have the alternate spelling of “jewelry” (not just jewellery). You’ve done good work getting backlinks.

You can get cheaper links if you do your PPC campaign targeting a country other than the U.S. For example, I noticed that your site has free shipping to U.K. It would be a natural to start your campaign for them, and see what clicks cost. It’ll save you money and build your experience.

How Should I Advertise My Website/Logo Design Business?

eMarketing, Services

I have a website and logo design company, and I am interested in targeting small business owners who do not have website, and offer them one at a nominal price.

What do you think the best e-mail campaign would be?
Should I rent a list? who to go to? any specific list?

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Jay’s Answer: It’s tricky, because if they have an email address, they might already have a website. I’d target the emails that are @yahoo.com, @msn.com, @gmail.com, @comcast.net, etc. Most of the rest will probably be a domain name that they own, which means they might have a website (you could manually check each one).

Your second problem is that if they have an email, but don’t have a website, there may well be a very good reason they don’t, and you’re unlikely to make them reconsider (especially via email).

I’d instead suggest focusing regionally. Find businesses that are just starting up, and see if they have a website/logo. Networking face-to-face with the right people is likely to produce better results than a email blast.

Also, don’t forget to place an ad on Craigslist – it’s the logical place for small businesses to look for something inexpensive.

How Can I Market Pro-Athlete Quality Workouts Online?

eMarketing, Starting Out

I’m creating new service with a noted industry expert that exists entirely online. The expert is a coach to professional athletes, and has coached numerous noted NFL, NHL, MLB, athletes among others. We are making his workouts available online for a monthly subscription, along with video representation of drills, technique etc. and a forum for members to ask questions.

This guy has a prestigious, elite, almost elusive air around him. People know his workouts are special, and if they are lucky, they get to use them. All the people that come to him are top level athletes or coaches. Currently, he doesn’t charge anything to these athletes for these workouts; it’s really like an elusive club where it’s free to join if you are accepted, but it’s hard to be accepted. That is going to change.

We are going to make these workouts available to a larger audience, from professionals to high schools, and start charging for them. However I don’t want to lose that prestigious quality that they already have. There’s a lot of “Steve’s Super Speed System” out on the internet right now, and I need to safely distance myself from them.

I don’t want the people who have climbed 10,000 ft to meditate with a Zen master to open the paper the next morning and see “Krazy Karl’s Zen Den,” if you get my drift. But on the other hand, most of these high school kids aren’t going to know this coach by name, so I need to sell to them.

My questions are:
1. Nobody with this track record has ever offered a service like this before, so people are going to assume this product is something else. (Steve’s Super Speed System for example). With a brand new product, how do I accurately convey what I’m selling without interfering with people’s preconceptions?

2. How do I keep a prestigious air around the product while making it available to everyone? (I know everyone says focus your market, but for this we really need to hit both markets)

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Jay’s Answer: Make the bar higher to join than simply paying money. Make prospects write an essay telling you why they want/need this workout, how they plan to make use of it, and how will they notice it works. If they don’t write a compelling essay – return their initial deposit.

Adding an essay will self-limit to only people who are serious enough to want it – and pay for it. It will also be a rich source of what people are looking for, so you can better target them with material.

The website should have an sample of what they’d be getting, so people who don’t know the expert, or trust the testimonials can see for themselves.