Advertising includes all the means of communication for getting your product or service’s marketing message across to potential customers in your target market in order to attract attention, recognition, legitimacy and sales.
There are many types of advertisements. The most obvious are messages you see in print in newspapers and magazines. You also see ads on TV or on computer monitors, or hear them on the radio or streaming web broadcast. You pass by billboards, murals, banners, flags, and people twirling signs along the roadway. You may be reading articles written with subtle but intentional slants about a particular brand.
You may hear a jingle, perhaps staying in your mind as an ear-worm. Or read a slogan, perhaps repeating to yourself because it has some rhythm or metaphor that resonates with you.
Ads may involve some recognition of sponsorship for an event or program. They may be found on signs posted in stores, on lawns, on telephone poles, just about everywhere.
You might come across a social media post or pop-up or review or comment. Or several. Maybe hundreds.
You may have seen product placements in TV programs, movies or on YouTube.
The average person is exposed to over 5,000 advertisements every single day.
Ads communicate.
They influence and persuade.
They remind, reassure, explain, guide.
They focus on customer needs, benefits, problems solved or to be solved.
They may be generally targeted, narrowly targeted, or specially targeted at one individual.
Someone has to have paid for them in some say.
There is no-one-size-fits-all advertisement. In fact, you will probably be using several different kinds of advertising channels to get your message across. Go slow, however. Be deliberate.
Advertising can be expensive. So, similar to all the other business and promotion activities you do, you always want to build in an evaluative component. Given the cost of a particular ad, are you getting a sufficient return on investment? What is the unit cost of an ad — that is, what is the cost per person reached? Per person who responds to the ad? Per person, in response to the ad, actually purchases something?
If you have in any way begun to establish your business as a brand, all advertising becomes much easier and more effective.
Conversion Tunnel
In any of your campaigns, you most likely will want to plan for a series of ads. Collectively, the ads in the series build upon one another. They serve to gradually tighten up the message and narrow the target audience.
The first in the series will be very general, and the last in the series will be a very specific call to action.
Basically, you can’t hit your customer over the head with too much information, and you cannot expect your customer to respond to your ad the first time they see it. Hence, you develop a strategic series.
· Awareness: Your first ad: Gain customer awareness of you and your product.
· Interest: Second ad: Guide the customer into recognizing how you and your product meets one of their major needs.
· Desire: Third ad: Entice the customer to want to buy your product.
· Action: Fourth ad: Turn your potential customer into an actual customer.
Writing Promotional Copy
Your promotional copy should be simple, obvious and direct. It should focus on the benefits to the customer, not the features of your product or service per se. It should validate how your customer thinks about their needs, desires, problems, and potential solutions. Don’t give the customer a laundry list of things. Be sure to anticipate the customer’s level of awareness.
Jewelry purchase needs include,
· Fill out a wardrobe
· Match a dress
· Something for a special occasion
· Feel good about themselves
· Make a power statement
· Compete with someone
· Signal that you are a bona fide member of a group or culture
· A memento
· A reward for a job well done
· Make yourself more attractive
· Connect with a mate
· Wants an heirloom
· Remember a special event, moment, date, occasion
Visualize, as you are creating your promotional copy, that you are talking to a specific customer. Tell them what they need the most, and how you are the right person, business, event to fulfill that need. In your ad, validate their thinking / feelings / understandings / desires.
Next, reinforce what you just wrote. There is an important need. Yes, the customer is thinking about this need. Yes, the possible solution is an idea shared by both you and the customer. Yes, you are there to meet this need when, where, and how the customer needs you to meet this need. Again, you want highlights, not an exhaustive listing.
Print vs. Online Advertising
Online Advertising Channels
SEO Optimization
Content Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Affiliate Marketing
Radio and Web Streaming
Influencer Marketing
Email Marketing
Your own website
SEO Optimization
SEO stands for search engine optimization. All the search engines, like Google and Bing, send out robots constantly to search the internet for information that can be categorized — identified, ranked and rated. Your online presence may extend to Facebook, Instagram, a personal website, Etsy, a blog post, a comment on a post, and just about everywhere in cyberspace. But you are nothing — not known, not seen, not heard, not acknowledged — if you don’t get indexed by the various search engines.
You want to be well-indexed. This means you need things wherever you are present online which are indexable. These include things like,
· Keywords and keyword phrases
· Captions for images
· Comments on posts
· When you/your business is tagged or hash-tagged
· Links back to your website
· Listings of your business in directories
· Reviews of your business and your products
This increases the chances that when someone searches for products like you carry or businesses like your own, you are more likely to be found.
71% of online jewelry sales begin with a Google search!
Selecting Keywords and Keyword Phrases. Do some research here. You can plug in a keyword into a search engine search bar. Typically, a drop down menu will appear that shows other words that come up when people look for that keyword. These become keyword phrases. Keyword phrases (2–3 words) will have better visibility outcomes for you than single keywords. That is because as you add words to a phrase, you begin to narrow down the relevant possible sites that might get flagged and presented.
Check the key words your competitor is using. Look at their websites and what words/phrases them emphasize. Plug their name into the search engine search bar, and see what comes up.
Content Marketing
Here you write an article or review or response to an online post, or create images and videos, and place these somewhere online. This might be a social media site, a site specializing in hosting articles, your own website, or a blog. You include somewhere (top, within, or at the end) links back to you and your website or your products listed online.
With this content, you are trying to educate the reader in some way. Your content in some way is providing a solution or answer to a problem or question the reader might have.
The better connection between you and the reader, the more likely the reader is to create a link to your content. More links to your content means greater SEO optimization.
Another type of content is when you are presenting one of your products or a type of jewelry product, and you do a soft-sell. You explain how to wear it, how it was made, interesting facts about it, how it fits with current fashions, or other interesting characteristic about it. Don’t list a price. List a link to where the reader can find more information about it.
As with most things, this is not a one-shot, one-time approach. You want to post content on a regular basis, probably daily.
Social Media Marketing
You can leverage the power of various social media sites, like Facebook, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram.
These sites have
· Pages you can set up a profile on (for your personal page as well as separately for your business page)
· Postings you can place.
· Postings you can respond to.
· Events you can participate in or create.
· Groups you can join or set up.
· Targeted Ad programs you can take advantage of (You might be able to target your audience by location, language, education, work, age, gender, birthday, relationship status, likes and interest).
In some cases, you can tack on a short commercial message or signature to the end of your posts. In other cases, commercial messages may be forbidden, but you can create a signature that generates enough interest and curiosity so that someone might link back to your site.
Some social media sites limit how many places or times you can use the same ad-copy-post. That limit might be 3 places or times. If you want to do more than that, you will have to modify your ad-copy-posts.
A lot of the advertising tactics you use here are free. It just takes a lot of time.
Other tactics will cost you. Targeted ad programs let you send a message to some demographically limited group which you define. You set a budget. You either pay for the number of click-throughs (someone has clicked a link in your ad), or the number of impressions (someone has visited the page where your ad appears). Some jargon: PPC for pay for click or PPI for pay for impression. You may also want to measure the click-through rate (5% is great, below 2% is not great).
You can use both your personal page as well as your business page to tell your story and get your products seen. Soft-pedalling the message will work better than any hard sell. For example, creating seven consecutive posts following you as you create a piece from inspiration to finish — of course with images — will get you better responses than creating what looks like a magazine ad for a specific piece of jewelry. A friend posted an image of her wearing a piece of jewelry she just made with her hair all messed up. She gave the image a simple caption: Bad Hair Day — What Do You Think? And sold 43 pieces in response. People feel more connected when they feel you are sharing your life with them.
Images are important. Short videos are the best.
If someone responds to any of your posts. Thank them. Always repeat their first name in your response.
You can use your personal and business profile pages to have conversations with your customers.
Think about reposting your customers’ pictures wearing your jewelry.
Or, create a branded hashtag (or two or three) and always list this at the bottom of all your posts. Think of something like: #warrensgems, or, #jewelrybywarren, or, #warrendesigns.
You want to post at least one thing every day. Most likely this is physically impossible time-wise to do this for every social media site. So, create a presence on as many social media sites as possible. Then concentrate on two of them with your daily posts.
Keep your ads short, and the messages well targeted to your intended audience.
If paying for ads, the social media site should also have some statistical information you can access to gauge how well your ads are doing.
Affiliate Marketing
Here you invite another party — referred to as third party — to drive sales for your business. This might be an influencer, a thought leader, a celebrity, another shop which sells accessories or clothing. You rely partly on the reputation and networking of some other business to advertise and advocate for your jewelry.
You might work out a co-marketing arrangement and split costs. You might pay them a commission or a percent of the sale.
Radio and Web Broadcast Streaming
Radio has always been an effective channel for advertising jewelry. It is a lot less expensive than TV, and has a loyal audience. It is very targeted at a local audience. Today, however, you might use the internet to place ads similar to the ones you might have used for radio.
Webcasts offer you an on-demand and more targeted connection to your intended audience. They allow you to reach a broader and more internet-savvy audience.
Influencer Marketing
Rely on one of the many influencers in fashion and jewelry to promote your stuff. Most established influencers have media kits to share with you so you can get an idea of the kinds of things they promote and who their target audience is.
Or, make yourself into an influencer. Create an online audience on one or more social media sites which follows you and pays attention to your recommendations. The key to becoming an influencer is to establish a clear brand identify for yourself. Create a branded hashtag. Encourage your customers to use your hashtag when sharing images, videos and advice from your own feed.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing methods in existence. It keeps your business in front of your customers on a regular basis.
The key is to grow your email list. So you need to make your emails special in some way. Your emails might include what is called gated content. They might include special discounts. They might present advanced notice for sales or other special events. They might include content that your customers may want to save, such as explanations about what certain gemstones mean or how to clean sterling silver jewelry. You might give first access to a new product.
Be sure you have secured permissions from each contact on your email list. You can create simple forms that can be posted online on your website or blog, and simple print forms to hand out to people.
Emails are effective, but you do not want to overdo them. People get annoyed if they get too many emails in their box.
I suggest using an email service like MAILCHIMP. Not only do they make creating and sending emails easier, they offer some tracking and analytic services, as well.
Your Own Website
Build a site that supports your business. Be sure it is optimized for search engine indexing. Decide whether your website serves primarily as a billboard — a place to find you. Or decide whether you want to include a shopping cart system and make your website an ecommerce site for your jewelry.
You can have your own domain name, or be part of a larger web-hosting company which may or may not allow you to use your own domain name.
Having your own website gives you credibility. It allows people to more easily find you and contact you. It gives you another channel for selling your jewelry.
Be sure to add an analytics package to your site. Some will be available for free. You always want to build in evaluative components with whatever you do.
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FOOTNOTES
Arias, Aaron. Six Ways to Advertise Your Online Boutique. 12/7/21.
MARKETING / PROMOTION / POSITIONING: Social Media Marketing For The Jewelry Designer
Social Media Marketing For Very Small Businesses … That Works!
Today’s successful jewelry-designers and other very small business entrepreneurs maintain a very visible presence on the internet. You must have an online way for people to find you and your products. There are many options. These options vary in terms of who controls the site, the costs to be there and update as necessary, and what limitations are imposed on the site or because of how the site operates.
They may have a website that functions simply as a billboard or business card. They may list merchandise on their site, with prices, and information about how to order it. They may present their jewelry on Ebay or other auction houses, or on sites like Etsy or Supadupa. They may let someone else promote their jewelry on-line in exchange for a commission or royalty. They may post images or videos on sites like Instagram and TikTok. They may have a business page on Facebook, Google or Bing. Or they may have a fully functioning shopping cart system on their own dot.com.
Whatever their level of involvement online, they must put into place active and deliberate marketing strategies for creating visibility for their site and their products, and for maintaining and enhancing that visibility over time. It’s all about recruiting and retaining eyeballs, whatever it takes. Take advantage of social medias’ powers for networking.
Digital marketing is not one thing; it is a set of different strategies and pathways for connecting with and influencing people. While initially a lot of what you do will be hit or miss and trial and error, you eventually want to get very organized, developing internet marketing goals, objectives and encapsulating them into a coherent plan. You want to be represented broadly across many platforms, but concentrate your energies narrowly on perhaps 2 platforms only.
You want your website and any web presence to be:
· Optimized for search engines and directories
· Attractive
· Navigate-able and User friendly
· Enticing to first time visitors as well as repeat customers
· As broadly visible and findable as possible
· Broadly bookmarked and linked to
Successful marketing of any kind means:
· Getting Seen
· Getting Known
· Getting Your Competitive Advantage Recognized
· Making the Sale
Make them stop. Make them stay.
To achieve these marketing goals online requires putting into effect various internet marketing strategies, some technical, others not.
Towards this end, I provide insights about the following:
1. Conducting an initial marketing audit of your online presence
2. Optimizing your front door and landing pages
3. Choosing and placing key words and hashtags
4. Optimizing your social profiles
5. Site usability and navigation concerns
6. Intensive site placement and linkages
7. Inexpensive things you can do to get noticed
8. Social media posts marketing
9. On-line advertising
10.Generating an email list and conducting email campaigns
11.Creating visual images and video content
12.Garner online reviews
13.Getting customer feedback
14.Competitor surveillance
15.Establishing baseline site-activity indicators
16.Have a FAQ page which summarizes all your policies and procedures
17.Have a testimonials page
18.Create relationships with online influencers to market your jewelry
You want to choose the right tools and use them in the right way. If the wrong tools, you can waste a lot of time and money and find yourself serving the wrong customers.
1. Conducting An Initial Marketing Audit of Your Online Presence
1. Assessing current marketing materials, brochures, business cards, stationery, listings, keywords, descriptions, click through ad campaigns, email lists, efforts and activities,
2. Assessing current web-site strengths and weaknesses, from a marketing standpoint, that is, how you are in sync with target customer needs, wants, desires and shopping behaviors, and
3. Setting reasonable and attainable online marketing goals and objectives.
Do all your printed materials reference your website and/or your email address?
Is this information prominent and readily accessible, or is it buried?
Does it convey a sense of pride in your online efforts, or shame and embarrassment?
Do you routinely mention your website to your customers or clients?
Do all your emails end with a business signature, that includes your business name, address, phone, fax, and email?
Does your website clearly and concisely express what your business is all about, and how to contact you — particularly in terms of the information on the front page, any other landing pages, near the top, that would appear in the first screen that your customer would see?
Is your navigation bar/system/strategy easy to manipulate by any customer?
Is each link labeled clearly and strategically?
Does the set of all your links clearly and easily get your customer to each section of your website?
Have you minimized the number of links it takes to get to any one of your product pages?
Is your front page indexable by search engine robots?
Is there sufficient information on this page to index?
Is the organization of keywords on your front page presented to your advantage, or disadvantage, given search engine indexing schemes?
Does your front page load relatively quickly?
Have you kept your graphics on your front page to a reasonable amount so they don’t slow down page loading or obscure any keyword information?
Does your website have the kinds of things that will encourage customers to remain on your site more than a few seconds?
Is it relatively easy to keep your website up-to-date, such as changing information, uploading new images, creating new layouts?
Is your website responsive — that is, will load and be easily readable on any browser and any device, no matter screen size or preset layout parameters?
Now, GOOGLE YOURSELF. This way you have a starting point for how visible you are on the internet.
2. Optimizing Your Front Door and Landing Pages
Your front door page (or any landing page) is your most strategic website asset. It should be optimized in form and content so that it anticipates the indexing and ranking schemes (algorithms) of the major search engines. While these schemes get altered on a regular basis, there are some pointers which will be generally helpful all the time.
1. Don’t use frames. Try to use DIV instead of TABLE html commands. Try to use a CSS style sheet along with HTML5 (or most recent version) coding. Make your webpage responsive, so that it will load up perfectly no matter the browser or screen size of the device.
2. Don’t use a visually wonderful, but indexability awful splash page. You should settle for a slightly less visually appealing page, as a tradeoff for making it more indexable and rank-able.
3. You are selling things. The average person will have the average computer system or cell phone setup. That means, you can’t use the most up-to-date, exciting website technology available. Your pages won’t load up for everyone, some may take too long to load up, and some may even lock up your device. Save the best-of-current-tech for your personal home page.
4. If you are using a template-based host’s WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website design editor, be sure the final result will be responsive. Also be sure your website will be easy to update and maintain.
5. TITLE: Your title should be about 9 words (not more, not less), with your most important key word first. Don’t repeat the same word twice in a row; separate it by another word. Use lower case letters for your key words.
For example: “beads, jewelry findings, beading supplies — Land of Odds” is better than “Land of Odds — beads, jewelry findings, beading supplies”. [Most important keyword is first.]
For example: “beads, jewelry findings, beading supplies” is better than “Beads, beading supplies, jewelry findings.” [Here bead is capitalized once, and appears as what would be judged as twice in a row.]
6. FIRST TEXT LINE: Your first line of the page (and this will appear after the BODY tag if you are hand coding), should be about 10 words, again repeating your major keywords, not putting the same word twice next to each other, and listing the words from most to least important. Never start the page with a TABLE or Graphic file. Start with words.
7. LINK AND PAGE NAMES: Be strategic in the names you give your active links and webpages. Use your keywords in these LINK DESCRIPTIONS (link-text) and URL ADDRESSES (url-text).
For example: Call your gemstone necklace page “gemstonenecklace.htm” rather than something like “AC402.htm”.
In creating the link descriptions on your page, write something like “Gemstone Necklaces” rather than “Products Page”.
8. PARAGRAPHS: Have about 3 paragraphs of text on your front-door page. Each paragraph might have 3 or so sentences.
Your major keywords should appear in this pattern:
– At the top of paragraph #1
– In the middle of paragraph #2
– Not at all in paragraph #3
If you don’t like the look of all those words on your front door page, you can always put the paragraphs at the bottom of your webpage.
9. IMAGES: For all your images, use the ALT tag. For the ALT tag, use your keywords to describe the image. By using the ALT tag, when someone places the cursor over the image, a yellow box will appear with the ALT tag words appearing. These are also very indexable.
Make your original images into .jpg or .tif or .gif files. The original images should be a minimum of 500 x 500 pixels and 72–96 dpi resolution. Within your webpage, you can adjust image sizes. Preference for using the percent (%) adjustment rather than setting particular pixel width and height sizes.
10.HEADINGS: Set up 2 or 3 heading on your front door page, and use your keywords in the heading text. Sometimes what you code as a heading is the first thing indexed, and sometimes the only thing indexed. On subsequent pages, use more headings, if these make sense for the page.
11.COMMENT TAGS: Put in at least one COMMENT tag using your keywords. In the HTML code, comments start with <! — and end with → . COMMENT tags cannot be seen on your page. They are hidden within the code. There is a 1000 character limit to COMMENT tags. Words in COMMENT tags are very indexable.
12.DOMAIN NAME: If you haven’t already selected a website domain name, you might try to create one using your most important keyword in the URL-text. There are many sites online that sell domain names. Compare their prices which can be all over the place. Compare the amount of space they offer you, any email limits, and whether you can add a shopping cart. For example, “beadsatlandofodds.com” would do far better than “landofodds.com” in search engine indexing.
You can also envision having more than one front-door or landing page for your website. You might have different kinds of customers, and may want to set up an entrance very tailored to each of them. From the search engine’s standpoint, they do not like to see virtually the same page used more than once. You will lose points here if this is your approach. But you can set up differently designed pages as front entrances, and based on how you get your site listed, you can use any of these as the link-reference point.
3. Choosing and Placing Key Words and Hash Tags
Generate a keyword list of 1000 characters. You can use a word processing program like WORD, which has a character counter. In this list, you would include variations on upper case and lower case spellings, as well as common misspellings.
Think about the words and phrases your customers might use to find you, to understand what you do as a jewelry designer, and how your jewelry will satisfy their needs and desires.
To research keywords, you can go to various search engines, plug in the major keywords you’re interested in, and check out what keywords other sites which pop up in the search engines search, have used. On each site’s front door page, review what words they see to use on this page. Also, you can use the browser’s VIEW button to bring up the Source Code image of a page, and check out what keywords other people have listed in their META TAGS (which are otherwise hidden from view). You can use Google’s ad words program to generate keyword lists.
Hash Tags
A hashtag is a word or keyword phrase preceded by a hash symbol (#). It’s used within a post on social media to help those who may be interested in your topic to be able to find it when they search for a keyword or particular hashtag. It helps to draw attention to your posts and encourage interaction.
If you are using a phrase, do not put spaces between the words.
You want to use hashtags that you think people will search on.
You don’t want to be too general and you don’t want to be too obscure. You can check out what influencers in your area of interest are using on their posts.
You should, if possible, include a branded hashtag, such as #yourname, #yourbusinessname, or #nameoflineofjewelry .
Different social media platforms have different expectations for the number of hashtags they view as optimal. Use that number, not more or less, if you can.
Facebook (1 to 2 at most)
LinkedIn (1 to 3 at most; place them within the body of your post, rather than at the end)
Instagram (10 or 11 is best, but you can use up to 30 hashtags)
Tik Tok (100 characters maximum)
Pinterest (1 or 2 at most)
I would suggest using hashtags in all your posts.
4. Optimizing Your Social Profiles
In various social media sites, directories and other places you list your business, you want to have a great, professional social profile about yourself. Think about…
Username: This is the identity of your business in one simple or compound word. If you have the opportunity to verify your name within any site, do so. This builds trust.
Biography: You want a short introduction to yourself and your business. [Refer to your Getting Started Story in an earlier chapter.] List important information about yourself and your business. Tell the reader how you and your design work solved problems for them. Establish some indicators of credibility and legitimacy. Make your business sound approachable.
Photos: Get a good headshot of yourself and another shot of your working at making jewelry. Get another image that defines your business, such as store front, store displays, or a group of employees serving customers. Last take some appealing images of some of the pieces you make and which represent your brand or style. Include photos showing someone wearing your pieces. Photos should be in .jpg format, 500×500 pixels minimum size, and 300dpi (for print) and 72–96dpi (for screen).
Headline or Tag Line: Usually you have an opportunity to add a short line of text after your name or the name of your business. 7–9 words is good. This line should suggest your keywords and hashtag words. This line should be catchy. Test out a few examples and see which ones get the best reactions.
Content: A lot of informative content on your profiles is always a plus. Research what other jewelry designers are posting on blogs and on Facebook for ideas.
When you update your social profile, let all your followers know. This is a good way to keep them engaged with your business.
5. Site Usability and Navigation Concerns
How usable is your website to:
– New customers
– Returning customers
Websites need very clear Navigation systems.
Websites need strategies to keep them from becoming boring. After someone visits a site a few times, and it only takes a few times, the sites become stale and boring to them.
Websites need all your contact information — address, phone, fax, email — right on your first page. Or at least a very visible link/button to CONTACT INFORMATION. Don’t make your customers hunt for contact information.
Navigation System
There is a series of research about the Magical Number 7 plus or minus 3. When people are confronted with 7 or more choices, they psychologically need to re-categorize them, such as into one group of 3 and another group of 4, in order to deal with all this information. Otherwise they get paralyzed and stumped. People can easily handle 4 pieces (7 minus 3) of information, but start to get uncomfortable with 7 pieces, and can also be forced to deal with 10 separate pieces (7 plus 3) information, but that’s pushing it.
From a website design standpoint, you do not want to make someone have to travel more than 4 links to get to the product information they want. As the required number of links to click on gets greater than 4 clicks, your customers will begin to get paralyzed, and not make the next click. Wherever you find you have more than 4 clicks to get to a product, you can re-categorize, so you have fewer links to navigate.
For example, suppose it takes 5 clicks to get from your section on Jewelry to your section on Amethyst Beaded Necklaces:
PRODUCTS — click 1 to — JEWELRY — click 2 to — NECKLACES — click 3 to — BEADED NECKLACES — click 4 to — GEMSTONE BEADED NECKLACES — click 5 to — AMETHYST BEADED NECKLACES.
You might reduce the number of clicks the customer has to travel by reducing the number of webpages they have to traverse:
PRODUCTS/JEWELRY — click 1 to — NECKLACES/BEADED NECKLACES — click 2 to — GEMSTONE BEADED NECKLACES/AMETHYST.
On the PRODUCTS page, you list all your types of products. On your NECKLACES page, you list all your types of necklaces. On your GEMSTONE BEADED NECKLACES page, you list all the types of gemstones.
Avoiding Boredom
Websites get stale fast. Unfortunately, to keep things re-designed and very fresh takes a lot of time and effort. So, you want to come up with some simple, less time-consuming tricks that you can do to keep your website appearing fresh.
One trick is to put something on the page that moves. Build in some kind of “movement” on your front-door page. You can use a .gif animation file, or create mouse-overs and other simple fun things which move using Javascripts.
Another trick is to create a sense of Interactivity — forms, polls, message boards, chat lines, email sign-up, email link, contests, games, ezines, links/resources page listing other sites of interest.
A third trick is to run specials and/or have a What’s New section.
Contact Information
Preferably on the first page, include your address, email, phone, fax, and other important identifying contact information.
If you have a separate CONTACT PAGE, be sure that the link/button to the page is prominently displayed at the top of your front door page.
If you use a CONTACT FORM, I think it is also helpful to list your email address on this same page, as well. If concerned about robots collecting email addresses off websites to use in spam, you can write you email address like this: warren (@) landofodds (dot) com .
Many of your regular customers or clients will begin to use your website like a rolodex entry. Make it easy for them.
Caution: many anti-spam programs reject emails that begin with Info, Contact, Shop and other very generic terms.
6. Intensive Site Placement and Linkages
It is important that you get listed with all the major search engines, directories and social media sites, as well as specialty directories associated with your specific business.
To make this process go as quickly as possible, it is important to have all your information together in one place, where you can cut and paste the information into the online forms, as requested.
Besides having about 12–20 of your most important keywords or keyword phrases handy, also have about 12 hashtags ready. You will also want to create 25-word, 50-word, 100-word and 200-word descriptions of your site, heavy on keywords, but no side-by-side keyword repetitions. One more thing: have a 7 to 9-word part description / part tag line for your business. Make this catchy.
Do NOT pay for or use any of the multiple submission services. Take the time to submit your site to each search engine and directory, one at a time. A site submitted through a multiple submission service can get assigned a low ranking by the search engines.
You can use Yahoo or Google or Bing to find specialized directories. Get listed in as many as these as possible.
Many search engines and some directories now charge you for a listing, either as a flat fee, or as a click-through rate. You may not be able to afford all the opportunities, but you might want to follow through on the major ones.
Some search engines will let you buy key words. When someone searches on a keyword, a link to your site will appear. If someone clicks through on that link, you’re charged a per click fee. Google ad words and Facebook ads work this way.
Also, link up with web-rings, web-malls, and other affinity arrangements online. You might create your own affinity arrangement with others businesses you know.
There are many sites which list local resources. Get listed. Facebook’s Graph Search allows you to search for businesses both by location as well as friend’s recommendations. It shows you which businesses your friends have frequented. Yelp and Trip Advisor are critical for local businesses.
You can do a search on the URL web-address of your competitors, as well as on their names, to see where they are listed.
Some of your suppliers may list you on their websites. Some of your customers or clients may list you on their websites.
To get a high ranking, search engines do three things:
a) CATEGORIZE your site in relation to certain keywords, by indexing words on your site,
b) RATE your link-popularity, by checking how often someone clicks on a link to your site, and
c) RANK the link-relevancy of your site based on how long the person stays on your site, once they’ve clicked on their way there.
So, the more places that maintain a link to your website, the more likely someone is to click through to it. The better designed your website is, the more likely someone is to hang around awhile. The better indexed you are (called SEO optimization), the more visible you are in any search.
7. Inexpensive Things You Can Do To Get Noticed
There are many low-cost or free things you can do to increase your visibility online. Some suggestions:
a. Get reciprocal links — “I’ll list you if you list me.” There are your friends and personal associates; other similar businesses; affinity sites such as shopping malls, specialized directories, awards programs.
b. Create educational and information content. Share it with other sites in exchange for a link back to your site. In fact, there are Free Content sites online that act as a repository and exchange for free content articles. Submit your articles there.
c. Respond to people’s questions in forums, newsgroups, message boards, reviews and the like. Start each of your responses by repeating their first name. Include a business signature with a link back to your site at the end of your response.
d. Write articles for online ezines, newsgroups, forums, specialized portals and the like.
e. Join affinity groups.
f. Include a lot of explanatory and how-to information next to each of your products.
g. Run a contest.
h. Set up a group and form your own community within one or more of the social media sites.
i. Set up a business page on one or more of the social media sites, as well as the major search engines such as Google and Bing.
j. Create your own online newsletter.
k. Post images on all the social media sites.
l. Post short videos to You Tube, as well as other social media sites, particularly Instagram and Tik Tok. Videos will generate more interest than images.
m. Create a blog. Keep it active. You can also use micro-blogging posts to lesson your workload. Micro blog posts are short links to other websites or posts online you find of interest. Here you make a statement about why the reader should pay attention to this link. Write the link. Suggest that the reader come back to your blog and offer some feedback.
n. Create an email campaign for your email-opt-in customers.
o. Send birthday wishes to your followers; include an image of your jewelry; tag the follower.
p. Create both business and personal profile pages on various social media sites.
q. Run promotions and discount offers.
r. Bundle 2 or more pieces of jewelry and run a promotion.
s. Shine a spotlight on your employees.
t. Show off your space.
u. Run a contest.
v. Re-share content from other sites.
w. Recognize loyalty; feature your super customers in blog posts or posts on social media channels; give them first access to new products; create a brand loyalty program.
x. Invite customers to react to and test out new ideas before you implement them.
y. Reward referrals.
z. On social media, position yourself as a subject matter expert.
aa. Use social media to find cross-promotional partners.
One thing I do NOT recommend is to send mass e-mailings where your target audience has not previously opted in to receive emails from you. Mass e-mailings generate a lot of positive responses, but they generate a lot of negative responses, as well, from people overwhelmed with spam.
There will always be new tools every year to take advantage of. Sharing text, image, video and audio will always remain in style.
However, you decide to attract attention and increase your visibility, you will pay with either your time or your money. At first, you will probably take a shot-gun approach — that is, trying everything. But in the interests of time and money, you will want to narrow your efforts.
8. Social Media Posts Marketing
Post everywhere. React to other people’s posts. Answer queries. Suggest how-to solutions. Include an image with your post, 1–3 hashtags, and a link back to your website or online presence.
Create a presence on all social media sites, and post to them all. However, select 2 of them to concentrate your marketing efforts.
Things which improve responses to posts: touches of humor, quality of information, your excitement, something weird, something the evokes an emotional response, a feeling of connection.
Keep your posts short. Yes, you are marketing yourself and your designs, but more subtly. You do not want to sound salesy.
Engage your viewer. For example, ask “Which of these 3 is your favorite?” or “A and B are perfect together — Agree?”.
If at all possible, end each post with either a CALL TO ACTION or a TAKE-AWAY / LESSONS LEARNED.
Share photos of events. Share photos of what’s new?
If someone responds to your post, respond back to them. At a minimum, thank them for their post. Remember to cite their first names in your responses.
Pay attention to the number of responses you get, and whether you get more or fewer responses depending on the site, the day of the week or the time of the day.
Plan to make posts on a regular basis. You might plan to use the same posts on different media sites. If using the same post for placement on the same social media site, say in several interest groups on that site, try to limit the same post to, in this example, 3 interest groups.
Instagram has been especially useful, productive and responsive to jewelry maker posts. With Instagram, I suggest planning to post at least once every single day. Remember that those captions are important and you want to make them clever or very personal in some way.
Quality will matter more than quantity.
9. Online Advertising
There are many opportunities for online advertising. For each opportunity, you want to carefully think through the costs and benefits. How many impressions (# of eyeballs) will your ad achieve? For each impression, how many of those people will follow through (click-thru rate) and link to your site? What words, keywords, terms seem to influence people to click-thru more often? What is a reasonable cost per click through?
The first types of advertising you should do are the basic, cheap and obvious. Include your website address and/or email address on your stationery, business cards, business checks, brochures, other handouts.
You add some marketing highlights, address and email as your “signature” for all the emails you send.
You might send out a Press release to your local papers and magazines, or to regional and national publications pertinent to your business. You will want to approach them with a good angle, that you think would be of interest to their readers.
Many search engines, like Google, directories and social media sites sell keywords. You pay a certain amount of money for each click thru to your site. You can set a limit to how much you want to spend each month. It could be as low as a few dollars, or as high as you want to go. When one of their visitors does a search on the particular keyword (or keyword phrase), your name appears with the search results, with a clickable link back to your site. You pay when someone clicks on that link and visits your site. Using a keyword phrase of 2 or more words, rather than a single word keyword will narrow your target audience, but at the same time increase the chances one of these people will click through.
Instead of using keywords, you might also be able to target customers by demographic data, such as age, gender, and geographic location.
You might purchase a banner ad to place on other people’s sites.
You can also purchase ad space or sponsorship listings on various online ezines, magazine and websites.
You can place classified ads. Many search engines have classified sections. There are many specialized websites hosting classified ads.
In a similar way, you can post several of your products on Ebay or other auction sites. Marketing on Ebay is very similar to taking out an ad, but probably more effective.
Note: Social media sites and search engines tend to favor paid posts and ads. These sites probably have applications which help you narrow your target audience, thus maximizing your costs-per-click-thru.
10. Generating An Email List and Conducting Email Campaigns
It is critical to generate an email list of customers. You want them to very formally and visibly opt-in to the list. You can generate sign-up sheets, online forms, and the like towards this end.
You can segment your email list into smaller, targeted groups.
A monthly contact is reasonable.
Caution: many anti-spam programs reject emails that begin with Info, Contact, Shop and other very generic terms.
11. Creating Visual Images and Video Content
Images: Images get better responses than text. Make your original images into .jpg or .tif or .gif files. The original images should be a minimum of 500 x 500 pixels and 72–96 dpi resolution. Within your webpage, you can adjust image sizes. Preference for using the percent (%) adjustment rather than setting particular pixel width and height sizes.
Show images of your finished pieces. Of you at working making things. Of someone wearing your pieces. Of the inspirations for your pieces. Of works in progress. Of close-up details of your pieces.
Encourage customers to share images of them wearing your jewelry.
Create a slide show of a series of images to tell a story.
Infographics generate lots of discussion.
Write captions for all your images. Don’t just tell them what the image is. Tell them how and why what is photographed will be important to them. Try to use humor and irony. Make the captions authentic. Bring out your personality in the captions. For example: “The bracelet you always wanted to go with that blue dress,” or, “One of a kind necklace which will no longer be available after the 1st.”
More examples:
“My color-picking frustrations paid off this time!”
“Need to finish this ASAP. Didn’t even take the time to brush my hair today!”
“So tribal … What do you think?”
“I think I’ve made a necklace to match the picture I hung in my room. Didn’t even think about that. Or did I?”
“I made all this jewelry today, and now have to leave it to do some vacuuming. I can’t stop looking at it though.”
Videos: Videos are the best way to get attention on the internet. They catch the eye. They can convey emotions. They make demonstrations easy to follow.
There are many formats. The safest one to use is MP4. When you upload to a site, like You Tube, the sites convert your video to their format. Consider purchasing video editing software. For the most part, keep your videos short — either the 1–3 minute version or the 10–20 minute version.
Each social media platform has its own rules and pros and cons for hosting videos. Check out: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, You Tube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, Snapchat. Most require a screen resolution of 1920 x1080 pixels, and a widescreen (16:9) format. You would set up a page or channel on each site. It’s a good idea to create a short introduction video explaining what your page or channel is all about.
You Tube: Host all your videos. On You Tube, you can also live stream video. This is useful to make spot announcements, present new products, and the like. Videos available to everyone. People most often look for “how-to”, “demonstrations”, “product reviews.”
Facebook: Videos can only be seen by your friends and followers. People on this site want videos that are entertaining or inspirational. 85% of viewers watch the videos with the sound off. Video size recommended is 1280×720 pixels.
LinkedIn: People like career-oriented videos as well as corporate and business promotions and interviews and conference broadcasts.
Twitter: Videos are very, very short. Usually off-the-cuff remarks shared by cell phone.
Instagram: Videos are square by default. Optimal size: 1080 x 1350 pixels. You want your videos to tell a story, with a beginning, middle, climax, denouement and conclusion.
Pinterest: Similar to You Tube.
Tik Tok: The standard video length is 3 minutes, though you can go up to 10 minutes. Sound is essential. The orientation is vertical, so you want the size of your video to be 1080 x 1920 pixels.
Pointers:
· Keep the viewer in mind. Aim to meet their needs, whether seeking to solve problems, learn something, be entertained, or be inspired.
· In the first 5–10 seconds, be sure the video content is an attention-grabber with a solid hook. Get your name out and your purpose out. Viewership drops dramatically after 10 seconds.
· Make the video mobile-friendly. Make any text large enough to be seen on a small cell phone screen. Make sure there is good contrast between text and the background it is imposed on.
· Always add either a CALL TO ACTION or a TAKE AWAY / LESSONS LEARNED before the video ends.
· Add captions to your video throughout because many people view videos with the sound off.
· Embed all your posted videos on your own website as well.
12. Garner Online Reviews
Online reviews will always be important.
I widely post links throughout my online pages and emails to the various review sites like Google, Yelp, Facebook and Travel Advisor. Periodically I send out an email to my customer list asking them to post a review.
Respond to every single post, positive or negative. Always begin your responses by writing the reviewer’s first name. Real and authentic responses, rather than canned responses, keep the conversation going and allow you to glean more valuable insights from your customers.
Occasionally the reviews might be negative. I know it’s difficult not to take negative comments personally, but it’s only personal if you allow them to be. Still, even negative comments are opportunities for dialog. Respond to them in a sensitive, understanding way, perhaps suggesting something like, (a) a future discount or reward, or, (b) being grateful for calling something to your attention — that this will change your behavior in the future. Thank them for their review.
One contributing factor to a higher search engine ranking is the number of positive reviews for your site.
Make sure you have set up business profiles on Google and Bing so that your customers can see the reviews posted on either search engine site.
13. Getting Customer Feedback
It is important to get customer feedback about your website, your marketing efforts and your products/product mix. Regularly connecting with customers will help you retain them. It will help you keep their information updated. Asking for feedback will get them more invested in your business. It will help you uncover any customer issues which need to be resolved.
When people email or call you, you might ask some evaluative questions of them, while you have their attention. Also ask them how they found you originally.
You can set up a free poll or survey online. There are many websites that offer free online polls and surveys.
Ask your customers for leads.
14. Competitor Surveillance
The internet provides myriad opportunities for you to view your competitors’ marketing strategies. You can analyze specific competitors you know of in your immediate environment. Or you can focus on 3–5 competitors that are prominent in your business.
Think about what they are doing and their performance relative to what you are doing and your performance.
In the search engine locator box, you can:
– Type a keyword, and look more closely at the first 3–5 competitors whose websites pop up
– Type in the name of a specific competitor, and see which websites mention their name
– Type in the URL address of a specific competitor and see which websites maintain active links to them, or have reviews of them
You can:
– Analyze their website and product line
– Determine what keywords are important to them
– Find out who lists them and links to them
– Check their visibility and rankings
What is their business model?
What assumptions do they make about the market for their products?
Where do they think their customers are?
How do they think their customers will find them?
Where do they advertise?
What is their product mix?
What kinds of pricing strategies have they put into action?
Listening tools (from LinkedIn Share): Some online sites which help you monitor competitors, blogs, comments, videos, tips and the like:
Bing: Internet Search
Commentful: Monitors comments on blog postings
BlogPulse: Identifies daily blog post patterns
Complete Blog: Monitors how people use the internet
Cotweet: Monitors discussions about businesses and their brands on Twitter and Facebook
Digg: Members vote on which web content should be shared
Feedky: Scans and indexes video websites
FourWhere: Finds tips and comments on Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla.
Google News: Highlights news items about businesses and brands
HootSuite: Customized analytics relative to various social media sites
Klout: Rates and ranks brands based on engagement levels in various social media sites
OpenBook: Searches real-time posts in Facebook
SamePoint: Enables you to connect your business to various social media sites
Sideline: Topic search application for Yahoo
Technorati: measures particular position and influence of any website
Trackur: Lets you watch your reputation, mentions, and promotional campaigns
Trendpedia: Monitors social media sites and what people are saying about you and your brand
UserrnameCheck: Find where your username has been registered
Website Grader: Measures the marketing effectiveness of your website
Yahoo Pipes: Helps you aggregate information from all over the internet
It is important to track the activity on your website, and to try to gauge whether this activity level is affected by any marketing effort you might launch.
There should be a statistics package that comes with your website. You can also link to Google Analytics or other available statistical packages online.
From this information, you should gather the following stats:
· # of unique visitors
· Average visitors per day
· Average length on site per vistor
· # of sales per week
· Average doll per sale
· Percent of unique visitors resulting in actual orders
· # of abandoned shopping carts
NOTE: You can easily find out similar information for all your competitors using many apps available online for this purpose.
16. Have a FAQ page which summarizes all your policies and procedures
Create one page, called a FAQ page, which summarizes those policies and procedures relevant to your customer base. Anticipate the kinds of questions your customers will ask you, and provide the answers here.
So, at the least, your customers will ask about:
· Ordering procedures
· Turnaround times
· Shipping time and costs
· Customization
· What to do about lost or damaged merchandise
· Repairs
· Returns and exchanges
· Backorders
· Copyrights, Trademarks
· Disclaimers
· Lead content or other information about materials
· Gift certificates
· Discounts
· Minimum orders
· Exchanging links
· International orders
· Security of site for online payments
· Other payment methods
· Sales taxes
· Wholesale orders or arrangements
17. Have a testimonials page (also can include pages for Press Articles, List of Retailers Who Sell Your Jewelry, Upcoming Events)
Periodically, gather testimonials from your customers who have purchased your product. Set up a webpage listing all these testimonials.
18. Create relationships with online influencers to market your jewelry
There are many people online that function as influencers. Many will market and promote your products in exchange for something. Sometimes this is money. Sometimes this is product. Sometimes this is some other reciprocal arrangement. [See chapter on INFLUENCERS for more details.]
They might share images of your jewelry. They might wear it. They will create a buzz for it.
Start by creating a relationship with an influencer who is relevant to your product line. Follow them everywhere. Interact with their posts. Show that you are interested in what they have to say.
Then pitch a collaboration.
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FOOTNOTES
Amin, Arshad. 16 Social Media Optimization Tips You Need To Know, medium.com, 1/18/22.
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