Offline Promotion For Your Online Store
The first question many people ask when they are looking at opening an online store is “How do customers find my site?” This is a great question and an important aspect of running an online business. Webplus Shop offers many easy ways for you to enter keywords and meta tags about your products which will greatly help your products to be found by search engines. While these tools are crucial for helping your online business get recognized, there are many other ways you can promote your store without using your computer at all.
The first suggestion is using business cards. There are many places that will print up 100’s to 1000’s of business cards for you at a reasonable price. These cards can be used to hand out to your friends and co-workers or to complete strangers at trade shows or just on the street. Having your cards at a business, at the mall, or wherever there are many potential shoppers is a great way to get your business name out there.
Flyers are an effective way for you to get some information about your site out to people as they are reading something to pass the time. Passing out or placing flyers in doctors’ offices, airports, bus stations, street corners, and shopping malls will not only introduce people to your store, they can also have coupons or descriptions of what your online store is all about.
Don’t be afraid to do something out of the ordinary. From painting your domain on your car to putting it on a big sign in front of your house, any publicity is usually good publicity. Create T-shirts, buttons, stickers, hats or whatever fits your budget and pass them out for people to wear at concerts, fairs, amusement parks, etc. A simple shirt with just your domain on it will increase curiosity and may lead them to your site by just wanting to know what that hat or shirt was referring to.
Checking out the price of running a small ad in newspapers, talking to radio stations about mentioning your site on the air, or printing calendars and pens that have your business name on them are also effective strategies. Donating prizes, gift certificates, or coupons to fund-raisers, golf tournaments, or contests also can help promote your store and even if they are not redeemed, it could be some free publicity.
Most offline promotion techniques are fairly inexpensive if not free. If you are really serious about having a successful online business, please utilize all the features Webplus Shop has to offer as you are setting up your store, but remember that there are many other ways to promote your business without being online at all. Above are just a few of the many methods of offline promotion that we recommend, so please take some time and find a way to promote your store offline that works best for you.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:26 am
Good tips. I would agree, if you are serious about your business, you can’t just promote it online. You also need to do offline promotion. I’ve tried flyers and have had some success with that, but I think next I’ll try and car magnet and see what that does.