Breathe some life into your site with Bludelta
23 Marketing Channels for Selling Products Online
So you’ve decided that you want to sell products online. You’ve selected products, set up a website but are now at the stage where you are looking for marketing channels to promote your products. There are bucket loads of channels that you can use to market your products, whether they are affiliate products or even physical products.
Here’s a list of the most popular ones that are on the web. I suggest that you select a few that you fancy trying out and add them to your marketing plan. Assign a specific measurable goal on your plan too, for example, add 5 of your products to each channel. This will give you a clear idea whether the channel is suitable for promotion of a particular product. Once you find a channel that works for you – then you’ll need to scale up your efforts to make the best of it.
- Social media – Facebook and Twitter via news feeds
- Facebook – marketplace application
- Auction sites such as – ebay, plunderhere.com, bidville.com
- Pay per click advertising – such as adsense
- email marketing or newsletter
- ad in a printed trade industry publication
- local newspaper- in classifieds or via regular column
- blog posts
- ebook giveaway
- white paper
- local event sponsorship
- radio advert
- television advertisment
- online forums
- squidoo
- article marketing
- search engine optimisation
- free web seminars (advertise on Facebook)
- online directories such as hotfrog.co.uk
- relevant industry trade shows
- google products
- Amazon
- Craigslist
There are plenty of other sites and methods that you can use to sell your goods. Many of the ones listed here are free – remember start small and once you find something that works, then build it up. Which ones do you use?
How to Build Your Email List Subscribers
So, you’ve been putting in plenty of effort to build your content, market your site and pull in regular traffic. It’s time to collect email addresses now so that you’ll have your own captive audience to market to. Here are some of the methods that you might want to employ to convert visitors to subscribers:
Tempt with a discount: This works well with pulling in the Facebook crowd too. Offer your readers a 10% discount by signing up to your newsletter.
Free ebook. This technique is popular web-wide. Exchange a white paper or an ebook for an email address.
Free membership. How about the carrot of a free membership to your site in exchange for a sign up to your email newsletter.
Advertisement. This is a trick that the internet marketing experts use. Offer a free ad in your newsletter for businesses who sign up. This is something that you will need to manage though – as you’ll need to record who has which ads in which edition.
Competition/Contest: One sign-up means an entry into a contest to win one of your products or services. If this is enticing enough there is a chance it will go viral. You might want to think about anybody you know who is a popular figure in the community to present the prize. Make it as attractive as possible for the best results.
Put a price on it. Tell your visitors how much their subscription would be if they had to pay for it. People always want to get a good deal or something for nothing. Also add how many people are already subscribed, this will give it some credibility.
If you are already in the process of building your subscriber list – what techniques are you using for conversions?