Hello All! I have an online Furniture Store which technically, has been up and operating for about a year. Due to personal problems, we quit advertising (Yahoo and Google) and have basically thrown the business down for the last 6 months. I am now trying to pick it back up and make it work. Last year, we spent all of our profit (plus some) on outdoor advertising which did not work. Here in a few weeks I will need to start trying to drive traffic to our site.....AGAIN! Does anyone have any marketing ideas and/or advertising ideas that are inexpensive?
#1. "RE: Inexpensive Advertising" In response to Reply # 0 Tue Feb-13-07 03:42 AM by BizConsulting
Alexis;
Welcome back to the small business world! You mentioned you spent all of your profits last year on outdoor advertising. Let's focus in on your "profits". What kind of advertising/marketing did you do to get those sales? Is it something feesible that you can do again?
Also, I went on your website (Great furniture by the way) and noticed you have a lot of Professional and College Sport items. That is great. I would suggest finding a couple of charity events where they could auction off 1 of your items. If it is a true charity event, you can write off the expense of the furniture. It is a great way to advertise and a great way to give back to the community. People just eat up Professional and College Sport items.
With the College Sport items, I would look for a local alumni Association for any of the Colleges you cover. I am an officer in a local alumni Association for Texas A&M University. All our events focus on raising Scholarship money for kids. We have qualified for charity status. Some (not all) local alumni associations will get their charity status approved.
#3. "RE: Inexpensive Advertising" In response to Reply # 1
Thanks for the advice, Suzanne. Locally, we are in a very small town with few charity events. BUT it is definitely worth looking into. We could definitely expand on that and look for charitable events elsewhere.
As to how we earned our profits last year: primarily through pay per-click advertising on Yahoo and Google. It works, but did not drive as much traffic to the site as we had hoped. Of course, this could be due to the site itself and the keywords that are imbedded in it. We will need to revisit this with our site administrator. Our goal is to give our customers the best price possible. We would rather move a lot of pieces at a lower profit margin than a few pieces at a higher profit margin. This works for us as well as our customers and frankly that is the way it should be with every company!
Anyway, we are just looking for inexpensive ways to drive traffic to our site. Thinking "outside the box" is what we are all about and working with some charities is a great idea. We will definitely look into this further. Thanks again and if you or anyone else has any ideas, please feel free to advise!
#4. "RE: Inexpensive Advertising" In response to Reply # 0
I too question why outdoor advertising? If your business is a cyber business, online, then your market is much larger than what you are attracting with outdoor advertising. Or is it that you actually ship furniture and so want to keep it a local business?
Have you tried online classified advertising sites? Many are free. Have you taken out "ads" on compatible sites? Some banner ads can be expensive, but you can place small text ads pretty inexpensively.
Also, placing tiny classified ads in newspapers can work. You needn't limit those ads to local papers either. You need only use a few quick lines to generate leads. You are not actually selling anything. Just driving traffic to your web site.
#5. "RE: Inexpensive Advertising" In response to Reply # 0
If you set up a blog, you can generate traffic from that which should increase sales. You probably know this but blogs are free and search engines love them. Give it a shot and good luck.
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