There are several channels online that can really take your ecommerce business to the next level but in order to get into all these channels, you must have a certain advertising/marketing budget to cover the cost. Depending on your niche, the web can be very costly or it can be very affordable, it really depends on how competitive your industry is.
Google Adwords : Google Adwords is the single largest Pay-Per-Click platform in the world. Since Google has the largest network of websites in the world as publishers (and advertisers,) the exposure you can get when launching an Adwords campaign is gigantic. Some of the properties on the web your ads will appear are places such as all comparison shopping websites, Amazon, YouTube and many of the other large sites on the web.
Microsoft Adcenter: With BING doing a huge push to market their search engine and now getting the index also for the Yahoo search engine, its exposure has doubled and it’s a great way to generate traffic on this Pay-Per-Click platform. You ads will appear on BING and YAHOO for your selected keywords.
Comparison Shopping Websites: People love to do comparison shopping and shop the best price around. Website such as BizRate, Nextag and many others offer a Pay-Per-Click platform to add your products to their database and therefore driving traffic back to your website. These sites can convert really well for you also.
Display Advertising: Placing banners all over the web can surely gain you a large amount of traffic. Granted, while some may think a large advertising budget may be involved, you may want to find a large network with a good Pay-Per-Click cost that can generate a great deal of exposure. Typically, we would recommend display advertising not only to drive traffic but to really brand your brand/website. Some of the largest display channels (may be costly,) are:
- Performics
- Google Adwords
- Advertising.com
YouTube: Some may not really agree or see how YouTube can drive a great deal of traffic to your ecommerce website but it really can. The traffic to YouTube is in the millions daily and videos are being watched every second. If you can create a great deal of product videos and you add a link to the description with your link, it can be highly targeted traffic.
Social Media Marketing: Social media and social communities are huge. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn…..all of these popular social sites can provide you with an effective and free platform to help drive traffic to your dropship products. Use them wisely and you will be well rewarded with increased traffic and sales.
Advertising: There are various ways to advertise. PPC, or Pay Per Click, is one that many entrepreneurs find quite effective. Although PPC isn’t free, sometimes you have to spend money to make money and there is no doubt that it will drive traffic to your dropship business or listings.
Email Marketing: Another very effective way to increase your traffic and if you can write the email marketing newsletters yourself free. Even if you must hire a freelancer to write your email marketing letters, you will still come out ahead provided you have planned out great campaigns and promotions that will drive traffic.
