inconsistent orders online

[davee2k]

I use overture to advertise, although this really doesn't have much to do with my post. Basically the first week of advertising brought me only enough orders to cover the advertising costs, something like £1500. In my second week, I made £1300 profit on top of the advertising for that week, which was only about £900. I am now in my third week, and I don't seem to be making any profit again. Is anyone out there experienced in e-advertising, and know why this is happening. Is it because I speant loads in the first week, so they came back to my site the second week?

cheers

[Aletheides]

Dave,

It's important to get a marketing plan and stick with it for a few months. What you're looking for is repetition. If after a few months things don't look well, troubleshoot and adapt.

[teana]

you definitely have to price out the marketing for the long run. There is no such thing as getting everything right away. You want to be consistent with your ads and marketing methods. Each marketing tactic should reinforce each other, like your overture ads, print ads (if any), and other advertising.

Consistent marketing lets the user know that your company is stable and then they begin to come in. It is frustrating to now see orders come in, but they will. You just have to be patient.

[pentupentropy]

I keep saying this to people, hoping it will sink in. I've tried some websites in the past that have bombed due to nothing more than overpaying for advertising. There are definitely some rules of thumb to follow, and I'll give some examples...

NETWORKING... USE IT... IT'S FREE!!!! Incorporate this into your marketing plans every way you can. As an example, I'm doing some consulting for a 5th avenue jewelry shop. A friend of mine owns it, and he was an Oracle DBA too, but he didn't know where to start to get traffic. Lucky for him, I had an easy solution - I knew a couple hair stylists that were friends of my wife, and some here and there friends that were clothing designers and a bunch who own upscale places in the catskills. I have hooked him up with a few of them.. told them to put together a show where his jewelry would be on every model.

There are do's and don'ts to this, though. He's not dealing with other jewelry dealers, but instead with markets that compliment his own. Stick with what helps you, not what hurts you or competes with you directly.

I also told him to have a contest and make up some free posters and postcards. He is now giving away one wedding ring (on valentine's day I think), and the cost of that and all the posters and postcards will be less than 5K. Seems expensive, but that includes almost 75,000 postcards.


DON'T PAY FULL PRICE FOR ANYTHING. There's a saying that you get what you pay for. It's not a lie. The thing is, when you're in business.... you have to get out of the mindset of calling up a vendor or supplier and paying full price for what they have. These people know this, they expect it, and they leave room for people just like you to drop the price a little bit and make you feel happy while still selling their products. Lower cost to you means higher profits or lower cost to your customers. Either way it helps.

THINK OFFLINE AS WELL. I don't care if you sell dialup access, the online marketplace is so huge that sometimes it just pays to advertise offline, or market yourself through a variety of mediums. I'm not going to get into too much here, because a lot of it is industry specific, but think back to networking. Advertise everywhere you can for as little as possible.

LEARN YOUR WAY AROUND SALES. Sell soemthing else. Something you don't want or care about. Go down to somewhere and find a newspaper, and go apply for one of those street sales jobs where you sell people imitation cologne or something. It sounds stupid, I know. But do it. Take 1 week of your life, and go around with the best salesperson there. I don't care if you have to smoke a joint to feel comfortable walking around selling with them, but get out there and do it. Too many people I know can't talk comfortably to other people. If you can't learn to do this, it's really hard to succeed in the world. Once you begin to understand the mentality behind it, you can be much more creative and productive in your own marketing and ad ventures.

[edit] some people will say I'm an idiot, some will say it's good advice. The thing I learned from that silly sales thing above was that things give you back what you put into them. Good luck with your venture.