I need help

littlemissbusy

Hi guys,
I have recently started an online shop. I researched my market very well before I took on this project. I am not technically minded so I paid a web design company to design my site, which looks really professional. We are now struggling getting traffic through our site and in turn, getting sales. I've done everything that I know on the SEO side of things to improve the rankings and I've spend a few grand with a pr company (which did get us some press) but what now? We are struggling on finance; I need some ideas on how we can take this to a new level. Does anyone know of any institutions that operate a newsletter or something where we can offer discounts to selective groups? We have put everything into this, and I know it will work, but with finances so tight I don’t know where to go from here.

littlemissbusy

I forgot to say that I have tried the google ad words and while they did increase traffic somewhat the return did not cover the cost of the ads.:(

stepbar

Whats the web address of the site? Maybe we could offer some tips if we knew what the site is all about.

Does anyone know of any institutions that operate a newsletter or something where we can offer discounts to selective groups?

Pigsback.com

littlemissbusy

hi stepstar, our site is bubblebaby.ie

stepbar

Ok, first things first.

You need to get access to bubblebaby.com. ".com's" are internationally recognised and as such have a worldwide appeal. From what I can see someone has bought it already and is waiting for someone to buy it off them. You could argue that they are infringing on your brand etc. WIPO (http://www.wipo.int/portal/index.html.en) can help.

Once you have the .com address you can market globally.

Secondly I was slightly concerned by this paragraph on your website (from a business perspective)

As a mum to two of the most beautiful children (I know I'm a little biased), I found that I received gifts that were either impractical or duplicated or in my own personal case quadruplicated. After chatting with a group of friends after my baby was born I realised that it wasn't just me that was in this predicament that they all, at one stage or another got baby gifts they just didn't need. I personally got 4 sterilisers (Sorry to my friends who got them for me!) But when I said I needed a steriliser at the beginning of my pregnancy I didn't expect you all to get them for me! Common opinion was that we all could have done with a few soothers, bottles etc rather 40 newborn vests which only lasted a couple of months.

As a mum myself I felt that it was important to offer parents a large selection of products and brands. Bubblebaby.ie commits to continue to source new and exciting products.

I don’t know how much research you put into this but it does sound like you had a chat amongst a few of your friends and then came to a decision. Have you produced a costed marketing plan? Hiring a PR firm is a waste of money unless you follow up the PR with an advertisement campaign (on the web and broadsheets / local papers). Unfortunatly you have serious competition from Baby.ie - http://www.baby.ie/ and Buy 4 Now - http://www.buy4now.ie/index.asp?s=7&ss=0&sc=

My advice-

You need to get hold of bubblebaby.com
Stop wasting money on PR firms!!!
You also need to decide if you want to concentrate on the provision of baby showers and hope the sales come through or concentrate on promoting the website and hope the sales come through. I think to differentiate yourself, you should go after the expectant mothers (for to host baby showers) and push the sales through that avenue. Promotion at this stage is going to be expensive and it sounds like you dont have the money to do it. You could have an affilate program for people who want to host baby showers. A Ann Summers like idea where promoters host a baby shower in the customer's home, takes orders and their cut and pass on the orders to you. An idea like this would be very marketable abroad.

information

stepbar wrote:

Unfortunatly you have serious competition from Baby.ie - http://www.baby.ie/ and Buy 4 Now - http://www.buy4now.ie/index.asp?s=7&ss=0&sc=

http://www.dceb.ie/news/default.asp?ID=105&itemId=32&topicId=&va=0

OP what is unique about what you are doing, are you
Cheaper?
Better quality?
Unique products?

You cannot just market yourself as a site that sells baby stuff, you need to be different that all the other sites and the physical stores.

information

http://www.dceb.ie/news/default.asp?itemid=8&id=160

shepthedog

I would suggest strategic link ups with similar websites that would compliment you site, such as Mother & baby advice/discussion sites, and other sites that specifically deal with mother/baby issues.. Other that that keep working on driving traffice thru google adwords and maybe even try some advertising in magazines etc that deal with the subject.
Alternatively you could try a launch day, get some press behind it and get some buzz going that way..
Keep trying and good luck

littlemissbusy

Thanks for replying
stepstar, god I never really read my "about us" page they way you did, I do see that there is a lot of me's and I's but really I wanted to give customers the feel of me as a person and a mum. Of course my market research wasn't based around a group of mums to be, I did carry out surveys, research on population growth, internet usage, and lots more but i wanted to put across the personal side. I do know about my competitors too. Whats different about us? well we offer gift registry, baby showers to start with. Don't get me wrong about the traffic, we are genterating traffic through our site but like any new business we need lots more. We underestimated the advertising costs in our marketing plan which run into the €1,000's with magazines per ad. Thanks for the tips and advice and I'll get cracking on some of the ideas . We have just purchased the .com address so at least we are on the right page! thanks again

slumped

You would be best served contrating a journalist to write a series of 5-6 articles on what you do and how you do it. Along with some photos etc. they can be fed out to magazines etc.

As you are more or less International in your operation you need a serious budget to market and sell the brand.

Have you thought about approaching magazines/baby related media with a view to offering them a shop on their site etc?

PR is a waste unless it is part of the overall marketing strategy.

Throwing money at random magazines is not the way to go either.

Decide what publications suit you best.
Decide when you will advertise in them (ignore the calls saying they have a great offer for you)
Decide how you will advertise (advert/insert/promo)
Decide where you want to advertise (publication/page/left or right/placed beside a certain article etc.)

S

sdm

It's fine getting a studio to do the site, but the seceret is making it number 1 hit every time.

betonit

try an affiliate program, In that way you only pay when you make sales. look at rollercoaster.ie I only really heard of and just looked at it there. Not sure if it would be a competitor or something you could advertise on. Best of luck with it.

misterq

Ok, there have been some good points mentioned above, but one I would flag as a waste of time is trying to get the .com domain name. It isn't going to get sales in the door, and frankly it would be a waste of your time at the moment.

I am assuming that for the moment your target market is Ireland? In this case, a .ie is as good, if not better than a .com. But this is a minor point.

Don't focus too heavily on SEO either. You could spend the next 6 months trying to make your site SEO'd to the nines, but again, this may not get sales in the door. Unless potential shoppers are actually searching on terms such as "milk powder dispenser", then there is precious little point in getting your site to rank well on them. Think carefully about 10-20 key phrases and terms that actual parents or prospective parents might search on to find baby products.

What you need to be looking at is where are parents and prospective going on the net and how can you reach them at those locations. Rollercoaster.ie being one of them, but do your research, I am sure there are plenty of others.

Someone mentioned differentiating your site from competitors. I think this is an excellent point. I think what you should focus on is providing top quality information and advice on your products for parents. Make the site not just a store, but a source of reliable information on the products you sell. Invite them to contact you for advice etc.

A discussion forum might be a good idea in this regard, but I would make sure that you have the visitor numbers for it. Nothing worse than a forum with about 20 posts, last one made 6 months ago!

Finally, don't just think online. Look at marketing your site offline also. Could you maybe give e-vouchers to people running child birth classes or something?

Now that I've covered that, I want to make two points about the site SEO:
1. The product or category name should show in the page title, good for ranking and when viewed on search results.

2. If at all possible, I would try and place the product or category name in the page address. Eg:
http://www.bubblebaby.ie/bottle-feeding/avent-6-sealing-discs
will rank better on search engines than:
http://www.bubblebaby.ie/product.jsp?nID=146&nCategoryID=32&theParent=32

Changing this would be quite technical though, so would require talking to your web developers.

stepbar

misterq wrote:

Ok, there have been some good points mentioned above, but one I would flag as a waste of time is trying to get the .com domain name. It isn't going to get sales in the door, and frankly it would be a waste of your time at the moment.

I am assuming that for the moment your target market is Ireland? In this case, a .ie is as good, if not better than a .com. But this is a minor point.

I disagree, sure it wont get sales in the door straight away but I would see it as being part of a long term strategy. If you want to have ambitions you need to look outside Ireland. The world knows what a .com is, how many have heard about .ie? Anyhow the cost of getting the .com will be far cheaper than a .ie

tak

Hi,

What's done is done with the .ie / .com now.
(You can ask people in the know about feasibility of shutting down the carpetbagger in due course.)

Right now you have to make contact with the young mums.

1) As said already, a well placed ad in a woman's magazine or webmagazine.

2) There are 600,000 Poles, E. Europeans, Chinese etc in Ireland. Maybe more.
Many are at an age when they are having kids.
I notice that even the motor factors' shops are now lputting their list of stock parts in Polish as well as English ouside their doors !
The Poles and Chinese have their own newspapers now.
Another good place to advertise at the foreign women is their local web café noticeboard. That should nearly be free of charge.
Also, many webcafé owners make money by putting the homepage of a business site on all the PCs.
The noticeboards on Post Office walls are free too, I think.

3) Do an odd suburban hustle .
The young mothers will be pramming down to the local shop/chemist and around the estate between 10 and 12 in the morning.
Your chance to engage them.

4) Feature a baby names page on your site.
In one foreign webmagazine,
http://www.linternaute.com/femmes/prenoms/
they have this great feature that shows the national statistics for each firstname since 1900.
If you put something like this on your site you'd be the first in Ireland that I have heard of with such a feature.
(VHI and the CSO only have are the top 10 names for boys and girls in recent years. They do not show the rise and fall in popularity of names over decades.)
The data could be got from the CSO. God knows, it's badly needed with all the kids with the same name in the classes at school.
A thing like that would really pull them into your site.


Good Luck.

gbh

I would say, get websites to link to your site and vice-versa. This would be one way of increasing traffic.

Word of mouth is also a powerful way.

you need to identify your exact market, ie, is it females 18 - 35, males, 35 - 55.

Then you need to target your product at people in that demographic. If you do, I am sure it will spread by word of mouth that way.

Just take heart that the largest business's and corporations today such as microsoft or apple computers started in a garage in a backyard.

Carole Cromer

Hi

Re Does anyone know of any institutions that operate a newsletter or something where we can offer discounts to selective groups?

One that definitely does is www.iwoman.ie - they run partnerships with an array of companies who offer dicounts to iwoman members. They annouce partnership deals in a monthly ezine.

Also www.menupages.ie - they too are open to syndicate relationships.

Though as I am not sure what you are tring to market. So these may or not be relevant.

Good luck

Carole

Trojan

I'm very surprised that running an AdWords campaign was not cost effective for you. In my experience it's always been hugely more cost effective than other methods - in fact only last night I had a client who owns a beauty salon tell me this again!

I'd suggest you do another review of that campaign before writing it off as a channel. Check for geo-targeting (did you target Ireland only?), how many and what keywords did you bid on, and did you use the content network (don't, unless you find real quality sites that are converting).

The other thing I'd suggest is to set up a blog asap. This can be a great way of increasing brand awareness, reaching your demographic, and building relevant inbound links - all for the investment of some time.

Regards,
Alastair.

littlemissbusy

Thanks for all the suggestions, I'm taking it all on board. Both our site traffic and sales have increased over the last few weeks. I got some really high quality over sized postcards done up and have used them to target the maternity hospitals and pregnancy yoga etc. I am currently looking into the foreign magazine and newspapers but I need to research this a little further. Thanks to all the advise!

EIREHotspur

Market in the places that mothers frequent (big word there).

Creches, Schools (if they have one child they may be expecting more) and catch them while they are hot on the marriage websites....weddings.ie?

Good job on the website by the way....a lot of people with business ideas have crap websites but yours in very professional.

Cianos

I think a discussion forum could be a powerful tool for you.

I know that mums love talking to other mums about their kids, discussing various parenting issues and so on. If a mum landed on your page and saw a

"Talk with other mums now"

button, I think it could do great to catch their attention and keep them coming back to your site.

If you were seen as THE discussion forum for parenting in Ireland, that would do great for your brand/business.

You could have the forum open at the start (ie, not necessarily requiring registration).

The thing about forums though is that they take a while to get going. As someone here already said, it can be off putting if you click into a forum and it's only got 20 posts, 15 of which are from the moderator (you).

However, you CAN get help in this regard:) www.forumelves.com, and equivalents are a low cost way of boosting forum activity. It's basically a bunch of people you pay to sign up to your forum, make posts, keep discussion going etc.

Another good resource for forums is www.theadminzone.com

G'luck

wildkholly

Really the best way to market your comapny is to place yoru URL (website address) on quality ranking sites similar to your content. Do ten a day. One way is to enter the link of yoru competitor like so:

add link: Competitor:D

Wonky Knees

I was going to suggest the hospitals but you covered that - I would be careful to market to fathers, if I am anything to go by. I think I have 60% of all the purchases relating to my children. I would also target the consulting rooms, especially Blackrock Clinic, and I would try get a link on the health insurance websites. For publicity, you could have a draw where the prize is a cheque to cover someone going private.

CelloPoint

Perhaps baby.ie got there first?