Launching a new store?

[Kent Multer]

Hi folks,

Most of my work has been customizing existing stores. But I've just been contacted by a local business about setting up a new e-commerce site from scratch. Marketing is not my strong suit ... What techniques do you use to bring customers into a brand-new site? Besides the standard SEO and pay-per-click, what do you do to drum up business?

If any of you have expertise in this area, I may be able to bring you in on the project. But for now, I'd appreciate a few tips. The client asked about it, and I don't have a great answer for him off the top of my head.

Thanks --

[Rick Wilson]

Email marketing, retargeting and social media marketing would be my top 3 on top of SEO and PPC.

[Kent Multer]

Thanks, Rick. For email marketing, I guess you need to buy mailing lists? Any recommendations on where/how to do that?

[Rick Wilson]

I don't know about buying lists, I would suggest building a list organically and then using that to drive incremental revenue. I would also suggest they hire marketing consultants for the marketing side, I know I don't let our internal web dev's drive our marketing efforts

[lesliekirk]

Buying lists is not a good idea. Most email marketing platforms will not let you use that sort of list. Emailing from those types of lists can even get you banned from Alltel for life (it's a long story).

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

I realize the client may balk at this, but if they want any chance of success, especially if this is not just a B2B endeavour, you'll need to hire a 'digital marketing' expert. Even if you had those skills, trying to do that on top of building a site is at the very least, distracting and disorientating. As for the areas to focus, I believe that would depend a lot of the product line and customer base. Again, something a marketer would do as step one.

There are still things you can do to help, (as Rick mentioned) such as ensuring the site has proper SEO metrics, including micro data, xml site maps, etc.

[Kent Multer]

Yes, I'm definitely open to bringing in a person with more expertise in the marketing area. Anyone here have that? Or can you recommend someone?

Thanks --

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

We've been working with De Ivett @ 5dspectrum for several years. Besides being great at the whole "marketing" thing, she and her team do a fantastic job and easy to work with -- unlike my experiance with many other 'marketing' firms.

https://5dspectrum.com/