Hi everyone, I am looking for some advice. To give you some background, I work for a company that supplies services and tools for online sellers. I am only using this forum to solicit ideas and not new business. My role in the company is to develop and culitvate new business. Basically sales, marketing, partnerships.
Our products have a low price point and have a mass appeal. We currently use CPC advertising in Google and Overture, though we are in a marketplace that is highly competitive and the bid to be number 1 looks to be about 3-5 dollars depending on the keyword and day.
I have a philosophy to be found when and where your customers are looking , the question is where does a newbie Ecom seller look?
The seller we are going after is either creating a site or has an existing site but is looking for a specific feature that not many offer[some sellers care less or find a work around]. Those that find our service are in awe a flexible solution that no one else does for the same money or even at higher prices points. Many of our current customers have a site as a hobby or for supplemental income. A few this is there main source of revenue, but the example shows the type of traffic they recieve.
Forums and messageboards are a great venue, but spam a board and you lose credability, also a forum like this to advertise legit, seems a little pricy, just by looking at cost versus CTR and product price point, [it looks if all went as planned we would just break even on the campaign] I understand that advertising is the cost of doing business but I am hoping for a decent ROI.
Our Affiliate program garners litle success, those that do sign up do not generate the traffic and our payback is about 10% of the cost of product.
Mass Emails /Spam - I am not interested in.
My question :
What are some ideas to reach the target audience?
Where are these venues?
What types of advertsing would be most effective in reaching our target market?
What other venues are there to get the message out?
If you know of specific companies/service that maybe able to help feel free to send me a private message.
Thank you in advanced
