Get Found to Juice Your Holiday Sales
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
‘Tis the season to be shopping, and ’tis the season to be shopping online. So, are you making it easy for your prospective customers to find you? Are you making it EXTREMELY easy for them?
Consumers visit many different kinds of websites throughout the holiday season, whether it be manufacturer, retail, review, news, comparison, local, etc. With this in mind, it’s critical that you expand your visibility across the online landscape to increase the probability that people will find you during this critical holiday season.
To that end, make sure that you conduct the following Internet marketing tactics to increase your exposure to drive your holiday sales:
1. Website
Is your website fully up-to-date? Does your home page mention any holiday promotions you are offering? Is your site optimized so that you rank on the search engines?
2. Blog
Is your blog full of holiday specials, promotions and useful information for your customers?
3. CraigsList
Are you publishing classified ads (for free!) in CraigsList.org? The site has more than 50 million users and has the 7th most Page Views of any English language site.
4. Yelp
Are you listed in Yelp? Do you have a professional profile page? Are you advertising on the site? Yelp attracts more than 27 million unique visitors each month.
5. Kijiji
Kijiji is a CraigsList wanna-be site, but with more than 2 million unique monthly visitors is worth leveraging for your business as well.
6. Your Local City and News Sites
Check out advertising and promotional opportunities among your local city and news sites. Some of these sites can attract large local audiences, who may be more engaged with the site due to the local nature of the content.
7. Paid Search Marketing
Are you running ads in Google, Yahoo! and Bing?
8. Content Network
Remember, you can leverage the search engines to also run text, image and video ads on their content networks. A better, more reliable approach would be to use their site targeting features to ensure that you are appearing on only the sites that matter most to you.
9. Comparison Shopping Engines
If you are a retailer, consider if comparison shopping engines are right for you.
10. Press Releases
Issue a few holiday-related press releases, and submit to an online wire service. Send your press release to credible blogs in your industry as well.
11. Articles
Write an article or two that your target audience will LOVE and publish them in online article directories such as eZineArticles.com.
12. Content Aggregators
If you do write a blog and/or articles, be sure to submit your writings to online content aggregators such as AllTop.com. To submit your site, go to: http://alltop.com/submission/.
13. Twitter
More than 22 million unique visitors are on Twitter a month. If you believe your audience is among them, start Tweeting your holiday specials and promotions.
14. Facebook
Facebook has more than 300 million users, half of whom log in every day. Are you cultivating your Facebook fans, and engaging with them?
15. Commenting
There must be a handful of blogs that your audience tends to read. Read them and add comments when you can add real value to the discussion. Be sure to include your name and a link back to your site (when appropriate).
