Promoting your craft shop online
August 31, 2010 by PowerMan
You probably already know that there are literally thousands of people looking for your craft shop on the Web – the problem is how to get them to discover you! This post can only offer a brief overview – but hopefully it will be a helpful starting point.
If you don’t yet have a web site for your craft shop then that’s the top priority on your To Do list. It is possible to advertise yourself on the internet without having a website – but why make things difficult? You could hire a local firm to build a site for you – (remember to contact other companies they’ve done work for, to check they’re happy), or possibly create it yourself from scratch (all the information you need is readily available on the web). Alternatively, you could post a job on an freelancing website like Rent-a-Coder – that can be a good way to get a website created.
One important word of advice – install an analytics system on your site so you can track the effectiveness of your promotional efforts. Expert Internet Marketers could not be without a good statistics program on their sites, so don’t ruin your endeavours with a beginners mistake. There are great web stats programs available free – and they’re simple to install and set-up – so there’s no reason not to do it.
There are numerous directories available that you could submit your site to. Many are free, and many others you have to fork out for. Best of the Web is one of the better paid directories, but you could also try Joe Ant. There are so many totally free directories that it’s usually best to use a reputable directory submission company to save time. Don’t bother applying to thousands of directories – one hundred or so is generally plenty.
Specialist directories or websites are among the most worthwhile places to advertise your site. Sadly many markets just don’t have sites like these – and the few that exist understand their value and usually charge accordingly. The good news is, there is http://www.ClickCraftShops.co.uk/ which is a craft shop specialist so it’s well worth getting in touch with them (specially as listing on that site is now absolutely free!). If you can locate other websites in your niche, try to sign up with them too.
Rather than sitting back and waiting for customers to appear at your new website – you might want to advertise to start bringing them in. Google Adwords is a good way to do this – it’s a Pay Per Click advertising platform that will show your ads adjacent to Google’s search results – and as its name suggests, you only pay when somebody clicks through to your website.
It’s superb getting prospects to your site – but one of the best ways to get site visitors is to remind people who visited previously to return and see what’s changed. Email is the way to accomplish this – and you’ll need to have peoples’ email addresses and their permission to email them when you’ve new things for them to take a look at. Implement a service like GetResponse to make this happen. You can actually automate the whole process by authoring a series of emails upfront and arranging for them to be sent out at regular intervals – without you having to think about it again.
Of course there is far more to marketing your craft shop on the web than I could deal with in this short document – but I trust it’s been a valuable introduction to the topic. The next step is the most vital one of all: Get Started!
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Hi Martha, thanks for visiting. David is actually the name of someone who commented on my blog (and to whom I was replying). But in any event, I'd love to know what this neighborhood was like when you lived here. Even in just the past three years, I think Islington has seen a lot of change.
As for Italy and the expense, I'm hoping my reviews help readers spend their hard-earned money in the worthwhile places (or at least avoid the restaurants where it'd be a waste).