In today’s e-commerce-driven market, it can be challenging to find ways to sell your products. There is great potential with e-commerce because people do so much of their shopping online, yet with so many online vendors it can be nearly impossible to stand out from the crowd and sell your products especially when you are first starting out. It is for this reason why it is helpful to be aware of a few alternative ways to sell your products. These methods could give you a unique edge which will boost your sales and improve your brand awareness. This can, in turn, increase your sales.

1. Your Own Self-Hosted E-Commerce Store

Having your own e-commerce store is a great way to sell your products online because it puts you in complete control and you do not have to pay to use a hosted store. It can take some time and effort to run and operate an online store, but it can also be highly rewarding to build a store from the ground up. Additionally, you can use dropshipping, which means that you do not have to worry about inventory or storage because the vendor is responsible for shipping to the customer.

2. Across Multiple Marketplaces

When a consumer needs to purchase a product, it is likely that they will visit any of the following popular marketplaces:

• Amazon
• eBay
• Walmart

This means that you will want to sell your products across multiple marketplaces. Creating listings and managing orders can be tricky and time-consuming which is why it is a good idea to use a marketplace integration service. This should include Amazon inventory management along with other marketplaces so that it can be easy to manage your listings from one central source.

3. Google Shopping

People also use Google to search for products so you will want to appear on Google Shopping. This is achieved by setting up a Merchant Centre account and create a Shopping Campaign in Google Ads.

4. Social Media Influencers

Influencers can have a huge impact on the success of a brand and even influence trends and popular culture. If you are able to get a social media influencer to recommend your products on their page (for a price) with a direct link it could help you to tap into an entirely new market and boost sales.

5. Pinterest

Pinterest is another excellent platform particularly for those selling art and jewelry. You can sell here by setting up a business account and use Promoted Pins to advertise your products and then encourage people to follow your account.

These are just a few alternative ways to sell your products online. The key to success when it comes to e-commerce is making sure that your products are available and visible everywhere that your target customer shops. This means that you need to identify who your target customer is and where they shop so that you can create and optimize listings to increase the visibility of your product. When you do this across multiple platforms, it should significantly boost sales and brand awareness.

No matter how appealing your business’s brand may be, it will be of no use whatsoever to you if it doesn’t reach your target audience. You should treat the task of expanding this reach with the seriousness it deserves by devoting as much of your time and as many of resources as you can to it.

To see what you need to do when you set about to expand your brand’s reach, make sure to read on.

Shoot for the stars

If you want your brand to reach far and wide, there’s no time for you to be thinking small; you have to shoot for the stars. More to the point, you have to communicate your brand’s mention on the web’s most significant publications. By doing so, even if you are ultimately unable to have your brand mentioned on the world wide web’s most prominent and authoritative sites, it will still be better off with regards to where it falls in the ranking pages.

In order to reach the sites that are deemed social influencers thanks to the following and pull that they have, first and foremost, you have to align yourself with a company capable of performing an effective SEO technical audit for you. A company that is an expert in this field, such as Click Intelligence, will be able to sort through all of the different factors that are potentially holding your brand back from communicating with social influencers. First of all, they will check all of your website’s elements, from its coding to its content, against their own audit checklist to ensure that nothing about your site is hampering your brand’s potential growth.

Become a content authority

To truly expand your brand’s reach, you need to have the reputation of being a content authority. This is because content is king in the digital work of today. 

To become an authority in this sense, whether it’s written, photographic, infographic, or video content that you opt for, you need to ensure that everything you upload is informative down to the T. This means no mistakes! Nobody is going to believe in your brand or ultimately trust in your business’s capabilities enough to bring you their custom if you cannot provide accurate information on the subjects that you are supposed to be an expert in.

A practical and proven way to become a content authority is to guest blog. If you can becomeprolific in this sense, you will find more and more opportunity to slip your brand into the content that you create. As a result, your brand will be right under the nose of your target audience, which is right where you need it to be.

Use Facebook to promote yourself

Thanks to the fact that it helps businesses reach a highly specific and responsive audience, Facebook is fast becoming one of the Internet’s leading paid search channels. If your brand is going to be seen anywhere in its bid to expand, it should be on this social media platform.

In order to expand your brand’s reach, as stated, there’s no time for thinking small. To create a big brand, everything you do must be BIG.

One of the most used feature in Hitsteps is heatmaps. Heatmaps provide an extensive insight into pages usability and design. However they hide informations too. A LOT of informations.

Following screenshots are from a classic Hitsteps heatmap when page is scrolled down. You can see some clicks around the screen.

It is a good start but there are a lot more to see from behind the scene data that generated this heatmap. Here comes the Page Analysis.

We have built Page Analysis to be dynamic, extensible and interactive. Page analysis provide data for heatmaps. but a lot of data that are not possible to view within heatmaps, are now provided via Page Analysis feature.

Looking at screenshot below, you can see how page analysis identify each HTML DOM Elements, bind to the element and show number of clicks that happened on that element. Furthermore, Page Analysis provide you with live and interactive view of your website. It allows you to click on your menus and buttons, and see clicks on sub menus and popups where you would not be able to see on a generic static heatmap.

This deep level of aggregated page elements analysis is a power tool for any UX designer who are trying to improve usability of a dynamic website. Perhaps video below can put this feature in better perspective:

This feature come pre-activated in all free trial and Pro accounts. You do not need to enable page analysis to record clicks on a specific page. It record all pages by default.

If you do not have your Hitsteps free trial account, you can create one now. no credit card required.

The internet has become the center of our modern world. It’s where we get all of our information, and it’s where most of us communicate with one another. As a result, it’s imperative that your business have a strong online presence. This means maintaining profiles on all relevant social media platforms, as well as employing a strong SEO and content marketing strategy.

But while it’s important to develop a strong internet presence, it’s equally as important to monitor and maintain it. And part of this process involves performing an audit of your online presence to make sure you’re saying everything you want to say about your brand, make sure there’s nothing out there misrepresenting you, and also to check to see if it’s time to update your marketing strategy.

However, this is another case where the why is much easier to understand than the how. You may recognize the need to audit your online presence, but you might not be sure of exactly how to do it, so here are three things every online audit should include.

Check for Negativity

The first thing you’ll want to do when auditing your online presence is to check to make sure no one is saying anything bad about you. Start by simply performing a Google search of your company name. Check the first page of results, but also dig into some of the stuff that comes up on the other pages. You never know if there is a blogger out there who has an ax to grind, and it’s better to identify these issues before they become more serious than they need to be.

If you do find something, there are a few things you could do, such as:

• Nothing: If there is something out there that is obviously false, or that stands no chance of becoming more mainstream, then it might be best to just leave things as they are, especially if you had to wait until page nine on Google to find something negative. Sometimes drawing attention to these things can be worse.
• Reach out to whoever posted the negative content: Sometimes a quick email responding to whatever claims this person is making, and also asking them to take down their post, can be enough to bury whatever negativity is out there.
• Use SEO to bury it: If whatever negative thing is written about you is too big to bury and you can’t get people to take it down, then you may need to get more aggressive. You can hire a reputation management company to help you bury these bad search results further down in Google, for we all know how often people look past the first page of search results.

You’ll also want to spend some time combing through review sites. If your business is on Yelp or Trip Advisor, make sure there aren’t any really negative comments out there. And if you find something, address it. You may not be able to win back a customer with a bad attitude, but you will provide some context to the comment that may soften its significance when future users stumble upon it.

Confirm Consistency

Your online presence is really important for promoting your brand, and one of the most important things when it comes to branding of any kind is consistency. This is because you never know when someone will come into contact with your brand, but you want to make sure that they receive the right message whenever they do.

As a result, a big part of your audit should be making sure that all your messaging is consistent. Take a look at each piece of content on all different channels and ask yourself what these things are saying about your company. But before doing this, make sure you’re clear about what it is you want to say. Then, compare this with what’s out there, and anything that’s off message should be deleted or changed to more accurately reflect the brand message you’re trying to convey.

Study the Numbers

Another thing you should do while auditing your online presence is to figure out what kind of return you’re getting from these efforts. But before doing this, figure out what it is you want to get from each channel. For example, are you looking to convert people into customers? Or do you want people to sign up for your newsletter? Or are you just looking for engagement?

This matters because it will help you identify where your efforts are paying off and where they are not. For example, if you’re spending money on Facebook ads hoping to drive sales, but this isn’t happening, then it’s time to rethink your strategy, or maybe even to drop Facebook advertising from your mix.

Overall, when it comes to digital marketing, quality is always more important than quantity. It may seem smart to be involved on all platforms, but doing so also exposes you to risk; there will always be irrational people. As a result, you need to be sure that this risk is worth it, and an audit of your internet presence will help you figure out if this is the case.

Evaluate Frequently

It’s important to stop and do a full audit at least once if not two or three times a year. But this shouldn’t be the only time you stop to look at your internet presence. Evaluation should be built into your approach, as this will help you identify more quickly when something isn’t working, allowing you to adapt and keep moving without having to deal with unnecessary setbacks.

About the Author: Kevin’s current focus is running Broadband Search, as well as being the owner and founder of several other business. His business ventures have helped make Kevin an expert in digital marketing, and he likes to share his expertise with other business owners whenever he can.

There are so many things marketers can do that sometimes they lose focus on the overall strategy. Is the approach you have chosen aligned with the goals of your organisation? Are the tactics still relevant? Is your strategy outdated? So, what are the warning signs that you need up update your marketing strategy?

Just plain old

If your strategy is older than two or three years, it’s probably time to update it. With so many updates, technology, platforms and new processes, you need to consistently account for change. Marketing is always developing and at a rapid pace. Anything over three years old can be falling behind. Content marketing, programmatic buying and customer analytics are just a few new tactics you could consider. Try to go over your strategy every twelve months. You don’t have to give it an overhaul, just adapt and update.  Sometimes it helps to make personal improvements, online courses are a great way to keep up to date with industry trends.

Preferences change

There is a stronger focus on health in 2018 compared to ten years ago. The same people are searching for nutritional recipes over junk food recipes.  If your audience is changing, then you must change with them.  If your strategy doesn’t account for change, your audience will go elsewhere.

How do you know if preference has changed? Simply listen to your audience. Surveys, keyword research and trends a just a few ways you can gauge change. Marketers will often forget to listen because they are so focused on what they are going to say. Address changes in your audience.

Lose sight of the overall picture

Because there are so many marketing tactics, we sometimes lose sight of how they will all work together.  How will social, SEO, SEM and email marketing all work together? To avoid this, you need to start with a business strategy. This will help you determine which marketing efforts will help you get there quickest.

Value over volume

In 2018, it’s no longer enough to just turn up the volume; you must have value there. You must integrate value into your strategy. There is plenty of content and information online but is it of value and quality.  People still value high-quality content.

Your brand doesn’t have a unique knowledge base and point of view. Are you demonstrating knowledge and opinion through blogs, articles, webinars, events and other methods to establish yourself as a leader in your field?  If not, you need to start updating your strategy.

Relocate spending

As your business and market change, are you making sure the allocation of marketing budget changes too? Has one marketing channel shown growth or potential over another? Do you have a room in your budget for innovative new tactics? It may be time to reassess your marketing spend.  If the channels you have been using are no longer getting results, you must change things up.  It’s time to relocate your budget to new channels. You can use eVoice virtual numbers to track marketing channels and see which ones are working the best.  

Final thoughts

If any of the above is describing your business or your marketing strategy, it’s time to step back and reassess your marketing strategy. Start with your business your business goals. Then map out tactics and channels that will help you achieve these goals. If you need more clarity, get some help.

To get most of your online campaigns, you need to have a good analytics solution to track it for you. Lesson learn while tracking your campaign will be priceless and best experience for your next campaigns.

Measurement is key for success, if you don’t set goals, you’ll never reach your goals! and that’s first step in Hitsteps.

Create your goal in hitsteps. Your goal is ultimate/final page where you want your clients to go or click, and then create campaign start page. Connect your campaign to your goal.

Next step is to Label each key page funnel along the way. It allow you to view where your visitors are at any given stage. You can search visitors based on labels they trigger, or see label tag next to each visitor in Hitsteps dashboard or any other lists. You can make a label for your Landing page, Funnel page, Another funnel page and Final page.

In labels page, you can see progress of each label. you can see exactly how many visitors trigger main page, how many proceed to next page, and how many finally made it to goal page.

In campaign page, you can see those who started campaign but haven’t finished it yet. you can checkout their behaviour in your website to understand why.

Calculating your ROI never been easier.

Don’t go having your next campaign without tracking them first, it’s like throwing eggs down to the floor!