The bottomline is that doing away with Google is inevitable but business that solely rely on Google for organic search traffic are ripe to fall into the "vulnerability trap". That too head-on! Instead businesses should start looking for diverse sources and platforms to promote themselves.
Joel Wishkovsky, the CEO of Card Gnome opines that "eCommerce is like retail shopping from when your parents were kids". New changes happen so constantly that sticking to traditional models doesn't work well. In our case, Google's almost monopolist stance is just too risky a bait. Google Adwords and organic search are important but not the sole detriment for scaling new business heights.
So what is the paradigm shift that businesses in the eCommerce niche should look to? What are the possible alternatives to Google?
For starts, the alterantives we are going to speak of today are both of paid and unpaid in nature. Choose wisely!
1. Comparison Shopping
The web is full of price comparison websites that collects product data directly from merchants who wish to list their business details. The prices and products are compared from the existing database, compiled by the info provided by the merchants. The key here is the collection of data correctly. An important approach used by such websites is through crowdsourcing techniques. This cuts the cost for the price comparison sites from creating crawlers or primary database. The latest in this field is that price comparison sites are engaging "comparison site optimization" specialists who work for increasing the prominence of comparison sites by optimizing titles, prices and content.
2. Behavioral Re-marketing
It accounts for almost 98% of all the web traffic for any site. To put it simply, remarketing or re-targeting, is an online advertising strategy to a target audience that leave a site without an any actual conversion happening. The idea is to simply get back the audience's attention who has shown a slight engagement with your brand already but was not too interested initially. In other words, it is marketing your brand to the same user in a different way. The companies engage with various ad networks to earmark online visitors with a pixel or cookie and then float banner ads of specific products that the user has shown interest in. This is not exactly "new" traffic but neither is all of what you derive from Google. So the statregy here is preservation of the existing clientele base to boost traction.
3. Referral Marketing
This is a tricky proposition as the customer becomes a virtual marketer in the process. Online referral marketing is on a rise with the boom in digital media platforms as a tool of promotion. According to a study by the Goethe University, Franfurt "referred customers were both more profitable and loyal than normal customers. Referred customers had a higher contribution margin, a higher retention rate and were more valuable in both the short and long run". This kind of marketing happens in two ways:
a. When the customers promote a brand/product through the word-of-mouth method.
b. User reviews on the product website. This leaves a good reputataion as well as adds keywords to the existing ones that helps SEO's track your site.
4. Facebook's Open Graph
You can never fall short of using the social media n number of times . Sites like Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Facebook and Twitter are as much your tools of trade as the brand iself is. Integrating Facebook's Open Graph is a viable traffic generation alternative to Google. Create a Facebook product page for your brand to build your community of followers. As the "like" action happens on a product when the users click on it, the product ads appear on their friends's pages and feeds. It is a little round about business act.
5. Online Classified Websites
This is somewhat similar to employing the price comparison technique. Popular websites like Craigslist, Kijiji, Gumtree etc are good places to start with. Affiliate networks like Commission Junction help in connecting with merchant-clients for generating quality product reviews to drive traffic to your store-front automatically.
6. Email Marketing
This is the evergreen method to draw customers. Since the very nature of your business is online, so try to connect authentically with the clients in the traditional style.
7. Content creation
Content marketing through blogging and guest authorship surely creates a good online business reputation. The power of the written word helps clarifies the business operation to the clients and draws them to make real time purchases.
8. Video Marketing
Videos form part of visual marketing. Creating simple How-to videos add value to you marketing campaign. Work around YouTube or Netflix - the most authentic websites for video sharing and hosting.
9. Offline Promotion
Having done everything online, what else can you do? How will offline marketing help your online business store? Well both online and offline marketing are two sides of the same coin. It is all about getting the necessary visibility. So doing Press releases, collaborating with media houses, radio stations or printing ads in dailies will help your cause.
As we suggested earlier, the existing traffic source from Google cannot be done away with totally. Why? Because structures have been build on it for so long now that imagining a new start is quite difficult. This is specially true for small business who are hard-pressed for choices.
Do let us know what your thoughts on the topic by leaving a comment in the section below.
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