e-Commerce Marketing Techniques for Novice Online Merchants

By Kelly Richardson
Career Colleges Columnist

Despite the popular notion that you must have a large advertising budget to properly market your new online website, there is a better way. If you're operating on a shoestring budget, here are some hard-hitting e-commerce marketing techniques that will make your traffic soar.

According to the Arkansas Small Business Development Center, there are now more than one billion web pages on the Internet as of January 2000 with the largest search engines having cataloged only about 17% of this total. So where does that leave your new e-commerce website? Thankfully, there are some marketing techniques that are tried and true and will get your page, as well as your product or service, noticed. All it takes is some patience and determination to grow your daily traffic flow. Here are some of the more popular e-commerce marketing plays that are paying big dividends for novice online merchants.

E-mail Your Way to Success

Manual Directories.Manual directories are a must if you want to bring in traffic. DMOZ, for example, is a hand submission site that brings in highly qualified traffic.
Web Page Optimization. Setting your meta tags and alt tags to maximize your chosen keywords will help your search engine rankings.
Webrings. Webrings are communities of like web sites that center on a common theme. Webrings are an invaluable key to your strategy.

You can also harness the power of e-mail to grow your online business. E-mail is fast becoming a standard mode of communication for computer users. One thing to keep in mind when creating your e-mail marketing campaign is to be mindful of SPAM.

E-mail Your Way to Success

Opt In Lists. Many web site software programs will collect the e-mail addresses of unique visitors for later marketing campaigns.
Autoresponders. Autoresponders are designed to provide your customers with an automatic reply for additional information.
Blogging. Find blogs that feature your target market and place one to three line ads that link back to your web site.

Follow these guerilla e-commerce marketing techniques and you will reap the rewards of numerous unique visitors and an increased bottom line.

About the Author
Kelly Richardson covers the local education and technology scenes in major cities across the country. His articles appear in a variety of respected educational journals, periodicals, and e-zines.

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