If you're just launching your online storefront, I'm sure you're chomping at

the bit to start making sales, and we're going to talk about the various ways you

can use digital marketing to do just that. In today's webinar, we'll start by meeting

our digital marketing experts. Then we'll quickly go over each marketing channel so

you'll have a foundational understanding of what we mean when we refer to things

like SEO, PPC feeds, and then each specialist will share tips for using each

channel effectively. And last but not least, we'll answer your questions. So go

ahead and start typing those questions into the Q&A box in the webinar software.

We're going to have a lengthy Q&A at the end of the webinar, but we might get a

chance to answer some questions during the presentation as well.

So let's start by meeting the webinar team. Hello again, my name is Alison,

and I'm going to moderate today's webinar. I'm a Search Marketing Manager here at

Volusion, and I'm passionate about strategy, content, and helping small

to medium businesses outwit larger corporations. I'm originally from Central

California, but I've been in Texas for over eight years now and started

spontaneously saying "ya'll" a few years ago. So it's a done deal, I'm a Texan.

- [Sean] It wasn't spontaneous at all. It's been a long time coming. Howdy,

everybody. My name is Sean, and I'm the Paid Search Specialist for today.

I've been at Volusion for four years. I've worked specifically with shopping feeds

and product listing ads for the last two. I'm certified in all things Google,

AdWords, Analytics, and Shopping. And I'm a big fan about using

data-driven marketing automation strategies to help online businesses.

When I'm not behind my two monitors at work, I'll be out hiking

around in the greenbelts here in Austin, Texas.

- [Kavi] Hey, I'm Kavi. I'm one of the SEO Specialists here at Volusion.

My background is actually in publishing, but a few years ago, I took my writing

skills and turned those plus my love of data into a career in digital marketing.

And yes, you are reading that last bullet point correctly.

I've never seen "Jaws," "The Shining," or "Groundhog Day."

- [Samantha] And I'm Samantha. I am an SEO Specialist and one of the resident social

media gurus here at Volusion. I recently just moved to Texas from Long Island,

New York, and I have about four years working in social media, SEO,

and marketing. I've had experience dealing with clients in a multitude industries

from fashion to industrial fasteners. Oh, and a fun fact, I hate cilantro.

Apparently, they say it's a genetic thing.

- [Alison] Interesting. All right. So now that we've met our team of experts,

let's talk about the different marketing channels. We can start with the text ads

that often appear on the right-hand side and on the top of search results.

- [Sean] Alison, that's going to be me. So pay-per-click ads are going to be those

hyperlinked text ads that appears at the top or the side of search result pages,

as you can see in the highlighted box to the right here. These ads are the most

ubiquitous of the web, and if you haven't clicked on them, you've definitely seen

them before. These are going to be really short ads with only two lines of text and

use targeted keywords to drive really qualified traffic to your store. Keywords

are words and phrases that match your ads to the terms people are searching for.

And from this example, you'll see that we're searching for telescopes, and the ad

experience matches that. You're only going to be paying for ads when someone clicks

onto it and visits your website, rather than just having to pay a set rate.

And lastly, PPC is a great marketing technique to oust your competition quickly

because your ads can very quickly appear on the front page.

- [Kavi] All right. And SEO stands for search engine optimization. It's a set of

strategies that can affect the organic or unpaid results that make up the majority

of your average search results page. You can see where those organic results begin

for our telescope example here inside this green box. So unlike PPC or shopping

feeds, SEO is a slow and steady process. Results don't happen overnight.

Best practices are always changing. But when results do appear, they can provide

a lasting value long after you've started your SEO campaign. So by performing a few

technical changes to your website and featuring fresh, compelling content on

your landing pages, you can help the search engines recognize what each page is

about and why it should be considered worthy of appearing in the search results.

One thing to keep in mind, this is a common misconception that a lot of people

have starting out with SEO. SEO is not about tricking or gaming the search

engines into ranking your site higher than a competitor's. It's about

working along with the search engines' sophisticated algorithms to increase

your site's traffic and revenue.

- [Sean] Excellent. Moving away from organic and back to paid search for just a

moment, shopping feeds, or data feeds as I'll be calling them, are image-based ads

that appear at the top or right-hand side of the search result pages. Because they

have an image, they can really stand out, especially on mobile devices, and do a

great job of showing off your products. These ads are pretty simple and only

provide the product image, the product title, its price, and your domain name.

PPC, the text ads we just saw, can advertise services or locations, like

plumbers in your areas or restaurants nearby. Shopping feeds are a little bit

different because they're going to be an ecommerce-first type of advertising. That

means they can only show products. Lastly, these ads are not keyword based like PPC,

so you don't have to research any keywords or do much extra work.

Instead, your ads are going to be served to clients based on Google

matching your products with search terms.

- [Samantha] The last marketing tool we're going to be discussing is social media.

And social media doesn't have its own place in the search results, but it

definitely has a special place in the consumer's heart. The whole idea of social

media is to make your customers love you by showing them how valuable they are.

This mutual respect fosters trust between the customer and the brand, which is why

about 81% of small businesses use social media. When you're a small business,

customer relations and business reputation on social media are very important.

In fact, shoppers are more likely to make a purchase after reading something

they saw on social media. So you want to make sure that you're representing

yourself well. When it comes down to it, social media is an avenue for promotion,

but it's also an effective customer service tool and a great way for brands

to get noticed. It does not discriminate by the size of your business.

Small and large brands both have a chance for success on social media.

Oh, and as a bonus, it allows you to direct people to your online store.

- [Alison] Excellent. All right. So let's talk about the strategies and tactics you

can use today to start marketing your online store. We've broken each channel

into three parts: Overview, Tips, and Takeaways. We'll also be providing you

with some resources. But before we do just that, I want to give

you some homework for tonight. If you do one thing today, please install Google

Analytics on your store. This way you can begin gathering data immediately and track

your store's performance over time. Volusion offers some easy do-it-yourself

instructions linked here, and the Volusion Tech Support Team can certainly assist you

with this. But trust me, it's literally copy and pasting. So you can do it,

and it's free. But if this is too intimidating, we also offer an

implementation service. But again, it's copy and pasting. It's free. I promise

you, you can do it on your own, which is great, because the data Google Analytics

provides is priceless. You'll learn everything from visitor demographics

and behavior to which channels are driving your traffic and conversions. So you'll

want to monitor your traffic data over time so you can make informed marketing

decisions in the future. We recommend that you explore Analytics in bite-size pieces

just to avoid being overwhelmed. There are a bunch of wonderful free tools out there

to help you learn the ropes. I recommend starting with this Metrics Webinar and

Google's free training resources. All of these links are not clickable now, but

they will be when we send you out the slideshow after the webinar concludes.

All right. So let's get to why you're really here. Marketing your store and

driving sales. We're going to start with pay-per-click, also known as PPC.

- [Sean] Excellent. Thanks Alison. As mentioned earlier, if you're a new store

just getting started or even an older, established store, PPC is a cornerstone to

any marketing strategy. Getting started with pay-per-click advertising can seem a

bit daunting, but it's really not too much to it. You're going to begin the

process by creating a campaign and then subdivide that campaign into

something called ad groups. Many of you may already be familiar with

AdWords and kind of know this, but ad groups are the subdivision where you

actually create the ads, add in your two witty lines of text as well as your call

to action. This is also where you're going to be setting your keywords. PPC is going

to be great to bring highly qualified traffic, and a reason for that is just how

flexible that it is. These ad types can change very quickly to accommodate store

changes, like a flash sale, as well as for seasons and holidays like Black Friday or

the Christmas shopping season. There really is a ton of flexibility of what you

can do. You can raise and lower daily budgets with a few clicks, test new ad

text, and add in new keywords. PPC is going to be great for marketing new

stores. You can direct the customer to any part of your store. And this means that

the landing page, the first page that the customer sees after clicking your ad can

be the homepage, an article, a category, or even a product page, anywhere on your

site. There will, of course, be better places to send them than not, so you can

try out a lot of different things and test a lot. So focus on popular categories and

higher margin products, it's always a great place to start. Lastly, it's going

to be great for gathering quality data about your store's traffic. Because the

data is tangible and quick, you can make a lot of great decisions that contribute as

you continue to build your store. So let's go ahead and consider some tips

to get started. First, you're going to want to make sure that your store is

presentable. Take your customers to an attractive and functional website.

Of course, it doesn't have to be perfect, and you're never going to be truly

finished building your store. But you still want your new customers to have a

really good experience when they get there. Second, you really want to organize

your categories and subcategories well. Think about your online store like a

real store. Different aisles or different categories and different shelves are the

different subcategories. So you're going to want to separate your products in

an appropriate way. If you sell apparel, you want to separate that from your sports

equipment and gear. If you have men's and women's lines of clothes, make sure that

they are not all jumbled together. For an example, let's look at considering

gift baskets. If you sell gift baskets, this would be your aisle, and the

different types -- baby gift baskets, movie gift baskets -- would be their own

subcategories and their own shelves. For PPC, if someone is searching for wedding

gift baskets, you want to show them products specific to that search.

It's going to be more qualified and they're likely to enjoy the

experience a little bit better. The third tip about PPC is try to keep

your CPCs, your cost-per-click bids, as low as you can while still getting the

traffic that you want. If you're just getting started, a rookie mistake that I

see far too often is that you're going to be overpaying for traffic because you want

people to get in the door. Instead, try to slow it down and focus on building a

sustainable and successful campaign. With this, experiment with ad position.

It doesn't always really pay, nudge, nudge, to be in the first spot. You're

going to want to see a good ROI, a return on investment, at a lower spot without

spending as much. So just don't overspend when you don't have to. And with that, try

to be more specific than too broad. You don't necessarily want anyone coming to

your store. I know it may seem like that. But instead, you're trying to advertise to

people who are looking to buy your specific products. PPC doesn't take a

shotgun approach to getting people into the door. A way to avoid the shotgun

approach is to add negative keywords into your account. Negative keywords are the

complete opposite of keywords. They are words and phrases that you don't want to

show up for. Common examples include the words "cheap," "used," or places like

"Craigslist" and "Walmart. " These people who are searching for "gift basket

Walmart" already have a destination in mind, and you don't want to pay for clicks

along the way when someone may just be searching and browsing around.

As a final takeaway, I want to say that PPC is going to be a great way to meet a

new audience through compelling text ads. It brings really quality traffic to your

site very quickly. But before you start paying for traffic, remember to have your

site in its best form. Structure your categories and subcategories as best they

can be to align your products with your campaigns and your ad groups. And finally,

try to offer some stuff that's going to stand out from your competition.

Well, I've added just a few little resources for you as well when this slide