Reply To: Hitting The Marketing Wall

[JohnW]

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Hi Matthew,
I feel sorry for folk who want to tackle any online shopping market these days. Everything changes so quickly and dramatically.

It has become very difficult to find or define any market that is unique or if it is, it will likely be quickly over-run with competitors if it starts to look attractive.

How long since you ran a market audit? Eg:

Product: I can see scores of sites selling the same WeWood Watch Date Flower product as you. Has the number of competitors grown dramatically since you started?

Price: There are at least 2 Au companies offering the same product for $AUD40 less than your price and they also offer free shipping. Are their prices realistic or ridiculously low? Some people are so inexperienced that they don’t realise what their real costs are, nor what is a realistic margin. Is your market being ruined by folk like this?

Positioning: Why should someone buy from you vs any of the many others? Quite frankly, I don’t see anything on your site that sets you apart from the others. If there is no reason to buy from you, all we have left is the commodity parameter of cheapest price.

Promotion: I see you are buying Google Product Ads. How well are they converting? It they have a very low conversion rate, it may be a sign that your competitors are under cutting you.

You need to divide your marketing communications into:

• New customers
• Existing customers

There can be exceptions that depend on specific market types but usually you would look to search engines (paid and generic referrals) as the main vehicle for new customers.

Selling to existing customers is more likely the realm of email programs and social media.

Do you create appropriate programs for each type of customer?

There is no point flogging your brain for new ways to disseminate links to your website if what people find when they arrive there are uncompetitively priced products and no justification for the extra cost.

PS: I would not get excited about your 2,000 Fb fans. 99.9% are not what I’d call “fans”. This Fb statistic must be the most irrelevant and misleading statistic on the web. All you need to do is check out your most recent “likes”. They tend to be the same very small number of people. Are they friends of yours? The dozen or so I checked don’t have the “feel” of customers when I look at their Fb pages.

Good luck.

Regs,
JohnW