Hello -
Thank you for your question.
Firstly, an important note: Your satisfaction with this answer is most
important. If you choose to rate this answer, please do so *after*
giving me the opportunity to provide you any additional clarification
or information you may need. Thank you for your understanding.
Because you're Internet-based, marketing your site is going to be
literally the number one thing you need to be devoting your funds to,
second to actually getting the site running. Visibility is utterly
key to the survival of an exclusively Internet-based concern.
The magnitude of your marketing will depend upon the magnitude of your
site and your ambitions for its growth over over some amount of time.
Because advertising is often a recurring cost, especially of the
online kind, that $4000 can disappear very quickly in a short amount
of time. To cut through the Internet's ever-increasing saturation of
business, it takes a concentrated effort to make and keep your site
visible. Searching for "european furniture" -- with and without
quotes -- yields thousands of hits on Google. There are 18 million
search results from the word "furniture" alone. I would highly advise
planning on a monthly budget for advertising, with as much funds as
possible being invested into an on-going monthly campaign without
sacrificing the other essentials of your business.
Overture, who handes 8 of the top U.S. search properties -- MSN,
Yahoo!, AltaVista, Lycos, InfoSpace, AlltheWeb, CNET and NetZero -- is
a prevailing presence in the pay-per-click online advertising realm.
They have a real-time bidding environment, including auto-bidding for
cents/click for offering how much you're willing to pay for various
search term positions. For a hypothetical example, when you search
for "european furniture" on Yahoo, there may be a company holding the
first search result that's paying $.25 per every person that clicks on
their link. Another company, holding the second slot, may be paying
$.21 per every person that clicks on their link, and a 3rd slot
company could be paying $.19 -- and it goes down from there. You set
a maximum you're willing to pay per click for the month, and your
slots are determined and then distributed throughout their sites.
I talked to a gentleman named Lonnie at Overture, and he said that
clients he has personally dealt with have ranged in the
$200-$1000/month level for the search term "furniture," but that other
representatives may very easily have dealt with much higher budgets --
especially for such a ubiquitous search term. Overture will actually
assess your site and submit a business proposal to you within 3 days,
which includes a site assessment, search term recommendations,
historical data, expected click volume, etc.
Lonnie can be reached at 866-747-7327x8773. I would check out
Overture's web site, including case studies and market research on
effectivness here:
Overture Case Studies
http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/learning/case_deere.jhtml
Market Research on Pay-For-Performance Listings
http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/about/advertisers/slab1_jup.jhtml
[More on] how Overture works
http://www.content.overture.com/d/advertisers/p/bjump/?o=UCJ&b=10&AID=9255179&PID=492926
Google, being the number one single-entity search engine, who also
handles AOL, Netscape, AskJeeves and others, is going to be a top
second choice for advertising. Their systems work similarly, but
there are important differences, such as how Google calculates
relevance.
In a nutshell, the biggest distinction between Google Adwords and
Overture is that, with Overture, you're actually paying for search
engine *placement*. You're not paying for a separate ad on the right
or left side of the search results, which is the case with Adwords
(right side). Also, with Overture, you're shown what the other
competing bid amounts are. With Google, you're not explicitly shown
that.
You can contact Sara at Google (866-246-6453x4733) to discuss Adwords
more in-depth, and you can read more here about the steps to get
started: https://adwords.google.com/select/steps.html
The first couple pages of search results are so eminently important,
because so many people decide where they're going to "surf next" based
on what kind of search results come up. It's imperative to have your
site as up-front as possible in these search results.
So another tactic you'll most definitely want to pursue is the
legitimate increase of your search engine placement exposure with
Google, because you won't get that through pay-for-placement. Google
utilizes an automated webcrawling system to determine search placement
relevance, and a good starting place to understand it is here:
http://www.internetmarketingwebsites.com/searching-gg.htm
This company actually specializes in search engine optimization, which
is the next thing I would recommend investigating -- hiring a company
to help you get better search engine placement/market your site.
Prices can range for this service from a few hundred dollars to
thousands, depending on the chosen scope of your project. Here are
some additional sites that specialize in this work:
Meandaur
http://www.meandaur.com/
SEO Logic
http://www.seologic.com/
Positioned1
http://positioned1.com/contact.nclk
Prime Visibility
http://www.primevisibility.com/?source=google2
These companies "look" credible to me, but I have not done business
with them directly, so I would ask for a few referrals from the one(s)
you choose to do business with. I would also ask about other
marketing and consulting services they provide.
These are the chief online approaches to increasing and driving
traffic to your site. In addition to these, there are sites that
accept online banner-type ads. Here is one:
FurnitureQuest
http://www.furniturequest.com/Add_Furniture_Store.htm
FurnitureQuest.com attracts over 100,000 unique visitors a month
specifically shopping for furniture and home decor items. Get your Web
site listed for only $10 a month among the top listings on our Online
Shopping page or your State page. For additional pages available,
please contact us.
The Furniture Portal
http://www.thefurnitureportal.com/footer.asp?pagename=Advertise+With+Us&s=Furniture
I would suggest placing banner ads on related sites. For example,
home improvement, and house/home-oriented sites. If you search Google
for something along the lines of:
home remodeling "advertise with us"
house "advertise with us"
"interior design" "advertise with us"
(try other variations such as "advertising rates" or just "advertise")
You'll see sites that allow for banner-type advertising somewhere on
their pages. Here are some examples:
Home Owners Guide
http://www.ahomeownersguide.com/
MSN House and Home
http://houseandhome.msn.com/improve/workingcontractor.aspx
homeplans.com
http://www.homeplans.com/
Dream Home Source
http://www.dreamhomesource.com/
You can contact their advertising departments for more information on
rates, which can range based on things such as ad length-times and
physical size.
Other tactics include more conventional advertising such as physical
magazines. You could easily place an ad in a magazine that would
direct individuals to your website; however, I would most certainly
exhaust the search engine advertising and placement techniques first.
Search strategy:
furniture "advertise with us"
furniture "advertise your"
google vs. overture
contacted Google/Overture |
Clarification of Answer by
jbf777-ga
on
24 Oct 2003 20:22 PDT
Thank you for your clarification request. I can surely make a
recommendation as to how best to spend the $4000. First, let me
disclaim that the following is my personal recommendation, and is by
no means a guarantee of success, nor a reflection of Google Answers'
thoughts or views.
The way I would approach this is to test the waters with as little
cash outlay as possible. There's no real way of determining which
method is going to work the best until you see their effectiveness
after trying them with a minimalist approach. People have different
results with different approaches. It's best to put your toe into the
water to see its temperature, and don't put all your eggs in one
basket.
I would start with $30-$50 in your account with Google Adwords and see
after a week or two if you've gotten any increases in traffic. Make
the link you submit to Adwords go to a counter gateway on your site of
some sort -- this is extremely important for determining how many hits
you're getting from that advertisement. If after a week or two you
can see a measurable increase in traffic, I would up your account
balance incrementally by $100-$200+ or more, in direct relation to the
traffic increases you've seen. If you see nothing after your initial
balance, try changing the ad a little and see if that makes any
difference.
I would definitely do the $10/month with Furniture Quest immediately.
I would have this go to a separate counter gateway to determine how
many requests you're getting through this means as well.
Categorically speaking, a primary goal is to have good search engine
placement, since that's the predominant way that people discover web
sites. If you have to spend $1000 or $1500 with a company that
guarantees the best placement in Google for related search terms such
as "european furniture," by all means, do it. Get the guarantee in
writing and do it on a credit card with recourse. If your site is
buried as item 3,482, no one is going to see your site when searching
for european furniture. Bear in mind that it can take at least 30
days just to see differences in placement positions, because Google's
webcrawler crawls every 30 days or so.
I would call Overture and see the absolute minimum cost involved with
getting started. Get their free business proposal and see the
estimates for click volume. If it's $300-$400 to get a good position,
I would dive in, again using a separate counter gateway to assess the
effectiveness of this compaign. If you see results, increment
proportionally.
At the end of 60 days, you should have a better understanding of where
most of your traffic is coming from. It would then make the most
sense to increase your investment into those areas that are most
fruitful.
If you require any additional information, do not hesitate to ask
before rating this answer. Thanks!
|
