Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

Certainly the fastest way to get relevant traffic is with a robust Adwords campaign. Depending on the product/service category you might also include a paid Facebook campaign as well.

In addition you'll want to develop a social media strategy -- again depending on the target audience and the product/service category.

Without knowing more specifics it's hard to tell what other approaches you'll want to consider. There's no one-size-fits-all answer to your question. Selling toothpaste or children's clothing is a lot different from selling office supplies or repair parts for jet airplanes.

if I were asked to prepare such a presentation, I would use Google to find at least 100 recent discussions on the topic, save them in PDF format, and compile your information from the best of them.

You can also search previous questions on this site, either using Google or through the search tools on this site.

If that were me, and if the presentation were strategically important to me, I was set aside at least eight hours to collect information, and at least 20 hours to read interview and prepared to present your presentation.

If you need technical help or guarding any of the above, send me a note. I'll be happy to help.

Good luck

The bag would probably include content marketing, online advertising, social marketing, but I'd also mention the importance of communicating with customers you already have and analytics so as to show cost-effectiveness and to maximise conversion rates eg looking at landing pages, buying routes, customer experience - so a lot of testing, monitoring and refining.

Is the new e-Commerce site a replacement for an older site? Are they looking for ideas for bringing more traffic/customers, better supporting your existing customers online, or something else?

Are the customers likely to be online? Are they a narrow niche? Can you go to "where they are" and engage them with information (not to sell, but to answer questions as an expert)? Can you create a contest? A co-marketing tie-in? An in-person event?

In my mind your question raises more questions. You need to machine gun these questions at the people you're meeting with to hit them with a lot of content very quickly. Until you know the things you don't know, how can you prepare for and work toward the things you don't know?

What niche is this new site in?

How warmed up or passionate is the traffic?

How attentive are visitors?

What are their pain points?

How old is the site and how is it positioned?

Does this site have an existing customer base?

Is this base in a list?

Doe people on the list regularly hear form the site owners?

How well developed is the relationship between the site owners and the list?

Is the list up-to-date?

Are the people on the list double opt-ins?

Is the list segmented?

Do segmented audiences receive different content and offers?

Is the content that goes to the people who buy at lower levels or have yet to buy show them what they could gain by buying, and do these messages allude to the extra content that buyers receive?

Are goods and products physical or digital?

Are there multiple price points?

Are there regular offers and sales of higher margin items to drive traffic to the more profitable products on offs?

Does the site offer gifts with purchases?

Are there incentives to buyers at certain thresholds for them to spend more on lower priced items to increase the value of each transaction?

Are there incentives to increase the frequency of purchase of lower level items?

What are the costs per acquisition of each new client?

What are the life time values of each client at each buying level?

What are the typical buying cycles?

David your first challenge is not to 'market your e-commerce site' but 'but presenting the strategy about how would you market it'. Of course, you need to have knowledge of how it's to be done because it'll be next step for you. But right now what you can do is, make a power point presentation with following sections:
1. Purpose of website/objective of website:

2. Target Audience:(Include slides those explain briefly who your target audiences are. Try to make it visually appealing and include few statistics about your T.G., if you could)

3. Customer Research: Explain how and why will you conduct research on your T.G. Gary has already provided you in depth information about what type of questions you might include. You are not supposed to actually conduct a research at this point but to include it in your presentation. It will help your bosses to understand that your approach is strategic.

4. Online Media Planning:
(It's about how you will promote website by using internet media.)
Here you can include following sub steps:
a. SEO compatibility of website:
Making your website SEO compatible by altering keywords, link/image naming etc.
b. Social Media Promotion:
Based on profile of your T.G., include name of few social networking sites. e.g. if your T.G. is B2B type, focus on linkedin. If they are normal people, focus on sites like FB.
c. Blogging
d. Directory submission
e. Autoresponders
g. Online Press Releases
h. Article submission
i. Link building (be careful about this. Be genuine in linking strategy or else it will backfire)
j. Paid Advertising ( Google adwords, Facebook ads, Linkedin ads, PPC campaigns)
k.Google analytics
l. e-Newsletters
m. create Landing pages

(You need to get basic information on all of above so that you can speak for 2 min. on each of them. If you know it already then it's advantage).

5. Traditional Media Planning:
This will include how you will market your e-commerce site through traditional available media. It mostly depends on budgets allocated to you.
a. Direct Marketing
b. Printed Newsletter
c. Radio Ads
d. Local Newspaper Ads
e. BTL activities
List can go on.....You need to include media based on your product, market and budgets.
Finally the most important:
6. Content:
For all of above, you will need effective content/copy that will engage your T.G. For this, you suggest your management to hire professional content writer and copy writer.

On internet you'll get details on every point mentioned above. You just need to get information that will help you to speak. Include visual elements in each slide.

Hope this helps you.
Thanks & Regards,
-Shrikant.

All good points above. If the conversation turns to website stats and mining repeat customer data, consider the org's values. Is customer privacy and respect paramount? Do they promise not to use cookies or other customer tracking?

If this is an existing site, look at social media sites to see if people are praising or bashing them and understand why. If it's a bad service or product to begin with, putting lipstick on a bulldog isn't going to make it beautiful (no offense to bulldog owners!). In that instance, they need a lot more help than just a digital marketing manager.