Question

Topic: Strategy

Marketing A Greek Paraphernalia Business Online

Posted by Anonymous on 4/6/2008 at 10:44 PM ET 25 Points
Situation:
We have been in business for a few years and is looking for some new ways to expand our business. We do not have a store front and have done most of our business through word of mouth and show style events. However, we feel a need to grow into the area of online sells. What is the best way to begin doing business online?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 4/7/2008 at 8:41 AM Accepted
    Create a website. Take pictures (both low and high-resolution) of the things you want to sell and create great descriptions of them. Allow people to order things and ship them (charging appropriately based on distance, customs, etc.). Use the keywords in your site that people are searching for. Have other businesses (including online directories) link to your new site.
  • Posted by joshuacrumbaugh on 4/7/2008 at 10:35 AM Accepted
    This one is easy. You've got a great customer base that loves technology.

    Obviously you have to get your website setup. I use ace-host.net for all of my hosting needs. I have no affiliation and I'm not trying to sell you on them. They just have great hosting for a great price and it includes everything you will need to get nearly any up and running with very little work.

    Next: Pick your top three most unique geekiest products and start marketing them online. Keywords and SEO is extremely important, but your customer base offers many marketing options that cost little to nothing to promote on. I generally use a plug-in for IE7 called the stumble toolbar. You can set your category click stumbe and it takes you to sites under that heading. This can help you start finding the right people very quickly. In fact it was the stumble toolbar that originally brought me to marketingprofs.com just a week ago.

    Be careful not to make your site too graphic intense. Most of your client base is going to be of the Craig's list mentality.

    I hope this helps.
    Joshua D. Crumbaugh
  • Posted on 4/7/2008 at 11:09 AM Member
    I agree with Joshua but would like to add a few things. A great marketing tool for your online store is going to be online forums where the "geeks" frequent. There are hundreds of forums on everything from programming to hardware to Gaming. Forums that revolve around ethical and non-ethical hacking will be great also.

    Pick the top 10 with the most registered users and contact those forums to check pricing on running a banner ad and posting privileges. A few quick posts to some big forums can really accelerate your momentum...just make sure your site and product offering is up-to-par and make the posts engaging to the users of the site to start conversation and give the thread maximum visibility. Be careful about posting without contacting the forum first...many times they will remove posts when people are trying to promote their business, if they are not a supporting sponsor.

    Check out the following two sites to get some ideas:
    www.extremegeek.com
    www.thinkgeek.com
  • Posted by flwrsbyj on 4/7/2008 at 12:09 PM Accepted
    I THINK WHAT SHE'S ASKING IS FOR WAYS TO PROMOTE AND SELL GREEK PARAPHERNALIA FOR COLLEGE SORORITIES AND FRATERNITIES. HOW DOES SHE CAPTURE THE COLLEGE STUDENT AND OR ADULT SOROR OR FRAT THAT IS LOOKING FOR NEW ITEMS WITH THEIR SORORITY OR FRATERNITY NAME ON IT
  • Posted by joshuacrumbaugh on 4/7/2008 at 1:43 PM Accepted
    Wow, good point all I saw was Geek. Well then forums are probably not the way to go. Facebook on the other hand has become a huge college student marketing tool. Although the site has recently been branching out to attract more than just the student clientel that is still the best way to get word out about your product.

    goto insidefacebook.com they have a lot of great material on how to effectively market using the site.
  • Posted on 4/7/2008 at 4:20 PM Accepted
    Geek....Greek...I guess I was only off one letter!?!?

    Yes, FaceBook is going to be a great tool. You can create a page for your company free of charge. Then you can run campaigns to get visibility for your page. Also, might try adapting some marketing practices to YouTube. The viral circulation of information is extremely intense with the college crowd.

    I was never a member of a fraternity but I am assuming the main offices would release some sort of newsletter. You might try getting hooked up with a couple of those main offices and get into their newsletter to help get the word out...make sure you provide value to them, that the competition can't.
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