Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

You can try out with those free advertising website/ social networking. By using facebook and twitter, you might get more people involve from there. At the moment, these websites are very popular at the moment. Try to create a blogs or forum as well, it might help. Spreading news from users to users...

Also you need to make sure your targeted business. Like who is your audience, what kind of people are you looking into it. Different countries have different interest.

For paid advertising, i think the best will be google Ads, yahoo, etc. SEO is good as well because you do have a website.

Hope this will help.

Luis

How about find a high-profile charity that you support and do some free work for them. For example, if they have an auction to raise money, get some pictures of local sport celebrities and work your magic.

Since you have a lot of competition online, I'd first work on improving your website. Website Grader gives it a score of 9 / 100 (https://website.grader.com/wsgid/2994105/default.aspx), so you have a lot of opportunity to improve your site.

Develop a strong sense of who your target market really is, and cater specifically to them (parents? artists?).

Did you start your business without business and marketing plans? If you had plans developed in advance, you'd have had to face the awareness issue BEFORE you spent the time and money setting up the website and business.

Now you don't have enough customers and you also don't have the funds to create awareness and develop solid leads. If I'm reading this right, here's my advice:

Cut your losses now. Trying to generate awareness without an ample budget is a way to lose money fast. You won't generate enough business fast enough, and you'll spend what little you have available for marketing programs that don't meet their objective(s).

What's the value of a new customer? Do you expect repeat purchases? What should you logically be willing to spend to get a new customer? If it costs you more to get new customers than they're worth, then you have a losing business model. You can't make it up with volume.

Sorry to have to be so negative, but think how upset you'd be if we gave you advice that would help you lose money faster.

Dear Natew,

Do yourself a huge favour and read Michael Goodman's post again.

Twice.

Then copy it out by hand and tape it to your bathroom mirror so that you can read it every morning before you greet your day, and every evening before you retire.

Trust me, you'll thank me for this one day.

Awareness is key. No awareness, no revenue. No revenue, means no bills or salaries paid on time, and down you'll go.

Then, reconsider this key sentence from your question: "Our product and service I believe can be marketed to everyone."

Everyone? Really?

So that would be infants and people in jail and crack dealers and royalty? Everyone, right?

Everyone?

No.

Wrong dear chap, quite wrong. No workee.

If everyone is your audience then no one is your audience and you'll spend more than you make attempting to appeal to everyone. 'Fraid not. Can't be done.

If you adopt the "everyone" mindset you'll be broke in a matter of weeks. Niche down old chap. Niche down. Narrow and deep, that's the ticket.

If you're still in business to niche anywhere, of course.

Just being honest. Believe me, you NEED honesty here, not wooly-minded claptrap.

"We specialize in converting photos to canvas giving everyone the ability to turn any photo being digital or hard copy into a
work of art."

Good show. This is where you ought to raise your colours.

But your website's got to change. Show me more before and after images; show me examples of the canvas in close up; give me a sliding scale of prices and sizes and quantities; and give me a darn good reason to do business with you and not with one of the hundreds of other outfits offering the same service.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA