Four Ways to Market Your Products Online

Being online today is like being on the Yellow Pages in the yester-years. If you are not online, you are missing a huge chunk of customers that are just waiting to gobble up what you have to offer. But how do you market your products online? Here are some ideas:

But First, Build Your Own Website First!

Having your own website is the most fundamental aspect of being visible online. Without a website that you can call home (Facebook does not count) you would have nothing to direct your potential leads to. So, before even trying to market online, build your “online store” of sorts. It does not matter if you just built it on Blogger or you bought a domain and self-hosted it, all that matters is that you have something to funnel your leads to.

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1. Facebook Fanpages

Facebook Fanpages have become one of the most popular methods to gather clientele from the internet. Around 90% of Filipinos has an account on Facebook so you are sure you are dipping in a huge pool of potential customers in Facebook.

But do not create a personal Facebook account for your business –  make a Fanpage. A Fanpage has more marketing tools you can use to capture a larger set of audience.

If you have spare money, you can use Facebook Ads. One of the most important tools in having a Facebook Fanpage is the ability to make premium ads. (Keep in mind that this costs money.)

Premium ads lets you “boost” posts or create adverts that occasionally show on a person’s newsfeed. What even more magical is that you can target a person via his age, gender, preference or even by pages he liked. Imagine targeting those who liked Goldilocks when you are selling homemade cakes. Amazing!

2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

This is a huge topic, but basically, SEO is the art of making your website rank in a search engine’s (mostly Google, really) pages for a search term. (For more info on teh definition of SEO, here is Search Engine Land‘s definition.)

You can do a bit of SEO to your own site by performing basic keyword research and on-page optimization. With a lot of hard work, dedication and a bit of luck, you will see traffic coming organically from Google.

3. Google Adwords

Like Facebook ads, you can have Google show an advert linking to your website in Google via a paid advertisement method. This is through Google Adwords.

When you pay Google to show your advertisements, you are given the options to show your ads on relevant Google Search results, in Adsense-enabled websites or both.

4. Ads Listing Websites like OLX or Craigslist

You can also list your products or services in listing sites like OLX.ph or Craigslist. Be sure to describe your products in brief (just a teaser, never go overboard on the details) then link back to your website.

Bonus:  Promote Your Website Via Offline Guerilla Marketing Tactics

This is not the campaign I did, buy the poster maker knows how to capture the people’s eyes!

I have personally used this and this works very well! What we have done for a client is to create posters that tickles the curiosity of the people reading it, plus a bit.ly link to the client’s website. It worked so well that even without further guerilla marketing efforts, the website is gathering traffic!