How can I advertise my new Optical business in an effective and inexpensive way?How can I advertise my website?
I just recently opened up an optical store and the location is nice but no one really sees us because we’re in the middle of the Plaza and almost every business there is new. Cars ride by our building every day, but no one stops to come in. I want to know how I could advertise my business effectively without burning my pockets. Also, I want to advertise my website too, but I don’t know how. Please help me.
Tagged with: new cars • optical store • pockets
Filed under: Website Business
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Hi…congrats on the new business!
Assuming you already have a website, hopefully someone did not build you one that is all glamor and not marketing savvy;>) By that, I mean hopefully it is not full of flash graphics and devoid of something useful, like a lead capture form.
So, if you have that, I would suggest that to get visitors to your site you and to get them to give you their name and email, you need to give them something for free. In this case it could be a great coupon, or maybe a free report like "Don’t Think About Buying Your Next Pair Of Glasses Without Knowing These 3 Things"…something along those lines
Now you have that part done. You need traffic. The quickest traffic is going to be paid traffic. One place to get it is by going to Google Adwords and opening up a free account. You will want to choose one main keyword phrase to start with (others later). I think you might go with "yourtown state optician" ie. brownville tx optician.
There is no easy way to explain this, but you would start a new advertising campaign in adwords and, write some several catchy ads (more than one so you can test them). To get ideas about what ads look like, do a search in google for your keyword phrase in quotation marks and see what shows up on the right side of your screen.
But, you want something that will compel a searcher to click on your ad, like "Free Report – Optician Reveals Secret To Getting Incredible Savings On Your Next Pair Of Glasses" http://www.yoursite.com
You are then going to bid on the keyword term you have targeted and any others you want to try (try to think of what someone would type in to google if they were search for an optician in your town) and start the campaign. Google has some free tools that they guide you to so that you will know what to bid if you want the top spot and even suggests other keywords. So, you are really going to have to become a "student" of adwords to do this effectively or hire someone else.
But, you can do this on very little money because Adwords allows you to set a daily budget. So, you can test and tweak it all you want.
You can even specify certain other websites in your local market that you want your ads to display. Or you can just make sure your ads are displayed in a very specific geographical area. What you can do is pretty amazing.
Now, if you are getting some traffic to your site, hopefully they like what you are offering and are giving you the contact information in exchange for the coupon or course or free report. You have it all set up with your auto-responder to automatically send whatever it is back to them immediately.
Now you have a real live prospect. But you cannot quit there. In your autoreponder you want to have loaded up some additional informative, useful information that you schedule to go out the next 7 days. You do not try hard selling so much as educating. This builds trust and will clearly get someone’s attention since I imagine no other optician in your town is doing this.
But, you could add in a special or a coupon with your notes, or just as separate emails scheduled to go out. I am sure being a merchant you get the idea.
After that, you want to get your cash register programmed to print something on directing people to your website. Something like, sign up on our site http://www.greatopticians.com for web-only special deals!
That will start feeding your list.
After you get all this done, you want to start working on getting your site to rank naturally high for those keyword phrases you came up with. If you write articles, post on forums, submit videos etc to various places you will get links pointing back to your site.
To help this along, you need to build pages on Facebook, Myspace, Squidoo, HUB page, Twitter etc. all with links pointing back to your "money site".
It would also help if you add a WordPress Blog to your site if it is not in that format already. Start writing useful content on there and that will help you greatly.
Lastly, although I probably would do this first, you need to get your business placed on google maps. There are directions there to so.
Anyway, that just touches on what you could do. Give me shout if you need more help. Good luck!
Hi there,
I think your problem is a common one. There are a lot of factors to consider here, but I believe your main goal should be to create value for your local customers, but you have to be able to communicate this effectively, which is part of the problem, and around you go in this circle!
Here’s a link to a free e-book on exactly this topic, there’s a fair bit of reading here but I’m sure it will contain at least one golden nugget you can use.
http://local-biz-masters.sitesell.com/funlife.html
Best of luck with the business.
Who is your target market? What type of people end up going to the Plaza? Price range of your products?
Try flyers with offers of discounts. You can advertise a 10% discount to draw people in, or more if you see fit. Promotions are good, and you need to break into the market somehow. Little freebies are nice as well. "Buy __________ and get a free bottle of eyeglass cleaner"
Look to see if there are any popular forums online for your city. You can target some clients by advertising your store with a "coupon code" that they can mention, or they can mention which forum they saw your ad on. This way, you can give them a discount or a freebie. Honestly, discounts + freebies are your best choice to lure them in.
Some of the ways you can advertise your business are:
1. Post an article about your business on related blogs and get free visitors and back links
2. Submitting to directories
3. Free classifieds
4. Forums
Send an email with more information about your business to e@culx.net for free help on finding new customers and increasing sales.
Marketing is the only way you can draw business to your store and website but it doesn’t have to cost you an arm and leg.
Free marketing tricks and promotional ideas can be found on the resource link below.
very carefully