Marketing Ideas?

Amatheya81

Hi Guys,

I'm about to re-design my webpage to add a shop and wanted some ideas for marketing. I'm a freelance illustrator and the shop is going to be selling cards with my artwork on and later some prints.
I already have a blog with over 100 posts on it (gets about 10 hits a day which I need to increase) and I will be adding advertising for my cards and prints on that too. Likewise I have a Diviant art and flikr page which I will also be adding advertising to.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thanks


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paulwf

Facebook and twitter tend to be the two largest ways of reaching out to customers online. You might have to go down the Ebay and Etsy route though, basically paying them a fee to give you traffic as you'll be competing against thousands of sites similar to yours.

Don't forget traditional selling and marketing, this can be very powerful combined with a webshop. For example take lots of your work to a Christmas fair and hand out flyers with your web address so if they don't want to buy straight away or see more of your range they can go onto your site later.

lcharm

You're in a pretty competitive market so I guess adwords is out of the question but here are a few ideas that could work for you.

Sell on eBay and then, with your disptach notes offer a discount code for them to reorder (or give to someone else) direct of your site.

Obviously keep blogging (aim for 1 per day or at least 2-3 per week) and work on SEO for you site, I actually pay a company for this as I don't have the time and it's boring! There is something called longtail SEO which you may already be experiencing on your blog. If you've not heard of it, certain long keyphrases of 4-5 words such as "modern and funky card designs" only get a few searches per month and most businesses won't invest much time and money in them but the fact is, there's hundreds if not thousands of combinations of longtail phrases which may be relevnt to you. The key is add those phrases into your content, title tags and meta tags. Some businesses in competitive markets almost rely on longtail and can get thousands of visitors out of it every month. Use the Adwords Keyword tool to get an indication of the number of searches for a particalr phrase and they'll give suggestions

Christmas is coming up so might be worth doing a leaflet distribution in your local area at least, focus on the fact they won't be getting crappy repeptive designs that the large card retailers provide...but not in quite those words!

Create a Youtube video of the process of how a card is made from start to finish including your design process just edit it down to 2-4 mins max. You can add the embed your vid on the site and it should drive some traffic from people you will be impressed by the work involved and will want to see more.

The main thing is fill your marketing funnel with as many ideas as possible and then ensure you measure the outcome.

Amatheya81

Sorry, I just re-read my post and realised that it made it sound as if cards are my business... That's what I get for writing posts when I'm at my day job. I'm a freelance illustrator and mostly I just want to get footfall to my website/blog. Cards and prints are just a thing that I'm doing as an off shoot of that.

Paulwf - Thanks for your suggestions. I'm not so keen on the etsy/ebay thing as I've done it before and there are just too many people doing art for peanuts on there but I am looking into doing some festivals next year if I can get my bum in gear lol.

Icharm - Most of my blog posts are very specific to my work. i.e. work in progress shots etc, tutorial, speed paintings. All the normal art blog stuff, so I don't think I will be able to use a company to do these for me. I am however starting to use the schedule options. Where as before quite often I'd do 3 or 4 posts all in one go and then nothing for a week or two I'm scheduling them so that hopefully I will have something approximating one a day.

lcharm

I meant SEO for the site that sells itself and not the blog. MOst of what I wrote is still valid but just customise it to meet your needs

VSC

Blog - What platform is it?
Wordpress has several "plugins" that you can use to help with SEO.

Webpage -
Is that SEO'd correctly? Metatags; Keyword density; Image names; Headings etc etc.

If you would like me to have a look, I can make some suggestions.

Amatheya81

Thanks but I am completely re-writing the website so no point looking at the current one and I already know a fair bit about Metatags and keywords. One of the reasons I'm re-writing is to add more of that sort of thing.

I really was looking for marketing advice to get more people to my website rather than advice on how to run/design my website/blog.

bergamot_2

Have you tried to swap posts with some other bloggers? I mean asking them to write about your website and you can revise/recommend theirs? I am into interior design and there are websites revising and recommending designers, theirs shops and products and it's really easy way to be seen.

If you have tutorials on your blog send them to websites offering various tutorials for free. I like those for Photoshop tips and always browse for more stuff in authors gallery.