Ecommerce Marketing Strategy #1: Search + Blogs = Traffic

Most ecommerce retailers continue to rely on email spam and online pay per click advertising as the primary mechanisms to generate site traffic even though the cost continues to rise and the effectiveness is declining. A recent Forrester survey shows that in 2003, 31% of consumers deleted email advertising without reading it. In 2006 that number had reached 72%.

A more cost-effective and consumer-valued approach has been proven in other industries and retailers that adopt it first will achieve a competitive advantage. The approach is quite simple: Search + Blogs = Traffic

Search

• Most people start with a search when looking for a product
• Natural search findings achieve 75%+ of the resulting clicks

Blogs

• The best way to be on the first or second search results page is to provide fresh content that is optimized to be found by the chosen search terms
• Blogs provide an easy mechanism to publish content to your site and can be setup to create a SEO page for each blog post

Traffic

• Cost-effective traffic enhancer (no CPC or email fees)
• Greater customer engagement with your brand
• Sizable increases possible in a matter of weeks

If you still need proof that this works, go to Google and type in "flat panel tv".

Take a look at the results. This is a highly valuable keyword that has roughly 10,000 searches per day. Most retailers (Dell, Circuit City, Amazon, Ebay, Overstock, NewEgg, SamsClub, Target, ShopMSNBC, Wal*Mart, etc.) are playing the pay per click game (roughly $2/click for this keyword). The results aren't too good. For example, Wal*Mart is buried on page 6 on the neglected paid ad side. How much traffic could this be generating?

Now look at the one retailer that is using content to attract consumers - Crutchfield. In my search they came up in the #2 spot - right on the first page. They don't have to pay anything for this. How many of the 10,000 people a day that come to this page click on the second link? 25%? 50%? 5,000 clicks a day @$2/day would cost you $3,650,000 a year in cost per click payments to Google. Crutchfield is getting $3.65 million dollars in free advertising a year - all by creating compelling content.

Most retailers currently view blogs as simply a self publishing tool for employees that would only distract site visitors from making purchases. Those that have implemented blogs as a marketing tool realize its powerful ability to drive cost-effective and sizable traffic. Check out ecommerce solutions to learn more about how blogs and 31 other social ecommerce solutions could fit into your retail site.