How To Market A Boutique Website

An online spa, fashion or boutique business is like any other business; you still need courage, confidence, determination and most of all, a winning strategy...and a great boutique website and graphic design studio to help you realise your goals.

The most successful online small businesses are those with owners that are intimately and actively involved in the marketing of their business online. The more you equip yourself with knowledge about internet marketing and how it all works, the better off you are to use the most effective strategies to promote your luxury beauty or fashion website.

Email Marketing & Newsletters

It should go without saying that you email all your friends and family as well as existing clients, to announce the launch of your gorgeous new boutique website.

Your next step will involve an opt in newsletter. Iimplement the code of companies like Mail Chimp or Vision 6 because the forms are easy to integrate within a boutique website, the newsletter creating tools are simle to use, they have safeguards to prevent users from sending SPAM and can manage your subscription list effectively. No one likes SPAM, so if you don't have permission to send an email to someone, don't send it. There are other companies offering similar services, but I like these as well, but these two are reliable and effective.

What Is Twitter

Twitter is a big deal at the moment. Who knows how long this will last. It's probably bigger in the USA than anywhere else, but the popular microblogging (this means short messages to the world) is catching on, and is potentially one of the best things you can do, free of charge (except for a lot of time) for your website marketing. Twitter is the fasted growing social networkng site on the planet, and it is foolish to ignore it's potential. Blossom uses Twitter to update clients, post updates on new work, be friendly to the world, to communicate with freelancers and to post inspiration.

Social Networking

At Blossom Graphic Design we believing the power of word of mouth, PR and just "getting out there". Being active on a range of social networking sites, in particular Twitter and Facebook, , allows you to quick post updates, special offers and general good will to a wide audience of like minded souls.

Blossom is happy to help our clients to utilise an "add this" or "share" button on their sites to allow poeple to send emails to friends about your products/services/site, to share on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Linkedin, Digg and so on.

Search Engines

There are thousands of search engines and directories on the internet, the major ones being:

Google - www.google.com
Altavista - www.altavista.com
Yahoo - www.yahoo.com
Excite - www.excite.com
AllSearchEngines - www.allsearchengines.com
DogPile - www.dogpile.com
AllTheWeb - www.alltheweb.com
Lycos - www.lycos.com

Site Engine Optimisation (SEO) is quite a complicated process and there is so much involved, that I will simply say that a site needs to be designed with search engines in mind, starting from an intuitive structure, through to relevant content, meaningful succinct keywords and phrases. I found a page that outlines fairly simply, SEO factors. It's worth a read.

Below is a list of sites that offer tips and techniques for SEO:

Linking Strategy

In my opinion, it doesn't seem to matter who you link to, but if your sites pages have links pointing to them from high ranking sites and blog's it can increase your page and site ranking.

Beware: most search engines hate "link farms" or sites set up specifically for linking strategies. They also can penalise you for linking with a "bad neighbourhood" site, so make sure you opt for quality rather than quantity when you offer to exchange links.

Make sure the sites you link to and from are relevant to your business.

Email Signature

It sounds like a no brainer, but I am always surprised by businesses with either no signature or a useless one. Make sure that you have a link to your website on every email that goes out of your mailbox. That way people can click through to your website when they need information easily and quickly.' Make the most of your signature. Blossom can offer a customised signature for your emails.

Testimonials

To give and receive feedback on products and or services is an organic ratings system and to give testimonials is good business etiquette. Make sure to include any testimonials your receive, so future customers can see what a great business you have.

Giveaways and Samples

When I had my own cosmetics brand, the best marketing strategy I found, was sending freebies to celebrities and the press in a beautifully presented and innovative way. I also had competitions going all the time with lots of online magazines and that in turn got traffic to my site - for the cost of sending a product. Genius!

Who of us isn't a sucker for the gift with purchase or the GWP? I certainly am, and I will do anything to get one. Employ the tactics of larger businesses to your advantage.

Affiliate programs

While I'm not an expert on this, I have heard it is highly effective for some businesses. Affiliate programs are essentially reseller programs in which a website owner displays an ad for another company in exchange for a commission on the resulting sales and/or leads.

Some sites to check out include:

Postcards and Flyers

A simple strategy that's really effective. Postcards are simple and inexpensive.They can:

create brand awareness
have a high ROI (return on investment)
be really fun, effective and creative
help to generate website traffic and increase sales
be used to promote specials, announce new products, websites, store locations, thank customers, use as a discount offer /coupon.

Repetition Is The Key

Remember repetition is the key to any marketing strategy. Repetition, the key to marketing online. What's that... repetition? The key! You get the idea. It works visually as with logos that you see everywhere, or with words and tag lines or catch phrases.

There are many many more ways to promote your boutique website and business online, so do you research and think outside the square!