Open Source Content Management

I've read through your questions and the responses and generally I agree, hardcopy advertising, if done with technical expertise does work. It is also important to place fliers and ads in areas or papers that your target audience is in or reads. This data can be obtained from newspapers and other marketing sources. Adwords is definitely a good medium, but the reality is people still read hardcopy - newspapers, fliers etc. It just goes to the effectiveness of your message and how hard hitting your buttons are that determine feedback. Remember, Adwords counts hits, hits don't always buy. Its difficult therefore to measure the 'hits' in a newspaper vs Adwords, but if you focus on sales statistics, you'll see the difference. Again, technical expertise in hardcopy advertising is what makes this medium successful.

Thanks

Channel or anyone...your advice please. What is it in the main that makes potential customers drop their shopping cart at the checkout? What's the psychology here?

Our eshop offers great prices, strong guarantees, an SSL certificate and an approved paygate with Verisign certificate. We get lots of visitors but too many abandoned shopping carts. This happens at the checkout before the sign-in form so we can't contact them for a reason.

Why would a customer take ten minutes in carefully selecting a product, checking the price and the detail, loading it into a shopping cart, proceeding to checkout - and then dropping it? Great if anyone can shine a light on this for me.

Phil Sinclair
shop.leadersedge.co.za

I am currently working on an idea that may help the members of this forum and the general public to market their business, products and services.

It may be the signing up process. Do you require your customers to register to your website by filling in certain info like name, number, etc?

The best way to do so would be to allow people to log in via Facebook and that would allow you to get those simple details such as name, email, etc.
I have found that people tend to leave the buying/conversion path when they have to enter such details because it seems like such a laborious process. Therefore by using the Facebook login button you eliminate that laborious process and all they need to do is enter their delivery information. Follow this link for more information:

Alternatively people may be against paying via credit card, you may want to look at alternative methods of online payment such as purchasing vouchers from Pick 'n Pay, using Pay-Pal, EFTs, and so on. Check here for more details.

Hope this helps.

In terms of marketing to get new customers. It would really help if I knew what your product was. But I had a short stint in marketing consulting.

The best thing for you to do is to analyse your current customers and see where they came from and how they were attracted to your product and heard about your product, then build your advertising around that information.

The next step is to find out how your competitors are marketing their products and then see how you can improve upon those processes as well as which niche markets are relatively untapped.

Finally make sure your adverts are goal oriented and the subsequent steps from seeing the advert to buying the product are streamlined to make it easier for your potential customer.

This is why I love the concept of Adwords advertising, The customer sees the ad after searching for that product; clicking on the ad takes him to a relevant landing page on the website; that landing page makes it easy to buy the product by listing all the relevant information and simplifying the buying process (i.e Facebook button for registering, and a host of payment options that the customer can be comfortable using)

Hope this helps.

Thank you Sam...your advice seems sound and we'll look straightway into connecting with Facebook directly onto he order form. Phil

Thanks, I love adwords too and I find it very effective. Done wrong and Adwords can be very expensive.

Reading all the posts, I have to agree that referrals and networking (especially on social networks) Really has a good impact. Branding is also essential - having people see you logo and making the mental link to something they need or want. There are so many really basic and rather uninspired logo's out there that have a hug impact becuase they brand it well... its everywhere at every corner and that mental suggestion is key. have your logo on everything and put it everywhere people see it, thus almost becoming viral markating....

Hi Andy,

What sort of business are you in? Is it something that people will use/buy once or keep returning to?

I've always maintained that the cheapest and easiest marketing tool for any business is it's existing customers. The pet parlour I send my cat to sms's me every four weeks to remind me that he's due for a grooming. The same goes for my recycling pick-up service - I never forget to put it out because they sms to remind me in the morning. And I tell all my friends about both services because they make it so convenient for me to use them.

Keeping existing clients happy and making sure they are repeat customers is ALWAYS cheaper than sourcing new ones. They tell other people about your business. It's all part of networking really.

I also agree with Trevanye - you have to have some good, recognizable branding. I want to cry when I see uninspired clip art logos - sooooooo many bad messages you're sending to potencial customers.

ROI on print advertising is difficult to gauge unless you make it one of those 'bring in this voucher for a 10% discount' sort of campaign - even then people forget. And the key to print advertising is to keep it going - things like newspaper ads will have to appear more than once or twice to make any impact and the cost of effective print advertising is often prohibitively expensive for start ups. Same goes for radio and television.

I'd be happy to make some suggestions for you if you tell me what sort of business you're in.