The most BANG without annoying potential niche customers?

[BracesLady]

I've had my web store for almost a year. I sell to a specialized niche market -- adults, teens, and kids who have braces on their teeth.

I really want to increase my sales, but I don't have big bucks to spend on advertising or marketing. I want to increase my product's exposure without annoying my potential customers with spam, banners, or pop-ups (all of which I hate with a passion). I've also been wary of "reciprocal links" or "link farms" because many of them are garbage.

In this past year, most of my sales have either come from my web store's informational "sister site", or from Google or Yahoo searches.

In this past year, I've done lots of "Guerilla" things on-line, such as creating links on like-minded sites, submitting to search engines, and optimizing keywords. I also wrote an article that appeared in an online orthodontic journal, increasing my credibility as a subject matter "expert".

I give my customers personal service, and so my Yahoo store has a 5-star rating. I added this to my site, along with some very nice customer testimonials. (I have a Yahoo store because it's EASY for me, although I admit it's not as flashy as other custom ecommerce sites).

Off-line, I send my customers magnets with a 10% off coupon code, and have sent out press releases, made brochures, and contacted various dental organizations and dental practitioners. Several dental magazines have featured my product for free, resulting in some sales leads from dentists. I even went to a recent dental convention and "worked the floor" at the trade show.

Now we're coming into the holiday shopping season and I want to try to increase my consumer sales. I've started a Google AdWords campaign. Although I get a halfway decent amount of clicks, no sales have resulted. I'm cringing, because over the course of two months, it could cost me a lot of money if it doesn't deliver!

(I tried SPRINKS for about a day, but they lied about the extent of their service and I cancelled it immediately -- it's a long story -- false advertising on their part IMO).

ANYWAY, I'm not sure what else to do to make my site more visible to my target market without spamming people or creating annoying banner ads. Many parenting sites deal with babies, and my market is tweens, teens, and adults. Most dental sites are created by dentists and don't have a links page.

BTW, for the holidays, I'm taking a new tack -- that my product makes a great gift or stocking stuffer -- and that is the focus of my Google AdWords campaign.

Any ideas from those of you who have been down this road? How do you promote without annoying people? Or is it just not possible?

Many many thanks from the Braces Lady! :-)

[mm99]

I would be very careful about any ppc progran unless you know what you are doing. Over and over again, I see more losers than winners. This type of thing really needs to be well thought out and planned. If you are buying traffic, the first view you need to take of this is that you are advertising and needs an element of stratagy, careful planning and results tracking.

More often than not, I see paying for clicks, as a copout for lack of doing things right in other ways. I don't know what your situation is other than what you have posted. Of course you will be mislead and lied to. They want your money and present themselves as a cureall.

I would look at cleaning up the site and making it more palatable to the ses first. I took a look at your head. Start there. You have things that are not legit (name="braces, adult, kid, teen, orthodontic, supply, teeth"), 2 keywords tags, "<META name="Braces" content="Dental, Orthodontic Kit">" ???, are 3 that I saw.

Forget pops (annoying) and banners (usless). Re stocking stuffers...maybe you feel that way, but my take on that is I like to find toys, candy and fun stuff in my well worn stockings and not something to care for my teeth with.

peace...Paul

[Conficio]

Hi there,
I can see several things that can be improved, before you throw out marketing dollars.

- Be patient, the get rich quick doesn't work anymore especially if you don't have money to spent. Remember the Internet Bubble people spent someone else's money!
- Build a marketing strategy. It sounds like you have done some things already (as you talk about your off line and on-line activities). It also looks like you are measuring your return - congratulations for that too! But you need to invest in better branding (Logo, site design, ...). Your site looks blant. Hiring a pro might be a smart investment here.
- You might want to concider a split of your sites for different markets (Dentists - with affiliate program and sale through commissions; Parents - with teenager stories, tips how to get them to wear the bracelets; Adults - with stories that help them to be motivated to wear the bracelets). Think to adopt the design to the audience (Dentists - clean etc.; Parents - Colorful; Adults - Groovy or pastel or Aartful) And customize the content too (Stroies, Articles, Feedback, Industry news). by now you should have gotten the point: Serve the audience, listen to their needs. May be you try to concentrate on one area fist and expand later. Repeat contacts to prospects makes the sale (it needs often 3 - 4 contacts before a prospect takes you even seriously).
- Continue your public relations campaign - writing articles - it is cheap and needs patients, but it should work. One article doesn't make you a field expert, but a dozend is getting you closer.
- Have you thought of writing news letter(s) to each audience? Go to www.bluepenguindevelopment.com for more info about that.

- AND Get rid of FrontPage, it just creates "uggly" Front Pages, but not web-sites. Also delete that fancy with the many empty paragraphs and the hidden text at the end of each page. It is confusing and makes the page note user friendly, does hurt you in the search engines and is plain unprofessional.
- Last but not least, read your server statistics. I bet you are loosing many people with a single click, because the pages are so blant. Rework it and then put it to the review on WebProNews.

Hope that was not too much to swallow, but you asked.

Sincerly good luck

K<o>
P.S.: some bed-time reading: www.webmasterworld.com/forum/2010.htm

[TrafficProducer]

Quote :
"Be patient, the get rich quick doesn't work anymore especially if you don't have money to spent. Remember the Internet Bubble people spent someone else's money!"

Yes I agree. Don't expect instant results.

Exchange links with other sites to improve visits and ranking.

[Conficio]

I did copy the URL wrongly. Sorry!

Here it is corrected:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm

Kind regards

K<o>