Those of you who know me know that I spend my of my days dealing with in antiques and collectibles. I love feeling the history in my hands. This is in stark contrast to the way I sell these treasures… through the internet. Nothing tangible, and I have to try to reach my audience amongst a sea of ‘noise.’
There was a time that I was spending a large part of my budget on google adwords to try to get people to find me. And yes, I was getting clicks, but the conversions were very, very low, which was both costly an ineffective. This is why I came up with a new plan. Here are the 7 ways I get people to find us without using adwords. And guess what? It costs a heck of a lot less!
- Create a mini-site. What is a mini site, you may ask? Well a mini-site is a ugly little site with a niche-specific domain name that forces people to make a decision. My shining example of this is www.HummelsHumels.com. First of all, the name is very specific to the Hummel Figurine, which is highly important. The search engines find it easier than my main domain, ‘vintagerarestuff.com’. It has a lot of good words in the top bar above where people can type in a new web address, which also gets google’s attention. But the most important mini-site thing is that it’s SIMPLE. It addresses the question “Do you have a question about selling your hummel collection?” and then it gives the person a place to fill in their name and email address to find out how. Very simple. One page. Ugly little site, but does wonders
- Start building a list. Once you have a few mini sites out there with forms to contact you, make sure you save their info. I use mycontactform.com and contactology.com. This way, when you have a product of interest, you can send it directly to people who would actually want to know about it. Sending an email to 500 people who care about a subject is better than getting 1000 clicks of people who are just ‘curious’ on adwords.
- Have a presence on eBay. I know, eBay has become a bit of a pain in the you know what lately, but they are still the largest e-commerce site, period. Having a presence on their gets you higher in google by virtue of the fact that eBay gets higher on google.
- Get an account on Linkedin.com and join groups. There is a group for nearly anything you can think of on linkedin.com and it’s a vastly underused feature! Recently I posted in 4 collectibles groups “looking for people to interview on collectibles corner tv.” In 48 hours I had 5 responses. Do you know how long it used to take to find someone to interview? The same can be done for anything. You sell panini grills? Join the restaurant owner group and start a discussion about commercial grills, then casually mention that you sell them. The exposure is really targeted. Make sure to check to the box to be emailed if someone replies so you’re able to follow up.
- Write a free guide in your niche. Distribute this in every form imaginable. Post it as a page on your web site, devote a mini site to it, sell it for 99 cents on eBay with free shipping in the niche you are catering to. Giving free information is one surefire way to get people to trust you, consider you an expert, and notice you.
- Write articles and go negative. You can write articles for free on a lot of different sites, and you can also write directly onto your own blog. But negativity often works better. In our panini grill example - a good title would be “Why you NEVER want to buy a 240 Volt Flat Grill made in China”. Then explain why and offer them a solution - something that you can provide
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Get Video. This is the MOST superior alternative to google adwords. Search engines love good videos that are well tagged. It’s actually quite amazing. There are services out there that can do this for you for under $600.00 and will literally take care of everything from production to distribution. When you think about how quickly $500-$600 can go on adwords, it’s a no-brainer.
Here is an example of a marketing video:
I get asked this a lot so I thought I’d address it here:
Feel free to use this information on your own sites, but please keep all my links intact and link back to this original post:
http://www.collectiblescornertv.com/7-superior-alternatives-to-google-adwords/
Some of my favorite marketing gurus are Barry and Dean: BuzzProfits 
Those of you who know me know that I spend my of my days dealing with in antiques and collectibles. I love feeling the history in my hands. This is in stark contrast to the way I sell these treasures… through the internet. Nothing tangible, and I have to try to reach my audience [...]
Great list and if anyone needs help with the blogging part I am available.
i need help to promote a Band , pro touring act playing blues festivals and other professional shows
Nice post! Love the idea about the video too. Very true.
Hi Al - I can help you with that. Do you have any video footage of your live act?
~Tammy
This list is perfect collection of tools. Absolutely worth of trying. Thanks for sharing.
Tammy Thanks for the insites!
I liked the way you tied this post in with your Linkedin post at our Mastermind and Implementation Coaching Clubs (MICC) group. People here can see it at: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1839895
Your video production is awesome! Would love to discuss with you doing some video work together when the time is right.
Tim Owen
“The Mastermind and Implementation Coach”
http://companies.to/TimothyBertOwen
Hi,
An excellent list that encompasses some of the high points of the various marketing “levers” you can pull.
A note of caution on the “mini site” item, which in essence is actually getting the mini site index page onto the first page of the Google SERPs. Having the keyword in the domain name and page title, while helpful, is not enough to get you onto page 1 of the Google SERPs for any competitive niche. I actually just Googled “hummels” and your page does not show up on the first 3 pages on Google. I also used the Google keyword tool to take a look at the search volume for hummels and it turns out that there are about 1000 searches a day. Don’t know how many visitors a day you are getting to your mini site from organic search but I would suspect its a lot less than 50.
The good news is that an extension of the techniques you mention in your post can help your mini site move up the rankings. Simply use a niche specific name when ever you post on a hummel blog or comment on a hummel web 2.0 site (i.e. hummels-r-us or Queen of the Hummels), include your email and website address and you will eventually build up a large set of one way inbound links to your mini site that will boost it up into traffic nirvana on page one of the Google SERPs. The key here is to control the anchor text of the inbound link. As you can see in this post, I have used the name “Toronto SEO” so that in the event that I get a link from this blog to my site, I will have the anchor text I need on the link. I’ve found that a lot of blog owners are appreciative of a comment that provides interesting reading, is longer than six words and is relevant to the discussion, so much so that they remove the nofollow tag on my link and I get some link love for my efforts.
Hope this was helpful,
Cheers,
Jim
You should give http://www.trade-pals.com a try. We allow you to create mini sites on a business directory. Many of the pages are ranked on the first page of Google for their title tag. The mini landing pages have video (viddler and you tube) testimonials, Banners, auto responders, live chat and more. Create as many landing pages as you want all under one account. Every page can look different and go after different keywords, full video instructions are included.
Hi Jim, Thanks - yes we don’t come up for hummel, but we do come up for “sell my hummel collection” which is what we’re aiming for. That specific phrase encompasses the purpose of the site.
Thanks for the tips! I agree about posting in blogs
I’m reading your article as though you are talking to me really. I liked the colored subtopics too, lol.
Thanks i’m glad you liked it!
you may also like what i’m working on: http://www.marketmetweet.com/tweetbrand