Hi,
My girlfriend is in the process of opening a high street store. I am building her an online store so she can sell online as well. She has decided to spend £1000 in the first month on online advertising.
What would be the best way to spend the money? I’m thinking of putting it all in Google adwords but not sure if this would be the best approach?
Any suggestions?
Before going for big advertisement do basic optimization for the site first.
Yes I think adwords would be the best avenue for that. You can experiment a lot with it.
I would also look at what offers bing and yahoo, but I would concentrate on google as it is the major search engine.
I second the motion. Adwords is one way to start your advertising. Well optimizing your site is also one of the first things that you need to do so be sure to get the best service for site optimization.
I would 1st start by doing some basic SEO on your site this would initially get the site up and running,regarding the adwords idea and a budget of £1000 that sounds in theory a fantastic idea ‘but’ if you dont have a clue about how to get the maximum return out of that amount of money you can end up spending it all but not alot to show for it really.
I would think looking at adding the site too some higher profile sites in your niche as i feel you will get more exposure for your money.
I have just setup a small link generator site which has only been up and running for just over a week and all i have done this week is promote it to digg and higher profile forums and its starting to get visitors straight away.
A £1000 budget to be used for a adwords campaign sounds alot but can vanish very quickly.Good luck with your new site
Thanks for the replies. I have been trying to optimize the site for Search Engines. I got a book on this and I’ve been following the advice in it for onsite optimization. For off site optimization I’m going to submit the site to search engines, directories, blogs etc. I also plan to create promotional codes (15% off) and send them to higher profile blogs. Hopefully they will post these for their readers.
Should I be usng software to help me in the optimization process? I always come across software that claims to work wonders but I am always a bit dubious.
Another question…
If the site is on page 100 of Google and I optimize it and manage to get to page 50 does this have any real benefit? Do people really dig that far into their search results? Or am I missing something?
I don’t think it would be realistic for me to get the site on to the first few pages in the short term.
Thanks!
depending on what she’s selling, you can find that your keywords could be very expensive at google’s adwords
try others like adengage for some low cost visitors too
she will be selling makeup/skin products. Wil have a look at adengage.
thanks.
EDIT…
Just had a look at adengage. Looks like we could save a LOT of money compared to Google adwords.
What about running a contest for bloggers to blog about her website? That will generate backlinks as well as interest.
a1anm, make some research first before your gf invest a lot of money for advertising, I think 1000 is really big cash for me. start from the below brother. Make it slowly , don’t be too rush. Set some marketing planning before invest a big penny
There is a lot you can do for free before spending 1,000 and it will enhance the effect your 1,000 investment will have. Like do some back-linking, get some traffic to your site, let others know about your site,
Think of your target market, is it a local market or an international market, and if either which one is it geared towards more? Search out your competitors, it’s likely to see where they are spending their marketing money, and it’s likely they have a much higher budget so you want to be a head of the game and out do them in SEO and other free marketing before spending money.
Start by putting out free press releases, spend a bit of money on hardlinks on other very relevant sites (costs like 20$ for 6 months on some sites), learn about page rank, spend a bit of money optimizing your shopping cart and making it appealing and looking legit. Start with the small then move up into spending.
Good idea, before you start the contest I think you will need to increase your subscriber list and develop community feeling among your readers/contributors.
Adword, Bidvertiser, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon.
Adwords.
Make sure you have a mix of some great text ads and banner ads.
For the first week, set your max CPC high. Then, as your quality score increases by having a high CTR, lower the amount slowly. This will allow you to retain a higher position in the search and pay a smaller amount per click. 
Internet advertising is the latest and one of the most interesting tools of online marketing that can take your business to unexpected heights. Adwords, Facebook, Networking sites will be helpful for the online advertising.
a1anm, have you considered the free methods of promoting your store? Social networking would be a good way of getting the word out, stuff like Twitter can be really great at making offers in your store well publicised, it also gives you the chance to promote new stock (etc) or news about the store. Give out a leaflet in the store about where you can be found on the web, it’ll allow people to nose around the website after they have been in the store and perhaps find more stuff they want to purchase in the comfort of their own home. Adwords are the obvious choice for getting some promotion for cash, but looking into free ways you can expand your brand are certainly useful. You can make your money stretch further (which is a very good plan in this economy). And as others have mentioned, taking the time to naturally get your site noticed by search engines is also useful, stuff like sitemaps, optimized markup, etc can all help encourage those well placed links.