The Hand Made Product Shopping Directory: Getting Your Stores Name Out To Those Customers

Getting your store's name out in front of the public is one of the most important things that any store owner can do. In fact it is essential for a store to make it these days. You can't depend on walk in traffic like a B&M located on a busy street can. You have to aggressively go after customers.

Being listed in general search engines and ordinary internet directories is important and can generate traffic but it is the old shotgun approach to advertising. This is fine for your average chain type of department store or grocery store. The experts are saying however that for many businesses and especially for those in niche categories their best results can be obtained from targeted customer marketing. This appears to be true as in this day and age more and more buyers are turning to specialized Shopping Directories when they want to buy on line.

For any store owner, the cost of advertising your store is something that every store owner has to figure in to their operating costs. It can be expensive but it doesn't really have to be. Compared to many traditional advertising methods, online advertising can seem downright cheap. One of the advantages of the internet is that there are many places to advertise at zero to very little cost. Using a well thought out mix of zero cost and paid advertising provides most store owners with a well balanced marketing plan. One that allows for flexibility on a day to day basis.

Another advantage of marketing in specialized shopping directories is that they also direct their marketing efforts to targeted viewers and potential customers for those listed in the directory. Targeted marketing generally has a better rate of return for the marketing dollar spent than most other forms of advertising. You simply are not wasting advertising dollars on people who have no intention of buying from you.

It has also been shown that no store is going to be able to depend solely on zero cost advertising to draw in customers. Advertising sites that offer a mix of zero cost and reasonably priced paid advertising also provide the average store owner with more flexibility. This is even more important in an up and down economy.

Being able to pay a reasonable price, one time, for an honest and affordable given period of advertising time and exposure also provides the store owner with the ability to develop continuity of visibility for their store. When a buyer is used to using a given shopping directory, and they see a store’s name appear over and over again in that shopping directory, it tells them the business is stable and trustworthy. This encourages them to buy from that store.

Pay Per Click advertising sites make a big issue of being able to offer a wide variety of tracking methods. They don’t make a big issue out of the fact that Pay Per Click fraud by many sites offering these services is one of the industries biggest problems. Of course it is important to know that your advertising dollar is bringing in sales but there are other ways of determining these facts. Most store owners who have their own web site are provided with the ability to determine these figures simply by going into their web site’s “stats” on their web site control panel. Internet mall types of shopping sites often have these figures available for those in their mall or shopping site. Those that don’t have these features available at present will be before very long. They will have to if they want to be competitive and continue to bring in more stores.

How any store advertises and spends their advertising dollars is of course the prerogative of the store owner. Smart ones are going to try and get the biggest bang for their advertising dollar as possible and do it with the least amount of hassle. Don’t forget the time you spend keeping up all those advertising sites is also costing you money. Take advantage of those zero cost opportunities when possible but don’t forget that you will also need to spend a few dollars also if you expect to draw those customers.

Visit The Hand Made Product Directory and obtain your Free Link to your store. Having a sale? Promote your sales for all to see. Let others know about your blog and list it also. Having an event in your area you want to promote? You can also list it. Plus find other resources for store owners.

info@dmpmc.net www.dmpmc.net/THMD

Feed Shark