Seed for Success | Empowering Women Entreprenuers

To be truly successful it is important to have both a plan for marketing online through SEO and offline through events and advertising.

Art is a tricky product to sell online without an established amount of trust from consumers. They can’t feel it or really see it to make sure it is as high quality as I say it is. That is why events such as consumer tradeshows are so valuable at this point in time. They allow me to show my products in a setting where consumers can see the vibrant colors and feel the high quality canvas before ordering it online.

Last weekend I participated in my first consumer tradeshow. I had the opportunity to share a booth with a very talented and successful interior designer and online retailer. We built an impressive space complete with drywall and fully furnished. Red Koala art hung on the walls to show consumers how they can have that one special piece of artwork in their child’s room that is personalized just for them. I distributed brochures with a 10% off coupon on the back and encouraged consumers to go to redkoala.com to see the rest of our products. In addition to the art, I also had on display Halloween wall hangings that are perfect for the front door and a growth chart. The consumer feedback on these two new products was great! Even though my website isn’t exactly where I want it to be just yet, I’m excited about the branding opportunity and the increase in traffic generated from the weekend.

I have struggled in the area of developing an online marketing plan. There is so much literature on the subject and so many different opinions on the best way to do it, that I just get overwhelmed and find something else on my list to do instead. I typically try to do things myself, but in this area I’ve decided to ask for help. Scott Smigler with Exclusive Concepts, Inc has come to my rescue. My site was designed by Fast Pivot and they did a great job building a beautiful site, but now I need help with making it more functional and easy to navigate for the customer. That’s where Scott comes in. He is an expert in website marketing. He has walked me through my site and shown me where I probably lose customers because of confusion. All of his suggested changes have made total sense. Once we finish making all of the changes, he is going to help me develop a game plan for moving forward into the wonderful world of search engine optimization. He has gone out of his way to help me and I appreciate everything he has done. My suggestion for any body with a website is to hire an expert to evaluate the functionality and have it optimized for closing sales. The difference between a designer and an online marketing expert is pretty clear and both are valuable.

Keep watching at www.RedKoala.com as we continue to make changes to improve the site and grow the company.

It seems to me that search engine optimization, or SEO as I’ve come to know it, is vital to the success of a new online business. Before starting Red Koala I didn’t know the first thing about marketing a business online. My background is in sports, and more specifically sports sponsorship, managing deals that ranged from $250,000 to $575 million. I’ve worked with some of the most recognizable brands in the world. It’s an entirely different ballgame to come down a notch and work with a brand that no one has heard of because I just developed it in my home office a year ago. I don’t have the big marketing budgets or the brand awareness of these larger corporations, so how do I get started? Millions of people surf the internet everyday and a big percentage of those are women with children. With a defined target market in mind, how do I find my consumers, or better yet, how do they find me? Blogging has come up as a good strategy from several of my mentors. However, I can hardly keep up with this blog while running my business and managing three kids. Evan Carmichael provided a great solution to this problem. He suggested that I write content that is informative on a subject, such as decorating a nursery, and let other people use it for their blogs and sites. This may not sound attractive at first, but the inclusion of a link to my website makes this a very lucrative approach. Instead of trying to write blogs all over the place, let others include you in their blogs. In addition to getting your name out there, you’re also getting valuable links to your websites.

I have just recently learned about the value of links. I have not started an online marketing campaign yet. I get stuck striving for perfection before I start advertising. I finally got over this stumbling block last night as I worked on my site well past midnight. I realize that a website is a constantly changing thing so there will never be perfection. Currently the Red Koala website is not ranked. This means I miss out on a great deal of traffic because my site can’t be found when my target market is searching for art. I have recently learned that linking is more valuable than I thought. Apparently linking is what gets your website ranked higher on Yahoo and Goggle. Wow… that’s big. So besides writing content for blogs and informational websites, I need to find good quality sites that are willing to put a link to redkoala.com on their site. This will take some time, but in the interim Evan also suggested that I buy some AdWords from Yahoo and Google. I’ve started to dabble in this, but haven’t really felt comfortable enough to jump in. However I think I will up my involvement based on the suggestions provided by my mentors. So the basic strategy is to buy AdWords so people can find www.redkoala.com in the sponsored section when they search for my keywords, provide content for blogging sites, and find at least ten good companies that will put a link on their website. This will take time, but in the end www.redkoala.com should have a good page ranking and start getting the traffic needed to drive sales. I hope this information is helpful for other sites just starting out!

On another note…I just got off the phone with a sales person from the American Baby Faire. They have a show here in Atlanta on September 20th and 21st. She offered me a deeply discounted booth to display my company products. The timing is great, I just introduced two new product lines including growth charts and seasonal wall hangings (check them out at www.redkoala.com) that I would like to promote in addition to the custom art. This will be my first chance to get in front of consumers. I hope I can get it all together by then! Wish me luck.