Seed for Success | Empowering Women Entreprenuers

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.

2 Comments » |

Posted by Abby Port