No matter what you sell, there is likely a market online to buy it. From guitar strings to waterproof blackberry cases - from Hummers to door locks and everything in between - you can find a store online that either sells it or lists full product information online. You can cross reference parts, find dealers, even find the nearest biodiesel fuel pump online. You probably can find almost any product you want, online.

How is online product marketing different from brick and mortar product marketing?

There are a couple of distinctions to doing product marketing online vs offline. Let’s take a look:

The offline way - in a brick and mortar store . . .

A brick and mortar swimming pool store promotes the fact that it’s a swimming pool store, but rarely would the weekly newspaper ad include every product they sell in the store. Only a few specials get to be featured. In the store, product displays are not all created equally, some items have higher prominence - easy to buy items are near the check out, popular items are in the back of the store (so you have to walk past lots of temptations to get to what you want). If you need something related to your swimming pool — you may look online for a local store, check the yellow pages, or you may just know where the nearest store is. Then you’ll drive over and search around for the part you need.

The online way - in an online store . . .

Special or featured products can be listed on the home page, or on a specific promotions page. If you have a good search feature on the website - any product you offer can be found in seconds. But the best part is that search engines can actually feature every product that the online store has - if you do the online product marketing right. Try that in your local hardware store.

So what does it mean to do online product marketing right?

Attract customers looking for the category of products or services you sell - customers looking for your niche - just like in the real world. If you look online most stores are really niche based - well really except for department stores - most stores are niche based, most businesses can nicely fit in to really narrow category. Humans (your customers) do type in things like pool supplies online.

Build individual web pages for each product that you want to sell. Ganging a group our products on one page doesn’t give you the best listings in the search engines. Sometimes there may be exceptions, but for the most part, each product should ultimately have it’s own page.

Create individual category pages and put the right products on those pages. One of my retail websites sells money clips, so we of course have a category page called money clips. But since we actually sell several kinds of money clips, we also have category pages for things like leather money clips and even hinged money clips - and of course category pages for each. It makes it very search engine friendly and human search optimization friendly too.

Use brand names in your meta data, in categories, and in your web copy. Customers are shopping for brand names online, but you can take it one step further, make sure you have model numbers in your product names, too. Customers searching for product accessories need those model numbers too. The idea is that the more detail someone enters in a search the closer they are to the buying process. Think about the comparison of these two searches. Phone Battery vs Phone Battery for Nokia 3206 - the second search is really looking for something specific.

Use multiple photos. Customers can’t touch and feel your products, show them what that look like in use and show them up close photos of important details. One photo shot that is often overlooked is taking a picture of the item next to something that is commonly sized. If it’s a small item, photograph next to a dime or a quarter. One phone company is using multiple shots of their phones next to common objects like a deck of cards and a pack of cigarettes. Helping web visitors get up close and personal improves your chances of converting the visitors into buyers.

Make sure search engines can reach your product pages. Some shopping carts and site builder software programs use template styles that are not “crawlable” by the search engines. Want to see if Google can crawl through? Use the site: command in the Google search page. Like site:http://www.redhawkstrategies.com

Soothe their worries about buying from your site. If you belong to your local chamber, display the logo on your site. BBB member? let them know.

Bonus Tip for Service Businesses: Even in the service business, you have some of the same objections to overcome. Most online customers won’t meet you fact to face before they contact you about your business - think of that website as a “pre-date”, that gives them a chance to “check you out” before they even give you a call.

Don’t hide your return policy. Let them know how long they have to make decision, tell them if there is a re-stocking fee. Make it easy to understand.

Include customer testimonials, and if you work only locally, be sure to include city and possibly neighborhood information. For instance:

Example

“I enjoy shopping at the XYZ store for my widgets. Their staff is friendly and they have great prices, too”

Jane Doe, San Marco (a neighborhood here in Jacksonville, FL)

There are probably at least a dozen other ways you can market products online, think about Pay Per Click to attract humans searching for your products. The Shopping Search Engines or Comparison Engines for listing products. Even using sites like eBay and Amazon.com to build alternate web stores to a pre-existing audience.

The face of product marketing has changed forever, and where ever you may be in the world - you can sell and market products to a hungry audience worldwide.