firstStreetOnline channels new media to build natural search and sales
FirstStreetOnline, which caters to the baby boomer market with innovative products, has launched firstStreetReports.com as a video-enhanced informational site that draws traffic to its main e-commerce site. The video site is just one way the retailer is using new media to build traffic, Daniel Yonts, director of Internet marketing, tells Internet Retailer.
Richmond, VA-based firstStreet, No. 384 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, has partnered with Richmond CBS network TV station WTVR to produce numerous how-to videos that show how to operate innovative products like an electronic lift that helps disabled people in and out of bath tubs and a turntable that can turn vinyl records into digital recordings. Each video is accompanied by a buy button that links to firstStreetOnline.com.
The informational video site has already helped to boost natural search rankings for firstStreetOnline as well as sales, which from Thanksgiving to mid-December are running about 15% higher that the same period a year ago, with natural search driving 60-70% of traffic, Yonts says.
FirstStreet, a unit of TecnoBrands Inc., is also taking other steps in a holistic approach to using new as well as traditional forms of media to both create a marketing buzz about its products and keep its existing engaged as interested shoppers, he adds. “Retained customers convert at 10 times more than new customers, and the cost to retain customers is less than reaching new ones,” Yonts says.
Next month, the retailer will begin offering RSS feeds to deliver its informational videos on firstStreetReports to blogs and other web sites, further helping to increase natural search rankings by developing more links leading to firstStreet’s web sites.
Because many of firstStreet’s products are unusual items not found in many places, it can be difficult to find content sites or blogs that cover such products as venues to advertise, Yonts says. So firstStreet is developing software that will enable it to develop niche blogs within minutes to create sites designed for specific products and categories. “Every product will be able to have a blog or an online survey integrated in minutes with firstStreetOnline,” he says.
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