Promotion - Basic

You can't sell your products if people can't see them. Zazzle has many ways to help your marketing and promotion. It can seem daunting, because there's always more to do, but take it a step at a time and eventually you'll be benefiting from every opportunity you have to reach a huge audience of prospective buyers.

5 Keys to Promoting Your Products:

• Leverage Your Site or Blog
• Email and Newsletter Marketing
• Share, Email, Link, Blog, and Twitter
• Flash Panel Widget
• Merch Booth

Additional links:

• Tools
• Zazzle Blog
• Promotion - Advanced

Websites and blogs are the best places to start promoting -- create a takeover banner or featured editorial/blog post for a limited time on your home page so everyone who visits knows about your new offerings. Also, be sure to add a permanent link to your gallery on your main navigation so it's always easy for people to find. See the "Share, Email, Link, Blog, and Twitter" section for tools to help you do this.

Some best practices:

• Put your links in context:
• If you are blogging or writing an article, add a text link to one of your products within the body of the post or article and insert a static image link alongside.
• If your site is art-centric, add links to the Design view of your products for a clean look.
• If your site is about shopping, use Product or Model views or a widget to display multiple products for a "mini-shop" experience.
• Keep image links, banners, or widgets above the fold for best visibility and click-through.
• Where possible, link directly to a specific, relevant product or design.
• Rather than writing a link that says, "click here," use a descriptive text phrase like, "Bassett Hound shirt" or make it a call to action, "see the Bassett Hound shirt."
• Update featured products on your website or blog often; see the "Product mix and design refresh" section for ideas.

Weave your products into the context of blog posts, articles, and website content:

• Link to your wedding stamps gallery when you blog about creating custom stamps for save-the-date announcements.
• When you blog about simple "green" practices people can apply to their everyday lives, include images and links to your canvas shopping bags.
• Feature your Mother's Day cards and gifts alongside a post about recipes and crafts for Mother's Day.
• When your band is going on tour, add links to tour t-shirts and posters on band's web pages.

If you have a regular newsletter or email blast, let people know about your store, featured products, and promotions or special offers. This is your direct line to your customers; used wisely it can be a productive avenue for sales. Be careful not to "over-message" or spam your list and think about putting your products in context of an issue where you are discussing or upcoming holiday or event.

Highlight the things that make your Zazzle store unique - the depth of your designs, the ability to customize and personalize products, and unique Zazzle products like business cards, as well as exclusive designs you are featuring.

Add urgency to your messages - remind people to place their orders in time to be delivered before specific events like Mother's Day, St. Patrick's Day, etc.

Announce a sale - You can lower your royalty on specific products for a limited time and announce a "sale price" on the items.

Even if you don't have a regular email list, an easy way to market your gallery is to add your URL to the signature on all your personal emails. Use a tagline to explain what your gallery is about, for example, "Everything for the new baby - shop now!" Be sure to include your Zazzle Star to earn referral fees.

Zazzle provides many different tools for you to link to your products on your blog, website, emails, MySpace, Facebook, via link exchanges, etc. to increase your traffic and market yourself. Your Associate Center page is a one-stop shop for the various types of links and widgets.

To link to a specific product, click "link to this product" below the design block on the right half of any product page. This will take you to a "Share This" pop-up which offers multiple options including a simple text link for email, code to embed a product shot or design on your site along with an image link. You can also provide this same code to your visitors so they can help spread the word for you!

The "Share" button lets you share your product easily in a range of social bookmark services including Delicious, Digg, Facebook, MySpace, etc. It's easy to send your friends an email message about a product using the "Email" link. Use the "Blog" link place a product in Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress, and Live Journal. If you use Twitter user, send product announcements with the "Twitter" link.

Our Flash Panel widget is the easiest way to promote everything in your gallery and from other Contributors, too! You (and your customers) will find the code for a Flash Panel promoting everything in your gallery under the "Promote this Gallery" link on your Gallery home page.

In addition, you can configure a different Flash Panel to drive sales from your website, blog or anywhere else by displaying all products created by any Contributor (yourself or anyone else), or all products Zazzle-wide based on a search term. You can even narrow those selections down to a specific product type (e.g. shirts) and sort by Recent or Popular. Go to Create a Flash Panel and select the criteria for your Flash Panel: (1) pick a Contributor handle or search term, (2) choose a name and skin, and (3) grab the HTML code for your configured Flash Panel on the last page.

With the Zazzle Merch Booth tool, you can create a mini-gallery of featured products to post on your site, your MySpace and Facebook pages, and almost anywhere else you can place HTML. Log in to see 25 of your recent products. Use the checkboxes next to the images to designate the products you want to show in your Merch Booth. To finish, select one of our skins or upload your own. You can also upload a logo.

Be sure to bookmark the "Post it and Start Earning!" page with the various embed codes on it; if you forget to, you can easily re-create your Merch Booth to get the code again.

Once you've created your Merch Booth, you can control which products are shown by adding the tag "merchbooth" to products you want to show. You can edit the tags for your products by going to your "Edit Product" page. Be sure to remove the "merchbooth" tag from any products you don't want to show.