We’re off to the first annual Baby & Kids Fair at 7W in New York. If you’re in town, stop by and say hello. We’ll be in booth F8 showing off our adorable Clean Shopper line and giving away lots of goodies!
Deciding where to spend my advertising dollars used to be so simple. Print or more print? In fact, back in the day (sometime around the Cretaceous period), I worked with three national print publications and called it a day. My phone rang off the hook. I was living in La-La land and didn’t even know it.
Now, thanks to the explosive growth of the internet, there’s a blog/website/twitter/facebook option for every fetish and an advertising campaign to match. I don’t have the latest figures, but one statistic I happened upon recently quoted the number of blogs on the internet at 112 million. And that figure was from 2007! I haven’t even bothered to look up websites, but my guess is I couldn’t count that high anyway. How do you pick from all the possible sources and find an advertising solution that gives you a good bang for your rapidly weakening buck? Honestly? I don’t really know.
Yesterday, I was fortunate to participate in a fabulous Search Engine Webinar hosted by The Momentrepreneur Support Group. I learned how to dissect my Analytics report (something my generationally-challenged brain should have internalized some time ago) and discovered that visitors from my site are overwhelmingly coming to us through organic Google searches (vs those organizations to whom I shell out ornate sums of money), and another big chunk are coming to us because kindly sites refer them (i.e. consumerreports.org, germfreaksguide.com, thegiggleguide.com, etc.). In fact, only a very small percentage of visitors to my site (4%) are actually biting on the paid-search fruit.
If 75% of visitors are coming to our site from online searches and referring sites, what does that mean for my print campaigns?
Does that mean my print ads are a waste of my already devalued dollar? Or did my customers read the ads, forget the cleanshopper.com URL and search for Clean Shopper shopping cart covers under our keywords? Apparently, there’s an “app” for figuring that out somewhere, but I haven’t found it yet.
Through a nifty tracking mechanism we installed on the site, we can occassionally track how successful our print ads are, but the stars have to be aligned and it can’t snow. Tough in those winter months. So far, we have found a mixture of five trade and consumer print publications that appear to work for us, but not nearly the way those organic searches or referrals do.
The print publications that have found a way to increase their viability stand out. They incorporate FREE links, website banners and other cyber bribes that extend the life of our print ads and give our campaigns longer legs. And who wouldn’t like longer legs?
Taking those five print publications and adding them to the list of over 112 million blogs and countless websites may not make me more cyber-ad savvy than T-Rex, but I’m at least learning how to find my way back to La-La land.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the ridiculous costs of outrageous charges,
or to take arms against a sea of over-zealous
compliance regulations,
And by opposing, end them? To stop, to think.
To think, perchance to reason, ay. There’s the rub.
For in reason, what knowledge may come?
The undiscovered land of wisdom,
from which no regulator has yet to journey,
Puzzles us and makes us ponder.
Where hath all the reason gone?
When ’tis far easier to toil overseas,
When costs are less and partners willing,
When dreams come to the meager and the small,
When such a thing as nickle and dime is
unto itself a phrase never uttered,
‘Tis it not nobler to oppose the
grunt and sweat under a weary process here
When across the sea, open arms extend?
But, if such an enterprise should be here
Would we in this regard turn away?
No, I say.
If reason, access and ability were to come this way,
Then all would be joyful and manufacturing in our fair land
would resonate to this day.
You will LOVE these totes. Not only are they breathtakingly adorable, but they’re exceptionally roomy, totally reusable and - get this - they have extra long handles so you can easily sling’em over your shoulder! And (this gets even better), they’re normally $6.99, but you can have one FREE just for buying $25 worth of great stuff at www.cleanshopper.com. Wahoo!
Every time someone purchases a Pink Gingham Clean Shopper, $1.00 goes to the ESSCO-MGH Breast Cancer Research Fund. And, that dollar goes farther than any other charitable dollar you’ve ever given. Why is that? Because 100% of every single penny that goes to the ESSCO-MGH Breast Cancer Research Fund, goes to breast cancer research. Oh come on, that can’t be true! Well, happy to disappoint because that’s the fact, Jack! See, every other charitable organization on the planet takes a cut off the top for admin purposes. This is not a bad thing, it just means that when you give them a dollar, only .40 to .60 actually goes to the cause. With the ESSCO-MGH Breast Cancer Research Fund, we all volunteer our time, services, expertise and goods, so every penny we raise goes right to research. So, please, buy a Pink Gingham Clean Shopper or better yet, make a straight donation to the fund. You can do so by clicking here. Your breasts, and those of the ones you love, will thank you!
ESSCO-MGH PSAs donated by 92.5 The River!
Had to share this great site! Naturally, our Pink Gingham Clean Shopper shopping cart cover is mentioned, but so are loads of other very neat items. And, when you buy any of them, a percentage of those sales go to breast cancer research, support and awareness. This is a great place to shop for the holidays!
So much to say and such a small space in which to say it! Where to start? The ABC Show was a phenomenal success, hence the inability to get anything else done but process and ship, ship, ship. Our new Black & White print was a HUGE hit! Look for it everywhere! Once we finished processing the orders, I got straight to work on the leads and orders generated from our Orlando conference we simultaneously attended! Following that, I put my creative hat on and developed some unbelievably cool designs for the ABC Spring Conference, which I’m delighted to say we have been invited to attend for a second year in a row! I’ve also been hard at work developing exclusive lines for one of our favorite retailers! And, in between, I recorded essco-mgh-breast-cancer-psa-final-mix with 92.5 The River for our upcoming, 14th Annual ESSCO-MGH Breast Cancer Research Fund benefit. Following the October 27th benefit, I’ll be back to work on our Wee BE Organic line! And, back to tweeting on a more regular basis. Here’s a look at our very popular Black & White Clean Shopper! 
In addition to our fabulous new eco-friendly packaging, we’re launching new prints in our popular Chic line of Clean Shopper shopping cart covers and Clean Diner highchair covers! All with reusable, matching drawstring totes. We’ll be showing off our new Loop D Loop (above) print and our must-have Black & White Circles (below) at the September ABC show, so you can buy everything in time for the holidays! You’ll want to scoop up Clean Shoppers, Clean Diners and matching bibs for all the families on your list! All available to ship after November 15th!
Chic Bib in Black & White Circles
Visit our website for closeouts and bargains as we make room for our fabulous new Chic prints!
Reusable Drawstring Tote in Black & White Circles
I’d love to say I’ve been on vacation these past few weeks, but the truth is I’ve been doggedly focused on the final approval stages of our new eco-friendly, biodegradable, fully recyclable, and utterly adorable new packaging! Effective October 1st, the entire line of Original Clean Shopper shopping cart covers and Clean Diner highchair covers will be packaged in trendy, eco-friendly containers. We’ve just made the best value on the market even better!
We started working toward a more ecologically-minded footprint a year ago when we launched our Wee BE Organic line of 100% organic cotton baby products, and now we’re furthering our goal with the eco-friendly packaging of all of our lines. And, we’re as delighted with the look of the new packaging as we are with our efforts to reduce our ecological footprint.
Our new packaging is PVC-free, biodegradable, and uses reduced amounts of raw materials to produce. Our Chic and Luxe Minky Clean Shoppers are already packaged in reusable, drawstring totes, which have won praise from consumers and retailers alike.
Retailers will get a sneak preview of our new eco-friendly packaging during the September ABC Show in Las Vegas, when they stop by our Booth #320!
Stay tuned to www.cleanshopper.com for deals on our discontinued stock as we make room for our new, incoming eco-friendly packaged Clean Shopper shopping cart covers and Clean Diner highchair covers!
We don’t do it often, so when we do it’s the ideal time to scoop up loads of Clean Shopper shopping cart covers, Clean Burper burp cloths, My Traveling ABCs and more! That’s because for the entire month of July, we’ll ship your purchases absolutely FREE. Of course you have to spend $40 or more, but the savings will make you want to grab, grab, grab! You get fabulous, award-winning baby accessories and we pay for the shipping! But you have to hurry! The offer is only valid in the US, and it ends on July 31, 2009.
