Tips on marketing high-risk products online
The difficulties associated with having a website that sells a product or service that is on a high-risk or commonly prohibited category list is significant. This isn’t to say it’s not worthwhile to pursue a high-risk e-commerce business, but you will likely spend some extra time successfully marketing your high-risk website, setting up your site to accept payments, and avoiding fraud.
We found a few articles that seem to have some good marketing insights and solutions and want to pass them on. We know that every advantage and time saver goes a long way in helping entrepreneurs stay on top of their to-do lists. Don’t forget, selling high-risk products online is certainly a challenge.
Please don’t forget, we can make life a lot easier by setting up a payment gateway for you, helping you with chargebacks, setting up your IBO payouts, or by recommending a high-risk merchant account – learn more about what we do on our about us page.
Even after we help you with, say – an affiliate payout system, appropriate payment gateway, or a merchant account recommendation, it will make paying partners and accepting payment for your products easier, but it won’t make marketing your products any easier. These days digital marketing has become a full-time job, and especially when you have multiple websites or businesses to manage, there just isn’t enough time. Below are some resources we found that might help.
Marketing high-risk products on Facebook and Google
This article from Entrepreneur.com details some great ways to engage on Facebook and Google. For example, when Facebook won’t let you promote your products over their ad platform, you can still have a brand fan page for your business and use it to market to your clientele. This might not sound like a good use of time, but when you put in the work and really build a strong fan base, you may be surprised how easy it is to recommend products that a portion of the group will consider buying.
If you have built your brand to attract people who would consider your products useful, it should be simple to casually or professionally market to them. There is a bit of work involved to build your audience, but ultimately we think you will find it is well worth the time. The article details several tips to turn fans into customers. You can use this channel to give out discount codes and other promotional treats for your audience.
Although not mentioned specifically, this article has a lot of great info that applies to marketing yourself in restricted categories like supplements, MLMs or on-line FFL sales. When properly applied, these tricks can significantly increase the traffic that comes to your site, and as any e-commerce merchant knows, traffic leads to sales, especially when you have funneled enough interested people into your web-store.
Online FFL marketing ideas
For example, if you were to try to attract more people for FFL sales it might be a good idea to start a gun interest group on Facebook. After you set up the page begin to create simple content to share relevant to the products you are selling. Create a video of you or someone using that product at a firing range for target practice, or how easy it is to reload or other interesting features and post it to the page and promote the post.
Make sure you are following the law and service terms of any platform you use. Depending on how much you spend you could reach thousands of people who are specifically interested in your product line. If you are an FFL site selling guns or ammunition, this article from Garrison Everest has some solid FFL marketing tips for 2017.
Old school radio ads
Consider going old school and setting up radio promotions in markets you target. Local radio stations often mirror the culture of their locale, so firearms ads are often allowed. Many radio stations are struggling these days to compete with Pandora and Spotify, (although it might be worth directing some ads to them as well) if possible. As previously mentioned, do the research and find your preferred customers, and market there. Ultimately, thinking out of the box is a great way to try to reach customers who might not have ever heard of you otherwise.
Vape sites, tips on boosting sales
Finding new ways to advertise restricted products is a big deal these days, with products like e-cigarettes and vape products being restricted, these ideas should help you find ways to increase your multi-channel marketing revenue a bit. Selling electronic cigarettes online? The marketing company Fog Pusher has put together a nice article on marketing vape products in 2017 that is also worth checking out.
Need help setting up your payment systems?
Remember if you are just getting started, you need a merchant account and a high-risk payment gateway to be able to process payments for these products so drop us a line, we are happy to help.