Hello my fellow Nairalanders, especially those of you that have expertise when it comes to online advertisement and stuff, I need your help.

I work for an upcoming fashion company called GLC and we have been trying really hard to advertise and market our products and get good customers. We have printed out fliers, did pop-up shows, even did a fashion show but the people that have been buying from us are just familiar faces like our family and friends.

We then decided to start doing what most upcoming businesses looking for advertisement do: we started advertising our clothes and website on the comment sections of blogs, celebrity Instagram pages, and such. Although this one brought a little bit of customers, it was not worth the amount of time we were putting in because I’m sure people were just scrolling past our advertisements.

Ultimately we did Facebook and Twitter ads and although it was effective, it was relatively expensive because we are a start-up company and we don't have a lot of money on our side. We tried to see how far we could go with $20 initially but it only lasted us for 4 days on Facebook and Twitter respectively. After these 4 days of spending $40 in total, we were able to get about 380 visitors to the site and 2 buyers although they said we had about 8.4K “impressions”. It was rewarding but nowhere close to how much we spent on the site.

Now we are looking for other ways to advertise effectively but affordably. The next thing which we are currently doing right now, is looking for blogs and websites that look viable and asking for their advertisement rates. So far most of the people who have responded to us are giving us ridiculous figures and we are trying to keep on budget.

Please, any help on what we can do or websites that offer good rates?


UPDATE:

Let me start by saying thank you all so much for your support, you don't know but it's really helping especially to keep me at a good position in my workplace.

FirstS2B, I took your idea up with my boss and he really liked it and commended it. We are already looking for people to partner up with and shops that may be interested in us, however he still told me to go and look for an online advertisement slot as he believes most of the market and demographic we are fishing for are prevalent on the net.

I have received and found out ad rates for: Linda Ikeji, LailasBlog, Pulse NG, Bella Naija, Miss Petite, GoldRushNews, Jaguda, NotJustOk, and Stella Dimoko...all of these are top blogs in Nigeria and as expected have very high ad rates that we cannot just afford right now especially for promotion.

What I'm trying to do now is look at lesser known sites that still seem to have good numbers, and ask for their ad rates. I'm reaching out to trezzy's blog, that1960chick, naijabliz, Jide Okonjo's blog, ketekete, and Daily Post Nigeria. Please, if you have any other upcoming blogs or sites that are doing relatively well, let me know as soon as possible.

I suggest you form Joint Ventures with other businesses. It works powerfully without costing you money. These other business owners should be selling products/services that complement your fashion products. Your customers definitely buy some other things along with what they buy from you like matching shoes & bags. You could partner with businesses selling these products so they market your products to their customers & vice versa. Sometimes, you may have an arrangement to pay yourselves commission on referrals generated for each other. It is a win-win arrangement for all parties. You could also parner with Fashion schools, fabric vendors etc. I hope you get the gist?

Have you really utilized Nairaland here?
Then how about Konga, jumia etc

ojemeka:
Hello my fellow Nairalanders, especially those of you that have expertise when it comes to online advertisement and stuff, I need your help.

I work for an upcoming fashion company called GLC and we have been trying really hard to advertise and market our products and get good customers. We have printed out fliers, did pop-up shows, even did a fashion show but the people that have been buying from us are just familiar faces like our family and friends.

We then decided to start doing what most upcoming businesses looking for advertisement do: we started advertising our clothes and website on the comment sections of blogs, celebrity Instagram pages, and such. Although this one brought a little bit of customers, it was not worth the amount of time we were putting in because I’m sure people were just scrolling past our advertisements.

Ultimately we did Facebook and Twitter ads and although it was effective, it was relatively expensive because we are a start-up company and we don't have a lot of money on our side. We tried to see how far we could go with $20 initially but it only lasted us for 4 days on Facebook and Twitter respectively. After these 4 days of spending $40 in total, we were able to get about 380 visitors to the site and 2 buyers although they said we had about 8.4K “impressions”. It was rewarding but nowhere close to how much we spent on the site.

Now we are looking for other ways to advertise effectively but affordably. The next thing which we are currently doing right now, is looking for blogs and websites that look viable and asking for their advertisement rates. So far most of the people who have responded to us are giving us ridiculous figures and we are trying to keep on budget.

Please, any help on what we can do or websites that offer good rates?

You as well place advert on our magazine /album for the 2014/2015 university of Abuja. That can help you spread the good news of your products

FirstS2B:
I suggest you form Joint Ventures with other businesses. It works powerfully without costing you money. These other business owners should be selling products/services that complement your fashion products. Your customers definitely buy some other things along with what they buy from you like matching shoes & bags. You could partner with businesses selling these products so they market your products to their customers & vice versa. Sometimes, you may have an arrangement to pay yourselves commission on referrals generated for each other. It is a win-win arrangement for all parties. You could also parner with Fashion schools, fabric vendors etc. I hope you get the gist?

AH! This is a fantastic idea. Thank you so much for this honestly, we would really look into this. It's going to be quite tasking to actually find somebody that may want to help us or even partner up with us...especially somebody that is established but we'll definitely look into this. Thank you so much

mrsage:
Have you really utilized Nairaland here?
Then how about Konga, jumia etc

We've been trying to advertise on all of these sites but the advertisement rates are rather expensive, that's the reason we are looking for affordable yet effective sites or blogs that can help us with advertisement which have good rates.

Thank you however for your suggestion oga, we will still be looking at trying to do something with these people.

nickxtra:
You as well place advert on our magazine /album for the 2014/2015 university of Abuja. That can help you spread the good news of your products

How much would that be?

Ojemeka, your problem is not unusual. Please shoot me an email at obi.ikpe@gmail.com and lets take it from there.

Cheers!

ojemeka:


How much would that be?

Full inside page(all coloured) is 15, 000 naira, inside cover page, page 3, back page or inside back page is 20, 000, all coloured.

obisiv:
Ojemeka, your problem is not unusual. Please shoot me an email at obi.ikpe@gmail.com and lets take it from there.

Cheers!

Thank you for your interest in helping obisiv, please what exactly do you do? Do you run a blog? Magazine? Radio show?

Tell me please so I can take it up with my boss, and we can shoot an e-mail if need be. Thanks.

nickxtra:
Full inside page(all coloured) is 15, 000 naira, inside cover page, page 3, back page or inside back page is 20, 000, all coloured.

Those are really good rates. Please if I may ask just out of curiosity, how widely read is the magazine in/around campus? Please be honest, do people really read it or it's one of those magazines the school has but nobody reads.

I'm awaiting your response, thank you.

UPDATE:

Let me start by saying thank you all so much for your support, you don't know but it's really helping especially to keep me at a good position in my workplace.

FirstS2B, I took your idea up with my boss and he really liked it and commended it. We are already looking for people to partner up with and shops that may be interested in us, however he still told me to go and look for an online advertisement slot as he believes most of the market and demographic we are fishing for are prevalent on the net.

I have received and found out ad rates for: Linda Ikeji, LailasBlog, Pulse NG, Bella Naija, Miss Petite, GoldRushNews, Jaguda, NotJustOk, and Stella Dimoko...all of these are top blogs in Nigeria and as expected have very high ad rates that we cannot just afford right now especially for promotion.

What I'm trying to do now is look at lesser known sites that still seem to have good numbers, and ask for their ad rates. I'm reaching out to trezzy's blog, that1960chick, naijabliz, Jide Okonjo's blog, ketekete, and Daily Post Nigeria. Please, if you have any other upcoming blogs or sites that are doing relatively well, let me know as soon as possible.

Thank you so much for your continued support and the ones you are sure to give. Thank You.

I'll be updating as everything happens and posting in the OP so you can know what is happening, and supply any help you may have. Thank you so much again Nairalanders, I feel really blessed to have all this support. Thank You.

ojemeka:


Those are really good rates. Please if I may ask just out of curiosity, how widely read is the magazine in/around campus? Please be honest, do people really read it or it's one of those magazines the school has but nobody reads.

I'm awaiting your response, thank you.

It will be widely read, we expect a large audience at the dinner night taking place in Abuja, we will host the magazine online for global audience. We will distribute copies to educational institutions and libraries, etc

I don't know who your target audience is and other details of your products. But you should understand that people don't buy products/services, they buy solutions! You should be able to frame your products as a solution to a problem or need your target market is having. You can them organise a free event which you market vigorously online to attract your right audience. This is where you spend some money to advertise using Google Adwords or Facebook ad or any other effective online advertising medium or media. After educating your audience thoroughly, you will easily sell your products as they now see it as the only viable solution to their problem. Do this.