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Here are a few ways you can improve your Internet marketing without spending a bundle. These
are some basic tips that have much more involved solutions than the
simplified summaries I provide below, but I hope it puts you on the
right path.
In this example, I'm going to assume you're trying to sell gourmet steaks online.
- WHO is your Market? - Do you really know your target market? What else are they buying online and offline?
What websites do they visit with regularity? Figure that out, then find the websites that cater to them. Not sure what else they like? ASK THEM. Send your customers a survey, call them...do your homework.
Then see what type of designs, slogans, and catchy verbiage these other sites are using to entice that audience. You
may not be able to afford a gazillion dollars of website R&D, but
you can bet that some of the top sites that already cater to your
audience DO.
Borrow from the best!
- What
is your Message? - Once you know your audience and the type of
presentations that are proven to attract them, you need to define your
message.
What is the ONE thing that you want your audience to remember about your product/service on your site. Don't get confused with two or three, although you certainly should have a page that espouses all your benefits.
You need to pound home the ONE thing that separates you from the competition? Is your product easier, faster, cheaper, more luxurious? Do you offer better service, newer technology?
I can't tell you how many websites I've been to that do a miserable job of telling me WHAT they do or WHY I should buy it. Don't be one of them!
- Sell
Benefits, NOT Features! - While it's nice to tell me that your Omaha
Steaks are USDA super special beef (that's a feature) what is really
important to most customers is the benefit of that feature, like that
"it tastes great!" or "is healthier for me".
- Use
CPC Wisely - Cost Per Click advertising on sites like MSN, Google and
Yahoo is probably the fastest and most efficient way to get quality
traffic to your site.
You pick the keywords for which you wish to advertise,
set the bid amount you're willing to pay for a clickthru, then you only
pay when somebody arrives at your site. AMAZING! But you need to track the results to really use this effectively.
That means familiarizing yourself with phrases like CPC
(cost per click) and CPA (cost per acquisition). You'll need to have an
order or inquiry page in order to know if the clicks you are buying are
converting into actual leads.
- Find
Your ONE Keyphrase - Now that you know your audience and how you want
to present your product to them, you need to choose the key phrase that
you think is ideal for your users to find you on a search engine.
This is a delicate and critically important task, as
you want to be specific enough that you won't attract bogus prospects
or compete for a phrase that's too general and difficult, but you also
don't want to choose a phrase so hyper specific that nobody searches
it, ever.
You can see how popular a phrase is by checking with Overture's Keyword Tool,
http://inventory.overture.com/.
- Tune
Your Tags - We've defined the key phrase you hope to rank for on the
search engines, now you need to learn these three letters, SEO.
Search Engine Optimization is the service of getting
your page to rank "organically" (not paid) on the first page of results
on the major engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo. This is achieved by a combination of factors, including having Meta Tags that stress your key phrase.
These tags are hidden in the HTML code of your site's
pages and tells Google and other engines what you think your site is
about. There is endless drivel written on this topic, but I suggest you
learn the basics enough so that if you do hire an SEO expert, you can
talk basic shop.
Check out www.seochat.com
to get started.
- Are
You Buying Links? - Probably the most important new element to SEO, you
will need to have as many back links (links to your site) from other
websites as possible to have a good chance of ranking for your key
phrase.
This is done by link swapping, submitting press releases and other articles or just buying them. Read more at
http://www.linkbuilding.org.
- Simplify
Your Content and Design - Ok, so let's assume you've had a little
beginner's luck and are now getting traffic to your site.
Are you maximizing the traffic? You can use excellent free tools like Google Analytics to analyze your traffic and see what they are and are not clicking. Your
end goal should be to generate orders or inquiries, so tweak your site
design until you increase your visit to inquiry/order ratio. That means
trying different buttons, hyperlinks, text and content until you find
the right combo.
If you're not tracking your stats, you can't improve!
OK,
so I realize this is a lot to digest in one sitting, but the key is to
know what you do and do not know...and then go find the knowledge on each
of these topics.
There are thousands of articles and plenty of paid pros out there to help you!
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