 | Major Communications |  |
| Major Communications | |
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ A. Main Article: "115 Internet Marketing Techniques to Blow Your Competitors Out of the Water" ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ By Terry Dean There are literally thousands of Internet marketing techniques which you can start using to increase your profits immediately. I am hoping that through this series of articles you will begin to see just a few of the techniques available. I will not be including a whole lot of information on each of the specific techniques. Part of the goal in these articles is to expand your mind to the possibilities and not just teach you step-by-step instructions for Internet marketing. 1. Develop a Unique Web Position in your Business. What is unique about your product or service? Is it better than the competition or does it just do the exact same things as everyone else's products. The successful sites online are never me-too sites. They are sites which have come up with a unique angle in a targeted niche market. 2. The Unique Web Position is more important than the ad copy. Good ad copy can not make up for a poor concept. A good concept and UWP (see technique #1) will work even with ad copy that is just OK. Your ads need to highlight and flow out of whatever it is that is setting your business apart from the crowd: prices, service, quality, etc. 3. Don't just lower prices if your product isn't selling. In some cases you may have priced your product too high. In most cases, it is because you haven't set yourself apart as a valuable product to the consumer. Add more bonuses, focus more on UWP, etc. In other words, add more value to the current package. 4. Look for a market before you develop a product. People who start with a product and go looking for customers are starting down a hard road. Find a market full of people who are ready to buy something. Most of the really successful entrepreneurs find a market of people and then develop a product that those people are constantly seeking after. 5. Look for a hungry crowd. The hungrier that your potential market is for your product the better your success rate will be. Don't spend your time trying to change people's buying habits. Create a product or find a product that people are already desperately searching for. 6. Don't try to create a market. Find an existing market. If you can't describe to me in one paragraph who your prospects are, then you are going to have a horrible time trying to sell your products online. Tap into a market that is already looking for your product. 7. Testing is the Key to all Marketing Success. One ad may work 10 times better than another very similiar ad for the exact same product. You must always test headlines, offers, guarantees, and traffic generating methods. The most successful marketers are not always the smartest. They are the ones who have tested the most methods without quitting. 8. The purpose of all of your advertising should be to produce sales. A small business cannot afford to spend millions of dollars trying to create name brands with their web site. For example, your banners should be tested to make sure that every penny you spend in advertising produces a profit in sales. 9. Even free advertising costs you something. Every bit of advertising you do costs you something, either money or time. Make sure that it is producing for you. Nothing you do is literally free. It will cost your business significantly less in the long run to buy a $500.00 program if it helps you to accomplish your goals in 1/10 the time. 10. Every aspect of your site and marketing should be focused on presenting your UWP to your customers. Everything you do should focus on your Unique Web Positioning Strategy: signature files, headlines, order forms, free reports, ads, etc. Your customers should always know exactly what makes you different from your competitors. 11. Integrate everything you do into one primary strategy. Your various activities, free reports, and advertising should all focus on the same prospects and eventually bring them to a buying decision. Don't focus on just getting a million people to your site. Ten red hot prospects ready to buy all of your products and services are worth more than millions of traffic that is just passing through. 12. Plan for multiple streams of income up-front. In most cases, 50% - 90% or more of actual profits in your Internet business can occur or should occur through backend selling opportunities. If you ignore supplying more than one product or service, you will be ignoring the majority of your profits. 13. Make sure that you include high ticket items in your overall strategy. If you are currently selling low priced items (items costing less than $100) which are not consumables, you must come up with higher ticket items to sell on the backend. It is easier to sell one $1,000 high quality product than it is to sell 50 $20.00 products. 14. Create your own Internet marketing funnel. The best strategy involves low ticket items, medium ticket items, and higher ticker items all in one funnel. For example, a consultant could create a book for low ticket sales and a marketing course for a medium ticket product. Then, the high ticket item can be their actual consulting service. 15. Pick a market you are passionate about. Don't just pick a market and product based on money. Find something that you love to do. If you're excited about your market, then you are going to find it is that much easier to stick it through until your business becomes a success. 16. Be willing to think outside the box. Be willing to look outside of the Internet to find ideas and strategies that are helping to build profits in other businesses. If a technique is successful at building profits off-line, it may just work online. Testing is the only way of finding out. 17. No marketing technique is really new. We talk about new technologies, but no marketing technique is really new. Someone in some other industry has already been using it. So, begin to keep your eyes open wherever you are shopping for techniques you can "borrow" for your business. 18. Human nature stays the same. The same basic marketing principles that were relied upon 100 years ago are still working today. For example, customers are still more interested in themselves than in your business. People still want the same basic benefits. 19. Look for the easy opportunity. Don't choose a project that costs $10,000 and 2 years to complete...especially when you are just starting out. Look for quick one month projects. It is hard enough starting out, so make sure you stack everything in your favor. 20. Avoid challenges when choosing a business. Enough challenges will show up after you start a project. So, look for a project that you know you can complete in a short time frame. Most beginners will never complete a project that takes over a month to finish. 21. Don't try to compete with major corporations. Don't try to compete with multi-million dollar corporations on the basis of price. You cannot start a book business and out price Amazon. If you want to compete as a small business, you must choose to market to a niche group of people. 22. Find your niche. If you want to create a book selling site, then focus on a specific market such as dogs, pottery, business, etc. If you run a search engine, focus on a niche. Don't compete with Yahoo. 23. Base your plan on reality. It may be a good idea to offer a site that updates every single day like the big corporations. They have hundreds of site designers and thousands of employees though. If you want a site that updates constantly, create it to work with an automated updating program or with a support system such as a discussion group where hundreds of people can be posting content for you. 24. Try offering seven links or less on your main page. One of the primary goals of any business is to make sure you don't confuse your customers. By offering only seven links or less on your main page, you will limit the likelihood your prospects will get confused about the purpose of your site. 25. Make sure every page on your site links back to your main page. Don't assume your prospects will just hit the "back" button to go back to your main page. Also don't assume that they will remember where your main page is. Have every page on your site link back to the main page. 26. Include the "new" command when linking outside of your domain. You will be able to keep the visitor at your site by using the new command on links that go outside of your domain. The way to do this is by simply adding target="newpage" inside of the html section of your links. Below is an example. A HREF="http://www.bizpromo.com" target="newpage" 27. Cut down on the graphics on your site. Graphics take a long time to load. Keep the graphics to a minimum on most sites and always try to reduce the colors down to 256 or even 16 for reduced sizes on all of graphics. 28. Don't always jump into new technologies. Flash sites and Real Video are awesome technologies you can use on your site, but don't let your whole marketing plan rely on them. Offer other means of obtaining the same information from your site for those who don't want to wait for the site to download. 29. Spend the extra money you need to get your own domain. Don't force your Internet business to rely on a free server. Getting your own domain name establishes credibility in the minds of many of your prospects. It is worth the extra $35 per year for Network Solutions and the extra $20 or so per month for a hosting service. 30. Look for a hosting service with full support, CGI access, and secure ordering. Too many people skimp in this area and find out they have to move their server later on. Look for a hosting service that has what you need when you start instead of just looking for the cheapest prices. 31. Accept Credit Cards Your business must accept credit cards if you want to succeed in this next century online. Around 90% or more of your customers will purchase by credit card, so you really aren't even in business yet if you aren't accepting credit cards. 32. Offer several options for ordering. The best way to receive the most orders in your business is to offer a secure order form, phone orders, fax orders, and postal orders. One of the keys to success in any business is to make ordering as easy as possible. 33. Remember that freebies are the key to sales. Offer freebies on your site. Offer free information, free CGI programs, free demos, or free samples or your products or services. Freebies are the driving force in online marketing so make sure that everything you do has some freebie involved. 34. Give something good and valuable away for free. Don't offer something just to get visitors. Make sure that it is a good example of the kinds of materials you can offer. If you are giving away junk, then people are going to have the same opinion of any product or service you offer. 35. Make sure not to give everything away for free. Some people give everything away for free and then find that neither they nor their prospects have been done a service. If you give everything you have away up-front you will have nothing to sell. If you give everything away to your prospects, they won't see the value in what you are offering them and usually won't even use it. 36. Create a sales funnel on your site. Always keep your well defined goal in your mind while you are building your web site. If your goal is to receive automated sales online, then make sure that all of your free stuff leads people closer to a buying decision. 37. Not all web sites are created with sales in mind. Some companies may just want to collect leads for their company to follow up on by email, mail, or by telemarketing. If you sell a high ticket item, you will find it is difficult to make sales directly online and may want to use your site to collect leads. 38. One of the best things to do on any site is to collect the email address. If you get your prospect's email address, you can follow-up. If you don't get their email address and you don't get the sale on the prospect's first visit, then you will have lost the sale forever. Also note that a good web site only converts .5% - 5% of their visitors. 39. The next web site is just a click away. Part of the reason for your focus in site creation is that your competitor is only one click away. If you lose your prospect's interest for one minute, you will miss out on the sale. Everything you do must grab their attention and focus on your goal. 40. Give an opportunity for people to present feedback. Your web sites should always have a feedback form so people can send you their questions or their opinions. Not all of the opinions are always good, but you will begin to see what reasons people have for not buying from you. Then, you may make changes if certain things keep coming up. 41. Every web site you create should have a headline. You should never create a site where your company name is right on top unless it represents your strongest benefit to your prospects. You must use your UWP and a strong benefit as the headline of your site if you want to keep people interested for long. 42. All of your marketing will be seriously hindered if you don't focus on your sales letter. It takes the same amount of work to get prospects to your page whether 1% of your visitors buy from you or if 20% of your visitors buy from you. Don't try every advertising technique in the book if you haven't established a page that can sell first. 43. Look to earn at least $1.00 or more per visitor. Push the envelope and seek to earn at that level of earnings. If you can't reach that mark, you will almost always be struggling when trying to use paid advertising techniques. Since the Internet is moving more and more to paid advertising and away from free ads, you have to start working on getting your closing rate up. 44. Focus on the lifetime value of a customer. If your front end makes only 25 cents or less per visitor, you can still earn money if your backend products and services are making up the rest of the picture. How much is a customer worth to you throughout their entire buying lifetime? 45. Don't start an affiliate program if you aren't achieving the above goals. Don't start an affiliate program just to get traffic to your site. One of the reasons for the failure of 90% of affiliate sites out there is the fact that the owner never worked on and tested the actual sales process. Sure, as an owner you make money through affiliates promoting you. What about them though? Why should they advertise for a program that doesn't work? 46. Your site must focus on benefits. You probably have heard this a hundred times, but your site has to focus 100% on the benefits. Your prospects do not care about your company, products, or services. They only care about what it will do for them. Tell them what you can do for them. 47. Spend 80% of your time on the headlines. If you can't get people interested and excited by your web site's headline, then you are not going to keep them at your site long. Many of the good copywriters spend days writing headlines and come up with well over 100 possible headlines for any sales letter they write. 48. Bullets are an awesome weapon for advertising. People online are moving at the speed of thought. To grab their attention and create the buying decision, you want to use a lot of quick benefit listings. You could almost call these mini-headlines. Most of the headlines you didn't use from technique #47 will become the bullets of your sales letter. 49. Your web site must establish credibility. Credibility is the missing link in many web sites. Sure, you established interest and desire in your product, but why should your prospects trust you. Step one to credibility is providing a good clean site and information that backs up your promises. 50. Testimonials are one of the keys to credibility. I heard it often said that marketers without testimonials have skinny children. Make sure to keep on file every testimonial you get in your business so that you have these credibility booster enhancers for your letters and your web site. ----------------------------------------- Terry Dean is the creator of the "Instant Internet Cashflow System" which will give you a roadmap of how to develop a $100,000 yearly Internet strategy, achieve Top 20 rankings on search engines, develop your own Hot Internet Products in 4 hours or less, and create an almost Unlimited Income through Banner Advertising... Click Here Now! http://www.bizpromo.com/cashflow.htm
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