Online marketing tips

To start an online business you have to keep in mind a few things without
which you would be running into stumbling blocks resulting in failure of your
business. These few basic points can help you for a business start-up , whether
online store to sell products, home-based business, service provider……..you
can just go on and on

1. A web site functioning as your office or store front to display your
   products or services. If you are interested in on-line ebay business , then
   you can start off without a web–but it’s good practice to have
2. Product or service to sell to your buyers
3. Niche market for your products.
4. Strong sales letter that compels buyer to buy
5.  Opt-in email to do follow-up on your prospective buyers.
6. Shopping cart for buyers to process their credit cards.
7. Marketing plan

Let’s take each step in detail to understand better.

Web site – You should have a domain name register in your name .This reflects credibility in the eye of buyers. Don’t use free sites as it does not look professional and it can steer your buyers away. Try to find and register domain name that reflects your business or service. You might not find exactly what you are looking for , but should be close enough.

Build your site to look like professional keeping in mind to –

• Avoid too many graphics. Graphics make page load slower. If a page takes too long to load , visitors tend to surf away.
• Avoid putting in too many colorful text colors. You are trying to sell something , not to  impress them with your text colors
• Read previous article on Pitfalls of domain . Get this business builder to help you build your business quickly and efficiently.

Find product to sell– You should do a thorough research before deciding on which product you would like to sell. Find what products are being searched for by surfers , what keywords are being used by them , how many sites are competing for those keywords and is the product has strong demand to make it a sellable
product or if there are too many giving them for free. You can research for your product by using keyword tools like keyword tracker ,keyword discovery ,or LSI
and of course google .Your product can be virtually anything like softwares , eBook, services , affiliates……Take specialized training with experts

Finding niche markets for your products.– Assuming that you have a product which you want to market , now is the time to find markets that are going to buy your products. You have to select your markets carefully to have a successful marketing for your product. You should avoid markets where there are already big dominant players fighting for a share of a already saturated market. You should concentrate on markets where there potential buyers but not much competition.

This is going to be your niche market. Niche markets are segmented markets overlooked by big players but enough demand to keep small markets in business .You need to do keyword research to find your niche markets.. Read  How to find niche keywords . 

Sales-letter that compel to click buy-button — Researches shows that it takes about 10 seconds for visitor to decide whether to stay  or move away from the site. Out of these 10 seconds , about 4-6 seconds are used up in page loading (provided that your page does load fast within that time) and the rest for visitor to read headings of your page. If your heading does not interest them , they are sure to surf away without reading  further. This is your sales-letter which is going to make surfer decide whether to stay or surf away.
To make visitor stay and scroll down your sales letter , you need to draw their attention , within those precious 2-3 seconds. This can be done by writing strong words that can catch their attention .  See examples of strong sales letter 1

sales letter 2
Opt-in box–You must have an opt-in box on your page where visitors can drop their email address for you to do follow-up .Researches shows that it needs upto 7-8 follow ups before they decide to buy your product. This can be done on regular basis by auto-mail responders. In order to get the important contact email from your visitor , you must give something in return to them. This should be something unique and of their interest to compel them to subscribe to your opt-in.

You can do your follow ups with specially designed softwares like auto-responder email follow ups. The auto-responders are very important to make your site automated .The auto-responders will collect the email addresses from opt-in box, send out pre-written emails or reports or newsletters. Then there auto-responders will send out follow ups at pre-defined intervals of time. This would save you tremendous time doing follow-ups. The email responders can be specialized like mailops or low cost like niche-responder . And there are also free softwares but I would not recommend it as you would be sort of advertising and promoting business for software owner. Free auto-responders have a link in outgoing emails which your subscriber can click to join them. This way they are getting business without doing anything.

Shopping carts–You should place shopping carts on your site to make it easier for your buyers to make their payments and it must be secure. You can make use of free carts like paypal which is secure and trustworthy . Or you can take the specialized shopping carts.

Marketing — To sell your products , you need to have strong marketing system working for you , Your online marketing can be done by

–Getting top placements in search engine ranks. When you are in top ranks , your link gets ore exposure which means your link will be viewed more often and if your product interested the searcher , you link stands chances of being clicked.   You have just diverted search engine traffic to your site for free. You can use any of the following three ways to get top placements in search engine ranks:

• Do your own optimization from tips picked on the internet–not recommended as you would wasting your time going through information available online
• Outsource your page optimization to seo services who are seo experts and can place your site in top ranks 
• If you want to do your own optimization , then take expert help from here

–Submitting your different social media networks like twitter , facebook , stumbleupon, technorati .These networks can be a good tool to boost your site’s advertising .If someone likes your product , service or information , then they might want to share with others which can be done by sharing through social media and some have accounts with multiple networks. It’s like pyramids where word gets around about your product. 

Viral marketing– Best example for this would be email marketing and eBooks.

Email marketing — In email marketing , you are sending out promotional emails to your subscribers with pre-written emails sent out at set interval of time . You can have a look for more details at
mailops–high-end specialized email responder and low cost like niche-responder.

eBooks– You can promote your product through eBooks. You can give free ebooks to your subscribers as apromotional gift , aloowing them to distribute to theirr subscriibers .This way you will be reaching out to lots of  people . The ebooks would have links back to your site .Anybody reading your ebook is bound to click on the link and to your sales letter. This eBook creator can create your eBooks quickly

Submit articles–Write good articles and submit to articles sites. Chances are your article might be picked up by some ezines .

Forums–Take part in forums and discuss topics with members , offering help where ever possible. This builds trust and is good for business

Written by admin on September 30, 2008 under marketing tips.

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