Archive for July, 2009

One of the simplest and most overlooked aspects of online marketing is that it’s not complicated. Or more to the point,, there are a lot of “experts” who try to make it complicated. Aside from whatever motivation they might have to do that online profits occur from one simple equation –

Traffic + Conversion = Sales

– performed over & over again

There are MANY ways to get traffic (visitors) to your site and cause them to take some action or “convert,” which will either result in more leads or (less frequently) result directly in more sales to your business.

So here’s the other simple rule — you only need to master 1 or 2 traffic methods and 1 or 2 conversion methods, and you will make money. You don’t need to master the entire kitchen to make a grilled cheese sandwich, and you don’t need to know EVERYTHING about internet marketing in order to add revenue to your business.

With that in mind, there are a few basic traffic techniques I’ve implemented in some of my sites and client sites that have universally and consistently WORKED. Here are a few of those methods — but remember, you only need to pick one or two:

Increasing Visitor Count

1) Twitter — highly effective for targeting your niche and developing the conversation with your customers and prospects. In fact, it is second to none. However, most businesses don’t know how to use Twitter effectively. They spam with “sales tweets” — “Look at the cool new thing I’m selling.” The 80/20 rule is highly effective — 80% of your tweets should be about something interesting, funny or otherwise engaging… a question of the day like “What’s for lunch?”… anything to get people talking, laughing, thinking… Also, keep it consistent and be generous with re-tweets. A few tweets a day go a long way toward establishing a rabid list of followers. The wrong thing to do is to Tweet like a madman for a day or two and then disappear for a month. Or worse, don’t reply when someone direct messages you or @messages you. That’s like ignoring someone at a dinner party when they ask you to pass the gravy. You WON’T get any dessert.

2) Video marketing is a very fast way to rank your site and get lots of inbound traffic. Keep your videos consistent — don’t show up one day in a baseball cap and dark lighting, talking about the rain, and another day bouncing in a jungle gym screaming about business leads. Consistent message, consistent tone, consistent look & feel. Also, be sure to put a call to action in your video’s description, as well as the full URL of your website’s landing page, and use appropriate keywords.

3) Article marketing is an evergreen method for outstanding traffic generation, with one HUGE caveat — mix it up! Putting the same article on 400 article directories will get you nowhere fast. You will get a bump in traffic from all the inbound links until Google figures out they’re all the same article and basically count it as one link. There are content spinners out there that alter the content of your articles automatically, but you have to be very careful here as well. Most content spinners change a word or two to replace it with a synonym, or they mash up the article randomly so the output is basically junk that cannot be read. It has to pass human review. So if you’re looking for a quality content spinner, ideally you want to be able to change the entire sentence many times throughout the article, and then have it spin those into hundreds of different articles. That’s the professional way to do it. At the bottom of your article, have a call to action in the information field; a blurb about you (the author) and a link to a free guide the reader can pick up at your website.

Conversion

1) Keep it simple. The landing page has to do ONE thing — get people to ACT. For this reason, it’s been called a SINGLE ACTION PAGE. Pear it down to the bare essence of what you need the visitor to do. Consider placing a video on the page with a very simple message, “Hey thanks for stopping by for my free whizbang. Just type in your first name and e-mail address and I will rush it right over to you. In just a moment after you send your information, you’ll get an e-mail with a confirmation link. Click that link and I will instantly send your free whizbang.”

2) Direct, direct, direct. Notice the video script in #1 above — see how we instructed the user on exactly what they need to do? And then we told them what to expect next, and what they would then need to do. And we closed with a reminder of the benefit — the free whizbang.

If you have trademarked the term “whizbang,” then I apologize in advance.

3) Test, test, test. ALWAYS have two versions of your landing page operating at one time. You can optimize your landing page using freely available Google tools in the Web Optimizer toolbox. You really can’t go on “gut” here — the data will be you every single time. Even on PPC ads, we have literally seen the addition of a question mark in the ad increase conversion by 16.8% So test, test, test.

Conclusion

These methods work on any business in any industry. Here is some social proof –

Local landscape designer increased her traffic by 7,342% (yes seven thousand percent)

• Local artist went from three visitors a day to an average of 41 visitors a day
• International digital publisher had zero e-commerce and started converting 16% of all traffic to revenue within 72 hours of implementing one traffic strategy and one conversion strategy
• Changing a landing page to a simple design on an e-book site turned conversion from an anemic two sales per week to eight sales a day — on the same traffic.

I hope this helps your business. The average business fails to do what it takes to drive traffic or achieve conversions to their website. While they exercise 20-30 traffic methods on average, they don’t do a single one effectively.  There are many sources online to learn about effective marketing strategies, including free resources and some almost-free, like the definitive guidebook  750 Traffic Techniques.

Do-it-for-you solutions are also available; experience guides the appropriate strategy for the website and market. The biggest challenge business owners face is knowing which strategy to implement. Experimentation can be very costly in terms of time and lost sales… The key is to find a reputable marketing firm that offers a full range of customized services as well as downloadable products and courses to assist every website owner at every budget level.

Believe it or not, there are actually truly easy ways for kids to begin making money on the internet today! You just have to make sure that you are searching for the right opportunity!

Start selling Shirts – Believe it or not, there are many children who are actually creating their self-created shirts and selling them on eBay or on the website. They simply create the shirt, and the parents take care of the transactions. If you know a child who wants to start getting some business experience, you should start with this!

Selling Toys – Children love selling toys, why not try organizing and start selling all of the stuff they do not want anymore. There are tons of kids around the nation and even the world who have started selling old clothes, toys, and other things that they do not want!

Writing – There are many freelancing services out there. They are looking for writers and things of that nature. Depending on the writing level of your child or even the reading level – they may be qualified enough to write for other people. Most of the writing online can be taken in at a 7th grade level; complex writing is not necessary – as long as the point can get across then this is the main goal.

21st Century

If you are a experienced e-commerce veteran, you have no doubt have heard of drop shipping. But if you are a newbie, you might not realize that you can start a business on the web with no need to stock inventory! How do you do this? You find dropshipping supply lists to ship or ‘fulfill’ your sales on your behalf. You simply charge the customer – buy the product from your supplier, and they send it to your customer with your company on the paperwork.

All you need to do to start a drop ship company is a web site, a method to accept credit cards (PayPal is great for starters), and a product to offer! There are several drop ship supplier directories on the web. You should be cautious, however about using these directories. Some of them are simply obsolete lists with incorrect or bad information. Be careful when you purchase access to a list of drop shippers.

The best drop ship company lists show you the actual name and address of the supplier companies. That is the way to go; avoid services that tell you they also sell products – they are usually a middleman and you will pay too much for your products. Don’t use a middleman, you won’t be able to price your products competitively.

The Internet has opened up a new class of business opportunities to those who are not afraid to spend some of their effort and money to learn the ropes. You don’t need a huge inventory of products to start selling on the web. Drop shipping is an easy, low-risk way to get started.