It's been said that there are only 3 things needed to succeed in online marketing
There are volumes of books with ideas for bringing targeted traffic to your site. In this section, you will find some unique ideas, and we will also see how to track the success rate of your promotional activities.
Plus two enterprising ways to get your product noticed
Here is a way to get free reviews of your site - and you can win customers as you do it !
The design and content of your home page is so critical that it's worth seeking expert advice.
But there's no need to pay a hefty fee to a consultant - ask the people who really matter ... your visitors !
Just add this to your main page:
Then sit back and get lots of advice - for free.
But here is how to get super added value from this idea:
And now ... here's how to multiply your response dramatically.
There are many free ebooks available on the Net. So just replace that last line with -
When you send the book you could say:
But we can still improve on that !
As we saw in tip (3) always take the opportunity to promote your site, so what you now say is
When your reader visits this page, at your OWN site, he will find the link to the book but you will have surrounded it with your best promotions.
What is the best way to attract visitors to your site ?
Many would say by providing free information - but just how does this work ?
Here's an example which you can adapt to any business:
Suppose you are a supplier of video recorders. Hopefully you will be the owner of a professional sounding domain name, such as www.VCRworld.com
You write an informative article entitled "How to Choose a Video Recorder" which explains
Put this article on your website or have it available by email (on an autoresponder if you expect a big response).
While your competitors are all posting similar ads which say
And whenever you contribute to any group where there are potential customers you include in your signature
They will be easily influenced to buy from your site while your competitors' unoriginal ads are consigned to the email waste bin.
Testimonials can be one of the most powerful inducements in your internet marketing toolbox.
But how do you make sure your readers will see them ?
There are a variety of ways.
But how about doing it the reverse way ?
In your ads or signature files take your reader DIRECTLY to your testimonial page.
They will then move on to your home page in a very positive frame of mind about your product.
By the way, I recommend that you include a clickable URL in the testimonial so that the author benefits not only from the publicity but from the additional link which improves his site's search engine ranking.After the home page of your web site the most important page is the 'About' page.
Visitors will want to know something about the owner of a site. The more personal information you provide the more confident they feel in what you have to offer.
Make your email address easy to find so they know they can contact you.
Numerous, otherwise excellent, sites ruin their chances by failing to display even the name of the owner.
You can use the About page to reinforce the purpose of the site, to declare your USP, and to link to your main products.
But here's one special reason to have an About page.
Suppose you make a paid site submission to Yahoo.
They will examine your description and see how well it tallies with your site.
They will look at your About page to ensure it has the necessary contact details.
Now suppose you have a description of your site on the About page which almost matches the entry you submitted to Yahoo.
Like a subliminal effect the Yahoo editor will agree that your entry does indeed reflect your site and is very likely to approve it, probably unchanged.
Whole books have been written on the subject of getting traffic to your site.
The ideal goal for most is to get high rankings in the free search engines: you then have a continuous stream of free targeted traffic.
However it can take considerable effort and time to master search engine techniques to achieve this position.
The quickest method by contrast is to use the pay per click engines which will submit your listing in a few hours or days, with Google Adwords being immediate. This requires an on-going cost and you will need to monitor results and regulate your bids if necessary.
As a quick in-between alternative you should consider ezine advertising.
The advantages of ezine advertising
OK, ready to submit your 2-line ad ?
Well, hold back.
My own results have been disappointing - especially with those services which promise to submit your 2-line ad to a batch of ezines.
The real success story has been SOLO ads.
These are ads, usually of unlimited length, which are sent to all subscribers of the ezine in a one-off mailing without any other ads or content. So you have the reader's full attention.
A solo ad in a popular ezine can be expensive so you may wish to experiment first in cheaper ezines and refine the ad content until you find a winning formula.
Here's how most people submit to the pay per click (PPC) search engines
But there's no need to hope !
Try instead this idea
Every business must advertise.
The more effective your ads - the greater your profits.
So how do you make your ads more effective?
There's only two factors
So how do you carry out this testing ?
As visitors flock to your website how do you know which ad has brought them there ?
Are they coming from
Wouldn't you like to know
There's only one way to find out and to really know the effectiveness of every single ad, banner, link that you run.
You need to use an ad tracking program.
Then you can identify the success rates of all your ad campaigns, so that you can eliminate all advertising that is not working, and run more ads that are making you profits
If the previous tip was your first introduction to ad trackers you may like to know that recording hits is just a fraction of their capabilities.
In particular
Recording a sale action for example can provide you with the important ROI (Return on Investment) figures which give you the real proof of how successful a campaign is. (You can actually submit to the tracking center the cost of your ad campaign and the price of your products and it will automatically calculate the ROI for you.)
Super Ways To Use An Ad Tracker showing unusual tips and techniques for using them with
Away from the Internet, there's a whole wide world out there who may just like to know about your web site.
Hopefully you have a short, memorable, meaningful domain name.
So why not start announcing it at some of the following places.
Have you ever waited for an important email reply from an individual ?
It could be concerning, say
One way to detect this is by setting up a tracking URL specifically for that individual when you send your email.
However asking to visit an URL such as
may just alert him to the fact that he is being monitored.
But there is a way to monitor him which is completely undetectable.
If your page is, for example, a (.htm) file you could instead provide him with a (.html) file which redirects to the htm file. Then you would inspect your logs and check for any access to that page.
But . . . that is much too long-winded.
There is a software tool which fortunately handles this all for you - and will email you the moment that the page has been visited.
So in effect instead of asking your VIP to visit
for your joint venture proposal you could provide this link
and you will know the moment he visits.
Can you think of more applications for this tactic ?
Monitoring the response rate at an online marketing forum, for example, where you would like to be notified of access as it happens.
A little hesitant, as I did not know the sender I clicked on the link - and was amazed to see that he had, unasked, produced a superb cover for my ebook Ad Tracking SuperTips.
And he also supplied two similar versions in different sizes saying
Well I did not have to think twice about replacing my own hand made version with this new one.
And as the author had an affiliate program it was an easy decision to use this in the credits section of the book appendix, a potential source of revenue for both of us.
How do you think his novel approach compares with a standard mailing saying "I like your site and wonder if you would like to promote my ebook cover service ?"
Can you think of a similar tactic for getting your product noticed - and make an offer they can't refuse ?
