Still Trying To Advertise For Free?
There is a funny mindset amongst some internet entrepreneurs and marketers that things online should be free. And this affects their businesses. Many people are drawn to the notion of free traffic to your website. Now, there are a few ways of get “organic” or “search” traffic and certainly it is nice when it happens but how does this come into play in a business model?
There are a few built-in downsides to the idea of free traffic. One is that it normally takes some time to build up. SEO or Search Engine Optimization can take months to produce results. First you have to put up your site, make changes, wait for results and repeat. Sounds easy enough but the search engines take time to produce the results and this whole process could take 3-6 months. Now depending on the purpose of your website, this might be acceptable, but if you are running a real business, you are sitting there loosing potential revenue as you wait around for your “free” traffic.
Let’s compare that to paid traffic. Now understand that there are a number of sources of paid traffic available. You could buy advertising through Google Adwords on a Pay Per Click (PPC) basis, you can buy advertising on blogs or a lot of sites that get a good volume of traffic. Often these are based on the number of visitors such a site receives. You can buy advertising in online newsletters or ezines and so on. But, there are some distinct advantages to paid advertising.
First, you are in control of it. You can turn it on and off at will. Flip the switch (start paying for ads) and traffic comes in. Turn off the switch (pull the ads) and traffic stops. When you are ready to handle more sales, you turn up the volume of ads going out. No problem. When you are relying on free traffic, it can be unpredictable and not the best business model.
Secondly, with paid advertising, you can track your ads very easily. You know which ad or publication someone come to you from, you can get a good idea of what they searched for and what is going to interest them. This knowledge can help you build a better product or service because you can learn to target your customer better. When you are running a proper business, this information is very valuable to you because the better you can tailor your product or service to your customer, the more effectively you can market it.
I guess the biggest problem that people have is that they don’t have a good plan or do proper testing before they get started. See, if you have a product or service that sells for X dollars, you need to know how much money you can spend to acquire a sale for it. Then you need to look over your conversion rates and how to improve them. See, a lot of people think that more traffic can solve their problem and boost sales. Well it can. But a more compelling offer and a better converting site can do it faster and cheaper. If you start at the beginning of the sales process and increase the conversions from surfers to clickers, from ad views to sales letter reads, from sales letter reads to sales, if each of these steps is slightly improved, then you start to see an exponential growth in sales for the same amount of traffic or the same number of visitors.
Once your site or sales letter converts traffic to dollars like a well-oiled machine, then turn up the traffic. Now you can go and pay for ads to get the word out. And when people find you online through an organic search, that is a bonus. But don’t waste your time sitting there waiting for it.
Blogging to increase sales
Well for some of us blogging is just about passing time and writing something on a webpage that is of interest to us. Most of us use blogs as a tool for self expression, to make new friends or discuss any issue. But is this all that blogging is about? Well there’s much more that a blog can do for you. A blog can help to increase your sales and improve your relationship with your clients tremendously, which ultimately again leads to massive increase in sales and profits.So how does it help in improving your brand value, sales, product quality and client-company relationship? Well we’ll share it with you here. Blogs are great marketing tools and when used effectively can attract a lot of potential customers.
Imagine you are running a small fashion house and you have developed some new designs that you are not sure whether people are going to like them or not. What do you do? You’ll go and show them to some of your closest friends but not many people for the fear of word spreading out that you have produced such and such designs. But with blogs there’s a way out. You can put snaps of some of those designs on a blog and then invite people from different walks of life to check them out and give feedbacks on the designs. Such people can be easily found at the various fashion and clothing related online forums. You don’t even have to reveal your name or company’s name till you feel comfortable. This is one of the best ways to get the most genuine feedbacks about your products.
Blogs also offer a great way to improve your product quality. A certain Swiss lock-maker found that their sales were on a constant decline despite increasing demand and was desperate to know what was wrong with his latest designs. The lock-maker started a blog where he informed people about the high quality of metal used and the latest technology that he was using in manufacturing the locks. People accepted everything but everyone on the blog left a feedback which shocked the lock-maker and brought to light real cause of plummeting sales, the key to the lock. The key being supplied with the new locks way too small for comfort and often got bent after a few months of regular use. The company immediately changed the key specs and all the faulty locks and ensured that its reputation was kept intact.
Blogs are a great way to also improve relationship with your clients and also to make sure that they remain loyal to your brand. Blogs are a great way to also tell people what all they can do with your product. Several small software firms do that because often people don’t realize what all functionalities that they offer with their products. A lot of mobile phone companies blog to inform people about what all their mobile phones can do and what all features people are looking forward to.
Most of the products that are designed in today’s world are designed based on client requirement or based on what a group of people in the society need. So it is imperative to know what they want if you want your company to make handsome profits.
Blogs can also be used for advertising too and therefore you can earn money or promote some other business of yours or a relative’s or a friend’s through your own blog. Blogging has truly come a long way since its inception and has become more than just a bare necessity for individuals and business.
What is the value of your customer?
Many businesses, whether online or offline don’t know what their customers are worth.
Knowing the value of your customers is crucial in the marketing process.
If you don’t know what your customers are worth, how can you know what you need to spend to gain a new customer?
The truth is that it costs money to gain a new customer. It is important to know what you are paying to gain a new customer and what the lifetime value of your customer is worth.
Does Advertising Cost You Money?
Well, if it does, you are probably doing it wrong!
The whole point of advertising is to generate income or increase sales. Advertising is not something you do:
a) When you have a chance to get around to it
b) Once you are successful enough to “afford” it
c) When you have extra money
Advertising should be a part of a complete marketing campaign and should not really be done on it’s own without being part of a bigger picture.
The idea is design a whole marketing campaign that works together. Advertising becomes a part of this and you should be able to track your advertising. A well designed campaign will have mechanisms built in that allow you to monitor your advertising every step of the way.
Advertising is an investment and you should know what the return is. Advertising should produce a positive return on your cost.
If you are losing money by advertising, then stop doing it! Get some help to create a marketing strategy and implement it to make money.
Increase Customer Loyalty By Giving Away Freebies
Everything these days cost money, there is no way around. So the best way to build a relationship with people, to get people informed of your product or informed of your service is to simply give stuff away for free. Every body loves free items, would you hate it if you got a free gift from a company? The answer to your own question is no, no you will not hate it. Usually by getting a free gift from a company, you will be a fan of the company. So you will be more informed about what the company has to offer than you would if you did not get the free item.
So what you need to do is start small, start with maybe a gift that is about five dollars or maybe even ten dollars, and start doing give away’s. This is a great way to drive traffic to your website or blog, because people will keep checking to see if they won or not. Then at the same time, while they are checking back at your website or blog, they are becoming more and more informed of the products or services that you are offering.
The great thing about give aways, is that the person that received the gift will not forget you. Gas is a huge subject at this time our lives, so let’s talk about gas as an example. Let’s say that I owned a gas station and there was a gas station across the street. We both cost the same, but we want more customers. Let’s say that we give away free gas to five lucky customers. Do you think the next time they need gas they will go to you, or to the gas station across the street? Chances are they are going to come back to you because they cared about your services a lot.
So when you are offering your free services and products, you are attracting future customers. Really, that is what you are doing. You will be surprised at how many people will want your services or products, only because you gave away some free gifts. They know that you care about your customers, and that you are not doing it just for the money. You really are, but this will show that you also care about your clients or customers.
There you have it, now you know what the power of free gifts and free services can do for you. Here is a little homework assignment for you, when you see that somebody is doing a give away, I want you to follow up on them. Follow up how their services and see how they are doing now. I would say that about most of the time they have increased their sales, and they have new clients. Word of mouth goes around, and chances are that the people that won the products or services are telling their friends and family about it. This is resulting in more people using your services and products. The gift or service that was given away will be covered really quickly by the new clients.
Tags: internet marketing tips, niche marketing, affiliate marketing, Jonathan Hook, article marketing
Old School Direct Response
I was reading a post on a forum the other day where a fellow marketer referred to a well-known marketer Ken Mcarthy as an "old school direct response" marketer. That caught me in my tracks for a minute. It was almost as thought his person had implied that Ken was somehow out of date, maybe not quite up to speed on some of the latest trends and fads in the online marketing world.
In fact, as I have mentioned before, the fundamentals of marketing are the same today as they were a hundred years ago. And in fact, there is valuable information in books that were written 100 years ago that could still turn any internet business around.
See, what some people fail to understand is that marketing online today is just different tools to do the same job. You still need a good headline, you still need a good call to action, a follow up system, upsell, etc, etc. The guys that were doing this through small ads and postal mail 100 years ago had the same issues and hurdles to overcome as we do. We just have different tools, a different medium. Same marketing.
In fact, it should be easier for us today. 100 years ago, they had to run an ad in a magazine or newspaper and then wait for the people to get that, and mail in their orders. It could take a couple of weeks before you even knew if your firs ad was responsive or if you had to tweak it. Now we can do that with Google Adwords in a matter of minutes to get results. Maybe it has gotten too easy for us and we have become lazy. We are so used to getting immediate results that we don’t even bother to try harder.
Don’t discount the ideals of the old school direct marketers, these people know where it is at. Sure , they may not be up to date with Twitter or the latest trend in online video but I am going to suggest that a direct response marketer from 100 years ago could do better online today than most internet marketers.
Tags: niche marketing, internet marketing tips, affiliate marketing, website optimization, internet marketing
