Help Stefan CampaignCeltnet WebInfo eZine
Tuesday, July 4, 2006
In This Issue
- Window on the Web
- Featured Article:
Why Having A Strong Internet Marketing Strategy Can Change Your Business - Classified Ad Board
- Comment
- Business Tip
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Window on the Web
With so many poeple either on vacation or preparing for vacation the summer is generally a slow time of the year for web sales. Perhaps it's the bright sun outside drawing people away from their monitors and laptops. This is why advertising is more important that ever during this time of year to ensure that you maintain visitor numbers to your site. Whatever product or service is offering the only way to maintain your sales is to ensure that information about your site is presented in front of as many people as possible. You can use pay-per-click advertising systems such as: Alternatively you can advertise in free classifieds. It might be better in some respects to use paid classifieds such as those offered on this site which give you both web-based adverts and e-mail adverts embedded in an eZine. Another alternative is to use a system such as UK Cheapest which subimits your ad to a large number (approaching a million) search engines and link lists.
Whichever means you use to advertise and sell your site, remember to keep plugging away at those ads, because they're one of the main tools by which you will acieve success.
Dyfed
Editor/Publisher
Email me @ editor@celtnet.org.uk
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Feature Article
Why Having A Strong Internet Marketing Strategy Can Change Your Business
by Lori Osterberg
For some business owners, the definition of an Internet marketing strategy is merely having a website.
While that may have worked ten years ago, trying to compete with 8 billion other web pages today will simply be ineffective. Without defining your key strategies, your site will have no power to bring in any leads, and ultimately no additional revenue.
Creating a strong Internet marketing strategy can be accomplished by working on four tasks.
1. Defining your target market. Just like in your traditional marketing, your online marketing clientele must be identified.
Start with your current clientele. Every business has one type of client that serves them best. Think about that person, and take a few minutes to define their likes and interests. How are you reaching them in your traditional marketing?
2. Discovering where they exist online.
Once you have a clear definition of who your target is, realize that those same people exist all around the world. What works for you in your local environment will transfer easily into the online world.
Look around for similar resources online.
If you target new moms, and use a local parenting magazine to generate leads, look into the online parenting sites. Many of them have online classified sections, or will allow you to place banner ads in their newsletters or on the site itself.
If youre a local service provider, and have a client base within 30 miles of your office, concentrate on finding resources that are targeting people in your local area. Many of todays search and research tools will help you discover resources that apply to geographical locations.
3. Writing website copy to reach out to them.
People typically write copy for their website in the same manner as a brochure. Yet a website is so much more.
Your website is your sales team. Its standing in for you 24 hours a day, 7 days of the week. What you say to your prospects in person should be conveyed into your website.
Your website copy is what motivates your visitors to want to take the next step. Whether your next step is to sign up for a free report, or purchase a product or service, your goal is to lead your visitor by the hand, and make them want to move to the next step.
The better you can direct your visitors, the more successful your site will be.
4. Working with your website weekly.
The most important step to every Internet marketing strategy is to work on it again and again. If you use direct mailings in your business, do you mail just once and hope for the best? You wouldnt be in business very long if you marketed in that fashion.
Your website is a very similar marketing tool. If you create it once and leave it sit, youll never reach a successful level. But if you work with it weekly, youll see some amazing things happen quickly.
Websites are meant to have new pages added; new content created; and become resources for other businesses and consumers. And the only way to do this is to have a plan that you stick with every week. Whether its adding a new section, or linking to other sites, working your site just a few hours a week can have tremendous results over the life of your business.
Copyright 2006 Vision Business Concepts Inc
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About the author:
Lori Osterberg helps business owners build a successful Internet marketing strategy. She consults with owners to show them how to develop a strong Internet presence, and provides many services such as paid search, search optimization, and online copywriting services for websites, press releases, articles and other online marketing tools. Receive her FREE ezine at http://www.VisionOfSuccess.com and http://www.GetKnownMarketing.com
Classified Ad Board
Is your ad out yet? Subscriber and co-op ads are listed on the Classified Ad Board. The board is refreshed every issue with a new batch of ads.
Comment
Making the Most of your Website
Over the past week and a bit I've been tarting-up the recipes section of my website www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes, both adding new content and improving the navigation code. This region of the site has now been extended with almost 200 new recipes, some modern and some truly ancient (from the stone and bronze ages no less!).
OK, so I've been busy but what has this to do with a web marketing eZine I hear you ask? Well it's all about our websites and how we maintain them. This situation came about when I performed a Page Rank (PR) check on www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes and found that the page had a PR of 0 — zip, zilch, nada. The page was indexed in Google, as were many of the sub-pages but I still had a PR of zero. This indicated a major problem — partly that the page rank of my main page wasn't filtering down and partly that no-one was linking through to this region of the site.
There followed a mad week of strengthening the links between the pages in this section of the site. Then I began to look for link partners and link exchanges that supported recipe sites. Most of the hard work is now done (though I still need to add more recipes and I need to update my recipe search system with all the new recipes.
I've done most of the things I can to improve my ranking and hopefully the number of people who visit the recipe site (it uses both Google Adsense and Amazon searches to generate income) and all I can do now (apart from locate more link partners) is to sit back and see whether all my hard work's had any real effect.
We all get things wrong, but as a webmaster/mistress one of the worst things you can do is to take your eye off the ball. There are many tools out there for checking the validity of your pages, for checking the PR of your pages and for checking which of your pages are indexed by the search engines (and which aren't). Use all of these to keep on top of your own weebsite and how it looks to the search engines and to your visitors.
Business Tip
Using your Thank You Page
If you're selling something on the internet, even if it's only a sign-up to your eZine then you will have at least one 'Thank You' page. In actuality you may have several such thank you pages usually with just a little text on them thanking your visitor for buying/subscribing/signing-in. What you actually have is valuable web real-estate that you're significantly under-utilizing. After all, anyone who'se reached this thank you page has already trusted you sufficiently to buy from you or to sign-up to one of your offers. Basically they're receptive to you as a vendor and you can use this to your advantage.
Use your thank-you page to deliver ads to your visitors. Or, even better offer them something that's linked to the purchase they've already made. You'll be surprised at how many people buy from you again.
