Marketing Online and Offline- Get More Traffic To Your Website and Your Office
April 5, 2010
Marketing online requires you to understand what works and don’t work online. For a start, there are very few website designers with an understanding of online marketing. The mistake many entrepreneurs make is to delude themselves that they only need to spend a lot of money on the website design and away they go, customers will come flooding in. Is this what you think as well? I dare say you would have learnt the truth by now. Before you start falling in love with your website, please make sure you are clear about:
1. Who your market is and what they want as solution to their problems- check your business plan
2. Who your market is and what they want and need as solution to their problems- check your business plan
3. What benefit your services and products offer the target market in solving their problems- check your business plan
4. How does your target market search for the answers to their problems on search engines such as Google and Yahoo – in short what keyword phrases are they using to search for solutions and this must be provable not what you think they are using. There are tools you can use to find this very quickly.
Armed with these answers, your next task is to ensure your website is set up with the relevant key word phrases in your domain (e.g. pet-sitters-help.co.uk for a pet-sitting business) and sales letters. You also need to ensure that you take steps to promote your website to relevant directories with a high page ranking using SEO service provides that offer services in directory submission, article submission, social bookmarks, social media, link exchange and video directory submission. All of these various submissions have their dos and don’ts and it is important you understand how to do this yourself without breaking your bank accounts and/or get one of our SEO experts of BSS Online Marketing to assist you achieve your goals without breaking your bank accounts.
Now, here is the deal, never use a SEO service provider who is not recommended by a third party. Remember, the quickest way to go out of business is to run out of money. If you spend all your capital on marketing that don’t generate positive returns for you, I am sure you know what will be the outcome to your business.
A great business is one with great products and services that are well supported by an effective marketing system. If you truly want your business to grow the two areas you must never undermine is ideas generation and development, as well as marketing and sales. Get yourself educated in these areas and you will be good to go.
Marketing as you know need not be reduced to online marketing. It should be both online and offline. The rules governing effective online marketing is only partly explained here as we are only looking at strategies for traffic generation and sales conversion. However, you must also be aware that driving traffic to your site does not necessarily mean you will generate sales. Sales are a function of:
1. The products and services on offer and how well they are presented online to address the needs and wants of your market – specifically offering them benefits that are deemed valuable.
2. The prices of your services and products compared to competitors- and this includes shipping costs and other costs incurred by the prospects.
3. The professionalism and accessibility of your services and products. In short, can the prospects reach someone in your customer services department or reception easily on the phone or by e-mail? It is for this reason we partner with a number of organisations to offer you virtual office and phone services at competitive prices.
4. How confident and trustworthy your business appears to the prospects and much more. Using a PO Box as a business address is a No, No. Asking for payment online by Western Union and refusing to take payment by credit card or PayPal is a sure recipe for lose the trust of your prospects and customers.
So when you are looking at traffic generation and sales conversion, don’t forget to review all other aspects of the marketing equation.
For more information about reliable tools and systems you can plug into your business toolkit contact Sheila Elliott at 0845 226 4315
Online Marketing Strategies for Generating Strong Sales
March 6, 2010
This is an article put together to help the average entrepreneur navigate the important journey of understanding what is required for effective online marketing. All too often, experts in SEO and even website developers will provide half the information required for business success to their clients, leaving entrepreneurs with little or no value for their money because they do not understand that effective online marketing must be supported by a number of strategies and systems.
In order for you to sell online effectively, here are my top tips to get you going. As a matter of principle you need:
1 A user friendly website with a well written and presentable sales letter that speaks to the target market in a way that influences them to take action. By the way this need not be expensive. Some expensive websites are ineffective and remember, website by itself does not earn you sales. You will find my recommended suppliers of website and SEO services on my blog site. Remember also to get your website hosted by a reputable host provider.
2 To optimise your website with keywords phrases that are searched on engines such as Google and Yahoo as well as include meta description and meta title on your site. Each webpage should be optimised with its own unique keyword phrases, meta description and title
3 To implement strategies for ongoing traffic generation such as website submission to major search engines and directories as well as writing and submitting articles via blogs and ezines.
4 To set competitive product prices with clear images and descriptions on the website. Products you want to sell online should not be too expensive except where they are well known brands which are in high demand.
5 A reliable customer support system to help you address issues quickly. This can be via phone or email.
6 A system for managing contact list and promoting services to contacts. Email marketing systems are critical tools for on-going relationship management and sales promotion.
7 A merchant account with PayPal and other payment gateway processor such as 2checkout or Nochex. Never rely on a single provider. You never know when you may have a dispute and the last thing you need is not to be able to receive payment from customers.
8 Details of contact names and business telephone number, as well as testimonials and success stories should be on your website and other marketing materials. All of this should be well laid out and presentable.
9 A domain name that is keyword rich and a reliable web host that provides 24/7 technical support 52 weeks in the year. Do not compromise your website hosting with a business that does not offer 24/7 support. Check out our recommended providers.
10 A landing page with a short sales letter carefully crafted to persuade leads to opt-in for your invaluable special report or gift to them.
These simple tips if utilised will make a big difference to your marketing activities over time.
Sheila Elliott is a business start-up and development expert offering group and one to one coaching as well as financial consultancy and training sessions. She is the founder of Business Services Support Limited and the author of My Business Is My Business- Learn How To Earn A Fortune. For more information about are free articles visit, http://www.businessservicessupport.com and http://www.sheilaelliott.com
How To Spot Home-based Business Opportunity With Integrity
September 20, 2008
I have often wondered where to start with this. However, now that I have been running my business from home for the last two years, I think there are tips that I can provide to newbie’s selling online services and products.
First thing, lets us talk about how to spot profitable homebased business with integrity. Let examine some questions here.
Is there a quick criteria that people can use to spot the scams from those opportunities that are genuine?
The answer is simple, YES.
There are many scams and good opportunities out there and you just need to do your own due diligence to make the separation easy for you very quickly.
The criteria I find useful and one that I now use religiously to sift through the scams from the good opportunities is set out below for you.
All you have to do is ask a series of questions and depending on the answers you can then determine whether to proceed with the homebased opportunity or not.
1. Who is behind the business? It is important to check out the people behind the business. If you don’t do so, you may well be acting irresponsibly at best or at worst dishonestly. Get a telephone number from their site and definitely call them and ask questions. If there is no contact number, then I am extremely uncomfortable to deal with the business.
2. What is in the public domain about the opportunity? Google is a very great resource to use for this. I very often check the name of the opportunity in Google and find out what people have said about it as well as make my judgement based on the balance of probability or my intuition. If the positive outweighs the negative, then I am content. People are more predisposed to moan about things that are not pleasant and it is common practice to post their experience on the net.
3. What is the business selling? It is important the business is legit and that it is selling a product of value. The last thing you want to be involved in is pyramid selling. For that reason, I will very often buy the products myself and test it before I promote it to others.
4. What is their credential for paying affiliate? Do they have reliable systems in place? This is extremely critical. I will test this by buying a product from my affiliate site and check if I am paid for the product sold in commission I will immediately recognise the business as having a reliable system in place. There is nothing worst than promoting other peoples products and services in the expectation of commission payment only to fine you get no commission for your work. So it is up to you to check the logistic and reliability of the commission payment platform used by the business.
5. Are the products or services being sold congruent with your values? I can’t profess to being indifferent in this area. There are somethings in life that I will never sell no matter the price tag or commission paid out. You must ensure you choose a programme that you are comfortable with. Its pointless making lots of money but being worried and not at peace with self after acquiring the money.
Finally, taking all this together, you can see why I choose to be affiliated with some my home-based opportunity such as:
1. Success University – http://www.bss.successuniversity.com
Almost everyone in the programme is publicly known and their products on personal development are highly esteemed. Zig Ziglar, Les Brown, Denis Waitley and more
2. Freebies Force-http://www.spmelliott.makemoneywithfreebies.com/
Again, all the products that are being promoted are well known. Companies such as Wendys, Proter and Gamble and more
So now you know it. There are great opportunities out there but you need to sift through to find them and always uphold a value of integrity in your dealings with opportunities.
Author:
Sheila Elliott FCCA, MBA
Founder of BSS Management Consultancy
http://www.businessservicessupport.com
http://www.mybusinessismybusiness.com
http://www.spmelliott.makemoneywithfreebies.com
http://www.bss.successuniversity.com
E-commerce
August 6, 2008
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E-commerce is here to stay whether we like it or not. For some of you, you may have been struggling to make sense of where to start with e-commerce. For others, you may have been looking for the right calibre of trainers or coaches to teach you the ins and outs of ecommerce, following a step by step approach in a structured manner to cut down on significant unproductive use of your time. I don’t blame you, as I was in exactly the same boat when I started my e-commerce experience. One of my personal frustrations have been around people trying to sell me incomplete information that will take me no where; what is more, they want me to buy the incomplete information for huge sums of money and if the truth be known, I did do so on some occasions but know better now.
Well, by now you know that this blog site is about fast tracking your business to success, by linking you up with experts in the business management and personal development industry. I have been doing so now for years and will continue to link you with the best in class resources to support you in your business.
In this section of the site, you will find some of the top notched programmes that will help you in your quest for accelerating your sales income through the internet. Let’s me share what on offer to you.
The eBook “How to Build Profitable Websites Fast!” can be obtained for free when you subscribe to this blog site today. It is my way to say thanks and of course to connect with you.
BANS (Build A Niche Store) is a website builder which enables you to create a network of traffic pulling, money making niche websites focused around the eBay affiliate opportunity.
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Build A Niche Store comes with a step by step user manual which will walk even the most technically inexperienced through setting up their eBay affiliate website, 9 professional template layouts which can be customized (from inside your admin panel) to match your target niche, lifetime member forum access, comprehensive product support and possibly most importantly – an UNLIMITED domain license which means you can build as many of these niche websites as you want for the small one time fee.
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