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
Making Your First Sales – top tips for business start-up
March 14, 2010
I hesitate to blog on this topic today but I think I should. I really want to share my own experience with you when I started my business. Believe it or not, even with all my qualifications and experience in business management issues, I did find the issue of marketing daunting when I started for a variety of reasons. Firstly, I have no track record in business and many prospects will ask for testimonials and trade reference.
Secondly, my role from being a finance employee to becoming a business owner was a significant change because I was responsible for my own income and dare I say my salary. Where do I start? Will people take me seriously? What if no one buys from me…………..? These were all the questions I silently asked myself. It is funny, because the truth is, I experienced a mixture of excitement and anxiety all at the same time.
One of the biggest challenges that many entrepreneurs will find when they start a business is the practicalities of selling their own products and services to the target market they really want to serve. Making that first sale is important to boost your motivation to continue. Being able to sell is a skill no entrepreneur can afford to be average at. True, you may be average when you start your business but you should not be content to stay at that level, unless you want to have an average performance in your business. In my case, I had to utilise the expertise of gurus who have helped others in the field and with strong market reputation. I utilised Jay Abraham’s ‘Marketing Mastermind and 93 Extraordinary Referral Systems’ which I used and quite honestly my income grew by more than 300% in twelve months just putting some of the tools shared by Jay Abraham. It is funny when I think about it now but I remembered when I started putting the techniques learnt and seeing the results. I remembered how I unwittingly sought advice from people who are not in business on a subject they know nothing about and sure enough they guided me towards the wrong directions. Thank God, I was wise enough to recognise when to put a break on their proposals. Remember, that it does not help you in any way to get someone who is not running a business to be advising you on this subject. If they know how to market they will be in business. Marketing is not just textbook stuff, it involves your interaction with yourself and others and much more.
Here are my top tips for start-up businesses trying to get their first sales and growing their business by at least 50% over eighteen months- consider them as my top tips.
• Start spending more than 25% of your time per week on marketing activities
• Recruit and utilise the skills of associates and joint venture partners to leverage time and boost sales income
• Seek ways of understanding your existing clients needs and develop solutions for them so that you can increase the average spend per clients
• Develop a marketing system using the likes of Jay Abrahams Marketing Mastermind System and be prepared to invest the time and money to put the system in place. No business will succeed without a solid system to support its success.
• Monitor the performance of all your marketing effort and do more of what works and less of what does not work.
• Seek expert advice and never take advice from people with no track record of doing what you are doing or for that matter with poor results in the area you are trying to master.
• To find out more about tools to assist your business in effective marketing, please visit www.businessservicessupport.com/marketing-strategies
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
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