In order to build a profitable online business, you'll need to develop a successful strategy to market your website. It's critical to attract visitors to your website in order for them to becoming a paying customer.
How is This Accomplished?
Use a Variation of Marketing Strategies
Don't invest all of your time and money into any single marketing strategy. For example, recent Google updates caused many commercial websites that had top rankings to suddenly disappear and lose all sales opportunities during the Christmas season.
By utilizing multiple marketing strategies, you will soon be able to measure which methods stand out and are more successful than others.
Consistency in Marketing
Monitor your online traffic and sales statistics and compare them your marketing plan on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. There is a signicant advantage in having knowledge of current trends and what techniques are working and which ones are just costing your time and money.
Test Marketing
Continually test all your website marketing strategies to see which one works the best. This can be done be providing discount codes, emailing special webpage offers to your mailing list, banner advertising on related websites or setting up affiliate programs. Discard methods that are not profitable or marketing relationships that are questionable and could possibly get you blacklisted in the search engines.
Successful Marketing Strategies:
Search Engine Optimization
Here are the locations where you should include your most important keywords or keyword phrases:
- Meta tags (not-displayed)
- <title> tag
- Meta-Description tag
- Meta-Keyword tag
- Image tag "alt" attribute
- Link tag "title" attribute
- Page content (displayed)
Weave your targetted keywords throughout the webpage. Focus on the first 250 words on your page and only use one to three keyword phrases per page. Include keywords in your <H1> tag (main title) and <H2>, <H3> tags (subheadings) as well as the hyperlinks in your site or and in outgoing links. Put your contact information on every page in case it is printed out and passed on for referral purposes.
- Refrain from using Flash, Java or javascript navigation
If your website is inaccessible without these technologies, you should fire your currently web development/marketing team and hire a firm with some experience. It sure beats having to pay for all your traffic through click-to-pay ads or receiving a lawsuit from the visually challenged due to non-compliance with Section 508 requirements.
- Internal Statistics Reports
Analyzing your traffic is critical, but it's also extremely important that your website be developed in such a way that the reports can display results that means something more than just how many people came to your website. There are many third-party solutions (too many to list) that can all be effectively blocked by anti-spyware and browser plugins... and even then, you don't know who else has access to this information. Targetted searches on Google can reveal unprotected traffic reports and your competitors can gain a wealth of knowledge due to the free statistical services. The best choice is to use an analytical package that integrates with your website's physical log file and can instantly generate customizable reports for you and also export the data to multiple formats like Word, Excel, or plain text. We use Urchin for all of our clients and it recently been upgraded to an internally hosted version of Google Analytics.
Search Engines and Directories
- Major Search Engines
Google is currently the primary search engine to be listed in. Once listed, you will appear in AOL, Yahoo and Netscape and it's still currently free. Other free resources also include directories like DMOZ. Do a search on Google to seek out targeted directories, for example for artist, look for artist directories.
Here are the other major search engines to submit to:
- Pay per click (PPC) Search Engines
If you desire to immediately gain visitors to your website, set up a Google Adwords or Overture campaign.
Email Marketing
- Start an Online Newsletter
Most visitors won't buy from you immediately but may need to be contacted several times to put them in the buying mood. Place an email subscription form on every webpage. Allow customers to register for different types of mailings so that they won't get upset and unubscribe because they aren't receiving the information that they were expecting. Send out your newsletter every two weeks to keep in touch. Be sure to include original content, and not just rehashed content and an advertisment, along with any new products or industry news you wish to introduce. Ensure that you follow current state laws and regulations regarding sending email or you could be faced with expensive lawsuits or even lose your internet connectivity due to violating your ISP's Terms of Service.
- Email Course or tutorial
Set up an email address with an intelligent autoresponder that will deliver quality information over a period of seven days. This means you have multiple chances of contacting your visitor and promote your product or service at the same time. You could also have the visitor complete an online form so that you have this information databased and can have the delivery automated.
- Ezine Ads & Articles
Create an ad or article for your product/service and find websites that focus on your target market. Write several ads/articles and monitor the tracking links with yourt stats software so you can identify the effective ones.
- Email Signature
Configure your email client so that every outgoing message contains your full name, contact information, your phone number and your website URL as well as some information about what your business is about. (I can't believe how many times I get an email message that says "please call me immediately" and I don't have their phone number.) Treat your signature as a personalized business card that is attached to every outgoing email message.
Links to Your Website
- Submit your Newsletter Articles
ezine publishers are always looking for original content. You can include a link back to your website in your signature file. If several ezine publishers (that may have thousands of subscribers) publish your article, you can get hundreds of links pointing back to your website.
- Reciprocal Linking
Trade links with other websites that don't compete with yours while offering similar services. For example, if you are a real estate agent and someone else offers online mortgages, you could exchange links with each other, thus adding new visitors to each of your websites.
- Forums/Blogs
Online Forums and blogs offer your advice and insight to other forum/blog participants then leave a link back to your site in your signature file. Popular forums and blogs are spidered regularly by the search engines and give your website a higher pagerank.
- Real-World Marketing
Not all your customers have access to the internet or are internet savvy. Market offline by including your website information on all stationary (letterhead) and business cards. Place ads in newspapers, trade publications, send out postcards, fliers and get involved in local organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce. You can even set up your own local club or be a guest speaker for others.
Continuously evaluate, test and refine your website marketing strategies so that you can apply them to any product or service. Following these steps will build a successful online business.
