Attract Visitors to Your Website

Step 1: Get the traffic you need to test your website fast! When I talk about testing with new internet business owners, I hear the same two questions all the time:

• How do I test my site?
• What do I test on my site?

As you may already know, there are an infinite number of things you can test on your site to help you increase sales. From layout to copy to design, there are limitless combinations of changes that may improve your visitor-to-sale conversion rate. But what’s “enough” when you’re just starting out? What elements should you focus on testing before rolling out your traffic campaign?

My advice is to stick to the basics. Focus on testing your:

• Salescopy, especially your headline, benefits, guarantee and call to action
• Order process, which needs to be simple enough for a novice web user to place an order
• Opt-in offer, so you can determine if you’re successfully capturing your visitors’ contact information
• Site navigation, so you can figure out how many clicks it takes to buy. Ideally it should take less than three.

These are the four critical aspects of your sales process that need to be tested before you start driving traffic. Later on, once you’ve generated sales and have some steady traffic, you can move on to testing other parts of your site.

Of course, all this talk of testing your new site raises one big question: How can you test without traffic? Because if you’re just getting started, chances are good that your website doesn’t get much traffic yet.

The solution is simple: Buy traffic through PPC search engines. Pay-per-click search engines are a lot like auctions–they allow you to bid for top-ranking positions under keywords of your choice. For each visitor who searches the keyword(s) you bid on and then clicks through to your site, you pay whatever you bid. Prices typically range from five cents to a few dollars per click-through for popular keywords.

There are a ton of PPC search engines out there, but the two best ones to get started with are:

• Yahoo Search Marketing and
• MIVA

With PPC search engines, you get cheap, instant, qualified traffic–provided you bid on targeted keywords. Not only that, but bidding on traffic in the PPC search engines can help your site get ranked in the free search engines, too!

Here are a few tips to help you start bidding for traffic without breaking the bank:

In Yahoo Search Marketing, bid to appear in the top three listings whenever possible, since these results are also “pushed” to appear in the search results for MSN, Yahoo, AltaVista, InfoSpace, AlltheWeb and NetZero–reaching 80 percent of all internet users.

Bid on targeted, descriptive keywords. So don’t just bid on “sock;” bid on “red wool sock.” Not only are targeted keywords and phrases usually cheaper to bid on–they’ll also attract more qualified potential buyers. Use a keyword selection tool like Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool to research targeted keywords that attract maximum traffic for minimal cost-per-click.

After you’ve tested and tweaked your site with a limited amount of purchased traffic, it’s time to start generating qualified traffic for your site on a larger scale. But how do you go from some traffic to a ton of traffic?

Step 2: Get cheap traffic quickly with PPC advertising. Once you’ve tested your site with limited PPC traffic, the fastest way to ramp up traffic to your site is to roll out a PPC campaign on a larger scale. Obviously, you should start with Yahoo Search Marketing and Findwhat, as mentioned above. But here are some more PPC engines to consider bidding with as you increase your investment:

• Kanoodle
• Enhance Interactive
• LookSmart

This is also a great time to get started with Google AdWords –Google’s own PPC contender. With Google AdWords, you get instant traffic with no waiting. Because as soon as you put the money down on your keywords, your ad goes up and starts working for you.

Step 3: Get free traffic from search engines like Google. Now that you’ve bid on keywords for a strong showing in the PPC search engines, it’s time to tackle the organic search engines and directories. Search engines like Google and directories like Yahoo! can still be a great source of free traffic for your website. The trick is getting a competitive ranking for your best keywords.

The first step in getting a top ranking in the search engines is to submit or suggest your site to them. In other words, you have to provide them with details about your site. You want to make sure that the “spiders”–automated programs that crawl the web indexing sites for the search engines–find your site and include it in the search results.

While the spiders do index sites and pages that haven’t been submitted, you certainly don’t want to leave this to chance. A spider might find your website and index it next week–or it might be two years before that finally happens. So take the time to submit your site to be sure you’re included. Once your site’s been submitted, expect it to take two to six weeks for your listing to appear.

Every engine has a slightly different process for site submission, and it pays to follow their guidelines. For example, there’s a fee to list your site in the directory at Yahoo!, but Google doesn’t charge for their submission process. Here’s a tip: If you submit your site exactly as they ask, you stand a better chance of getting a good listing on the first page of search results.

To submit or suggest your site to the major engines, follow the simple instructions they provide on these pages:

• For Google, go to www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
• For Yahoo Directory, go to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/
• For Yahoo! Search, go to http://submit.search.yahoo.com
• For MSN, go to http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
• For AOL, submit your site to the Open Directory Project, which uses ODP data. Here’s the link: http://dmoz.org/add.html

And don’t bother with companies that offer to submit your site to the search engines. Since each search engine uses a different set of criteria to rank your site, free submission services can actually end up doing you more harm than good, since they submit the same information in the same way to all the engines.

Another option is to give away your articles through free content websites like these:

• www.ezinearticles.com
• www.freesticky.com

Your articles will automatically be made available to thousands of websites seeking free, quality content–and all you have to do is submit your articles once.

Don’t underestimate the power of giving away free content. And as your articles gain more exposure, don’t be surprised if you’re contacted by high-profile magazine and portal sites related to your industry looking for free articles to include on their sites, too.

Step 5: Get free word of mouth publicity using viral marketing. Simply defined, viral marketing is a way for you to spread your marketing message like a virus. You encourage people to pass on information about your site to others, and you use that word-of-mouth publicity to advertise your business. Once you start the “virus,” it spreads without you lifting a finger.

Need an example? Try Hotmail.com, the free web-based e-mail service provider. At the bottom of every single Hotmail e-mail sent by Hotmail members, there’s a simple one-line message:

“Get your free, private email from MSN at http://www.hotmail.com”

How much time do you think it took Hotmail to include that signature line as part of their e-mail service? Not much at all–but look at the impact this simple strategy had on the growth of their business. In my personal experience, more than 35 percent of all e-mail users have Hotmail accounts!

You can easily duplicate this strategy by doing something as simple as including a “pass it on link” at the end of a free newsletter, something as simple as:

“If you’ve enjoyed this article, please be sure to forward it to a friend!”

By simply asking readers to take action and forward your newsletter, you’ll prompt free word of mouth exposure for your business without any extra cost or hassle.

How else can you put viral marketing to work for you? Here are a few simple ideas:

• Give away free articles (like the ones I describe in Step 4) that include a “pass it on” link.
• Give away free demos of your product.
• Offer a free trial of your service with a “share this great resource” button on the page.
• Hold a contest on your site, and give participants an extra entry for every friend they refer.
• Start an affiliate program (see Step 7 below).

As you can see, you don’t need to be the next Hotmail to get started with viral marketing. By simply encouraging people to “share this resource with friends,” you can attract some great word-of-mouth traffic.

Step 6: Get free links on other high-traffic websites. Link requests require minimal effort from you, but they can absolutely explode your traffic numbers overnight. How? If your site is a featured link on a major site in your industry–one that receives a ton of attention–your site immediately benefits from all the exposure their site receives.

Getting started with this strategy is simple, but you should follow a standard process every time you request a link. Let’s break it down into a few easy steps:

1. Do a Google search for your standard keywords–the ones that people generally use to find your site.
2. Make detailed notes about the sites that appear regularly in the top ten listings for your major keywords.
3. Use the Alexa Toolbar, LinkPopularity or Technorati to find out what other sites these sites are linking to, whose linking to them and how much traffic they’re receiving, then look up their contact information.
4. Before making contact, make sure you know the correct URL for the site, the URL of the sub-page on which you want your link to appear, the name of the site owner or webmaster, the date you last visited their site, and a brief description of the contents of the site.

When you’re ready to contact the owners of these website and request a link, write a personal e-mail–don’t use form letters. Be sure to include some positive comments about their site, information about you and your site (along with your URL), an explanation of why a link to you would benefit them, and instructions for contacting you to get started.

You want your request to be thorough and professional. If you can present a persuasive argument for why the link request benefits both of you, you stand a better chance of forging a connection. And if you’re really eager to get your link on their site, be prepared to up the ante by offering them a commission or a link on your site in return. The investment could be well worth the extra exposure your marketing message receives.

When other businesses request links on your site, my advice is, be stingy. Just as links on others’ sites serve as a personal recommendation of your site, links on your site are recommendations for their businesses. Only recommend the best!

Okay, now let’s talk about the ultimate linking strategy.

Step 7: Get thousands of websites to promote your business for free. Imagine hundreds, even thousands, of websites promoting your product or service without spending a dime until someone refers a paying customer. You can do this with what’s called an affiliate program.

Affiliate programs–also referred to as “reseller” or “associate” programs–are a great way to get other people (called “affiliates”) to promote your product or service for you. For every paying customer your affiliates refer to your site, you pay them a commission. And since you only pay when you make money, it’s an extremely low-risk option.

Here’s how it works: Your affiliates send visitors to your site using banner ads, text links, letters of referral and so on, while you track these referrals using special software. It’s an extremely powerful way to grow your business because it automates your traffic generation. To get started with your own affiliate program, you need to:

1. Establish your commissions. To keep your affiliates motivated, you should pay them 40 to 50 percent of your profits per sale.
2. Get software to track the traffic and sales of your affiliates so you know what to pay them.
3. Provide your affiliates with tools they can use to promote your products, such as e-mails, banners and so on.
4. Recruit more affiliates. Look for sites that target your market, and invite them to become affiliates.

Affiliate programs are an ideal way to automate your traffic generation because other people are marketing your site for you. Your sales increase on a daily basis–but your affiliates do all the selling for you, and it doesn’t cost you a dime until they send you paying customers.

Now, for the final step, let’s talk about what you need to do to keep your traffic coming back to your site again and again.

Step 8: Use e-mail marketing to attract repeat visitors. Getting lots of traffic to your site is great, but if you aren’t collecting the contact information–the names and e-mail addresses–of visitors, you’re wasting every single click. If visitors leave your site without buying your product, there’s a good chance they won’t ever be back–and you’ll have absolutely no way of following up with them.

Remember: It can take up to seven points of contact to make a single sale, so you’ll want to begin collecting visitors’ contact information from day one using an opt-in form on your home page. Then send them e-mail messages to follow up and keep them thinking about your site. Need some ideas for e-mails you could send to follow up with your opt-in subscribers? Try these ideas:

• Monthly or bi-weekly newsletters that include tons of tips and information
• Free reports on topics your market would appreciate
• Answers to common questions people ask about your product
• Offers for products similar or complementary to ones you may have already offered them
• Free product trials that give potential customers a taste of what you have to offer
• A “downgrade” offer for a product that’s less expensive or robust than your featured offer

Following up with the addresses you gather is quick, easy and simple with e-mail management and automation software. You can create e-mail messages called “autoresponders” that potential customers receive automatically as soon as they opt-in on your site–within seconds–no matter what time of day it is or whether you’re even at your desk!

That’s right: As soon as your visitors opt in, they’ll start hearing from you on a regular basis without you having to deal with the stress of writing a ton of e-mails to individual addresses. This is a process you can put on autopilot from the very beginning.

Final Thoughts
Obviously, we’ve covered a lot of ground in this article, so I think it’s only fair I point out that, before you dive into any of these strategies, you’ll need to do a bit more reading and research on each of these topics in order to understand these tactics in depth. What I’ve given you is simply a clear roadmap of exactly what you need to do first, second and third to test your website to maximize conversion rates and then roll out an effective traffic campaign that attracts swarms of potential buyers–automatically–for years to come. But reading more on each topic will help figure out exactly what you need to do for your site to make it a success.

Before I wrap up this article, I’d like to make one last point. Over the years, I’ve noticed a common thread that links all our most successful clients who have internet businesses: They have all focused on implementing one or two marketing strategies really well.

So don’t feel like you need to become an expert in all the strategies I’ve covered here. Focus on becoming really proficient at one or two–because this may be all you need to dramatically increase your traffic–and sales.

Derek Gehl

WWW.SPOTABUSINESS.COM - CONNECTING PEOPLE WITH BUSINESSES!

brought to you by entrepreneur.com

Step 4: Give away irresistible free content for priceless publicity. Believe it or not, a really easy, frequently undervalued strategy for getting traffic is giving away free content to other websites. Even just two or three well-written articles can generate truckloads of traffic, as long as they don’t contain a sales pitch. You want to include rare, hard-to-get information that’ll lend your articles automatic value–the kind of information that establishes you as an expert in your field.

Once you’ve finished an article, write a short bio paragraph about you and your business and place it at the end of your article along with–and this is the most important part–a link to your site.

To locate sites that might be interested in your content, e-mail other website owners in your industry–be sure to choose sites that receive attention and visits from your target market–and invite them to use your article on their site or in their newsletter at absolutely no cost. Many site owners need fresh content, so they’ll be more than happy to post your articles–and it won’t be long before those articles start driving traffic back to your site.

Key Terms With Guerrilla Marketing

 As marketing continues to change, the secrets of guerrilla marketing continue to change. There are 18 guerilla marketing secrets, and they guarantee you will exceed your most optimistic projections.

Memorize these words, then live by them. I’m giving you a memory crutch so that you’ll never forget these major guerrilla marketing secrets. All these words end in “-ent.” Run your business by the guerrilla concepts they represent and reap the rewards.

Commitment
You should know that a mediocre marketing program with commitment will always prove more profitable than a brilliant marketing program without commitment. Commitment makes it happen. 

Investment
Marketing is not an expense, but an investment–the best investment available in business if you do it right. With the 18 secrets of guerrilla marketing to guide you, you’ll be doing it right.

Consistent
It takes awhile for prospects to trust you. If you change your marketing, media and identity, you’re hard to trust. Restraint and repetition are two great allies of the guerrilla.

Confident
In a nationwide test to determine why people buy, price came in fifth, selection fourth, service third, quality second, and, in first place, people said they patronize businesses in which they have confidence.

Patient
Unless the person running your marketing is patient, it will be difficult to practice commitment, view marketing as an investment, be consistent, and make prospects confident. Patience is a guerrilla virtue.

Assortment
Guerrillas know that individual marketing weapons rarely work on their own, but marketing combinations do work. A wide assortment of marketing tools is required to woo and win customers.

Convenient
People know that time is not money–it’s far more valuable than money. Respect this by being easy to do business with and running your company for the convenience of your customers, not yourself.

Subsequent
The real profits come after you’ve made the sale, in the form of repeat and referral business. Non-guerrillas think marketing ends when they’ve made the sale. Guerrillas know that’s when marketing begins.

Amazement
There are elements of your business that you take for granted, but prospects would be amazed if they knew the details. Be sure your marketing reflects that amazement.

Measurement
You can potentially double your profits by measuring the results of your marketing. Some weapons hit bull’s-eyes. Others miss the target. Unless you measure, you won’t know which is which.

Involvement
This describes the relationship between you and your customers–and it is a relationship. You prove your involvement by following up; they prove theirs by patronizing and recommending you.

Dependent
The guerrilla’s job is not to compete but to cooperate with other businesses. Market them in return for them marketing you. Set up tie-ins with others. Become dependent to market more and invest less.

Armament
Armament is defined as “the equipment necessary to wage and win battles.” The armament of guerrillas is technology: computers, current software, cell phones, pagers, fax machines. If you’re technophobic, see a techno-shrink.

Consent
In an era of non-stop interruption marketing, the key to success is first to gain consent for your marketing materials and market only to those who have given you that consent.

Augment
To succeed online, augment your website with offline and online promotion along with constant maintenance of your site.

Content
Don’t believe that old adage, “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.” Sophisticated consumers these days know the sizzle from the steak and prefer the steak every time. Your substance, not your style, will carry the day for you.

Implement
It’s not enough for you to know these 18 secrets. The key is to take action on them, all of them.

Congruent
Be certain that all your marketing is saying the same thing and pulling in the same direction. Don’t undermine what you do with marketing that marches to the beat of a different strategist.

These concepts are the reason many startup guerrillas now run highly successful companies. They are the cornerstone of guerrilla marketing. They might look like just words, but each one is nuclear-powered and capable of propelling you into the land of your dreams.

Jay Conrad

WWW.SPOTABUSINESS.COM - CONNECTING PEOPLE WITH BUSINESSES!

Guerrilla Marketing?? What’s That?

 First there’s marketing. Then you have direct marketing, consumer marketing, B2B marketing, buzz marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, online marketing . . . really, the list is endless. But one form often left out is guerrilla marketing.

The term “guerrilla marketing” was first used by Jay Conrad Levinson in his popular 1984 book, Guerrilla Marketing. In it, he describes this method of marketing as nontraditional, low-cost or no-cost ways of marketing, promoting, advertising, publicizing, etc. Some have called it unconventional marketing; some have called it extreme marketing; still others have even used the term stealth marketing. And all of these apply in the sense that the tactics are nontraditional and low- or no-cost.

Guerrilla marketing has a major profit orientation and emphasis. Since guerrilla marketers don’t have unlimited funds, they must employ smarter rather than harder ways to work. This is done through the full use of time, energy, information, knowledge and, most of all, imagination. The guerrilla marketer must use all of his or her contacts to network, find creative publicity stories, angles and outlets, and generate ideas that’ll get noticed and talked about.

This type of marketing is primarily designed for small businesses and independent professionals. Other organizations such as nonprofits have also found it beneficial. It’s great for small business because it’s important for a guerrilla marketer to be flexible and agile to react to marketplace environments and influences– without layers of bureaucracy to go through, small businesses can change course as needed.

My co-author of Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days, Jay Conrad Levinson, has laid out some other key principles to help explain the essence of guerrilla marketing:

• Guerrilla marketing is based on human psychology and the way people think and react vs. judgment and guesswork.
• With guerrilla marketing, there’s an emphasis on profits, not just sales.
• A good measure of guerrilla marketing is the number of relationships you build over a particular period of time.
• Guerrilla marketing employs a focus on markets and target audiences vs. trying to be all things to mass markets.
• There’s a concentration on three specific ways to increase business: new referrals, more transactions from existing customers and larger transactions from existing customers.
• Instead of out-and-out competition, guerrilla marketing supports cooperation with other businesses.
• Guerrilla marketing is made up of many elements all working together and supporting each component of the program.
• Technology is the guerrilla marketer’s friend. Use it. Leverage it. Profit from it.

Here are some guerrilla marketing examples that you might have noticed, or maybe noticed but didn’t realize they were marketing of the guerrilla type:

• Chipotle’s offer of a free burrito to anyone dressed up like one of their football-size burritos on Halloween
• A business owner associating himself current event as an expert so he can get quoted in the media
• An entrepreneur nominating herself for an award and promoting her nomination and receipt of the award (if she gets it)
• Sonic DriveIn Restaurant’s magnetic cups that adhere to the trunk of a car as it drives off, making it appear as if the driver forgot to remove his drink from its temporary resting place. This marketing stunt really got talked about, and word-of-mouth marketing took over and helped spread the word about this restaurant.

Many of these guerrilla marketing ideas, principles and practices appear to be simply common sense. However, in reality, they’re not common practice. These examples are only a few of the many that businesses have used successfully. Your options are only limited by your imagination.

Al Lautenslager

WWW.SPOTABUSINESS.COM

Earning Money On The Internet Is Easy – True or False?

 

 

You see and hear hordes of people looking for opportunities to work part-time on the Internet hoping that they would find a way to leave their regular jobs and sustain themselves with the earnings from the Internet work or business. The assumption here is that this method of earning is easier than maintaining a 9 to 5 job, plus the earnings are limitless. Is this true or false?

 

It is true that the potential of earning through the Internet is limitless. However, it is not true that it comes easy. Nothing great ever comes easy. Success on the Internet takes time, effort and requires special training. The virtual world is not the same as brick and mortar world and you need to be prepared for that.  It is not only enough to put in effort, but also the right kind of effort and to know the difference you need to learn about how Internet works, how Internet marketing is done and what factors are critical in the virtual world. Simply put, you need to do your homework thoroughly.

 

Here are some myths that can kill your Internet venture:

 

1.      All you need to do is put up a website - this is one of the most wide spread fallacies about e-entrepreneurship. Just as a real world shop, your website needs to be (1) visible, (2) accessible and (3) interesting to get visitors. You need to learn how to do this, and do it well before you attract enough crowds, or traffic in Internet language, to run your business successfully.

 

2.      Freebies are enough to get traffic – while it is true that everybody loves to get something free, this also needs to be useful. You might get people to your website because of you advertise something free, but if that is low quality, outdated or not useful, you would soon find that your ruse backfires. Giving away freebies is an art that needs to be perfected. The customer should feel so good about it, that it should compel them to come back and want to do something in return for you – eventually this would lead to try out your products and services.

 

3.      You can get rich quick on the Internet – wake up from your dreams. Only in your dreams you stumble upon a fortune and become rich overnight. Internet is an excellent platform for generating wealth, but it definitely takes time and effort. There are concepts such as affiliate programs, residual income, multiple income streams that work excellent. However, they require months of work often round the clock before they pay back.

Why e-businesses fail?

 

 

Today the best thing you could do to earn money is launch an e-business. It is easy to set up, requires a very small investment, demands only periodic attention and catapults you on the global market. What else would you want from a business? However, statistics show that six out of ten dot com businesses fail. Why? Sure fire e-business often fail because they overlook some very vital factors.

 

1.      Human contact is a must-have – you find an excellent website with vibrant graphics and captivating content. You love it, you love the product and all of a sudden want to speak with someone about it. You search all over the website where all types of information are there, but you cannot seem to find a phone number to contact some human being for a discussion. The ‘contact us’ button brings you to a computerized query page, which instantly put you off. You decide to move on.

 

2.      Fine tune the website – no product ever goes in the market without being tested first. During the testing period, the feedback received helps to fine tune the product to deliver exactly what the market segment really wants. So, why should the website be any different. Run a trial before the real launch and check out its performance. You might find it perfect; do others do so to? Are they able to navigate with ease, find the information they need within two clicks of the mouse, can they contact you with ease? The answers to these questions are critical to the success of your website.

 

3.      Update it frequently – while it is true that people like familiar things, it is also true that the same people get bored if exposed to the same things over and over. No matter what you offer, you need to keep your website interesting. You need to make the surfer want to come back repeatedly for more. Keep your website interesting by updating it with news, changes as per feedback you receive, freebies, useful information and the like. A boring website would soon loose its charm, and close down.

 

4.      Computer friendly – this is a factor most ignored by dot com companies. You use broadband and find a wonderful website, which fascinates you. When you reach home and try accessing the same website through your dialup it would continuously time out because of the huge graphics and frames. What do you do? Look for another one. Keep your website uploadable on low-end computers and low speed connections.

Social Networking Site is Taking Off!

Well, we’ve made it thus far.  99 members and counting! We’ve been running now for 2 months! I would say that number really isn’t too bad considering every advertising method we are using, is free.

Now we are asking for your help spread the word to all those that you know out there that own a business. We will provide them with a free profile, url, blog, free use of forums, email, private messaging to other users, post pictures, post video, commercials and whatever else your heart desires! Oh yeah and its free! If you know any small business owners let them know about this service. We can help them advertise and we aren’t charging anything because we are working towards being the largest business directory out there and we believe that helping our customers is the way.

You should know that we are at about 7,200 hits a month and that’s also increasing day by day.

I would like to take the moment to thank all you readers out there and thank you for all the comments you have left us.  And thank you for your sincerity!

-spotabusiness.com - working to connect people and businesses!

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