DRIVEING PEOPLE TO YOUR WEBSITE
GETTING PEOPLE TO YOUR WEBSITE
Traffic to Your Website
Videos - Offer a special video that complements your products. Instructional videos that teach something related to your product work extremely well as both up-sell and backend.
Newsletter - If it works for your product, you can offer a subscription to a monthly newsletter related to your product. This will bring you not only repeat customers, but also a residual monthly or yearly income. We discuss this in more detail later in this section.
So to begin with, let's talk about some tools to use to send your emails out. EASY TOOLS TO USE
This is an email client. It takes the time-consuming task of daily email management and makes it very easy. They have three versions to choose from:
Sponsored Version - provides you with the full-featured version of Eudora for free but there are static onscreen ads that don't interfere with your email workspace.
Paid Version - provides you with a full-featured version without the ads. Cost is $39.95 before the $10 rebate.
Lite Version - provides a free, reduced feature version with no ads.
There really is no difference in the Sponsored and Paid versions, except the ads, and they are easily ignored.
It is important to save your email into different mailboxes for later reference. It's simple with Eudora. This helps to keep your email organized so you don't accidentally miss an important message. You may be getting hundreds of email.
You can use many different mailboxes.
Email hyperlinks should include the "mailto:" prefix. This will allow the email program to launch a new email making it easy for customer replies.
URLs should include the "http://" so that the program will launch the browser and go directly to the site mentioned. You should also try to keep all of your web addresses in lower case to avoid confusion with upper versus lower case. And be careful not to put a period after a URL. You don't want the computer thinking the period is part of the web address.
EXAMPLE http://www.creativecrafts.com
- Sign your emails - Develop an electronic signature to attach to the bottom of all of your emails. It's also called a "sig file". Include your auto-responder address, your email address, your telephone number, company name, etc. This is free advertising if you use it correctly. Use it to "sign" your name to any posting you make in mailing lists or forums. It is legitimate information that you now have available to anyone who reads your posts. While blatant advertising is frowned upon, your electronic signature is a good way to get your company information out there.
Make sure that you include your URL, email address
HOW TO COLLECT TARGETED EMAIL ADDRESSES
First of all, don't just collect e-mail addresses. It's a waste of effort, and you could be accused of spamming. Secondly, you get a much better response from a targeted list of previous customers, newsletter subscribers, and visitors who have opted-in to your email database.
You can gather them from your website guestbook, free offers, auto-responder logs (people who have requested information from you in the past), and anyone who has asked for more information. These people will not accuse you of spamming, because they have given you their e-mail addresses.
The Channels software is the best way to gather the e-mail addresses you need. With a few clicks you can send follow-up letters to these people.
Collecting addresses from other groups and chat areas is a bad idea; they are usually protective of their privacy and dont want ads clogging their email. They have not given you permission to use their addresses and WILL accuse you of spamming.
There are many places and websites from which to obtain addresses, but many people now use software that automatically deletes email from unknown users. So its best to use the email addresses of those people who have already dealt with you.
RENTING TARGETED OPT-IN EMAIL LISTS
There are companies who provide many hundreds or thousands of email addresses of people who have "opted" to receive email on topics that interest them. There is a small charge, but you should definitely find out how the email addresses were obtained first. If they were not ethically and responsibly collected by giving their permission to be opted-in, the same accusation will apply as to spamming.
These companies offer targeted opt-in email lists:
http://www.postmasterdirect.com
http://www.vesmail.com
SEARCH ENGINE
LookSmart - This has been compared to Yahoo and inputs to MSN, Excite, Alta Vista, CNN.com, Netscape Netcenter and others, (www.looksmart.com)
META SEARCH ENGINES
These are programs that gather search results from multiple search engines simultaneously. They rank a web site based on the combined ranking in all the included search engines. So if you want a top spot, you'll need to ensure that you are well ranked in all the search engines used by the META search engine.
- MetaCrawler - Simultaneously searches Google, AskJeeves, Inktomi, About, Overture,
FindWhat and others, (www.metacrawler.com)
- Dogpile - This is the most commonly used META search engine. It searches 3 databases
at a time, (www.dogpile.com)
You don't have to submit your site to META search engines, because they are already searching other major search engines. Top spots in the major search engines, ensures you a top spot in their results.
SPECIALTY SEARCH ENGINE/DIRECTORIES
These offer alternative to the major search engines. They are devoted to a particular subject or niche.
Legal Aid www.findlaw.com
For Women www.wwwomen.com
Sports www.sportsearch.com
Business www.b2bexcite.com
Music www.ubl.com
MORE IS NOT BETTER
There are so many search engines, don't try to submit to all of theam
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HOME OFFICE 2010
WHY VIRAL MARKETING WORKS SO WELL
We've all passed on a joke we've received by email, that has been forwarded several times. Why? It makes us laugh, and we want to share the humor. The benefits of that are that our friends know we have a good sense of humor.
Benefits are the driving force of viral marketing. If people are to spread the word about your product or service, they must stand to benefit from it. Hotmail users don't mind the ad at the bottom of their emails, because they have use of a free account.
IMPORTANT POINTS FOR SUCCESSFUL VIRAL MARKETING
BlueMountain almost invented viral marketing. BlueMountain.com is a huge e-card company. In 10 different languages, you can send anyone a card of literally thousands of choices with voice, photo, animation etc. Your friend receives an email with an announcement that a special card has been prepared for them by you. They click on the URL to go see it. It's delightful, and fun, and at the bottom of the page, they are asked if they would like to send a card to someone as well. Probably they will.
The cycle goes on....
THE VIRAL CYCLE
- It has to be easy to pass on. - If they have to do too many things to get it
accomplished, they probably wont bother.
- It shouldn't cost people anything to pass It on. - Hallmark.com made the mistake of charging
people for the e-cards at the beginning, and it really affected their growth. Who wants to
pay for email? I'm not saying that you should give your service away for free, it's just that
the viral aspect of your marketing should be free.
- Design it with your niche market's interests in mind. - It must have appeal to your direct
target market, if you're into cars and your viral marketing is along the line of something totally
different, it won't be of much benefit to you or them.
are you taking notes? Have you said to yourself, "Hey that would work for my site?" Find ways to tailor these ideas to your particular situation. Each one of these ideas that you put in place will bring in money each month. Find a way to make it work for you!
Once you taken some time to think about how the ideas in
HOW TO MAKE YOUR MESSAGE VIRAL
It is easy to add viral aspects to your marketing message which will increase your sales.
article that you give away, with a "pass-it-on" link in it. In your newsletter or e-zine, put
"Do you know someone who would be interested in reading this article?" Click here to
email it to them!" You don't even need to have a newsletter, just write a short article
that has value to your target market, with the "pass-it-on" link at the bottom.
versions of software all the time. How about a sample chapter of your information?
Be sure to add the link that allows them to get the full version of this product right
away, by clicking it. Once they've tried it, you want to make it very easy for them to buy.
- Free trial of your service works the same way. - How often have you shopped in a
grocery store where there are free samples to taste? You go around and hit every
table, don't you? The best part about this one, is that the person must come to your
web site to get a real "taste" of your product or service.
- Contests bring in traffic. - This is a good way to capture contact info. Allow them to
enter their friends also, but there has to be a benefit for them to do so. Tell them,
each time they enter a friend, they will be entered again.
- Start Your Own Affiliate Program. - This allows other people to promote your product
or service. For every sale they make, they get a referral fee. These affiliates send
visitors to your web site by way of your banner ads, links, etc and you can track these
people with special software, and pay the referral fee to the affiliate. It's really good,
because you are only paying for results. It doesn't matter how many affiliates you
have, you still only pay them when they make a sale for you. This is a very, very
good way of making your marketing "viral" and increasing your exposure on the web.
More on affiliate programs in Section 6.
REMEMBER
Give the visitor some benefit by sharing, and TELL them to share; they may not think of it themselves
Christ like 4 life is a Ministry Website we offer
This section will talk a little bit about some hints to making online auctions work for you. However, if you are really interested in utilizing online auctions, go to www.keystoneresources.net where you can purchase a more extensive training guide that will walk you step by step through the process.
TEASERS/HOOKS
In the description of your item, always include a teaser or hook to get them to visit.
EXAMPLE Item for Bid - leather coat
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