The key to the success of any business is customer traffic. On the internet, that means driving readers and users to your website, and then hopefully interesting them enough so that they stay and possibly even make a purchase.

However, the whole process begins with traffic, and where you are driving your traffic from. After all, if you aren’t sending quality visitors to your site, then you’re just wasting your time. Read on for three of my favourite places from which to draw immediate, high-quality traffic.

Forums and Message Boards

Forums are far from being the “cool new thing,” in a large part because they’ve basically been around since the beginning of the internet. Hence, they’re often forgotten or overlooked when considering ways to drive traffic to your site.

However, a lot of people still use forums and message boards every day. Perhaps even more significantly, when a user is on a message board, they are typically looking for an answer to some question or problem that they have. Which means that if you’re posting answers in the right places, you are going to be attracting users who are not just passively browsing your site out of boredom, but actively searching for a solution, which very well may be your product.

Popular Blogs

Engagement with blogs is an absolutely crucial way to drive inbound links to your site. Follow the blogs of thought leaders within your industry, and read them regularly. When you see a relevant article, make a comment, and include a link to your site if your think it warranted.

For instance, if you’re reading an article about how to drive more traffic to your site, and you just recently wrote an article about high quality places from which you can draw traffic, you might want to think about making an intelligent and thoughtful comment, and leaving a link to your article. There’s a fine line to walk here between adding value and spamming. How the link is construed depends upon your relationship with the original poster, your place in the industry, the relevance of your comment, and the aptness of the link. You’ll have to be the judge.

Thanks!

 Sean

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Internet Marketing Academy

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Small businesses fight for every bit of money they earn.  Competition for sales is incredible, and businesses must adapt to changing markets or lose out on sales.  The Internet can be used as selling tool in one of two basic formats.  The first is to use it to reinforce an existing store front.  The Internet would be used to help bring in customers at a local store.  The second is focusing solely on Internet sales, with no store front at all.  In this case all advertising would be undertaken online and all sales would be shipped.  For local sales, the online advertising methods must take a different tack.  Instead of using broad advertising methods to reach as many people as possible, advertisments should be highly focused and limited in scope.

The Importance of Local Listing

The first thing you will need to do to use the Internet to market your business is update all your local listings.  Go onto Google and make sure that your company is listed as a local business.  Also check out sites like superpages.com or yellowbook.com and make sure that your information is listed and correct.  You will also want to ensure that the keywords listed are directly related to your business.  While niche market keyword usage is a necessary part of selling online to the general public, when you are selling locally you can use broader search terms.  There is less competition for local business than there is for international.  Where a solely Internet based business might need to use more awkward phrases, a local business can simply list their focus.  You might also want to place a listing on a site like citybizlist.com to ensure as much local exposure as possible.

Incorporate Social Media

Once you have all of your listings up and running, you will need to start looking at other advertising methods.  It does not make sense to pay for preferred listings on search engines to promote local business, but it does make sense to consider paid advertising on social networking sites.  Facebook offers tremendous advertising potential.  Not only can you create your own business Facebook page, but you can also buy local advertising.  Much like advertising in a newspaper that distributes in your area, buying Facebook advertising allows you to keep your focus very narrow.  You can advertise locally at a very inexpensive price.  Facebook can also be used to create interest using different promotions.  You can do give-a-ways, raffles, competitions, and more, all run through your Facebook page.  It will take time to build up a large enough audience, but the investment is well worth it.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

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Marketing is used to encourage people to buy a specific product.  Not only is it designed to convince consumers of brand superiority, but it is also designed to remind them to buy the product they never knew they desperately needed.  Branding is about two basic concepts, establishing your corporate expertise and creating a relationship between the corporate side of the company and consumers.  Personalisation is an important part of the process when building a brand.  The more consumers relate to the products or services offered by your company, the more likely they are to place your company at the top of the list.  Marketing reminds consumers of the benefits of using your company.  Personalisation of advertising does not work well with traditional methods, but online marketing allows much more targeted advertising.

You can identify several different target demographics to find a variety of different avenues for personalised advertising.  Create ads directly targeted toward each of those demographics.  You will need to do some research to find the right demographics.  Market studies are a good way to determine what demographics will most appreciate your products and services.  Online surveys can help you with your studies of the market place, and they are often free to post.  You can get a lot of information with little to no expense, simply by posting several short surveys on websites with a matching client base.

After you have determined the different target demographics and websites you will use to market your products, you will need to determine a more direct strategy.  Each website and demographic that you have isolated as a potential target must get targeted advertising.  Each ad should be directed at a single group.  The more limited the group, the more you can narrow the focus of the advertisement.  While broad range, mass appeal marketing is a must for more traditional marketing mediums, online advertising allows you to take the time to put together advertising that only targets a small number of people.

The targeted demographics will help you to create advertisements that are more sympathetic to your targets.  You will be able to create younger ads for younger people.  Ads that generate an emotional connection and ads that appeal to the consumer’s sense of humour are highly effective when marketing to the public.  Personalising advertising also helps you to establish your company’s expertise.  You can show with your advertising exactly what your company has to offer.  This can help improve your conversion rates and clicks through to your website.  This will improve your overall sales.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

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The holidays are a time when many people spend a bit more than they should.  The joy of gift giving during the Christmas season makes people dig a little deeper when shopping.  Physical store locations create beautiful window displays that capitalize on the season.  Online sellers should do to same.  Integrating Christmas imagery in your existing sales website can help you to increase your sales this holiday season.  There are several different ways to add a Christmas feel to your site, and you should employ them all.

1. Change the overall theme – most websites are designed so that certain elements remain the same from page to page.  This is referred to as the theme of the site.  Change the theme to reflect a holiday spirit, to get shoppers in the right frame of mind.  Christmas imagery like decorations, wrapped presents, holiday lights or a Christmas tree are all possible examples.
2. Place sale items in the forefront – make sure to highlight your sale items and include information about their potential as gifts.  Draw a strong connection between your sale items and holiday giving.
3. Colour scheme is crucial – any other time of the year, a subdued colour palate can be used to create a feeling of warmth, but for Christmas, bright colours act as an attraction.  You do not need to stick with traditional red and green, but bright colours that compliment each other are a must.
4. Create a Christmas logo – while all of your products should be sold under your regular logo, a special holiday design can capture imaginations.  Many large retailers use a different holiday exclusive design each year.  Stay on top of trends and find something that tickles the funny bone or warms the heart of the average consumer.
5. Offer services specific to the holiday – including services like gift wrapping and drop shipping are a solid choice as part of your holiday campaign.  Include vivid advertisements that demonstrate the ease of shopping on your site.  Let consumers know that your site is truly a one stop shopping location.

These strategies can help to boost final quarter sales by encouraging additional holiday spending.  Giving consumers a visual reminder of the season and using subtle reinforcement like the overall colour scheme and logo design will help put them in the shopping mood.  You can not give them the opportunity to hold a product prior to purchase, but you can give them a festive atmosphere in which to shop.  Thoughtful use of animations is a great addition to any holiday website, and paying attention to the hot gifts of the season will help you to determine the best items to put up for sale.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

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If you have not yet begun your holiday sales promotions, you are already running late.  Many businesses start putting together their holiday promotional material no later than September.  The reason for this is that the earlier you start with certain advertising methods, the best options are available.  For example, many websites often offers the best display slots on a first come first served basis.  The price is often similar, but the best slots go first.  However, even if you have not yet begun your holiday push there are some great strategies you can still pursue.

Banner Ad Campaigns

Determine your big sale items now, so you can send the information out to as many people as possible.  You may or may not have the lowest possible prices on some items, but that will not matter.  The lowest prices will sell out quickly, leaving people looking for reasonable.  As long as your sales price is moderately competitive, early web banner advertising on well trafficked sites can have some real benefits.  Try to either generate one huge advertisement that covers all of your sales items, or do a weekly sales ad that shows off different items.  Weekly banner ads leading up to Christmas can be a great way to maximise potential sales.  The slow release for sales information keeps customers coming back, time after time.

Slow Build to Maximum Coverage

Another basic technique is to start small, and slowly build your advertising coverage.  Few businesses can afford to advertise at full strength for long.  The alternative is to start with a sprinkle of advertising.  An online video ad promotion here or there combined with a gradual increase in the number of ads, peaking in the last two weeks before Christmas.   This method can be highly effective.  It also helps keep advertising costs as low as possible. The truly expensive part of the campaign only lasts for two weeks, with the more moderate pricing before that.  If you can not afford online video advertising, consider using local sites or social media as an option.  In either case, gradual escalation is a great way to get extensive market penetration on a limited budget.

Cross Promote with other Shops

Do not limit your business to direct promotions. There are great opportunities to combine your marketing budget with another store.  For example, a shoe shop might partner up with an outwear seller to maximise both locations advertising budgets.  Since neither store has a large budget individually, combining the two budgets to purchase the most popular advertising is a great way to effectively reach out to consumers during the winter holiday season.  Cross promotions can be effective in all types of media from email to SEO, and even for direct referrals.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

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While basic marketing principles remain the same regardless of what you are selling, there are some subtleties that should be kept in mind when you are marketing across different business models.  The type of business can have a direct impact on advertising content.  The how and why of marketing stays the same, but advertising content can vary tremendously.

Selling Products

When you have a physical product that is for sale, you need more concrete statements as descriptors.  The product must be described in detail and all possible uses should also be provided.  The ad content should focus on how the product solves a problem or enhances quality of life.  Promotions for products should include either direct sale discounts or possibly shipping discounts.  The virtual marketplace does not allow a customer to interact with an item directly before a sale, so offering free or discounted two-way shipping can be a good motivator to consumers.

Marketing for Service Industries

A service industry can’t focus on the physical aspects of product description, but they can focus on describing the service and giving examples for when it is useful.  Accounting services might discuss tax preparation or reconciling accounts, while a website that sells investment tips would mention recent successes.  Promotions that many service businesses have used successfully include discounted services or package deals.  In lieu of offering a single service discounted or free, many businesses have found it useful to offer a free add-on option or a discount on the up-sale.

Selling Subscriptions

There are many service websites that operate on the subscription model.  Clients purchase daily, weekly, monthly or annual subscriptions to receive full access to the site.  Because shoppers can’t view the entire functionality of the site until they subscribe, it is vitally important to give them details about what they will receive.  Descriptions need to be clear, with very limited use of adverbs and exaggerations.  Clients that are expecting a specific service based on advertising who receive something very different will cancel their subscription.  The most common promotion offered for subscription websites is a free trial offer.  Stand out from the crowd by offering either extended trials of up to a full month or not taking credit card information until the trial is over.  Let your excellent service do the selling.

While the differences may seem obvious, there are many ads online that don’t properly describe the offered product.  Legitimates businesses need to be very up-front with potential customers to create long-term relationships and lasting business success.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

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Pushing your website to the top of search engine results is rarely as easy as many online marketing companies might have you believe.  Unless you are paying someone to handle the work for you, there is no magic formula to seeing your website returned at the top of Google every time someone puts in a particular phrase, as evidenced by the touch and go success of such companies’ products.

There are, however, some pretty cut and dried strategies that such companies use to get a website scoring higher on Google, Bing, and other significant search engines.  Most of this success centres on search engine optimisation (SEO), the practice of imbedding keywords into your website to push it higher in search engine results when those keywords are searched for.

SEO is quite successful, and many internet marketers have recognised it as a valid way to see their websites get more traffic.  Unfortunately, many people stop there, getting a grasp on search engine optimisation through keywords but failing to access other means of internet promotion through similar channels.  This loses marketers traffic to their websites that could dramatically increase customers contact to their products.

Keyword search engine optimisation is not the end of the line.  It must be combined with similar strategies to reach maximum effectiveness.  To help you take advantage of these avenues, here are a few ideas that mesh with keyword SEO to shoot your website to the top of Google:

Create Links to Your Pages on Other Websites

Most search engines are very concerned not only with keywords and how often they appear in your content but also with links and how many of them lead to your website.  As such, having a solid supply of links running back to your website across the internet is important to scoring higher with the big search engines.

Submit your website to directories that keep track of particular types of sites.  Include social media buttons that allow visitors to link back to your website from Facebook or Twitter.  You can even talk with the owners of other, related, websites about a link swap in which you post a link to their website on your site and they do the same in response.

Build a Page on Facebook

This runs along the same thought as the section above on links, but on a larger scale.  If you have a dedicated page on Facebook from which visitors can launch to your website your monthly traffic will increase and, in turn, so will your ranking in many search engines.  It typically takes only a few minutes and as people join and like your page they will add your links throughout Facebook, further increasing your attractiveness to Google.

Don’t Neglect Side Elements of SEO

In optimising their websites with keywords, many people think that search engines look only at the content of a page for rankings.  This could not be further from the truth.  In reality, search engines pay special attention to the title of a page, and one that is rich in keywords will earn you more points with the big engines. Headers within a page work the same way – if Google senses a section of text is more important it will pay particular attention to what it says.

Keeping up with what search engines want is no easy task.  By attacking the issue from multiple fronts, however, you move closer to success and ensure greater results across the board.

Thanks again,

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

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One of the biggest mistakes most Internet marketers make is they don’t realize what is going through their prospect’s mind when they are surfing online. You have to really delve into what your prospect is thinking about at the time they come to your website when you’re trying to make money online.

This blog post will give you a good profile of the typical prospect. Keep this in mind when you are writing your ad copy.

1. Your prospect has tons of distractions!

When your prospect is online, they are experiencing a lot of distractions. Among these distractions includes endless pop-up windows, e-mail notifications, and instant message alerts.

In other words, there is a lot of chaos going on online when your prospect comes to your website. They have tons of distractions and your sales message has to cut through all that in order to get their attention.

2. Your prospect has a lot of problems going on in their life.

Today, people are being bombarded with all kinds of challenges. This includes financial, health, and future concerns. Most people work in jobs they hate and basically do not go out and meet interesting people or go to interesting places.

Your website has to be the most exciting message they have read all day. Assuming you target that prospect’s hot buttons, you will be able to get their attention, and perhaps turn them into a customer.

But none of that will work if you do not realize your target prospect has a lot of problems going on in their lives and are constantly distracted.

3. Your prospect is being bombarded with advertising messages constantly.

We live in an over-advertised society. There are advertising messages attacking us via billboards, television, radio, and storefronts. It is literally impossible to escape this.

You have to realize this when you create your advertising and website. Your prospect has probably been pitched tons of times before they see your website. So you have to make sure that the advertising message on your website cuts through all the noise in your prospect’s life.

So keep these three tips in mind as you construct your website. Knowing what your average target prospect is going through, and what you’re up against, will help you create a website that will grab your prospect by the lapels and force them to read your ad.

Live, Love, Laugh!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Internet Marketing Academy

Most people think they can write anything on their website and get sales. This is simply not the case. You need sales copy that is going to get people’s attention, get them reading all the way to the order button, and yank out their wallet and buy.

This blog post will reveal 5 secrets to writing sales copy that can boost your conversions.

1) Pretend you are taking to your prospect at a bar or restaurant.

One way to make sure your sales copy is customer-centric is to pretend you are talking to your prospect at a bar or restaurant. What happens is you will start to write like you talk and in a conversational manner. After all, a sales letter is simply a face-to-face sales pitch in disguise.

2) Use short sentences and small words.

Most people read at a sixth-grade level. Therefore you do not want to insert large words into your sales letter as your prospect could get lost in your copy!

3) Give it to someone in your market to read.

One of the best things you can do is give your sales copy to a person in your target market. If they come back to you and just say, “That’s nice”, then you need to rewrite the ad.

But if they read the sales letter and ask you, “Where can I get that!” then your sales copy should work!

4) Get right to the point.

You are not writing a novel or short story. You need to get right to the point in your letter if you are going to pull people in.

One way you can do this is by  using the famous copywriter Gary Halbert’s introduction he used to implement all the time.  It goes like this:

If you’ve ever wanted to lose weight, then this will be the most important message you’ll ever read!

See how this get’s right to the point? You can easily modify the above for your own market.

5) Keep your target audience in mind.

Your typical buyer is going to have many distractions. They could be at home with 24 different pop-ups on their computer and Twitter notifications. That’s why your advertisement has to cut straight through that to get their attention.

So implement all 5 of these tips for better copy!

Keep Selling!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Internet Marketing Academy

It’s no secret that having one time offers can boost your bottom line. Offering more of your products and services after the initial sale is a perfect time to get more people to buy from you.

However, most marketers really mess it up when it comes to writing copy for one time offers. Especially offers that are made immediately after the order, or “one click upsells” where people can automatically add more products to their shopping cart.

Here are some copywriting tips that could boost the conversions of your one-time offers.

First of all, people who buy your one time offers are already going to be “warmed up” to you. After all, they have already bought from you and all you need to do is carry on the sales conversation.

This may seem simple but a lot of marketers sell their one time offers like their lead product: with a lot of information and benefits about the seller to boost desire in the product.

The tested way to start off a one-time offer is to continue the conversation in your customer’s head. This is done by simply thanking her for the previous purchase and that you want to present another way they can solve their problem or better their life.

In other words, they are already a “warm” prospect. You don’t need to warm them up by talking to them as if they have never heard of you before.

As a result, expect your upsell copy to be shorter than usual.  Unless you are selling an item that’s way more expensive then your initial offer, your sales copy will be shorter in length.

It is a also a good idea to talk about the previous product/service they purchased in the copy.

For example, if you are selling an information product and you are upselling your customer on a more expensive home study course, you can tell your customer the upsell will show them the “HOW” of what the initial product covers—that they will get more of the benefits they want to experience. This is why they bought your lead product in the first place.

So take action on these copywriting tips for upsells. They could really boost your upsell conversions through the roof!

Live, Love, Laugh!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Internet Marketing Academy