Anyone who has owned a business knows and understands that they must keep an eye on costs at all times. Any expenses must be considered in light of whether the cost can be justified by an increase in revenue. To any business owner who thinks that driving targeted traffic to your website is too expensive, we would suggest that they look at the facts and adjust their way of thinking.

A typical offline marketing strategy is to spend part of your advertising budget buying an ad in the print version of your local Yellow Pages. The Yellow Pages is a resource that many people use to find companies to do business with, but that doesn’t mean that you will get many responses to your ad.

In another marketing scenario, you could have flyers or advertising material delivered to every home and business in a particular neighborhood. You are still throwing out a huge net to the general public and hoping that your ad will end up in the hands of someone who is looking for your product or service at that point in time.

You will have some success with these methods, but the percentage of viewers that actually respond will likely be quite low. Out of the number that responds, the number that ends up buying from you will be smaller yet.

Enter Internet Marketing which is much more targeted and effective. Whether you use a Pay per Click campaign or Search Engine Optimization or a combination of the two, these strategies target specific niche markets. If you were looking for leads, wouldn’t you rather talk to pre-qualified people who have already indicated that they are in the market for what you are selling? Of course you would!

When you use these techniques to drive targeted traffic to your website, you are getting visitors that are already interested in what you are selling and in many cases, are ready to buy. This is the ideal situation for any businessperson.

Another advantage to using Internet marketing techniques is that you have the ability to monitor your campaign closely to keep a handle on which ones are most effective. If you find that something you are doing is working well, then you can continue with it. On the other hand, if you are not getting the results you are looking for, you can make changes fairly quickly.

More traditional forms of advertising don’t offer this option to the business owner, but that doesn’t mean that they should be abandoned altogether. Marketing your business is an ongoing effort that should include a number of different strategies. It would be a mistake to assume that you won’t get results (and make money online) from Internet Marketing strategies as well as from other, more traditional, methods.

Keep in mind that a properly designed website is an online billboard that is capable of promoting your business 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Don’t ignore this wonderful opportunity to promote your business.

Why Your Business Needs a Website

Just about any type of business would benefit from having a website. Consider it another tool that you can use to increase sales, even if you don’t sell anything directly from your site. Here are some reasons why having a presence on the Internet makes good business sense.

1. Your Website is Open 24/7

Even though your business may only be operating during the regular business hours you have chosen, your website doesn’t lock the door and go home at the end of the day. Instead, it is always available to provide your customers (existing and potential) with information about you and your products or services.

2. Having a Website Gives You Credibility

Many people will go online to investigate a business before deciding whether to buy. When you put up a properly designed website that provides information your customers find relevant and helpful, it goes a long way toward establishing you and your business as one that consumers can rely on.

There is a lot of competition for the Buying Public’s dollars and people feel more comfortable dealing with someone they feel that they know, even if it’s from the tone of your websites. If you can successfully develop a relationship with your customers, they will turn from one-time buyers to regular customers, and that is key to be able to have a successful business and make money online.

3. Your Site is Another Way to Generate Income for Your Business

Once you go online, you are not restricted to selling products and services from a physical location. You now have the freedom to sell directly from your website. When it comes to building a successful business, you want to have as many sources of income as possible and selling directly to customers online is a growing trend.

Many people find it quicker and easier to buy products or order services from a website than to drive to a store somewhere to get the items they need. Ordering online saves them time and (possibly) money and they are free to do so from anywhere that has an Internet connection. With time being at a premium, you will want to demonstrate how dealing with you can benefit your customers, and saving time and or money is a great hook to make consumers want to buy from you.

4. A Website Lets You Go After International Customers

Once you go online, you are no longer limited to local customers only. You are free to attract business from anyone with an Internet connection, which means you have the potential to increase sales substantially.

Keep in mind that when you decide to offer products and services to a worldwide market, you are also going up against more competition. Visit high-ranking sites from companies that offer similar products or services to yours to get an idea of what they are doing right. Armed with this information, you can put your best foot forward on the internet and grow your business.

Reliability and Internet Marketing

One objection you will probably come across when you are engaging in Internet marketing is the idea that buying something over the Internet is a risky venture. Some people will use online resources to conduct research to get product information but stop short of ordering items online. If you are also operating a brick and mortar store, you can certainly use your website to draw customers to it, but wouldn’t it be a better marketing strategy to use your site to sell your products to people from all over the world and make money online.

Being able to access a larger pool of potential customers is a very exciting concept, and having an online presence means that you are not restricted by traditional business hours, time zones, or geography. You can offer your wares to customers in any part of the world.

If you are going to offer products in the virtual world, you will need to establish a reputation for reliability and exemplary customer service. How do you do this? By putting yourself in the customer’s shoes, that’s how!

Tell Your Customers Something About You and Your Business

Use your About Us page to share some basic information about your business. People are more likely to buy from someone that they feel they know, even slightly. Tell the visitors to your site who you are, something about what made you decide to start your business in the first place and what you are committed to in your business. These kinds of details will make you more real to the potential customer, instead of a faceless, impersonal internet entity.

Have Your Privacy Policy Clearly Indicated on Your Site

Privacy issues are something that many people are concerned about these days, and who can blame them Any time we hear about someone being a victim of identity theft, we all wonder if we are taking all the precautions we should to keep our private information, well, private.

When you make a point of telling your site visitors that you will not be sharing their contact or other personal information with other companies, you are indicating that you are a reliable company to deal with. Instead of waiting for the potential customer to ask questions about what you are doing with the information you collect, you are putting them at ease by dealing with the issue up front.

Offer Exemplary Customer Service

Another issue that may make a person reluctant to buy directly from a website is concerns about your customer service and return policies. Make sure that your customers can reach you (or someone working on your behalf) quickly and conveniently. If you have a toll-free number for this purpose, make sure that it is easy for your customers to find. If not, then have a dedicated e-mail address for customer service issues and make sure that it is monitored on a regular basis. Let your customers know that their questions and concerns will be dealt with in a timely manner and you increase your ability to make money online.

Take away the customer’s objections, and they will be more comfortable buying from you, and you will see the benefit in increased sales for your business.

Are you curious about the world of Internet marketing but feeling a little intimidated about using it to help your business grow? You don’t need to be. By taking some time to educate yourself about Internet marketing, you will be able to add this strategy to your bag of marketing tricks.

There are two main types of Internet marketing campaigns you should be familiar with Pay per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To have a better chance at achieving success with marketing your products or services online, you may want to incorporate both strategies into your marketing plans.

Pay per Click

Once you launch your site, you will want to generate traffic and make money online right away. Using a Pay per Click campaign can help you reach this goal. Here’s how it works, you bid on search terms or keywords that you think people interested in your products or services would use when trying to find your site. When someone types in one of the words you have chosen, an ad with a link to your web site will appear. You may have seen them in your own search results as Sponsored links. You are charged a certain amount when someone clicks on your ad to get to your website.

Google, Yahoo, and MSN all have PPC campaigns you can participate in. Choosing keywords for your PPC campaign can be a bit challenging; you will likely find that the most popular keywords are also the most expensive ones. Don’t be afraid to choose keywords that reflect the search terms that an average Internet user would type in to find your site, even if they are not near the top of the list. The idea here is to get visitors to your site, after all.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about getting free traffic to your web site. It will take some time for your website to get indexed (listed) by search engines but if you can get ranked well by one of the Big Three search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN), you are likely to get a steady stream of visitors to your site.

Once your website is up and running, make sure that you update your content on a regular basis. Search engine crawlers (bots) go out through the Web to look for new pages and you can improve your site ranking by keeping it stocked with new information.

You will also want to make sure that your content has keywords relevant to your niche market you are targeting. These are the terms that Internet users will type into the search box to find you.

Don’t be afraid to use a phrase made up of several words when you are choosing keywords for your content. Many people use these long tail keywords to find things they are interested in online, and when you choose to incorporate them into your content, you make it easier for these motivated buyers to find you.

Is regular email marketing dead?

We believe it is…

Here’s an insider peak at the technology that’s changing how effective email marketing is done…

http://www.andrewandterry.com/emailgamechanger

Enjoy!

Andrew Cocks and Terry Zambri
1-800-848-8107

PS: Your speakers must be on…
 
It will take you less than 5 minutes and it WILL increase your business!
 
http://www.andrewandterry.com/emailgamechanger

Your Mailing List Can Make You Money

Having a web site is a wonderful way to promote your business online, but you should be establishing a mailing list as a marketing tool as well. If you are able to capture contact information from visitors to your site, you will have multiple opportunities to connect with them and to ultimately make money online.

How do you get your site visitors to give you their contact information You offer them something in return for it. This could be one of the following:

• A Subscription to Your (Free) Newsletter • A Free Gift • A Free Report

Once you have this information, you add the person’s name and e-mail address to your mailing list. Be sure to give them the option of opting out of receiving further communications from you; the last thing you want to do is alienate your list members by spamming them.Make sure that they receive whatever giveaway you are offering shortly after signing up for your list. If you leave it longer than a day or two, they may forget that they visited your site and asked for it.

Offer Valuable Information.

The purpose of list building is to be able to make money online without doing hard selling. Instead, you offer your members information that they will find interesting andor useful. Every time you send out a mailing, make sure that it has something valuable in it.

Establish Credibility and Name Recognition

When you stay in touch with your list members on a regular basis and continue to provide them with relevant information, you are establishing yourself as someone they should consider doing business with. You want to be in touch with your list members often enough that your list members will think of you when they are ready to buy your products, but not so often that you are being a pest.

The long-term goal here is to have a number of repeat customers, rather than single purchasers. It will take a bit of time before you bring your business to this point, but the effort will be worth it. The repeat customers, and those other customers your regulars refer to you, will be the key to building an ongoing online business.

New Products and Special Members Only Deals

Every now and then, tell your list members about a new product you are launching or about a special offer you have put together for mailing list members only. Just about everyone likes to feel that they are an insider who is able to get advantages that other people can’t.

Let your mailing list members know about new products before they launch to the general Web-surfing public and give them a chance to get the item first and at a discount. You may also want to invite your list members to e-mail you with testimonials you can post on your site after the official product launch. This tactic will also help you to increase sales.

What is SEO

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a term used to describe techniques used to drive traffic to your website from search engines. Most of the web traffic you get will come from the three search engines with the largest number of indexed sites Google, Yahoo, and MSN. If you want to market your products sucessfully and make money online, you need to make sure that your customers can find you.

Keywords

Most visitors to your site will find you by typing keywords into a search engine. These may be a single word or a phrase. By putting content on your site that contains relevant keywords, you have a better chance of having Web surfers find your site.

How Search Engines Work

Very briefly, here’s how the process works, search engines have programs that go out through the World
Wide Web looking at content. These programs are referred to as bots, spiders, or crawlers. Even the most advanced search engine doesn’t have every web page crawled yet; according to estimates, only about half of the 20 billion pages online have actually been indexed.

Once a particular page has been crawled by a search engine’s spiders, it is indexed. Indexing means that the
page has been added to that search engine’s database. Web crawlers will revisit your pages to see whether they have been updated since the last visit, so it’s important to keep feeding your site with fresh content.

When you type a search query into a search engine, the process is really quite impressive. The search engine
software goes through all of its pages to find a match for the word or phrase you submitted. The more narrow your query, the more specific your results will be.

The search results you are given are not just pulled out of the air (figuratively speaking); they are ranked according to a formula known as the search engine’s algorithm. The specific factors that a search engine uses to rank sites is a closely-guarded secret; the best anyone has come up with are strategies that seem to work to get a higher ranking.

High Ranking and Web Traffic

If you want to attract a steady stream of traffic to your site, you need to get a high search engine ranking. SEO techniques will help you to reach that goal by helping you to determine which keywords people are most likely to be using to find information relevant to your niche market. When you make a point of putting out content with these well-chosen keywords in it, you have a better chance of attracting site visitors who are interested in what your site has to offer, and motivated to buy from you - now.

A key component of SEO is to track where the traffic coming to your site is coming from and what kinds of keywords Internet users are using to find you. If you can’t track your results, you have no idea what techniques you are using that are the most effective, and that is an important aspect of Search Engine Optimization.

How to Make Your Site Sticky

When you are building your online business, one of the key components you need to address is how to make your site sticky. This means that you not only want to get Web surfers to visit your site, but you want to make sure they spend time exploring what you have to offer when they get there.

If you have a situation where you are getting a lot of traffic to your site but it isn’t converting to increased sales, take a look at your site from the point of view of a potential customer to try to determine where the difficulty is. Then you can make corrections to make your site stickier so you can make money online.

Is Your Site Easy to Navigate?

When you first click on your own site, can you find your way around quickly and easily? If not, then you need to make some changes. Keep in mind that people who are surfing the Internet looking for information will click away if they don’t find what they want to know in less than minute. They may lose interest quicker than that!

Make sure that your site visitors know exactly how to get where they are going by using a menu or tabs that clearly indicate the page they link to. You also need to make sure your site visitors can get back to a previous page or your Home page if they end up in the wrong section of your site.

Tell Your Visitors What You Want Them to Do Next

Make it easy for your site visitors to know what action you want them to take. It’s perfectly acceptable to put something on your web site that says, Click Here, Buy Now, or Learn More. Don’t keep them guessing about the next step you want them to take. You are far better off (and will make more money online) if you tell your customers what you want them to do than if you leave them to their own devices.

Make it Easy for Customers to Contact You

Some people are quite comfortable with surfing the Internet to look for information, but when it comes time to make a purchase, they would rather place it by phone or go to a brick and mortar location. If possible, give your customers multiple options to communicate with you. Offering a live chat option may be helpful, too; the customer can get the information they need to make a decision right away, instead of clicking off your site to get it elsewhere.

Tell Your Visitors to Bookmark Your Site

A potential customer will likely visit a few times before making the decision to buy from you. Even if they were really impressed with your site, how are they going to find you again? Tell your site visitors to be sure to bookmark your site so they can visit again. Web surfers may think they will remember your URL, but chances are they won’t. Otherwise, you may have lost out on the opportunity to do business with that person entirely, which is not your goal when you are building a business to make money online.

If you want to give your Internet Marketing efforts a boost, you should consider starting a blog. It’s another tool you can use to drive traffic to your web site and make money online.

What is a Blog

The most basic definition of a blog is a kind of online journal. It contains posts in reverse chronological order. Now, that may imply that a blog is like an online diary, and some blogs are just that. Other blogs are used to present information, interact with readers, and ultimately to sell products.

The style of a blog is more personal than that used in articles. It’s more like having a conversation at a (virtual) water fountain than just presenting information.

Advantages to Having a Blog

When you have a blog (or several of them), it’s a way to launch an online presence under your own name. Over time, you start to establish yourself as being an expert in the niche market you have chosen to target.

Since people will usually choose to do business with someone who they know, even through something like a series of blog posts, this is a great way to connect with potential customers. Through your blogging and postings, you provide them with information that is timely and relevant to their needs.

Make a point of posting a link to your web site on your blog. Refer to the fact that there is another place your blog visitors can go for more information, to download a free ebook, or to see your products or services. When you let your blog visitors know that you have a new product for sale, they are more likely to buy from you because they feel as if they know something aboutyou already. You have taken the time to establish credibility.

How to Start a Blog

Starting a blog can be done quickly and easily. There are many blog platforms you can use at no charge, such as Wordpress.com. Signing up is quick and easy. Once your account has been created, you can choose a theme for your blog from a number of options. The theme is the background color and image for your blog. With the choices available, it may be difficult to make a decision! If you get tired of your current theme, you can change it with just a few clicks of your mouse.

You don’t need to know any HTML to add content to your blog, either. The editing function is very simple and easy to use.

Keep Your Blog Content Fresh If you want to attract regular readers to your blog, you will need to keep it updated on a regular basis. You may be able to get away with updating your web site once a month or so, but with a blog you need to plan to add content at least weekly, if not several times a week. If this seems like too daunting a task with your other responsibilities, then you may want to consider hiring a freelance writer to ghostwrite your blog for you.

Click the hot link below to check out the blogging platform we use and recommend:

Best blogging platform

When it comes to internet marketing, you want to make sure that whenever you are interacting with the visitors to your site you focus them on a single action you want them to take.

 What is the purpose of your website? What do you want this person to do? Do you want them to buy your product? Do you want them to get on your list? Do you want them to download something, or click a banner ad? What’s the purpose?

You should have a sole focus on getting that person to take that one specific action. You want to focus on getting people to take that desired action on that sales letter.

That’s why a squeeze page is so effective, because it’s either you opt-in or you don’t, so you’re giving people a choice to make. Either opt-in to learn more or don’t.

If somebody’s not willing to opt-in, you probably couldn’t sell them something anyway, so don’t worry about those people who don’t opt-in. You probably wouldn’t sell them anything, because if they’re not willing to give you their name and E-mail they’re probably not willing to give you their credit card information. Don’t worry about those people who don’t opt-in, focus on the ones who do.

When you have a squeeze page in front of a sales letter – a great example is at Your Million Dollar Lifestyle - as soon as you hit the squeeze page, you want them to give you their name and E-mail, and then you’re going to give them something in return like a free report or ebook.

Always focus on what’s that main thing you want them to do, and get them to do that before asking them to take the second step in your process.

In my opinion, the first step in your process should always be to get the name and the E-mail, because most people aren’t going to buy your product the first time they see it. People who make money online know that they’re probably going to buy it on the sixth, seventh, tenth time they see it, and they’re going to see that because you’re going to follow up with them via auto responders six, seven, ten times and keep driving them back to the sales letter after they’ve given you their name and E-mail.