Online Profits
The rewards that await you if you’re willing to put a little time and effort into understanding the Internet and E-marketing are enormous.
This is a vast area – but we want to give you 11 strategies that you can begin using immediately. Our one aim is to give you what you need to grow your business and increase your profits. These are very good starting points:
1. Get clear on what the purpose of your website is
Otherwise it can just end up a confusing mess. Is the purpose of your website to sell something, give information, nurture relationships??? It’s up to you – but get clear from the start. For example, the purpose of your website is to give leading edge information to your clients that can help you significantly grow your business and increase your profits. Simple as that. So get clear on what you want your website to be and focus on it.
2. Remember that your website should not be about you
OK it sounds weird but the truth is your prospective clients and customers aren’t that interested in you. They’re interested in what you can do for them. There’s a fundamental difference. Sure, you can have an ‘About us’ section and your website certainly needs to convey your pre-eminence in your field. But beyond that it should all be about your prospective clients. Step into their shoes. Meet their needs. Address their fears and concerns. Above all, give them solutions and solve some of their problems. Then you’ll have a website that people will want to visit.
3. Give People Free Stuff.
Don’t hold back. If the purpose of your business is to add real value to peoples’ lives – start now. Give visitors to your site information they can use that will make a real difference to them. This can be from news letters with interesting facts to free direct mail literature.
4. Collect Email Addresses
You would not believe that most businesses still do not collect the email addresses off everyone who contacts them. You may as well take a huge bucket of cash, go to the top of a mountain and throw it of the top. Every time a business fails to capture someone’s email address they’re turning down the opportunity to contact them for FREE, for weeks, months and years ahead. This is insanity. It’s also insane not to offer visitors to your website an easy way of submitting their email address, so they can see if you’re as good as you say you are.
5. Once you have Email Addresses – use them!
Of the businesses that are good at collecting email addresses, hardly any of them follow up by communicating regularly with their customers and clients in an effective way. You don’t just have to use email to sell stuff. You can use email to thank people for their business, make them a special offer, give them a free article or report, send a newsletter, recommend a product or service they may be interested in, ask for referrals, share some news that may be interested in, ask why they’ve not done business with you…the list is only limited by your imagination. The point is this. You could grow your business by 10, 20 or 30% just by adopting an effective e-marketing strategy.
6. Automate your Emails with Autoresponders
One of the reasons that Email Marketing is so powerful is because if you set it up properly, your entire email operation can be automated. Using autoresponders you can decide who gets which emails and when they get them. You can even create a system where people who purchase a particular product or service receive a series of emails leading them to further purchases. And the entire process is automated – which means that you can lie on the beach while the profits roll in.
7. Test Pay Per Click Advertising
How would you like your business to be at the very top of all the search engines without spending months on search engine optimization that probably wont work anyway. You can do this simply and rapidly with pay per click advertising. This enables you to get to the top of the search engines but you only pay when someone clicks to go to your website. So unlike most internet advertising, you only pay when someone visits your site. How much you pay will depend on how much competition there is amongst other advertisers in your category.
As with all marketing, the golden rule is to TEST and measure the results.
8. Use Audio on your website
The internet now offers the opportunity for you to speak directly to your customers and clients. Adding audio to your website can be very powerful and is not expensive. if you want to stand out from the crowd, aim to get audio on your site within the next month.
9. Consider Testing Internet Advertising
The collapse of internet advertising after the dot com boom, gave advertising on the web a bad name. But for many businesses, it’s become a key part of their marketing mix. Consider testing internet advertising on a small scale – if it’s successful and you are able to role it out, it can be a superb way to reach large numbers of potential customers and clients very rapid.
10. Forums
We also strongly recommend that you join as many forums as possible as this is huge form of advertising for your business and again grows awareness for you in a big way. You don’t have to just join forums to do with your trade / profession, join all types of forums you will be amazed at how much traffic this can drive to your site.
11. Branding
When you carry out any form of advertising through any media coverage, be it internet, direct mail, in person, vehicle livery or magazines make sure it is identical every time. What we mean by this is that you don’t confuse matters with different themes to your business, keep it the same at all times, giving across the same message over and over again, the most important message of all is to delivery exactly what you say, PAY ATTENTION TO DETAIL, with all communications and the message you give to your customers.