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Localized strategies for Colorado
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Are people pulling in money on the web?
You're interested in Colorado or perhaps Colorado is the state you reside. You're promoting a product or service and you wish to market your product or service to visitors to your site who live in Colorado and other places too. You've read that internet surfers are spending money head over heels every day shopping online and you're dead set on figuring out how you can get your share of the pie.
Fact #1
People do make good money on the web, but it's most likely not you.
Fact #2
Business owners that do make the money, are not necessarily smarter than you.
Fact #3
Those that are successful online are not especially gifted or better educated, but rather they have learned a few tricks of the internet trade. The difference in the 'haves' and 'have-nots' is not measured by any number of college degrees, but rather by the application of a few common sense strategies.
Are you any of the following?
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A person involved with Binney & Smith At Home
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An individual reselling someone else's products or services?
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A small business, with your own products or services?
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An affiliate, linking to other sites to collect commissions on
customers you refer?
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A network marketer, distributor, or direct sales professional
marketing products or services of your 'parent' company?
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Someone with a garage full of 'stuff' you want to get rid of?
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A web site owner living in Colorado
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Or a small business owner thinking about doing one of the above listed items
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If you are any of the above types, this article is for you. You are about to learn precisely what to do this year to help assure that next year your business, website or blog is more profitable.
Internet marketing tips and strategies for Binney & Smith At Home...
If you wanted to clarify 'what' the Internet is, you could make a strong case for the statement:
The net is a place to find things
Listen closely to what internet users say when they're talking about the net:
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"After a little research I found exactly what I needed..."
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"Let me pull-up the TV guide, I think it's on tonight..."
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"Yea, $20 bucks on eBay, can you believe it..."
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"Welcome onboard, how'd you hear about us? Online?"
Everybody's looking, finding, or searching for something. Everybody. So, it's your task to help customers and prospects find you. It's a little work, but it's not nearly as hard as you would likely expect. Give yourself about one hour to explore in detail each strategy listed below. After you are exposed to the basics, you might wish to pace your efforts so that each week you tackle one approach until you have each one working.
STRATEGY #1
Everyone is talking about blogging, but do you have a blog yourself? A blog is little more than a forum for you to rattle on about whatever you're interested in... perhaps things related to your business, your industry, or the benefits and recommendations surrounding your merchandise.
Go by focusing on how this all relates to Colorado or the benefits people from Colorado might experience.
The reason a blog or weblog is a must for your online promotion strategy is because it gives you an instant platform to be heard on the internet to provide news and information about the activities you are doing. Your blog or weblog should link to your various other web pages and sites. Blogs are "search engine" friendly and much more likely to get listed in Google, MSN search, Yahoo etc than your website.
Invest a little quality time setting up a 'profile page' on your blog (or connected to your blog) that tells visitors a little about you. Also remember to link to this profile page from your various other web site pages.
Post short but frequent messages every week (more often if possible). Keep it lively, interesting, and topical but above all don't hype and don't write sales pitches.
Need advice? Here are links to a few highly popular blogs that offer top notch services. Some are hosted others you can host yourself.
STRATEGY #2
Invest a little time studying about "folksonomy" or "tags" and how they can benefit your online marketing promotion. A good place to start is Technorati http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html
Once you understand the basics of how tags interact with your site, start using them on your blog and in comments you post to other blogs. Open a complimentary photo sharing account at Flickr http://flickr.com/ to upload photos with descriptive titles and stories related to your business, Binney & Smith At Home, or your products and services. Don't forget your tags!
Open a FURL http://furl.net/ account to save and share bookmarks or favorites linked to all your important web pages. Again, add well worded descriptions and associate proper tags to every bookmarked page.
Never stop linking... return to your other site pages, your blog, and your profile page and add links to your Flickr and FURL pages.
STRATEGY #3
Start an opt-in e-mail list and/or give visitors the chance to subscribe to your RSS or XML feed.
Most website owners have unfortunately found out few people purchase anything on that first visit. How often has anyone ordered or even communicated with you from your site? It takes a bit more "schmoozing" to get past first base, so to speak.
Here's what researchers have learned about who's most likely to buy products or services on the Internet:
What's the bottom line here? No matter how much traffic you manage to get to your web pages or blog, if you do not provide visitors a motivating reason to sign-up for a newsletter, you will likely reduce your opportunity to make sales by over 90%. Add a subscription box to every page that you plan to direct visitors to. Do not list any web page on a search engine, business card, or other promotion if that page does not have a way for visitors to subscribe to your list.
Internet marketing tips Bonus Idea: Many web site owners now offer XML or RSS feeds as an alternative to newsletter subscriptions (not necessarily a replacement). Explore options to offer XML or RSS feeds to your web site visitors. Email as a communication vehicle has lost some of its punch and profitability in recent years. Users are confused about what is quality content in their email folder and what is SPAM and unwanted advertisements. XML or RSS feeds are not nearly as technical as they sound and are worth learning about.
STRATEGY #4
A search engine marketing campaign will generate more website prospects and customer traffic at a lower cost than any other form of website marketing. Without question. Yet the biggest majority of website owners ignore this path to a continuous flow of highly qualified visitors.
Consider these points.
Jupiter-MetaMetrix statistics show that search engine usage is expanding at double-digit rates. Marketing Sherpa studies report that website owners who implement search engine marketing campaigns realize a 24% - 500% greater revenue.
A Georgia Tech study shows that 85% of its participants discovered websites through search engines and were searching with the intent to make a purchase.
And... eMarketer research showed that over the past year, search engine marketing has grown tremendously. Growing up to 125% in last year alone -- (US statistics). Paid search accounts for over 30% of total online ad investing.
All these millions are being spent by entrepreneurial businesses, large businesses and people just like you. It's called PAY-PER-CLICK ( PPC or COST-PER-CLICK ) and it allows you complete control over your search engine listings. No more optimizing, waiting and praying only to end up as listing number 5524 on page 452 under the keyword phrase "why bother" because that's where some search engine employee (or worse yet, some robot) thought your search engine listing belonged.
Pay Per Click places you behind the mix-master where you can whip-up well worded PPC ads (called listings) with spiffy headlines (called titles), interesting descriptions (10 to 20 words or so) and bake up perfect matches between keywords and keyword phrases. YOU chose and the destination or landing pages you want to link search customers to.
With pay-per-click, site owners decide how high in the rankings (or search results page) they want to appear by bidding penny by penny for the top spots. Keywords popular among web site owners cost more while other more diligent site owners find less expensive keyword niches that may bring equally good results for much lower per-click bid rates.
The unique advantage in PPC advertising is that you can bid on dozens or hundreds of keywords connected to your products, services, business or affiliate offer while never spending a penny until someone CLICKS your listing. Add to this the fact that some keyword listings in some PPCs can start as low as 1 cent a click.
There are many expert websites and eBooks with recommendations about setting up a PPC marketing campaign. Many charge you an arm and a leg (be careful), but the best we've found is free and is available to anyone joining this internet marketing newsletter.
Recommended Newsletter: Musings of an Internet Guru
Follow link below to join (search engine eBook complimentary)
Join: Musings of an Internet Guru
Here are a few very useful search engine suggestions and keyword brain storming ideas to get you started:
- On the subject of ad copy (the words which will comprise your numerous different listing titles and descriptions) we can sum it up briefly: RELATE your listing to the keyword the searcher has typed, SPARK curiosity in their minds to encourage a visit, be TRUTHFUL, be BRIEF, be CLEAR, don't HYPE, and FILTER out bad clicks.
- FILTER OUT BAD CLICKS? Yes, if your product is NOT for certain searchers, be clear upfront before they click. Example: If you bid on the keyword 'herbal shampoo' because your product is an herbal dog shampoo, make sure your ad copy reads: for dogs, pets, or animals. If you only fulfill orders in Canada, state this upfront in your listing ad copy. There is no need to pay for a visitor click if you cannot service a particular customer's needs. Use words to filter out bad clicks.
- There are many good resources to help you with ad copy, writing, and knowing what to say about your product. We recommend the eBook by Kim Klaver, "If My Product's So Great, How Come I Can't Sell It". Click here for a complimentary 'Mini-edition' of this eBook.
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The Colorado Marketing Secret
Go local. Yes, entrepreneurs from Colorado search for stuff to buy using "Colorado" as their keyword. That means you must include listings targeting Colorado and bid on keyword phrases containing Colorado.
The quickest way to success with any pay-per-click marketing campaign is preparation and consistency. Do your homework upfront to find less expensive keywords to bid on, write a quality title and description for your search listing and stick with it for at least 8 months as you learn the methods. Set a reasonable budget that you are comfortable with (perhaps $51 a month) and consider that your tuition in the search engine school of hard knocks. After you graduate, you'll begin to see results. It's an education worth the time, money and commitment.
STRATEGY #5
Don't start any other methods until you have the techniques outlined in this article implemented. However, you should invest in yourself by reading articles and eBooks on internet marketing.
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ArticleArticle911.com source:
Article researched by ArticleArticle911.com staff and contributors.
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© Copyright 2005 by
ArticleArticle911.com
or article author
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