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Localized techniques for Virginia
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Are you taking in money on the web?
You're interested in Virginia or maybe Virginia is where you live. You're marketing a product or service and you wish to market it to visitors to your site who reside in Virginia and other locations too. You've read that internet surfers are spending lots of money each day shopping online and you're determined to figure out how you can tap this online market.
Truth #1
People do make a lot of money online, but it's likely not you.
Truth #2
Business owners that do make the money, are not necessarily more web savvy than you.
Truth #3
What separates those that make money and those that go broke has more to do with common sense approaches than graduate course degrees. 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 website owner living in Virginia
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Or a small business owner thinking about doing one of the items listed
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If the things we've listed above remind you of yourself, this article is for you. You are about to be taught step-by-step what to do this year to help ensure that next year your business, website or blog is excedingly profitable.
Internet marketing tips and methods for Binney & Smith At Home...
If you wanted to simplify 'what' the Internet is, you could make a strong case for the argument:
The web is a place to dig up information, products and services
Listen closely to what internet users say when they're talking about the web:
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"Do a Google, and get back to me with on what comes up..."
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"Yes, I compared 4 like items and found the best buy online at..."
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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..."
Everybody's looking, finding, or searching for something. Everybody. So, it's your task to help them find you. It's a little harder, 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 understand the basics, you might wish to pace your efforts so that each week you tackle one approach until you have each one mastered.
STRATEGY #1
There's no getting around it, you've gotta have your own blog. A blog (or weblog) is little more than a platform helping you to yack away about what you're taking part in... maybe things related to your business, your industry, or the benefits and testimonials surrounding your products and services.
Promote your business locally by focusing on how this all relates to Virginia or the benefits people from Virginia might enjoy.
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 stuff you are doing. Your blog 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 and your business. 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 premier blogs that offer affordable services. Some are hosted others you can host.
STRATEGY #2
Invest a little time learning about "folksonomy" or "tags" and how they can benefit your online marketing efforts. A good place to explore 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 free 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 invitation to subscribe to your RSS or XML feed.
Most online business owners have discovered 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:
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People tend buy from non-brand names AFTER they subscribe to newsletters put out by those same web site owners.
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People don't tend to buy on those first dates when they first visit the site. It's those newsletters that people sign up for - on the sites - that do it.
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91% of opt-in subscribers are more likely to buy... (Source: eMarketer Inc)
What's the bottom line here? No matter how much traffic you drive to your web pages or blog, if you do not provide visitors a compelling reason to sign-up for a newsletter, you will likely cut back your opportunity to make sales by over 90%. Add a subscription box to every page that you plan to direct internet traffic 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 join your list.
Internet marketing tips Bonus Idea: Many website 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 site visitors. Email as a marketing vehicle has lost some of its penetration and profitability in recent years. Users are confused about what is quality content in their email inbox 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 create more website prospects and customer traffic at a lower investment than any other form of website marketing. Without a doubt. Yet the overwhelming majority of website owners ignore this path to a continuous flow of highly targeted visitors.
Consider these points.
A Georgia Tech survey shows that 85% of its respondents discovered websites through search engines and were searching with intent to purchase.
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.
All these millions are being spent by small businesses, big businesses and people just like you. It's called PAY-PER-CLICK ( PPC or COST-PER-CLICK ) and it allows you full control over your search engine listings. No more optimizing, waiting and praying only to end up as listing number 5148 on page 504 under the keyword phrase "middle of nowhere" because that's where some search engine employee (or worse yet, some robot) thought your site belonged.
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 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.
Pay Per Click positions you behind the the controls where you can whip-up well worded ads (called listings) with zippy headlines (referred to as titles), compelling descriptions (10 or maybe 20 words) and bake up perfect matches between keywords and keyword phrases. YOU chose and the destination or landing pages you want to link search visitors to.
The great advantage in PPC marketing 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 penny or a few pennies a click.
There are many newsletters 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 you by joining this internet marketing newsletter.
Musings of an Internet Guru: Newsletter
Click here to subscribe (free PPC eBook included)
http://www.danhollings.com/class/newsletter.html
Here are a few very useful search engine suggestions and keyword brain storming ideas to get you going:
- If your product or service is something that can be related to a locale, like a city, state or region you may be able to find some ripe tomatoes in phrases like: 'retirement homes in Florida', 'Mississippi flat rate phone service', 'herbal sunscreen for southwestern sun', 'indoor air filters for Los Angeles'.
- Discover more keywords by narrowing down to extreme specifics. People can be VERY specific when they search. Use names of months and years like '2004 tax savings', 'May flowers', 'Christmas of 2005' or 'September back to school supplies'.
Let's say you are marketing a broad line of herbal products... why not get a list of all herbs (there may be thousands) and use that list as a keyword list. Maybe your product doesn't contain every herb on the list, but people searching for any ONE herb specifically may be interested in others. Try specific model numbers, makes and designs if your products are sometimes referred to this way: 'Epson stylus CX6400', 'Apple G5', etc.
- Add adjectives to your keywords like: big, purple, new, cheap, affordable, soft, aromatic, healthy, etc.
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The Virginia Marketing Secret
Go local. Yes, entrepreneurs from Virginia search for things using "Virginia" as their keyword. That means you must include listings targeting Virginia and bid on keyword phrases containing Virginia.
The secret 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, compose a quality title and description for your search listing and stick with it for at least 12 months as you learn the methods. Set a reasonable budget that you are comfortable with (perhaps $77 a month) and consider that your dues 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 energy.
STRATEGY #5
Don't start any other methods until you have the strategies 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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