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Localized strategies for West Virginia
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Who's earning revenue on the web?
You're doing business in West Virginia or maybe West Virginia is the state you reside. You're marketing a product or service and you desire to market your product or service to customers who live in West Virginia and other states too. You've read that consumers are spending lots of money each day shopping online and you're dead set on figuring out how you can tap this online market.
Fact #1
People do make good money on the web, but it's likely not you.
Fact #2
Those that do make the money, are not necessarily more web savvy than you.
Fact #3
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. 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 a person like any of the following?
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A person involved with Binney & Smith At Home
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A distributor, or network marketer representing products or services?
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An average "joe" with a garage packed with 'junk' you want sell?
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A small business owner, with your own merchandise?
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A reseller of products or services provided by another source?
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Someone pursuing associate or affiliate programs online?
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A web site owner living in West 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 discover exactly what to do this year to help ensure that next year your business, website or blog is more profitable.
Internet marketing tips and techniques for Binney & Smith At Home...
If you wanted to simplify 'what' the Internet is, you could make a strong case for the following:
The web is a place to find information, products and services
Listen closely to what people say when they're talking about the net:
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"I'll check MapQuest to find directions..."
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"Yes, I compared 4 like items and found the best buy online at..."
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"Let me pull-up the TV guide, I think it's on tonight..."
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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 job to help customers and prospects find you. It's a little tedious, but it's not nearly as hard as you probably expect. Give yourself about one hour to explore in detail each strategy listed below. After you learn the basics, you might wish to pace your efforts so that each week you tackle one approach until you have each one up and running.
STRATEGY #1
Everyone is talking about blogging, but do you have a blog yourself? A blog is nothing more than a platform for you to speak about what you're taking part in... perhaps topics related to your products and services, your profession, or the benefits and recommendations surrounding your various products.
Promote your business locally by focusing on how this all relates to West Virginia or the benefits people from West Virginia might enjoy.
The reason a blog is a must for your internet marketing 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 web pages and sites. Blogs are "search engine" friendly and much more likely to get registered 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 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 publish 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 reading about "folksonomy" or "tags" and how they can benefit your online marketing campaign. A good place to explore is Technorati http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html
Once you understand the basics of how tags work, start using them on your blog and in comments you post to other blogs. Open a no cost 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 online business owners have unfortunately found out few people purchase anything on that first visit. How often has anyone ordered or even emailed you from your site? It takes a bit more "relationship building" to get past first base, so to speak.
Here's what researchers have learned about who's most likely to buy merchandise on the Internet:
What's the bottom line here? No matter how much traffic you generate to your web pages or blog, if you do not provide visitors a good 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 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 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 marketing vehicle has lost some of its penetration and profitability in recent years. Users are confused about what is quality content in their inbox and what is SPAM and unsolicited advertisements. XML or RSS feeds are not nearly as complex as they sound and are worth looking into.
STRATEGY #4
A search engine marketing campaign will create more website targeted traffic at a lower investment than any other form of website marketing. Without a doubt. Yet the biggest majority of website owners ignore this route to a continuous flow of highly qualified visitors.
Consider these statistics.
Research by Jupiter-MetaMetrix shows that search engine usage is expanding at double-digit rates. A Marketing Sherpa report showed that web site owners who used search engine promotional campaigns realize 25% - 490% revenue growth.
eMarketer research showed that over the past year, search engine marketing (SEM) has skyrocketed. Growing nearly 125% in last year -- in the US alone. Paid search advertising accounts for over 35% of total online ad spending.
All these millions are being spent by home run businesses, large 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 5262 on page 546 under the keyword phrase "middle of nowhere" 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 lists and eBooks with recommendations about setting up a PPC marketing campaign. Many charge you upwards of $100 (be careful), but the best we've found is free and is available to you by joining this internet marketing newsletter.
We recommend the following newsletter
(All list members get a free search engine tips PDF)
Pay-Per-Click Search Engine and Marketing Ideas
Here are a few hot search engine suggestions and keyword brain storming ideas to get you going:
- Expand your keywords by asking your spouse, friends, neighbors, relatives, existing customers and strangers to look at your web page and offer their keyword suggestions. In this phase you cannot have too many cooks in the kitchen.
- Put your biscuits in the oven and watch'em rise... That is, use web based 'keyword expanders' and research tools to expand your keywords beyond what you can come up with on your own.
- Remember, searchers may type in something that describes your product, but more often than not they will be typing in words describing their problem. If your product or service solves, fixes, heals, masks or even distracts them from their problem, you want those keywords on your list.
- "In-house" keywords (those used frequently by others in your industry or business) are often the most costly because lazy business owners don't often think beyond their own nose. The result is these limited keywords get bided-up sky high. Customers on the other hand seldom search using "in-house" keywords. Your goal is to find keyword niches popular with customers but less popular with your competition.
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The West Virginia Marketing Strategy
Go local. Yes, business owners from West Virginia search for products and services using "West Virginia" as their keyword. That means you must include listings targeting West Virginia and bid on keyword phrases containing West Virginia.
The quickest way to results with any pay-per-click marketing campaign is preparation and consistency. Do your homework upfront to find less expensive keywords to bid on, think up a quality title and description for your search listing and stick with it for at least 6 months as you learn the rules. Set a consistent budget that you are comfortable with (perhaps $66 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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