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State specific techniques for Alabama
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Who's bringing in money on the net?
You're doing business in Alabama or perhaps Alabama is where you reside. You're promoting a product or service and you want to sell your product or service to customers who reside in Alabama and other places as well. You've read that customers are spending money head over heels each day shopping online and you're determined to figure out how you can tap this online market.
Truth #1
People do make a sizable income from their website, but it's probably not you.
Truth #2
Site owners that do make the money, are not necessarily more web savvy than you.
Truth #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 any of the following?
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A person involved with Country Bunny Bath and Body
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A entrepreneurial business, with products or services of your own?
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Typical homeowner with a garage overflowing with 'stuff' you want sell?
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A reseller of products or services provided by another source?
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Someone interested in affiliate programs?
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An MLM'er, distributor, or network marketing professional
representing products or services offered by your company?
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A website owner living in Alabama
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Or an individual thinking about doing one of the items listed
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If you are any of the above types, 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 strategies for Country Bunny Bath and Body...
If you wanted to clarify 'what' the Internet is, you could make a strong case for the following:
The internet is a place to find stuff
Listen closely to what people say when they're talking about the web:
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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 find you. It's a little more effort, 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 every 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 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.
Go local by focusing on how this all relates to Alabama or the benefits people from Alabama might enjoy.
The reason a blog or weblog is a must for your online promotion strategy is because it gives you an instant presence on the internet to provide news and information about the activities you are doing. Your blog or weblog 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 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 publish 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 promotion. A good place to spend time at is Technorati http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html
Once you understand the basics of how tags apply to marketing, 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, Country Bunny Bath and Body, 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 web site owners have learned 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 "dating" 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:
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91% of opt-in subscribers are more likely to buy... (Source: eMarketer Inc)
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94% of US adults who have subscribed to a permission based (opt-in) email have made a purchase from the retailer... (Source: eMarketer Inc)
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40% of adults with net access, subscribe to or have received opt-in e-mail in the past three months... (Source: Bigfoot Interactive)
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 compelling 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 sign up for 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 website visitors. Email as a delivery vehicle has lost some of its punch 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 complex as they sound and are worth learning about.
STRATEGY #4
A pay per click search engine marketing campaign will drive more website targeted traffic at a lower investment than any other form of website marketing. Period. Yet the biggest majority of website owners ignore this route to a continuous flow of highly motivated visitors.
Consider these statistics.
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 home run 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 5076 on page 561 under the keyword phrase "find me if you can" because that's where some search engine employee (or worse yet, some robot) thought your site 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 newsletters and eBooks with recommendations about setting up a PPC marketing campaign. Many charge you way more money than it's worth (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 expert search engine techniques and keyword brain storming ideas to get you started:
- 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 Alabama Marketing Strategy
Go local. Yes, entrepreneurs from Alabama search for things using "Alabama" as their keyword. That means you must include search ads targeting Alabama and bid on keyword phrases containing Alabama.
The path to making money with any pay-per-click marketing campaign is preparation and consistency. Do your homework at the start 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 11 months as you learn the ropes. Set a monthly budget that you are comfortable with (perhaps $75 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 strategies 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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