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Local techniques for California
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Are you taking in money on the web?
You're seeking information about California or maybe California is where you live. You're selling a product or service and you want to promote your product or service to customers who live in California and other places too. You've read that consumers are spending lots of money each day shopping online and you're determined to figure out how you can tap this online market.
True Statement #1
People do make good money on the web, but it's likely not you.
True Statement #2
Those that do make the money, are not necessarily brighter than you.
True Statement #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 Stanley Home Products
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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 California
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Or someone thinking about doing one of the above
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If the things we've listed above remind you of yourself, this article is for you. You are about to learn step-by-step what to do this year to help guarantee that next year your business, website or blog is enjoyably profitable.
Internet marketing tips and strategies for Stanley Home Products...
If you wanted to simplify 'what' the Internet is, you could make a strong case for the statement:
The internet is a place to find things
Listen closely to what folks 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 business to help internet users find you. It's a little work, 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 every week you tackle one approach until you have each one up and running.
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.
Go by focusing on how this all relates to California or the benefits people from California might experience.
The reason a blog 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 things you are doing. Your blog or weblog should link to your other web pages and sites. Blogs are "search engine" friendly and much more likely to get ranked 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 publish sales pitches.
Need advice? Here are links to a few well known blogs that offer quality 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 efforts. A good place to visit 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 no cost photo sharing account at Flickr http://flickr.com/ to upload photos with descriptive titles and stories related to your business, Stanley Home Products, 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 contacted 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 products or services on the Internet:
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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)
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A recently conducted a study on E-mail Newsletter readers and concluded newsletters "create much more of a bond between user and company than a website can"... (Source: The Neilson Norman Group)
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 hamper 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 subscribe to 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 web site visitors. Email as a communication 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 complex as they sound and are worth learning about.
STRATEGY #4
A pay per click search engine marketing campaign will generate more website traffic at a lower cost than any other form of website marketing. Without question. Yet the overwhelming majority of website owners ignore this route to a continuous flow of highly targeted visitors.
Consider these facts.
A Georgia Tech survey revealed that over 80% of its respondents discovered web sites through search engines and were searching with intent to buy something.
eMarketer statistics showed that last year, search engine marketing (SEM) skyrocketed. Growing over 120% -- just in the US. Paid search advertising accounts for about 40% of total internet ad spending.
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 maximum control over your search engine listings. No more optimizing, waiting and praying only to end up as listing number 5727 on page 350 under the keyword phrase "why bother" because that's where some search engine employee (or worse yet, some robot) thought you belonged.
With pay-per-click, web site owners decide how high in the rankings (or search results page) they want to appear by bidding a penny at a time for the best spots. Keywords popular among web site owners cost more while other more diligent web site owners find less expensive keyword niches that may bring equally good results for much lower per-click bid rates.
Pay Per Click puts you behind the wheel where you can steer towards a perfectly worded PPC ads (known as listings) with snappy headlines (known as titles), interesting descriptions (10, 15 or 20 words approximately) and stir up perfect matches between keywords and keyword phrases. YOU make all decisions and the destination or landing pages you want to link search prospects to.
The unique advantage in PPC marketing is that you can bid on dozens or hundreds of keywords associated 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 way more money than it's worth (be careful), but the best we've found is free and is available to people 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 very useful 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 California Marketing Strategy
Go local. Yes, entrepreneurs from California search for stuff to buy using "California" as their keyword. That means you must include listings targeting California and bid on keyword phrases containing California.
The path to making money with any pay-per-click marketing campaign is preparation and consistency. Do your homework in the beginning 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 6 months as you learn the rules. Set a monthly budget that you are comfortable with (perhaps $61 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 energy.
STRATEGY #5
Don't start any other techniques 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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