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Localized techniques for Vermont
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Who's pulling in revenue online?
You're interested in Vermont or maybe Vermont is where you live. You're selling a product or service and you need to market your product or service to customers who live in Vermont and various other places as well. 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.
Truth #1
People do make good money on the web, but it's likely not you.
Truth #2
Site owners that do make the money, are not necessarily smarter 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 Stanley Home Products
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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 Vermont
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Or someone thinking about doing one of the above listed items
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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 guarantee that next year your business, website or blog is more profitable.
Internet marketing tips and techniques for Stanley Home Products...
If you wanted to state simply 'what' the Internet is, you could make a strong case for the argument:
The internet is a place to dig up things
Listen closely to what folks say when they're talking about the web:
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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 task to help internet users find you. It's a little tedious, but it's not nearly as hard as you might 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 once week you tackle one approach until you have each one working.
STRATEGY #1
There's no getting around it, you've gotta have your own blog. A blog is nothing more than a platform facilitating you to rattle on about what you might be taking part in... maybe matters related to your business, your industry, or the benefits and recommendations surrounding your various products.
Go local by focusing on how this all relates to Vermont or the benefits people from Vermont might experience.
The reason a blog 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 things 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 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 consider linking 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 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 spend time at 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, 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 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 "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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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 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 reduce 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 sign up for 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 site visitors. Email as a marketing 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 unsolicited advertisements. XML or RSS feeds are not nearly as complicated as they sound and are worth looking into.
STRATEGY #4
A pay per click search engine marketing campaign will drive more website targeted 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 motivated 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 small 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 5835 on page 701 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.
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 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 anyone 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 expert search engine suggestions and keyword discovery ideas to get you thinking:
- Sometimes people time in web addresses in those search boxes! So bid on those if the search engine allows it: 'www.website.com', 'website.com', 'http://website.com' and every combination full or partial you think a searcher might actually type.
- Match up keywords with words in your ad copy. Even though a 'spa', a 'hot tub', and a 'whirlpool' might mean the same thing in your mind, if a searcher types in 'hot tub' and your listing says: "Relax and save in your new Spa", you will miss out on many interested customers.
- Think negative... yes, people search for herbs that can kill, plastic surgery pitfalls, mlm scams and sundry other peculiar things. Invite them to explore your related listing. Do you offer cosmetics or skin car as an alternative to plastic surgery? Is you mlm a beacon of light in a sea of seemingly dubious scams?
- Get creative with interest spikes in the news. 'Mad Cow' might be a great keyword for your all vegetarian product line. The 'SARS' outbreak might have generated millions of searches that your 'immunity booster' could have benefited from (just don't make any false claims). And where were all the bra ads when a gazillion people typed in 'Janet Jackson' after the 2004 Super Bowl surprise?
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The Vermont Marketing Winning idea
Go local. Yes, people from Vermont search for stuff to buy using "Vermont" as their keyword. That means you must include search ads targeting Vermont and bid on keyword phrases containing Vermont.
The secret to making money 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 11 months as you learn the rules. Set a monthly budget that you are comfortable with (perhaps $65 a month) and consider that your investment 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 methods 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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