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Localized techniques for Virginia
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Are you bringing in revenue online?
You're interested in Virginia or maybe Virginia is the place you live. You're promoting a product or service and you want to promote it to people who live in Virginia and other locations too. You've read that internet surfers are spending money head over heels each day shopping online and you're dead set on figuring 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 brighter 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 Two Sisters Gourmet
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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 Virginia
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Or someone thinking about doing one of the above
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If any of the above activities sound like you, this article is for you. You are about to learn precisely what to do this year to help guarantee that next year your business, website or blog is enjoyably profitable.
Internet marketing tips and methods for Two Sisters Gourmet...
If you wanted to simplify 'what' the Internet is, you could make a strong case for the following:
The net is a place to search for information, products and services
Listen closely to what folks say when they're talking about the internet:
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"Look what I found online yesterday..."
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"I'll check MapQuest to find directions..."
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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..."
Everybody's looking, finding, or searching for something. Everybody. So, it's your job 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 understand the basics, you might wish to pace your efforts so that once 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 local 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 web campaign 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 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 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.
STRATEGY #2
Invest a little time reading 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, Two Sisters Gourmet, 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 opportunity to subscribe to your RSS or XML feed.
Most website 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 "schmoozing" 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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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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People tend buy from non-brand names AFTER they subscribe to newsletters put out by those same web site owners.
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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)
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 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 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 effectiveness and profitability in recent years. Users are confused about what is quality content in their email folder and what is SPAM and unsolicited advertisements. XML or RSS feeds are not nearly as technical as they sound and are worth investigating.
STRATEGY #4
A pay per click search engine marketing campaign will create more website traffic at a lower investment than any other form of website marketing. Without question. Yet the biggest majority of website owners ignore this technique to a continuous flow of highly qualified 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, large 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 5108 on page 583 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 an arm and a leg (be careful), but the best we've found is free and is available to people 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 tips and keyword discovery ideas to get you going:
- When cooking-up your keyword phrase list, use an extended "keyword discovery" phase. Your competition, like you, will do basic keyword research. You can only beat them if you take it to the next level, and that won't happen in the first day. Having a large number of targeted keywords in your campaign is a side effect of an extended period of brainstorming, discovery, research, or whatever you want to call it.
- Not very wood with gords? There is a hidden target market of quality visitors who type in incorrect spellings of what they are looking for. Site owners often overlook this. In a recent 30 day period on a major search engine at least 108 people where searching for a 'buisness'? Hundreds more were searching for: 'vitiamins', 'vitimans' and even 'vitamens'... You can bid on misspellings and have very little competition on the search results page.
- Assume that at least half your keywords will be rotten eggs, that is, no one will ever look for them and end up at your site. Because there is no extra cost to add as many keyword phrases as you can think up, treat them like biscuits and bake-up as many as you can... 100 or more keyword phrases for each destination page you list in any PPC search engine.
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The Virginia Marketing Strategy
Go local. Yes, business owners from Virginia search for things using "Virginia" as their keyword. That means you must include search ads targeting Virginia and bid on keyword phrases containing Virginia.
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The path 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, write a quality title and description for your search listing and stick with it for at least 9 months as you learn the rules. Set a reasonable budget that you are comfortable with (perhaps $90 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 effort.
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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