My Buy Essay

Educated Consumers

Not too long ago, a colleague asked me why we invest so heavily in consumer education. We have made a conscious decision to spend marketing dollars on consumer education for a very simple reason. Educated consumers are simply better customers.

Lets take a closer look at why educated consumers are better customers.

Less Technical Support.

1.) Educated consumers require less technical support. The reduced technical support results in lower overhead costs. Often educated consumers can further reduce the support burden by assisting or educating other customers or potential customers in forums, newsgroups, user groups or elsewhere in an industry community.

Often users with a strong technical background or understanding will often assist in the forums and provide users technical support. The result: an educated consumer is a happy and helpful customer.

Easier Sales.

2.) Generally speaking educated consumers have a better understanding of the technology, how it can be used and how it will benefit them. A customers understanding that an application will result in saved time, can easily justify the software’s expense. Cost becomes less of an issue when long-term value is understood.

Reasonable Expectations.

3.) I hate to say it, but back in 1996 when we started out, consumer ignorance resulted in unrealistic expectations. Consumers purchased expecting that software would do their dishes and vacuum. Regardless of how well the software did what it was designed to do, if a customer expects it to do something else, they will not be a satisfied customer.

Educated consumers have realistic expectations and understanding of what can and cannot be accomplished.

Kinds of Consumer Education

1. Articles.

Educational articles not only propagate the success and understanding of a technology, but well written articles will often establish the writer as an industry expert.

Example .feedforall.com/newsletter.htm (on the bottom)

2. White Papers.

Real world examples of how other users are using software to resolve problems or save time are often great illustrations of technology in action.

Example .notepage.net/whitepapers.htm

3. PPT Demonstrations.

Power point presentations not only assist with user education, but also can be used by User Groups to further evangelize and educate potential users.

All in all, educated consumers result in a happier user with realistic expectations. Ignorance often results in dissatisfaction and unrealistic expectations while education leads to long term happy and helpful customers.

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One of the most effective methods of getting traffic to a sales page is very well-known within Adsense circles (used to send traffic to Adwords advertisers through the Adsense program), but not as well known for traffic generation directly to sales letters.

That method is the content site. There are literally thousands of people making a living online by simply creating content sites, placing Google Adsense code on those content sites and collecting a check from Google every month.

There are literally thousands of others who have sales pages selling products and services who have never created a content site and pay for their traffic through the Google Adwords program. Much of that traffic is coming from those who are creating the content sites and placing Google Adsense code on their pages.

Isn’t that interesting? If you have a sales page selling a product or service; how much could you save by cutting Google out of the loop? A lot! If you have been creating content sites and depending on Google for a paycheck, how much more could you earn if you sent that traffic to a site selling an information product of your own? A lot!

There is even more money to be gained with this strategy then you might first imagine. At first, you might be tempted to think that the only money being left on the table is the money going to Google for providing the Adwords and Adsense programs. Nothing could be further from the truth. If that was the only money involved, then the percentages that Google keeps are very small… their service is well worth that price.

But it’s not! That money is only the start. Let’s consider the following facts to see that we can actually earn a multiple of whatever you are currently earning from your Adsense check or from your product site if you cut Google out of the loop.

1. The Adsense algorithm isn’t perfect. It often shows ads that aren’t very relevant. If you cut Google out of the loop, you can make your content site to sales page site traffic 100% relevant 100% of the time.

2. Adsense publishers often only get 0.5%-15% click through rates on any Adsense ad due to a number of factors. The method I will show you in this article will deliver 25% of the hotest buyers from your content site to your traffic site continually.

3. Adsense is currently a negative ranking factor on all three major search engines (see RankingFactors.com for more information on that). That means that by running Adsense on your content sites, they are slowly losing search engine traffic month after month. By removing the Adsense and sending that traffic directly to a product site, you will retain your search engine traffic.

4. Many have reported getting banned by the Google Adsense program. You came to the Internet to make money because you wanted more control and freedom over your life. By getting a large percentage of your income from a single company (Google), you are sabotaging your efforts. You are at the mercy of Google just like you were/are at the mercy of any employer.

5. If you are selling a product using Adwords traffic, you also are at the mercy of Google and bidding wars. You must continually improve your conversion ratio or the ongoing bidding wars will eventually eat up your profit. Google (or Overture or any other bid PPC system) is slowly allowing your competitors to either receive more traffic while you receive less… or causing you to pay them more and more of your profit every month as you are forced to raise your bids to continue to receive traffic.

Wouldn’tyou rather generate your own traffic and not be held hostage to bidding wars?

So we are agreed that you want to cut Google out of the loop whether you are a content site creator or the seller of a product or service; right? How?

Well, first of all you will nead to learn the skills of the other side. They aren’t difficult whichever side of the fence you are on. If you are a content site creator, you can pick up InfoProdCreation.com and have your own product 35 hours from now with 5 hours of work. If you are a seller of a product or service, you already have the skills to create content sites. Just write articles instead of sales pages and give information instead of trying to sell. Make it a multi-page site instead of a single page sales letter.

And I’m about to give you the secret to traffic delivery from a content site to a traffic site. It’s very simple. Create a home page with only the following elements:

1. A very short 2 paragraph, 3-5 sentence description o your product or service (no selling here).

2. A large (size 6) link that says either “Enter Site” or “Enter Here”. This link leads to your product site.

3. Three smaller links (size 2) on a single line below the above link that lead to the rest of your content site. They can say “Widget Articles”, “Widget Reviews”, “Widget Forum” or whatever types of content you have on your content site… about widgets in this case.

You will find that about 50% of the traffic on a content site eventually ends up at the home page. You will find that about 50% of those that end up at the home page will choose to click the “Enter Site” or “Enter Here” link. You will find that those 25% of the content site visitors (50% of 50%) will be fairly pre-qualified to read your offer. In many, many split tests, this traffic has out-performed Google Adwords traffic.

Have fun and please leave a comment and let me know how much more money you are making with this strategy. I would love to hear from you.

There is nothing more than I enjoy than marketing products on the net. Products which have been thoroughly researched and 99.9% of times are exactly the one that I myself use. I use the net each and every day and update myself with exactly what is happening online. All of those little changes, which most times result in big changes. And I meet these by adjusting my campaigns and ideas accordingly. I also love receiving those constant spam messages into my email inbox what a great way to monitor exactly what others are doing. Overall in the research I have done over the past few months here are a few points I would like to address, that will have a direct cause and effect impact on your own online business promotions.

It stuns my senses just how many scams and dodgy products are currently doing the rounds. It is a disgrace and all that it achieves is to directly wipe consumer confidence away from products which actually have a genuine worth and value. There is absolutely no benefit in promoting a product or service which does not have real value or effect. The internet has gained over time this reputation for making a simple quick buck. This is very far from the truth, but there are quite a few people out there who believe this point, and are doing there best to really make those quick bucks at any price. But these type of actions do have consequences and most of these fall back right into the lap of genuine sellers.

If you sell online in any form you really need to ask yourself one question How Long Do You Plan To Operate In Business Online. If your answer is, Forever! Then you have a future. If the answer is, Not Long At All. Then go ahead and just give up right now. I will let you in on a simple truth and it costs nothing! There is absolutely no way to make an easy dollar online, not one way at all. I have seen every scheme and idea in the book and this idea of ‘An Easy Buck’ an idea promoted fairly widely in most dodgy sales pitch’s, is simply not possible. Nor is it possible I might add in offline world business practice.

It is good advice that a degree of knowledge is really a must needed commodity for potential buyers, before they purchase. This action needs to be provided by sellers, in the form of direct product information. A fancy sales pitch without real product information just doesn’t work online. Customers are cautious before spending online already, firstly because of internet security risks and secondly because of the fact they have seen all the gimmicks before. Truth in advertising works online and this is something sellers need to be totally aware of, when marketing there own products. Truth is an absolute online asset, ask yourself the question, would I purchase the product I am selling. And as important are the 2 words, Online Trust.

Customers should be advised to always check their rights and/or the sellers background before purchasing online from any seller, check a sellers online sales policy, about us or contact us page. And if you buy a product you should always have the ability to ask for a refund, within due reason. Consumer confidence is an essential ingredient for good online buying experience. I myself have purchased products with which I have been far from happy. I contacted sellers and have received no response back, so I have had to contact the credit company I purchased the items though re: pay pal etc. And then a sellers response becomes automatic, because there is a negative action in result for the seller.

This type of action is called leverage. If you are unhappy use leverage, but buyers really should not need to resort to this type of action. This is exactly what separates the good sellers from just the plain bad, and exactly one point which ruins consumer confidence which directly effects everyone who operates in real online business. My advice, always follow your sales up with a question, asking for any feedback from your sales. Make sure the customer is pleased with the level of service and product you supply. The customer is number one and always should be treated with this exact respect. If you are serious about long term online success then this type of action is more than necessary. And always remember if you get any negative feedback, fix or negotiate the problem immediately and effectively.

The sharks and internet get rich quick artists have a short life span online, but as soon as one disappears another replaces them. Their actions do put the spotlight onto genuine sellers and we need to be wary of this and act accordingly. Being aware of potential changes and actions of others that may have a direct negative effect on our business provides us with a real option to make our online opportunities more successful. Turn a simple negative into a positive and this is an approach that we can always use no matter where in life, to make things simply better. The only substance that will make you a success in any form is plain hard work. There is no substitute for hard work, and if you already understand this exact fact you are on your first steps to reaching success already.

Promoting your internet business can be done in hundreds of ways, some of which are more effective, some less so. Others can be total flops. But what matters at the end of the day is simply this: RESULTS…RESULTS…RESULTS. All your efforts should be geared to this one goal alone: Results that put money in your wallet.

So what really works?

1. People just cannot resist…FREE! Yes, FREE!

Imagine: You are out shopping for perfume. You pass the cheese counter. A gorgeous lady offers sample tastings of smelly, bluey Gorgonzola. You hate cheese, it gives you eczema. But you take some all the same &ndash maybe not to eat, but take it anyway as it is free. Lesson: People just love… FREE! If it is free, people will take it. Send out free newsletters; offer a free trial period/services/information. Tease your potential customers, for example, with FREE PC reports or PC scans. After running these free services, alert the customer of problems (potential and existing) on their credit record or PC. Then show them what it is, or repair the problem for a fee. This can be an effective way to get information to your potential customers, create sales or to generate traffic to your site.

2. Turn KNOWLEDGE into traffic to your site.

You will probably be an expert on your product/ business. Leverage this expertise by writing articles and publishing them in an ezine or an article information site. The most effective way is to give away your articles for &ndash FREE! In return, ask the publisher for authorization to include a byline. A byline is a very short summary of the author, his credentials and website. Your byline is a way to claim a ‘visible’ place, a niche on the world wide web for you/your business. With time, readers will come to regard you as an expert in your area of specialization. The logical progress and outcome will be trust in your site as a source of credible information.

3. Click-Click-Click to riches

Some search engines allow the purchase of website rankings.This is an excellent, inexpensive and effective online marketing technique. With Pay-Per-Click programs, you choose keywords that are relevant to your site, and determine yourself the bid prices for each keyword/s. When surfers enter these words, your site will appear with other sites bidding the same words. Higher price bid words rank the site higher in the list. You are only billed for that click if the surfer chooses to view your site. Many Pay-Per-Click programs offer other benefits such as updated lists of commonly used keywords.

4. In the Real World, we live…OffLine

You business may be online, but…remember that in the real world, everything else is offline. Utilise the myriad media advertising available: Newspapers, magazines, the radio, the television. Send out press releases to distribute your information to thousands of people across the country you live in.

5. Net-keting

We are not islands unto ourselves. Many online entrepreneurs share similar marketing ideas as you. Networking with these people via link-exchanges and customer referrals could bring exponential growth to your online business. However, caution must be exercised in the choice of a networking partner: everything that you recommend is a reflection of yourself/your business, hence you owe it to yourself to do due diligence and ascertain that your networking partner is reputable.

To succeed in the mortgage industry, get used to meeting people. Referrals from people who know you and business from Realtors will make up at least half closed loans. And no matter how good you are, if people don’t have some reason to trust you, they’re not going to call.

“Real estate is a contact sport,” said Realtor Barbara Anderson.

She and her husband Ron are the owners and instructors of Success Real Estate Academy in Prescott, Arizona. According to Barbara Anderson there are some specific steps you can take that will keep you on their radar and building revenue:

• Be really, really good at what you do. According to Anderson, this means communication, competitive rates and consistent excellence. While Anderson and her colleagues can’t by law refer their customers to you, they do provide them with a list of three mortgage professionals. You have to be a star to get on that list. Nothing else will work. “I tell my students that they need to get out and interview them,” she said of choosing which mortgage professionals they’ll work with.

• Offer classes. Anderson says that she often has mortgage professionals speak at her school. Many of them will end up on the lists of the fledgling Realtors. Focus on subjects that enhance their professional lives. Topics that tap your expertise to show them how to save money, make more money or attract more clients are all winners.

• Join a Realtor’s association in your area. Like marketing frequency, the more times Realtors and escrow professionals see you, the more likely it is that you’ll come to mind when their list comes up for review. If you can, go the extra mile and offer to host a meeting. According to Anderson, mortgage professionals prove that they’re helpful, congenial and accountable by the way they show up amongst their peers. “It’s just being there for them,” she said.

• Grow your supply of testimonials. Another way to tap the power of who you know is to collect testimonials from your clients. Most people will lend far more credence to another person’s description of their experience with you than with your own assertions of excellence. Put the testimonials on your website, your brochures, your mailings and even on your business cards. A time-saving way to collect testimonials from all of your clients is to program an email request into your customer relationship management (CRM) software. That way, testimonial gathering, like all of the other tasks automatically managed and executed with your CRM, is a zero-work, high-yield proposition. If you’re still shopping for CRM, consider one geared specifically for mortgage professionals.

Taking advantage of service opportunities and association memberships has skyrocketed the revenue and credibility of more than a few mortgage professionals. According to Ron Anderson, it’s the most important thing they can do after establishing professional excellence.

“Their reputation makes a big difference, just like Realtors and doctors,” he said.

As a local business owner you wear many hats and you have countless responsibilities. Consequently you’re not always able to follow-up on opportunities that could advance your business. It is the nature of running a business.

Once an awhile an opportunity comes along that you absolutely should not pass up. In this case it is a business listing on both Google and Yahoo local. Not only can it generate targeted traffic in your area, but the listing is FREE. And here is another reason why you need to jump on this, it doesn’t matter if you have a web site or not, you still qualify for the free listing.

Why would you want a free business listing with Google and Yahoo?

Because they are the two largest search resources online, and account for approximately 78% of the total search results. But even more important is the fact that your customers are searching for local products and services online in greater numbers. In some surveys it is suggest that as much as 25% of all Internet searches are local in nature.

Your customers are turning away from the cumbersome yellow pages. Instead their utilizing the content rich resources of the Internet. You have to ask yourself - if you competitors are listed and you are not, when a prospect searches online which business will most likely end up with a new customer?

How hard is it to list your business?

It can be done in less then an hour. Below are the two locations:

Local Business Center - https:.google.com/local/add/login?hl=en-US&gl=US

Yahoo Local - local.yahoo.com/ (Click on the “Add/Edit a Business “ link at the bottom of the page)

The Benefits of a Local Listing

Besides the excellent exposure, you get to list important details about your business, including:

In addition to company details, Google and Yahoo both provide an interactive map for locating your business. I’m sure most of you have utilized the mapping service of either of these search engines and know how convenient it makes finding a business. Not only can customers find out who you are, but they also can pinpoint where you are.

As I mentioned, neither of these services require a web site, but when you combine your listing with a link to a killer web site you are in position to do so serious customer conversion. For those lacking a web site, Yahoo offers a free 5 page site. It allows you to get a basic web presence until you get the real thing up and running.

At this point few businesses are cashing in on local Internet marketing. For those that are the results show a higher ROI, and an improved customer conversion rate.

The future of your local business will depend on how effective you are in reaching your customers online. Getting a free listing on Google and Yahoo Local is an excellent start.

While it’s great to get a multiple visitors one time on your site, it’s even better to get returning visitors mulitple times. This means that your site really has an interest to them enough that they’ve bookmarked it. Bookmarkers over time will lead to sales, and once you’ve sold to someone it’s always easier to get them to buy from you a second time than getting them to buy the first!

So is your site “sticky” enough to keep them coming back?

Here are a few good ways to make your website “sticky” so that you get repeat visitors that are interested in your site:

1. Have frequently updated, fresh content. People aren’t going to come back if your site stays the same all the time. If they’ve already got all the information they need from your site, why should they return? Make sure that the information is always new, fresh, and changing so that they have an incentive to return. Perhaps even give away prizes or rewards to make them return. Free gifts are a great motivator!

2. Your content must be valuable. Don’t talk “small talk” and fill your site up with gimmicks, bells and whistles, and other page fillers. Make the content on your site actually useful to someone. Use relevant articles to your topic, maybe have free tools or calculators or something that are relevant to your product, or even just keep the people up to date about what’s happening with your product. Refrain from using flashy animated objects, java applets, and midi files. These are only annoying to the surfer and it will discourage them from coming back.

3. Make your site easy to navigate. Especially if your site has got lots of competition on your product or service, maybe they’ll choose your site over your competitor’s site just by the sheer fact alone that they can get around your site easier! People want to get the information they need quickly and easily. Don’t make it a challenge for them or they’ll only become frustrated and click off of your site.

Using these easy and common sensical tips you can make your website “sticky” and watch the traffic increase!

NO matter what business you are trying to build online, you will need sales leads if you are ever going to make sales, and sales leads are what you are trying to generate if you are marketing on the internet. In order to survive, any web site needs a steady flow of qualified leads.

The aim of any lead generation campaign is to build your mailing list. Internet marketers often say “the money is in the list”, which is totally true. A list of responsive buying customers that trust you is worth its weight in gold!

While spam filtering has lessened the impact of email marketing, it’s still a viable means to getting your sales messages out there. In theory, email is marketing is free, although of course its costs you in terms of your time. The theory behind email marketing is that by using a “hook” such as a free product or some other incentive, you can “funnel” interested parties onto specific products and services.

When you consider generating leads via an email campaign there are basically three avenues you can explore: email signatures, joint ventures and safe lists. One word of warning though, and that is avoid spam at all cost, one spam complaint can seriously damage your online business. You should familiarize yourself with the laws concerning spam, and at the very least ensure you include a un-subscription link in ALL your marketing emails. Due to spam, it is advisable that you avoid buying leads, no matter how reputable the company, buying leads can easily lead to a spam complaint, you have been warned!

In its simplest form, email marketing is a matter of putting a signature in all your emails that contains a link to your main product.

If you are looking to vastly increase your list quickly then a joint venture (JV) may well be the key you need. In its simplest form, in a JV you supply the product and a fellow marketer supplies the leads and you share the profits. Hopefully, you will then get the emails of your fellow marketer’s customers, so you can then mail them with further offers.

When considering a joint venture there are many considerations you have to think about, but the main one, before you consider contacting anyone about mailing to their list, is “what’s in it for THEM”, not “what’s in it for me”. NEVER write to a fellow marketer unless you can offer them something of value in return for their help, and that is not necessarily just a share of the profits, be inventive!

Finally you have safe lists. A safe list is a list of people that have agreed to receive marketing emails in return for being able to send their own marketing email. The value of this form of marketing has never been that good. After all you are trying to sell to people who are only interested in selling to you!

You can use pay per click advertising such as overture or Goggle adwords to advertise your site and draw in interested leads.

One other highly effective way of generating interested leads is posting in forums that are related to your area of business. Include a link to your site in your signature and people interested in your sphere of business will often click it if your forum post was interesting.

Three other popular sales lead generation techniques are submitting articles to ezine publishers and article directories, press releases and testimonials for products in your target market.

No matter what lead generation technique you employ you will need a way to capture your leads email address when they arrive at your site.

The traditional method has been to use a pop up or pop under which contains some incentive to get someone to sign up. With the invention of pop up stoppers their effectiveness has dwindled and therefore unstoppable pop ups (also know as hover ads or slide in ads) have evolved. This new generation of pop ups are built into your webpage and as such cannot be stopped. Simply do a search on Goggle for “unstoppable pop up” and you are sure to find a software solution to produce these types of pop ups for you.

The other alternative is to use what is called a “name squeeze page”.

In essence a name squeeze page is a web page whose sole purpose is to capture an email address.

They generally contain a small amount of information about the product or service you are selling as a “teaser” for the reader and will contain a sign up form, with a message like “to find out more simply fill in the form to be immediately directed to further details on this amazing product”.

A name squeeze page not only helps build your list, this information can also be used with certain software to help personalize your site for your visitor, a technique that has been shown to increase sales. Again, simply do a search for name squeeze page generators.

No matter how you generate sales leads there is one thing always to bear in mind, and that is to be effective your leads must be in your targeted market. If, for example, you are selling internet marketing products, then it’s no use advertising on a site that is all about scuba diving!

When you start to build your online business, ensure you include a well thought out sales lead generation strategy from the beginning. Do not make it an afterthought; this should be in place from the very beginning if you want your business to be a success.

If you are a loan officer or mortgage broker looking to keep your name, and your products and services in the face of the public, you may want to consider internet marketing.

You may be thinking to yourself that you are not savvy enough with a computer in order to market via the internet.

Well, these days you don’t have to be, thanks to blogs.

One of the best ways to market yourself and your products is with your own personal blog.

Trust me, it is easier than you think.

Anyone can set up a blog in no more than five minutes and it is absolutely free. It is only a matter of finding a blog provider, which can be done very easily with a google search.

Once you have set up your blog, including domain name and template which the blogger will help you out with, you will be good to go.

On the blog, you can post a biography of yourself, as well as your picture, and the products and services you have to offer.

Now, you can add your blog address to your business card, and tell people in face to face networking to visit your blog.

Blogs are also great for long distance loan customers that you work with. By telling them to visit your blog, they can see your picture and will be able to put a face with your name. This is a great way for them to find a comfort level with you.

By using the internet as a marketing tool, you have added a great weapon to your arsenal of marketing strategies. Best of luck.

How can a business that is already successful in reaching their local market extend their marketing reach online? The good news is that the traditional offline marketing that has always worked so well will still work at least as effectively to promote your online presence. The other side of the coin is that to promote your business online, the old traditions need some updating to keep up with online marketing best practices.

Any business should already have a marketing plan and objectives from their offline initiatives, so let’s jump straight into the technology aspects of online marketing. I generally look at the following things first, because they can be done at very low or no initial cost, and also because subsequent specialist marketing won’t be as successful without these things in place. Of course there is a huge amount more to online marketing, the extent of which could easily be justified as a full-time university course. This is the pre-school notes, to help get your site to a starting point on a low budget if you can’t quite afford to be calling in the big guns to market your site for you professionally just yet.

1. Site optimization

This is always the place to start, because the effectiveness of everything which follows is often dependent on this being done up front. When I say this, I include great content and intuitive navigation as the basis for everything. Only once your site has been optimized for intelligent visitors should you tweak it for search engines, but never at the expense of the former.

Search engines look at things like keyword density and how specifically a page matches a specific search term. Of course this is extremely over simplistic, but nevertheless a worthwhile starting point. By identifying 10-20 key terms you would like search engines to pick up on, and creating specialised pages with relevant information which utilises those terms in the right way, you will start getting much better results once your site has been indexed.

You will find that it is best to use specialised keyword phrases, for example “precision-engineered bolts” is likely to get better placement than a generic term like “engineering parts”. You should also work to create a single page for every key phrase you want picked up on, and include the key phrase in the title, meta tags and use all the words in the body of the page at a high density relative to other words. You should also preferably include the key phrase in the page title, as well as the URL of the page, for example, “.mysite.com/precision_engineered_bolts/”. Each page should use a different title, specifically based on the key phrase utilised in that page’s content.

Your site should really be developed using XHTML and CSS these days, table-based design has numerous technical problems associated with it, and it results in a lower keyword density than the current standards.

Ideally you should use a content management system which incorporates and facilitates all of the above quickly and effortlessly, such as that provided standard with RealmSurfer sites. This will allow you to manage your own content optimization, with a bit of trial-and-error.

2. Linking and indexing

The next step is to get search engines to start to notice and index your site. Google, for example, won’t even look at your site until it has been linked to by at least one other indexed site. Paid inclusion (paying the search engines to index your site on a priority schedule) can be appropriate at this phase if you need to urgently accelerate this process, however it is not always necessary.

Especially useful at this stage can be participating in forums serving your primary target market. This has the dual benefit of creating awareness of your business within communities you would like to reach, and at the same time can help create incoming links to your site, something that search engines pay particular attention to. Ensure that your site details are included as a link in the footer of your posts.

Never use a forum to spam members or submit unsolicited advertising posts — that just has the opposite effect of destroying your business’ credibility. Some forums have a separate advertising section in which it may be appropriate to professionally post information about your services and products. Always make sure that your presence represents a valuable contribution to the community. Stay on topic and be professional, helpful and constructive.

Search engines take many factors into consideration when ranking a site. New sites, for example, don’t initially fare well, however you will find they will allocate some credibility weighting to you the longer your site is up and running. The biggest factor though, external to the site itself, is the number of inbound (preferably non-reciprocal) links from other sites, and the context and wording of the referring link, as well as the ranking of the referring page, and referring site. The popularity of those sites plays a big role, as well as how high up in the site’s own hierarchy the link is. By way of example, a link from .news.com.au counts for much more than a link from a very deeply embedded page like .somesitesomewhere.com/subdirectory/theattic/someoldforgottenpage .

3. Implement online marketing partnerships with high-profile online businesses

This is where you can really benefit if implemented successfully. When I was previously running the e-commerce business unit for a large company, rather than pay high-traffic websites to advertise on their sites, which can be very much untargeted, we offered them a percentage of sales. In other words, we provided them with the banners to promote the service, and implemented simple tracking of where our visitors were coming from, and then paid a percentage of the total revenue to the referrer. This resulted in very low marketing costs to us, and the referring sites started placing more and more emphasis on their side to ensure that we got top placement whenever they were low on paid inventory.

Another effective medium-term strategy is to provide content of value to sites which serve your target market. They benefit from your topical content, you benefit from the exposure and links.

4. Dabble in paid keyword advertising

Only at this point should you actually be starting to pay for online advertising. These forms of advertising, however, allow you to specifically target certain people, which means you get a much better return on investment than simply advertising to everyone. This can take some trial and error to find what works best, but the amount you pay should be less than the amount of business you generate, and should normally include full measurement and reports on a reasonably regular basis, preferably online.

For this purpose, I often suggest starting with Google. They are by far the most popular search engine globally, they have a very good reputation, provide reporting online, and are probably the most likely to produce results initially. Yahoo and MSN also have excellent paid link systems, and they keep getting better all the time. The latest offerings from all three are now also starting to allow targeting to specific demographics, a trend that is likely to become the preferred way to target online audiences once the capabilities for this type of targeting matures.

5. Involve an internet marketing specialist

At this point, you should be starting to see some results, and be in a good position to ask some intelligent questions. Preferably deal only with a business that has a good reputation (ask for client contact details so you can find out how effective they are), and has preferably has been around for at least a few years. They should also provide very detailed reports (ask for examples of these up front), and be able to explain in detail how they go about promoting your site, on which sites they do so, the number of views and clickthroughs per site per day, and how effective each promotion was relative to the next. They should also meet with you at least once a month to review successes and failures and involve you in the decision-making process of where next to promote your business. At least monthly, you should be in a position to evaluate your cost per sale for various promotions, and to change your focus accordingly.

Especially be wary of businesses who claim unrealistically quick results, or base their business mainly only on search engine submission, or use deceptive practices to try and “trick” search engines into ranking you higher. These usually at best produce no value, and can in some cases lead to your site being removed or ranked very low by search engines.