Many web sites today are not viable, meaning they are not doing what they are supposed to – i.e. producing leads and/or sales. Now I’ll qualify that statement by saying that I’m talking about web sites that are for a commercial purpose. Those sites should be producing leads and/or sales for the business, and it is possible. But in order to do it, you have to drive traffic to the site.
There are certain key actions to driving traffic to your site and getting it producing leads and/or sales.
What’s Working Now
In the Internet’s short history, the marketing actions that have been truly effective have changed just about each year. These are the actions that are working right now, and these are the actions you should take as part of a campaign to make your site successful:
a. Paid Search Engine Advertising.
b. Content Hub Submissions
c. Collecting Identities on Your Web Site
d. Making sure your site is set up to take advantage of traffic
e. Email Marketing to Your Own Lists
f. Search Engine Optimization
I will explain each action.
a. Paid Search Engine Advertising
The term refers to paid advertising that a company can run on search engines, so that when a person enters a specific search term or phrase, your ad appears.
For instance, if someone goes to a search engine and enters "antivirus software", you will see regular search results that come up for this term, but on many search engines, you will also see paid advertising, usually labeled as "sponsored links." That means that some company that sells antivirus software has paid to have that listing appear when anyone enters the search term "antivirus software."
Similarly, if you entered "golf equipment," you would see the regular listings but also a bunch of sponsored links from companies selling golf equipment.
One can choose any word or phrase at all and choose to have your ad appear when people enter that phrase on that search engine. However, you will want to select words or phrases that are at least somewhat popular, i.e. that a lot of people are entering. That way you get decent exposure for your ad.
One of the biggest advantages to this type of advertising is that you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad and thus arrives at your web site. You start an account with one of these search engines, put some money in it, and every time someone clicks on your ad and comes to your site, your account is debited. This is has an advantage over most other types of advertising, where you pay whether there is any result or not. With paid search engine advertising, you only pay for actual traffic coming to your web site.
A number of regular search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, HotBot, and Lycos, are currently including sponsored links as part of their search results. For Google, the most popular of all the search engines currently, the sponsored links appear in the narrow, far-right column (and sometimes along the top), whereas the regular search results appear in the wider left-hand column. Google’s paid ads program is called "AdWords."
For more information on paid search engine advertising, see our article on the subject, here:
http://www.realwebmarketing.net/article21.html
b. Content Hub Submissions
A content hub is a type of web site that has lots of informational articles on it. A person with a web site, who needs article content for their site, can go to a content hub and download articles for free on a wide variety of topics, and then post them on their web site. These content hubs allow you to search by topic or category or by keyword.
Writers can post articles on the content hubs. The benefit for the writer is that he can mention his company and include his web site address in the article. And that provides in-bound links to his web site, from the content hubs themselves, and from every web site where that article is posted. In-bound links, meaning links from other web sites that link to yours, increase link popularity, which is one of the main criteria used by Google and other search engines to determine web site ranking.
So the content hubs service both writers who want to get the word out on their company or products or services, and people who have web sites who need article content.
For more information on content hubs, see our article on the subject, here:
http://www.realwebmarketing.net/article24.html
c. Collecting Identities on a Web Site
One of the most vitally important - and often neglected - aspects of designing a web site is to include ways to capture identities of people visiting the site. This means to get the name and email address (minimally) of people who visit the site, so you can promote your product or service to them in the future.
Let's say that you have a web site and it is set up so that people can buy your products directly online. Well, assuming your site has well written sales text on it, a certain percentage of the people visiting the site will buy the product online.
But what about the people who don't buy the product right away? In all likelihood, you spent hard-earned resources getting those people to come to the site, either through online or off-line promotions, search engine positioning, personal hard work, etc.
Now if you don't do anything to capture those identities, those resources are completely wasted. The chances are slim that those people will come back another day and buy. There are just too many web sites vying for the web surfer's attention. And some research says that most prospects have to hear your message 3 or more times before they will buy from you.
The solution is to include reasons on your site for the person who is interested, but not going to buy right away, to give you his name and email address now. This allows you to build an email list, which over time, can become a formidable part of your marketing strategy. Free offers of various types, usually of information, are the best way to do this.
For more information on collecting identities with a web site, see our article on the subject, here:
http://www.realwebmarketing.net/article18.html
d. Making Sure Your Site is Set Up to Take Advantage of Traffic
Once you finally get people coming to your site, you have to have the site set up in order to properly take advantage of the traffic. Aside from having free offers, this includes:
1. Having well written and compelling sales text
2. Having photos of your product readily visible, especially if the product is unusual in some way
3. Provide a “BUY” button, large and easy to find on every page
4. Make sure the buying process is easy and intuitive
I have seen mistakes on web sites, with omissions on all of the points mentioned above. Any one of those mistakes can kill your sales, and missing out on all four is certain death.
e. Email Marketing to Your Own Lists
Once you have built up an email list, the thing to do is to start marketing to that list with email, either with individual offers for products or services, or with newsletters that contain information articles as well as information on your products or services.
4-5 years ago, emailing to rented email lists was a great way to find brand new customers. Unfortunately, certain unscrupulous people overdid it, emailing to email lists endlessly, and ignoring accepted ethical practices that eventually became law in the Federal CAN-SPAM Act. As a result most people are very skeptical of promotional email unless they have “opted in” to some list.
So that’s the key. Once you have gotten someone to opt-in to your list, they have given you the OK to send them newsletters or other material. This now gives you the opportunity to give that person more familiarity with you and your company and product.
For years marketing experts have said that it takes multiple exposures to you or communications from you to get someone to buy. In other words, someone is not as likely to buy from you the first time they hear of you. It takes repeated exposures, to email to them on a regular basis.
For more on email marketing, see our extensive article here:
http://www.realwebmarketing.net/article14.html
f. Search Engine Optimization
It’s important to have your web site set up in order to get the best possible rankings from search engines. There are a lot of factors involved and let’s just say that unless you have a LOT of free time on your hands, it is best to have a professional handle this for you.
Summary
Once again, the most important actions to take in order to get your web site producing, are:
a. Paid Search Engine Advertising.
b. Content Hub Submissions
c. Collecting Identities on Your Web Site
d. Making sure your site is set up to take advantage of traffic
e. Email Marketing to Your Own Lists
f. Search Engine Optimization
And there is one more factor, maybe even more important than the rest – which is to do these actions regularly, month after month.
Submitting one article to a couple of content hubs isn’t going to accomplish very much. But if you submit a new article twice a month, to the top 50 hubs, for several months, you’re really going to see results. The same goes for paid search engine advertising, emailing to your opt-in lists, and search engine optimization.
The key is doing them on a regular basis and keeping it up for several months. Then you will start seeing some real results.
