Saturday, December 31, 2005

Keys to Targeting Your Internet Advertising

So you got your website up and running. You hired an excellent web designer to craft a perfect home page and satellite pages that will really draw in the visitors and inspire them to buy. You have a beautiful catalog of products with detailed descriptions. You have a section dedicated to the services you provide with praises from past customers. And you have the best online shopping cart service out there so that you customers can buy from you with no hassles and next day shipping. That's great! Now where are your customers?

Driving traffic to your website is a much discussed and much misunderstood venture. There are a million theories out there that claim to drive tons of new visitors to your site daily. There are services that say they will increase your traffic by an enormous percentage if you will only pay them their small fee over a period of fifty years. There are so-called experts who will place your pages on all the best search engines on the net. They claim that with this kind of blanket exposure, your traffic numbers will explode within days.

But the only sure-fire way to draw productive traffic to your website is through targeted marketing. The important word to notice here is "productive." You can draw hundreds of thousands of visitors to your site every year by hosting a giveaway of some kind. Services that search the internet for freebies will have people clicking a link to your site like crazy. But these people are not there to buy anything from you ... quite the opposite. They are empty clicks. There is nothing productive about this kind of traffic. People looking for free stuff will rarely make you any kind of money. And that's what you're after, right?

So target your marketing to the people who really want to buy what you have to offer. How? Start by trying these basic steps...

* Hire an experienced copywriter. The copy that is on your site makes a world of difference in the sales you garner from the internet. Most important to targeted marketing are the keywords found in your title and the metatags in the website's code. An experienced copywriter will know how to determine the most effective keywords and place them strategically in your site's copy. If you cannot afford a copywriter, do some research and talk to your web designer about inserting metatags.

* You can enroll in pay per click search engines. Obviously, google.com is one of these, but most of the most popular keywords are already taken. If you can think of some original phrases that people use to search for your products or services, you can post your ad next to the text that comes up when people search for that phrase. Every time someone clicks on your ad to go to your site, you pay google.com a nominal fee.

* Submit articles to free ezine sites. This is especially helpful if you are a service provider. You can write, or hire someone to write, an article for you about your area of expertise. Give some free tips, offer your experience, and be accessible in the text. Then at the bottom of the article, you get a link to your website advertising your services. Every time someone publishes your article in their ezine or newsletter, they must use your web address at the bottom.

These are just a few of the many ways to ensure you get "productive" traffic. Empty clicks are just that ... empty... and your wallet will stay that way, too!

About the author:

Timothy Spaulding is the owner of the Work At Home Business Resource Center and Home Made Profits providing opportunities to make money online with your own home business.


NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box.
Thanks! :-)

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Internet Marketing and Your Home Based Business

By Timothy Spaulding

All of you home based business entrepreneurs that are trying to make a living working from home know the problems encountered through Internet marketing and trying to get your web page noticed in order to increase traffic and ultimately revenues. Some people just blindly pay a lot of money for advertising, and those who don’t have an advertising budget often times do not advertise at all. Both of these are detrimental to your business, and it does not have to be as difficult as you are making it.

There are many innovative and creative ways to market your products and services inexpensively if not free, so spending a lot of money on it could be wasteful. But if you have no money to spend you may be dooming your business to fail by not advertising. People in this situation should be diligent about searching out all the options for free advertising.

When it comes to advertising, there are many options online and offline that will help you spread the word about your Web page and your product and you will increase traffic and revenues because of it.

First, check out offline venues like local newspapers, television stations, radio stations and the like for free advertisements. Often times these mediums are looking for new local businesses to highlight in their business sections and/or discussions. This is free advertisement and something you should cash in on immediately. Also, make sure your URL is on all of the printed material you use in regard to your business whether it is stationary or free gifts. Having your URL out there will help people remember your address and be more likely to check out what you have to offer.

In addition, while you are making your URL well known, make sure your web page is professional and accommodating to consumers. Make sure that the checkout process is easy and convenient as well as secure. Using payment systems like Paypal might be a good idea for you as well because it allows a variety of payment methods in many different currencies.

Advertising online also does not have to be expensive. You can submit newsletters to online ezines and the like with a resource box with your information, trade links with other relevant web pages, and other ideas similar to this. Certainly, you can do banners and other advertising, but if you don’t have much of a budget try all of the free options before you start paying
money you do not have. As you grow, your advertising budget can grow as well.

As long as you are creative and proactive in finding inexpensive and/or free advertising your business will grow, your revenues will grow and you will not be spending much at all on advertising. Remember, the more people that are aware of your web page increases traffic, referrals and ultimately purchases. Make sure your URL is visible to as many people as possible in as many places as possible.

About the author:

Timothy Spaulding is the owner of the Work At Home Business Resource Center and Home Made Profits providing opportunities to make money online with your own home business.


NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box.
Thanks! :-)