Tuesday, November 20, 2007
How to Create Your Web Site Marketing Plan
Copyright 2002 Herman Drost
Creating a web site without developing a web site marketing plan
is the same as planning for failure. A web site marketing plan
is essential not only just to survive but to continue to thrive
and expand your business. You should spend 80% of your time
marketing your web site. It's the life blood of your online
business.
When to create your web site marketing plan.
Most of us probably create a web site first before we plan
to market it. However just like a business plan, you should
prepare your marketing strategy ahead of time.
What's the benefit of doing this?
The further you plan ahead the easier will all the pieces of your
web site fall into place.
Give me an example please
Recently I was working on an ebook. Before creating it,
I worked on creating the sales page for the web site.
This meant I had to think first of all the benefits
the ebook would be to my customers plus research appropriate
keywords to weave into my web copy for my web page to rank well
in the search engines.
If I had done this backwards and created the ebook first, I
would have wasted hours of time redoing my web copy to fit my
web site marketing plan.
Here are 7 steps to creating your web site marketing plan:
1. Begin with the end in mind - create a vision what you want your
web site to accomplish. Define a vision statement i.e. "I will
develop a highly profitable web site within 6 months".
2. Set doable goals - depending on your product or service,
write down one or a set of goals you BELIEVE you can accomplish
i.e. "I will turn a profit of $500/month at the end of 6
months".
3. Choose a few marketing strategies - based on your research,
pick a few strategies to begin with that you know you can
accomplish. This could include optimizing your web site for the
search engines, placing an ad in an ezine, or writing an article
to submit to online publications.
4. Create a time line and set a deadline - create a horizontal
line on paper or on a white board (where you can easily view it
each day) and divide this line up into days, weeks or months (or
whatever duration you decide) of your marketing campaign. Then
mark the beginning and ending dates of your campaign, plus what
type of marketing method you are using.
5. Track your results - if you are running an ad either on the
Internet or offline, track its effectiveness. Use ad tracking
software like adtrackz to track all the links you place online.
To know how visitors arrived at your web site and what keywords
they searched on to get there, analyze your web site statistics
(read my article "How to analyze your web traffic".)
With offline ads, use a different code for each ad.
If one ad doesn't work well, rework your copy and try it again.
Once you find one that works, expand your advertising to
other publications.
6. Calculate your return on investment (ROI). - don't just blindly
throw money into an ad and hope for the best. Keep track of how
much money you initially invested in the ad and what profit you
made in return. i.e. if you received $7 back in profit for every
dollar you invested in your pay per click strategy, then you are
running a very successful marketing campaign.
7. Constantly evaluate your results - after each marketing
campaign, evaluate which strategies worked best and which ones
did not. Repeat those marketing strategies that are profitable
to get maximum results from them. Throw out or refine the ones
that did not work well and try some different ones.
Tips
Write your vision, goals, strategies and time
line on a piece of paper.
Keep this next to your computer so you can refer
to it from time to time so you don't lose your focus. It's easy
to get distracted, particularly when it's no longer fun to act
on your marketing plans and they just become a chore to do.
Be disciplined - stay focused on your vision, goals, strategies
and dead lines. Staying on track with your time line and
accomplishing your deadlines, will give you a great sense of
accomplishment. You also can be assured you are making progress
towards achieving a profitable web site.
Try a number of strategies at the same time - by utilizing a few
different strategies together, you have a better chance of
getting more visitors to your website. For instance each week
you could place an ad (free or paid) in an ezine and write an
article. Daily you could participate in the various popular
forums, newsgroups and message boards on the Internet and
include a link to your web site in your signature file.
Conclusion - creating, executing, tracking, testing and
evaluating your concrete web site marketing plan will greatly
enhance your chances of building a profitable online business.
7 Essential Steps to Web Site Promotion
7 Essential Steps to Web Site Promotion
Copyright 2002 Herman Drost
Web Site promotion should be the major part of your web site
marketing plan. It's not enough just to design a beautiful web
site and put in on the Net. Promoting your web site has to be
done constantly if you want to get a continuous stream of
traffic to it. If you don't drive traffic to your web site, your
online business venture will soon fail.
1. Create a web site marketing plan - if you fail to plan then
you default to a plan for failure. When designing your web site,
create a plan on how to market it as well. Try to put yourself
in your customers shoes when doing this. It's too easy to just
view your web site from your own perspective. You need to have a
clear vision for your business, goals (short and long term) you
wish to achieve and the strategies of how you will accomplish
them.
Read this article "The 7 steps to creating a marketing plan"
2. Define your target market - many online marketers promote
their web site aimlessly in a field which is too large i.e. they
may use bulk mailing as one of their promotion strategies. Of
course you may get some visitors but the chances are you will
not make many sales. Why? You have not narrowed your field of
customers and targeted them. If you sold Cadillacs online for
instance, you are not randomly going to market to every person
on the Net. Your target market may be previous owners of
cadillacs, or people who routinely purchase luxury American
cars.
Getting targeted customers to your web site, will increase sales,
because they will have more interest in your product or service
than marketing to a general audience.
Read this article:
"How to target your customers and put them in a buying mood".
3. Use several promotion strategies - don't just stick to one
form of promotion because you never know which one will work the
best for you. If you use many channels i.e. search engines,
email marketing, forums, writing articles etc you have a greater
chance of getting more traffic to your web site.
4. Promote continuously - if you want to drive constant traffic
to your web site, you must promote it continuously. Web traffic
is the lifeblood of your online business. For example, you could
constantly optimize your web pages for the search engines,
resubmit them if needed, visit discussion forums every day and
write an article for online publications every two weeks.
5. Calculate your return on investment (ROI) - this means
keeping track of how much money you invested in your marketing
plan and what profit you received in return. This will avoid
wasting large sums of money thrown aimlessly into advertising.
If you calculate it takes 100 visitors to your web site to
generate one sale and with each sale you make $10, then you
shouldn't spend more than 10 cents to get each targeted visitor
and still make a profit.
In order to know which aspects of your marketing campaign bring
the most visitors, you must be able to monitor visitor activity
to your web pages.
6. Analyze your web site traffic - by analyzing your web site
traffic, you can determine what marketing strategies are
successful. You can then change them as necessary, to boost the
sales or services from your site.
Your analysis may include what keywords your visitors are using
to find your web site, which web pages are the most popular and
where your visitors are coming from. These are essential
statistics you should know, instead of blindly promoting your
web site and hoping for the best.
Read this article: "How to analyze your web site traffic"
7. Test, monitor and track your results - to run an effective
online marketing campaign, you need to constantly test what
works and what doesn't. Tracking the response to an ad may cause
you to refine it until it generates a great return on the money
you invested. Once your results are satisfactory, you can then
roll out your ads on a larger scale and spend greater sums of
money.
You should also monitor your site in the search engines, so you
can optimize your web pages for higher search engine rankings.
This will attract more visitors which leads to higher profits.
Web site promotion strategies will differ for everyone, and will
depend a lot on your product, web site and your personality. Try
everything you can, record the results, and see what works for
you.
How to Use an Automatic Responder for Effective Pr
How to Use an Automatic Responder for
Effective Prospect Follow-up
Copyright 2003 Herman Drost
When a prospect shows an interest in your product, if you don't deliver
what he wants immediately and follow up on him, you lose sales.
No matter what you're selling online, using an automatic responder to do
personalized follow up, can drastically increase the amount of sales you
receive. It can also dramatically cut down on manual follow up of your
prospects.
Once a prospect requests your information there are a million and one
things that can divert his attention from it.
For instance:
His computer crashed, he has to wait several days to get it repaired.
His wife called, her car broke down again. He has to pick her up.
The kids are screaming, the dog is chewing on their favorite toy.
His friend needs a ride to the airport...now!
These are just a few examples of what can happen to cause your
prospect to forget about your offer. That's why it is so important to get
your offer in front of a prospect more than once. The ideal number is 5-7
times.
How an automatic responder (autoresponder) works
These programs automatically return a prewritten message to anyone who
sends a message to the autoresponder's email address. They usually allow
for one or more follow-up messages.
Types of automatic responders
Single follow up - this one will reply once only to any message sent to it.
These are very useful for letting someone know that you have received
their mail and will get back to them shortly, or you could inform people
you are away on vacation.
Multiple follow up – these are often called sequential autoresponders.
They can be programmed to follow up over a period of days, weeks, or
months with any number of sequential messages.
Features:
Send multiple follow up messages
Messages can be personalized
A copy of each requestors message can be sent to your e-mail address.
Can create an online form to insert in your web page.
Supports both plain text messages or HTML.
Broadcast email updates to your entire customer list
Attachment support - your messages can contain one or more
attachments.
Tracking URLs - setup a tracking URL to track click throughs from your
messages
Totally Ad Free
Automatically adds an "Unsubscribe" link at the bottom of each message.
Free automatic responder
autorespond-it.com (contains all the above features
limitlessfollowup.com (free perl script)
sendfree.com
getresponse.com
freeautobot.com
Paid automatic responder
rapidreply.net
How to set up an automatic responder on your web site
1. Create a form on your web site to capture your prospects information
(i.e. name and email address.) You can do this on one or several pages or
use a pop-up or pop-under (www.isitebuild.com/web-site-promotion.com)
on your web page. I prefer the pop-under because it is less obtrusive for
your visitors (pops up when the prospect has left the main page).|
2. Write a series of 3-7 personalized follow-up messages regarding your
offer. You have the option of spacing these several days (or weeks) apart
from each other.
3. Set up a confirmation page (www.isitebuild.com/success) to confirm
your prospects successful subscription.
4. Set up an error page (www.isitebuild.com/failure) in case your prospect
makes a mistake filling out the information. Create an email link on this
page that will direct him to your offer. Your autoresponder will still
capture his email address for follow-up.
5. Upload your main page (containing your subscription form), confirmation
page, and error page to your web host. If you are using a pop-up page,
upload this one as well.
6. Check all your web pages before you begin your marketing campaign.
Test the links and check the pages in different screen resolutions, and
browsers.
7. Begin your marketing campaign.
Creating multiple personalized follow up messages to your prospects,
gives them a better chance to respond to your offer, resulting in
increased sales. Using an automatic responder will allow you more
free time to focus on implementing other marketing strategies.
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