I am in San Antonio for a couple of days training WSI Internet Consultants on ways to generate leads in the online environment.
Times have been tough for business in both the offline & online world of marketing and many of us are looking for value and ways to eliminate the unnecessary expense.
Online and Website Marketing is a way to reach online communities via your website and convert prospects into buyers. All you need to do is to make sure that your services or products are considered necessary. You also need to market smarter during these hard times.
Online marketing is an effective and low cost way to increase your sales. Below are a couple of tips on how you can increase your sales online during a recession.
Call to Action
When new visitors arrive to your website, there needs to be a clear path to action. This must be visible on the home page and should be clear to the visitor in the first few seconds of arrival. Your visitors should always know what your website is about and what steps to do next.
Pay Per Click
Well written pay per click advertising campaigns can rapidly increase your sales. To do this, increase your advertising budget and target your advertisements around geographical or other demographics. Create your advertisements around each of your specific products and then make sure the advertisement delivers the visitor to the specific page where you describe the product with a clear CTA (call to action) to make sure the visitor takes an action.
Blog Marketing
This is a powerful marketing tool and I believe every business should have one. With a blog you can broadcast your marketing messages to every corner of the world thanks to RSS (Real Simple Syndication) and other Web 2.0 tools. Your blog can also build trust and credibility and encourage conversation with your targeted customer. People will buy from businesses that they trust.
You can use your blog to strengthen your relationships, build your brand, and develop a loyal readership and to get new customers. The key to effective blogging is to regularly write interesting original content that your targeted customer will be interested in. A major benefit of blogging is that it can dramatically improve your search engine rankings of your website.
Social Networking
Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to name but a few are great Social Networking websites and tools where you can engage with other people that shares the same interests. Social Media Marketing is powerful and if done correctly, can increase visibility to your products and services drastically.
There are hundreds of social networking sites out there; many are focused around a topic, interest or particular group. Find one that your targeted customer is active in and participate yourself. You need to do some research on this.
Stay in touch
Marketing to your past customers can also be a quick way to increase business leads and sales. Email marketing can keep them coming back to purchase other products. In most businesses, 80% of the sales come from 20% of the customers. Stay in touch with your biggest customers on a regular basis. You aren’t trying to sell anything, you are just touching base. You will be surprised on how much more business can come from this.
Leave a comment below if you require more information regarding online and Website Marketing.