Home Business Marketing Secrets

admin — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:44:47 +0000

Tom McMULLEN asked:

If you want to make sales you need to do some home business marketing unless you are lucky enough to get all of your customers from word of mouth. Most businesses, no matter how large are not that lucky.

People from kids to 80 year olds now buy things on the internet. It is becoming second nature to compare product prices, and look at various merchants online before they actually make a purchase.

This is good news for business owners who are using the internet to make money. You can sell more, and make more money if you are being found online. So how do you do that.

First of all, if you do not have a website or blog of your own, you need to get one. Part of your home business advertising efforts will revolve around sending traffic to your site and you can not do that effectively using any old replicated or affiliate website.

When you set up your site make it easy to get around in. One mistake many business owners make is they clutter their site with useless junk that actually detracts from their main products. Solicit some outside opinions on your site as it is easy to fall in love with your work and be blinded to any problems it may have.

Another important factor to keep in mind is how fast does your site load. Slow loading sites lose visitors who will not wait around. They will leave and go somewhere else like your competitors.

If you are unsure about how to lay your site out look at what the top websites in your industry are doing. This should give you some ideas for your own website.

One more point to keep in mind is that everyone who visits your site will leave. It is to your benefit to have an opt in form where they can join your newsletter, or access a free report.

You will greatly enhance your home business marketing efforts if you capture information for future follow up. Imagine that you have thousands of visitors coming to your site everyday and only a small percentage will buy anything from you.

The best thing you can do is get as many names and email addresses to follow up with and turn some of those into future customers. You can not do that if you let everyone leave to never hear from you again.

So how do you get visitors to your website? You do that 2 ways.

1. Offline marketing

2. Online marketing

If your business has a strong offline presence already you can add to that by adding your website to any newspaper ads, yellow pages, radio, flyers, direct mail, your business cards, and so on.

It is amazing how many small businesses and home businesses do not have a website. You can use this to your benefit when you get one.

Online marketing can come in many different ways as well. Much of this will depend on your budget. Here are a few ideas.

1.Pay per click advertising with Google, Yahoo, MSN, 7Search and other pay per click search engine programs.

2. Article marketing where you either write, or hire a writer to write, articles about the niche your business is in. Include a bio box for your readers to find your website in.

3. Ezine advertising is a great way to cheaply reach thousands of readers who are on someone else’s list. This is great when you do not have a list of your own to email to.

There are many directions your home business marketing efforts can go. Always remember that the more eyeballs you have viewing your website the more potential business you can have.

Internet Business Marketing Ideas to Pull in Website Sales

admin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:30:07 +0000

Cynthia Minnaar asked:

To prepare to pull in more sales from your website it is a sensible internet marketing idea to have a stat counter on your website or use Google Analytics so that you can see, inter alia, exactly where your traffic is coming from, the keywords being used, the entry and exit points from your site, the number of pages they visit and how long a visitor stays on your online home business website.

These statistics will help you fine tune your website to encourage visitors to stay longer and explore your website and to either make a purchase or sign-up for your newsletter or affiliate program and ultimately pull in more sales from your website.

The bounce rate referred to in Google Analytics means that visitors go no further than the page they entered your site on. If your bounce rate is high it could mean that you are targeting the wrong keywords and they are arriving at a site that they have no interest in.

Perhaps the colour is off putting or there is nothing to grab there attention in the top fold of your website that is visible in their browser when your site opens. Is your site easy to navigate? Can they get back to the home page once they click on a link to another page of your site? Put yourself in your visitors’ shoes and take a tour of your own website to find out! These are all areas you could look at and make gradual adjustments to entice the visitor to explore your website.

You could change the position of the products or opportunities that you are offering. It is amazing what can happen when you change two links around or move a banner to another position on your website.

Be sure to have a call to action on your website and make it highly visible so that it attracts the people’s attention and makes them click.

An internet marketing idea that a lot of people do not like but have been proven to work is the use of pop up windows or slide in advertisements on your web site. They grab your visitor’s attention because they jump right out at them.

Be sure to keep track of and analyze all your promotional efforts. Concentrate on the ones that work and drop the ones that don’t work. Don’t waste your valuable time.

You know what it takes to get traffic to your website so you need to get the most from each one of your visitors. You could add a message board or chat room to your web site. If people enjoy it, they will revisit your web site to participate regularly. Ask them to subscribe to your ezine, bookmark your site or complete a survey and remember to always offer them something free in return.

Keep yourself up-to-date with the latest internet business marketing ideas by buying internet business books, ebooks, private site memberships and joining appropriate forums. The internet and technology moves at such a rapid pace that you need to keep studying, learning and applying all the new website promotional ideas you can.

If you find a banner is not performing well on your website change it to a text link. Try a different colour text to draw attention to a specific area on your site or add some tiny graphics to break up the text and attract attention.

Visitors are looking for information so be sure your website offers unique, interesting and informative content for them to read. Keep the sentences and paragraphs short and to the point, try using lists, short tips and short articles as many people have little time and just skim over text but at the same time hope to find really useful information.

You can trade content with other ezine publishers or web sites. This is also a powerful and effective way to place your links on other targeted web sites.

Nothing is static on the internet and that includes your website. Be continually on the lookout for internet business marketing ideas to pull in more sales. Tweak and change things on your website to adjust to the expectations of your visitors and this will generate online income for you.

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Home Business Marketing Secrets

Internet Business Marketing Ideas to Pull in Website Sales