The Silent Avatar Speaks

Happy New Year and let’s hope you don’t buy into the doom and gloom sayers and have a prosperous 2009!

So let’s get into my first post of 2009…

The silly season of 2008 is now behind us , however I wanted to share with you my observations as I went about my shopping with the throngs while paying particular attention to the marketing strategies being used amongst the retailers to win business, and how that can translate to online marketing.
Quite obviously, Christmas is a bumper time for retailers as they vie for the largest slice of the pie they can when people are willing to open their wallets and spend. The same can be said for online marketing.

Pay particular attention to these strategies for boosting revenue and customer numbers:

1. The first thing I noticed was the big, bold claims which literally jumped out at me from the shop windows. If the “offer” (like 20% to 50% off everything” was good enough shoppers would be attracted to come into the store and spend. This mirrors the strategy of capturing the site visitors attention with the view to keeping them on your site.  So what does this tell you? Make your offer compelling. Words really matter.

Learing to write good sales copy is an art, and it takes time, patience and skill to put together compelling sales copy which converts to sales. Top internet marketers will tell you that long sales copy converts better than short copy. though more and more I see video being utilised to deliver the message (and backed up with written copy).  This has a two fold effect by a) drawing in the site visitor by giving the site credibility (OMG.. there is a “real” person attached to this website”, and b) using emotive copy which has an effect on the reader.

2. Another thing I noticed was the “add ons” to lure purchases.  Offers like “buy one, get one free”, or additional products which were given free if you brought a certain product. Again this mirrors offering your site visitors your premium product for a fixed price, and then including additional products to entice them to buy your main product.

3. For customers who didn’t know what to buy as a gift, gift certificates were freely available. This is one area I felt could be utilised by Internet marketers to gain additional sales. Why not include gift certificates on your site? Those who are interested in a particular Internet marketing product could let friends and family know that your product/service you are offering is something they would appreciate as a gift and therefore sending a gift certificate to the recipient would give additional revenue.

4. One thing I found which was completely under utilised was the lack of capturing email addresses from the shoppers. At a time where there is an influx of buying customers not once did I come across an outlet which took advantage of increasing revenue by getting their staff to obtain email addresses to send promotional offers to their customers after the sale.  I find this lack of awareness by business owners and franchises quite astonishing, as in Internet marketing having a list of prospects (and your best prospect without a doubt is customers who have purchased from you before), is guaranteed money in the bank!

5. The other area I felt was extremely under utilised was “up sells”. Again, not one outlet when I purchased an item promoted additional products at the time of the sale. Maybe the staff had no incentive to sell additional items or just couldn’t be bothered, but without a doubt this is sales going begging. McDonald’s would have to be the king of up sells using their “will there be fries with that?” tag to customer orders.  Others call up sells “suggestive selling” and getting into the habit of offering (or suggesting) additional products at the time of sale will significantly increase your revenue turnover. It’s obvious that staff have be trained, or you havr to integrate this trategy into your web site, however with little effort this strategy can be implemented with great results.

One person to bring up sells to the front of Internet Marketing was Mike Filsaime. Mike launched the Butterfly Marketing Script with all the fan fare of a Royal Command Performance, setting the pace for successful Internet product launches. So impressed by the script and the ability to up sell to customers I purchased the script myself (when I purchased it it was significantly less to buy than it is today).  You can get a copy of the Butterfly Marketing script by clicking here.

6. Offering a “gift wrap service”. Again, offering a service like gift wrapping at this time goes a long way to show that you care about your customers, and this type opf service can mean the differnece between whether the customer recommends you, or returns for additional sales.  Gift wrapping can be brought quite cheaply when you are buying in bulk, and having a person whose sole job is to gift wrap and get email addresses can significantly increase customer perception of your business.

Any online business can offer this service as an “addon” either by charging a small additional fee, or using it as a selling point to increase sales.

7. Last but not least it was plainly obvious that the larger stores started planning well ahead for this time of the year and the additional revenue it would bring. It just makes plain good sense to plan your promotions well in advance to give your business every opportunity to succeed.

I’m the silent avatar… and I have spoken

Did you notice any other areas of marketing which were used (or not used) which impact sales? Let me know by posting a comment.

Tags: Advertising, Business Tips, Copywriting, Internet Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Online Business, Promotion and Marketing, Web Development by the silent avatar
No Comments »

When you have your own business at home, getting into Internet Marketing can quickly raise the status of your business. One of the most important facets to having success with Internet marketing is how you are generating traffic. Without traffic coming to your site it is impossible to have success. Therefore, you must evaluate how you are going to generate a high traffic volume.

The thing about running your own business at home is that you can never have too much traffic. You should always be looking to increase your traffic volume so that you can increase your income. Typically you want to find a few solid marketing techniques and stick to them as opposed to using several different techniques. But you may have to try out several before you find the most effective method for you.

One technique to raising your traffic volume with Online Marketing is submitting a site map to search engines. What this will do is give your site a better chance of being examined by the search engines. With more visits to your site from the search engines spiders, your sites will gradually climb higher on the search engines thus increasing your traffic.

Most people are aware of affiliate programs, but few are familiar with how they can benefit the site they already have. If you set up your own affiliate program for people to sell your product or service, you will have a business within a business. Not only will you have other people selling for you, your traffic will increase as well because of two separate businesses.

Perhaps the easiest method of increasing your traffic volume is posting in forums. There are literally hundreds of thousands of forums to choose from. The key is to post in forums with a lot of people that are all interested in the niche you are involved in. After spitting out some fresh and enticing information, you can reel people in to your website immediately.

The last method is one of the best on the Internet right now: article marketing. Article marketing can do a number of things for your site. First, it allows you to write fresh and enticing content that readers will be astonished by. Second, you can promote or write about whatever people are looking for here. Lastly you can place a bio box with your URL in it to direct customers to your site after submitting the articles to article directories.

Traffic is essential to having success with Online Marketing. It can be difficult having your own business at home, but using a few of these marketing techniques can make life much easier for you.

I’m the silent avatar.. and I have spoken

Any comments? Leave a comment, or ask a question and I will respond with wit and expertise (what a combination)

Tags: Internet Marketing by the silent avatar
No Comments »

Evening all,

This post I want to bring you up to speed on what you should be doing when your website is finished,

I’ve always said that a website is nothing more than html code stuck in cyberspace unless you dive traffic to your site.

Given that there are over five and a half billion websites on the Internet and growing at an exponential rate, this figure is enough to scare the pants off any would be Internet merchant, or home entrepreneur.

There’s good reason that Alexa does not rank website unless they are in the top 1000,000 as below this you really aren’t getting enough traffic to warrant being part of their statistics. So unless you are considering throwing a LOT of money at advertising and branding, don’t worry about having a high ranking,

Your goal is to drive a steady stream of people to your website to give you an income, or increase your “authority status”, through your blog, articles and  comments posted back to your website.

To produce a website and not consider how it is to be marketed is just plain stupid.

The time money and effort to produce a website is for naught unless you promote your website.

So how do you promote your website?

This will depend on the type of website (which I will discuss later) but at the least all website owners should be doing the following:

1. Using their web address in all of their emails, along with their tag line.  I wrote about it using email signature sometime back. Review the post “Quick Tip – Using Email Signatures“.
2. Using their web address on all stationary – including business cards, letterheads, with compliment slips, invoices, brochures… In fact anywhere you can put your web address – put it! This includes all electronic stationary as well.
3. If you have a motor vehicle have a magnetic sign made to put on the side of your car (or if you’re really committed get the car sign-written with your website details. Driving around as much as we do this is a great way to advertise your website. Just think of how many people can see your mobile advertisement!
4. If you have a shopfront your web address should be clearly visible from the street.
5. If you have a product tag, your website address should be on the tags, labels, stickers (whatever)

It takes time for something new to sink into people’s consciousness. Repetition is the key. Whether you website name is reinforced through a variety of means doesn’t matter.

Let’s now look at specifics…

[Read more →]

Tags: Advertising, Blogging, Business Tips, Internet Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Newsletters, Online Business, Promotion and Marketing, Traffic Generation, Web Development by the silent avatar
No Comments »

I’m sure you are aware that there are a lot of people making money online today. You have probably heard about some of the higher profile Internet Marketers who rake in millions of dollars every year. They also travel all around the world going to Internet Marketing seminars where they discuss the latest money making strategies.

These seminars are located in places like Orlando, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Australia. Not bad places to go to work huh? Besides the bonus of being able to enjoy some sun and local attractions while they are in these cities, they get to discuss the latest Internet Marketing techniques and brainstorm ways to make even more money.

Ah, the life of the Internet Marketer. It’s a tough job but someone’s gotta do it .

Are you interested in getting into Internet marketing? Maybe you’re already doing it but you’re struggling to make a buck. Maybe you’re really skeptical and believe that there is no bloody way the little guy can make money online.

You might be thinking… sure it’s easy if you have a lot of cash to pay people that are experts to write content for some hungry profitable niches that you know nothing about. Or sure it’s easy to make a lot of money if you have a list of 100,000 people to pitch to.

Well come on people, do you really think that’s all it takes to make a mitt full of cash with Internet Marketing?

Well, actually you’re not too far off. It could very well happen this way.

So now you are probably thinking that this solidifies what you’ve always thought. The little guy can’t make money online…

… Nonsense!

You gotta remember that these big time money making marketers were in the exact same position as you are now. They struggled and struggled trying to make money and many times thought they would never succeed.

But they never gave up and they kept on trying different things until something worked. Then all they did was repeat the process (aka rinse and repeat)

Once they started making money, they would re-invest this money in tools to make their tasks faster and they would start going to these big Internet Marketing conventions.

This leads to more money, more Internet Marketing friends and Joint Venture partners. It’s a great way to build your business.

If they can do it, there is no reason why you can’t do it. Plus you have an advantage… today there is so much more information available to help you make money online. Most of the big names in Internet Marketing didn’t have all this information available to them and had to figure it all out through trial and error.

So if you are just a beginner and have no idea where to get started, here is a series of easy to follow videos called “Fast Cash For Newbies” that will save you the pain of trying to figure out everything on your own.

Learn how to make more money with capture video on screen strategies.

I’m the silent avatar… and I have spoken

Tags: Blogs, RSS and Podcasting, Internet Marketing, Joint Ventures, Online Business, Promotion and Marketing by the silent avatar
No Comments »