Subscribe to our newsletter below:

Newsletter - September 2006

5 Low-Cost Ways to Promote Your Web Business

Pay-Per-Click Marketing: Testing Ad Effectiveness

5 Low-Cost Ways to Promote Your Web Business

Running a business is a constant struggle to balance return on investment, between the amount you invest and the number of customers you convert from that investment.

People often focus on the conversion rate to drive a good ROI, but if you can reduce the amount you need to invest, you can dramatically boost your profitability.

So here are five low-cost ways to use the Internet to promote your business:

1. Spread the Word with Every Piece of Correspondence
A great way to promote your company without any additional cost is to attach a short blurb to every piece of correspondence you send, online or offline. Use a signature in your email or forum posts to advertise your company. Add your website URL and slogan to your personal stationery, fax cover sheets, envelopes. You never know when your blurb will strike the right chord with someone.

2. Write Articles on Your Business Topics
While it may not seem to make sense to work for nothing, you can drum up a lot of low-cost business by writing free articles on topics relevant to your company. Focus on articles packed with relevant information, and also include low-profile blurbs and links to your company. Submitting these articles to some appropriate online and offline publications will get the word out to tons of people for the cost of a little bit of your time.

3. Network Online
Networking is a powerful tool for connecting with potential customers, and there are plenty of ways to do it for free online. Join communities, start a blog, offer Q&A sessions on your website. By "meeting" people online, asking questions, and offering your own expert advice, you will increase the pool of people who trust you and are willing to hear about your company.

4. Promote Your Business with Freebies
Everybody loves freebies - and they love to tell their friends about them, too. By offering free goodies, from informative White Papers to fun downloads, you can effectively promote your business and encourage people to promote your business for you.

5. Offer Web Seminars or Online Presentations
Web seminars and online presentations are amazingly inexpensive and easy to run these days, and they put you in a prime position to spread the word about your expertise. By giving free lectures about areas related to your company, you can market to hundreds or thousands of people at one time. Offering a special discount to seminar attendees will have people flocking to your website.

Using every opportunity to spread the word about your company without spending large amounts of money will boost your business with minimal risk. If some of these methods interest you, call 01242 570330 or email me now.

Does your web site need an MoT?

The number of web sites now online has doubled in the last three years to about 80 million. Half of these sites were developed after 2003.

Like any other part of the marketing mix, a web site will become dated. Technology moves quickly, and as users gain experience, their expectations increase.

Does your site meet those heightened expectations? How can you tell? Here are some tips on how to review your site and ensure that it is still tuned-up and delivering peak performance.

Have a look at the competition. Have their web sites been updated? Have the competition introduced new features or new functionality? Are they found above you in the search rankings?

Does your competitor's web site look better than yours? - Be honest with yourself and ask your colleagues for their opinions. Look for new features that will improve your ability to present your message clearly and motivate interaction.

Is your checkout process streamlined? - Many sites manage to get a visitor excited about their products or services, but then lose them for the ridiculous reason that they can't make an online purchase easily. How can you improve your purchasing process so that your site visitors will have a positive buying experience?

Do you need to improve your site's visibility? - Being "found" or discovered is the key to Internet success. So make sure that you are being listed for search terms that are relevant to your business. Millions of people use search engines to locate the products and services that they need; make sure you fully utilise this free advertising opportunity.

Does your site look dated? - Visual appeal moves rapidly, and all too quickly your website can look like last year's model. Appearances matter - look at a 'respray and valeting' for your site. Update your graphics, add new and current visuals, and clean out any old or outdated information.

Your business has grown and developed. - Chances are that in the last couple of years your business has developed and evolved. But has your web site kept pace with these changes? Make sure your visitors know that they are dealing with an active, growing and dynamic company.

Out of date content. -Many sites were developed without upgrading in mind. New technologies and new site design means that you can build in easy-to-use content editing functions to help keep your content fresh. New and relevant content will keep your site visitors coming back for more.

Your customers have changed. - If you have been measuring your site's performance, you have a clearer insight into what your customers need. If your products and features no longer cater to the needs of your core audience, then you should think about re-tuning them.

We can help you with all these issues. If you would like a no-obligation consultation, please call 01242 570330 or email me now.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing: Testing Ad Effectiveness

One of the amazing things about advertising is that a tiny difference in the text of an advertisement can have a huge impact on how customers react to it. So how can you tell which wording will work for your campaigns?

You could always just rely on your luck and business sense, and hope that what sounds good to you also captures the minds and imaginations of your potential customers. Of course, if you are wrong, you will have wasted your campaign budget and lost your chance to convert dozens or hundreds of people to paying customers.

For that reason, most marketers prefer to test, test, test. Before committing money to a specific set of phrases, ensure that your text is appealing and memorable - the best it can be.

One of the most effective ways to accomplish this is through pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns with contextual advertisers such as Google or Overture. PPC advertising can be very cost effective, as you can determine your advertisement's positioning by how much you are willing to pay per click.

PPC campaigns make excellent testing grounds for four reasons:

Changes are quick and cheap to make. You can add or delete new ad texts to a PPC campaign at any time, and at no cost.
The changes are instantly apparent. Within minutes of coming up with a new idea, you can have it online and attracting customers. Similarly, you can quickly remove the ad if it doesn't work.
The reactions to the changes are easy to track. Within hours, you can see whether the click-through rate on the search pages increases or decreases. You can also track whether site visitors attracted by a particular ad have a higher likelihood of making a purchase.
You reach a broad segment of the population. With PPC testing, you don't need to worry that your text's success is an anomaly, because you will have a huge test audience.

PPC test campaigns are useful not only for planning successful advertising campaigns: you can also test the most effective word combinations in your website text or your title and description meta tags. You can see which keywords elicit the greatest response from the public, and then target those keywords in your web pages.

Testing is the key to ensuring you have the best chance of convincing your site visitors to buy from you. For a fast, easy and low-cost way to hone your advertising message and website into a conversion machine, you can't beat pay-per-click advertisements.

In the next segment of our PPC tutorial, we will discuss how to use PPC to bring your products and services directly to customers who are most likely to be interested, vastly increasing your return on investment.

If you would like to learn more, please call 01242 570330 or email me now.

How Giving Away Content Helps Business

Strong, persuasive web content is a treasure for any website owner. Good copy not only helps convert site visitors into paying customers, but it also helps search engines find and index your website, making it an important source of free advertising.

So why are businesses and writers of all shapes and sizes giving away content? And why would you want to consider doing this yourself?

Article directories are repositories of information, with hundreds of articles on any topic, from artwork appreciation to zebra breeding. Authors contribute new pieces to these sites every day, and thousands of interesting and informative articles are available for use. Amazingly, all these articles are absolutely free to use on your website or in your newsletters.

Why would businesses and enthusiasts spend their valuable time writing articles to give away for free? The answer lies in one little catch that comes with using this free content: you must keep each article exactly as-is, including links within the text and a resource box or bio at the end of the copy.

By allowing people to freely distribute articles with links to related information, the authors increase awareness of their own websites, while boosting their relevancy and page ranks on Google and other search engines.

Many search engines calculate the number of sites that link to any given page when determining the page's position on the search engine results pages. Each published article boosts the number of links to a web page.

Meanwhile, website owners also benefit from the idea, because they can add solid content to their site at no cost. This helps to establish the website as a reputable, knowledgeable source of useful information to visitors, while also improving their ranking in search engines such as Google.

This is a win-win situation for author and publisher alike.

If you want to boost awareness of your site, try submitting some general-interest information to article directories, with a link back to your primary website in the resource box. Every site that picks up the article will be spreading the word about you, while improving your site's attractiveness to search engines.

Search engine marketing has become one of the most important marketing channels on the Internet. Publishing relevant, quality-driven content, with links from your resource box coming back to you from throughout the Net, will greatly enhance your online marketing activities.

If you would like to know more, please call 01242 570330 or email me now.

Autoresponder Email Courses

Every e-commerce business's dream is to create a website so compelling every visitor will immediately become a paying customer. Unfortunately, most people who visit your site simply won't be ready to put money down on the spot. They will need more convincing, more time to think it over. For this reason, an autoresponder email course can save customers who would otherwise be lost to you.

An autoresponder email course is a multi-part informational series your site visitors opt to receive. At pre-determined time intervals (e.g. every day, every two days etc.) over a specified period, they receive one short email article containing information relevant to your message which interests them.

How does this help your business? Autoresponder email courses perform several important tasks for you at one time:

Autoresponder courses establish you as an expert in your field. People are most likely to buy from companies that show they know what they are doing. By providing visitors with useful and relevant information, you establish yourself as a trusted source, increasing the likelihood of making sales.
Autoresponder courses prevent your visitors from forgetting about you. With so many offers available, it is far too common for a site visitor to take some time to think about your service, and forget to return. However, when your site visitors are reading your autoresponder email course, they will be reminded simultaneously to return at regular intervals.
Repeat contact without additional work. Studies have shown that it can take up to seven contacts to convert site visitors to paying customers. An autoresponder course can do this for you, without any additional investment of money or manpower.
Build your opt-in email list with an autoresponder course. Asking your visitors to opt into your mailing list to receive your autoresponder course will build your permission-based email list quickly, and give you additional opportunities to market to visitors.
Give your visitors something to tell their friends. If your site visitors find your autoresponder courses truly informative, they will probably spread the word about them. This will vastly increase your site traffic and the number of people who join your permission-based marketing list.

If you want to increase the impact of your website and drive more sales, autoresponder email courses are a fast, effective way to convert more site visitors to paying customers. Don't lose that majority of potential customers who are not willing to buy on their first contact; give them a reason to keep coming back to your website.

To find out more, call 01242 570330 or email me now