Archive for July 8th, 2009

Before you start performing split and multivariate testing in order to improve your landing page conversion rate, there are several important factors to keep in mind.

Factor #1: Product Quality
The web can be a risky place to make a purchase. You can’t touch the product and look at it like you can when you’re out shopping at a store.

Nothing will undermine your conversion efforts faster than a crappy product. It’s extremely easy for unsatisfied customers to post scathing reviews on blogs and forums. Having to defend against a product that doesn’t meet expectations is a losing battle.

Understand that all your multivariate and sophisticated eye tracking tests won’t mean a thing if you’re putting out a substandard product.

Factor #2: Product Demand Versus Supply
This is an area that can trip people up. You may assume that there is a need for a particular product, but unless you have proof of that demand, you’re better off moving on to something else.

How do you access product demand? You use a keyword research tool like Word tracker or Keyword Discovery.

Keyword tools allow you to type in a search phrase and get an estimate of the demand for that keyword (how many people type it into the search engines within a fixed period of time) as well as the supply for that keyword (a measure of the competitiveness of the keyword).

Using a keyword research tool will tell you that writing an ebook on “Fishing” is a losing proposition. While the term “Fishing” is extremely popular, the competition for that keyword is enormous, making it virtually impossible to rank highly in the search engines.

However, the keyword phrase “ice fishing house plans” has a good search volume and very little competition. Writing an e-book on this topic is a much better idea and ranking in the top ten for this search term is very doable.

Before you create a product, do some keyword research to ensure your product is viable and has a low level of competition.

Factor #3: Unique Value Proposition
Every high converting sales page succeeds at helping the customer reach their goals. In other words, you must be relevant to your web visitors. One powerful way of doing this is to spend some time defining your Unique Value Proposition or UVP.

A UVP isn’t a mission statement or a slogan. It’s a statement that answers the question “Why do I need to buy this?” If you can’t quickly communicate the answer to this question, you’ll never achieve a high converting sales page.

Your UVP should be one of the first things your visitor sees. It must be concise, memorable, unique, and explain why the visitor needs to buy.

Factor #4: PREselling
As far as I can tell, the term “PREsell” was coined by Dr. Ken Evoy, a Canadian businessman and creator of the Internet company SiteSell.

Below is Ken’s own words about his PREselling concept.

“On the Net, effective PREselling creates a warm, ‘open to buy’ mindset in your target group and gets that important click through to your monetization source (i.e., your order page, your merchant partner’s sales site, your store, etc.). And PREsold visitors are much easier to convert into customers.

Successful PREselling content ‘works’ at several levels…

1) It has that ‘been there done that’ voice and flair.

2) It has specific knowledge that comes from real experience.

3) It is supported by a depth of useful information good reference material plays an important part.

4) It is spun or positioned in a way that is uniquely yours. Furthermore, it is consistent, from page to page, from e zine issue to issue, from week to month to year. And finally, it is for the customer, absolutely.”

You’ll find a lot of sales pages on the Net that really aren’t complete websites. Well, I suppose you could call them single page websites, but all they are trying to do is sell a product.

Having a one page site is not going to create that nice warm ‘open to buy’ mindset that Ken talks about above. In addition, the Search Engines are moving away from that single page model and looking for sites that provide more substantial value.

Here’s my recommendation. Build a complete business website that not only contains your sales landing pages, but provides lots of additional free content centered around the wants and needs of your target market.

Creating a small site that contains 25 30 content pages based around the theme of your products will do wonders to help PREsell to visitors. In addition, each of these content pages can (and should) be focused on additional profitable keywords that are related to the theme of your product or service. Over time, this will help to bring in even more natural organic traffic from the Search Engines.

By following these four basic factors for website conversion, you’ll be in a great position to naturally increase your website conversion rates.

Corte Swearingen has been a marketing professional for 20 years and is the creator of the Integral Marketing System as well as the founder of http://blog.small-biz-marketing-tips.com

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • LinkedIn
  • Live
  • MySpace
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • TwitThis
  • Upnews
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • YahooMyWeb
  • Blogsvine
  • Furl
  • Print this article!
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • Fark
  • feedmelinks

Hot Niche Marketing Tips

Business anywhere has one rule survival of the fittest. In short, you have to work very hard to stay ahead of competitors. And a niche product is as good as any other product as far as the operations are concerned. So what you need to do is keep abreast of what others are doing as far as online niche marketing is concerned.

• One of the great things about this field is the money possibilities. If you are starting out, you need a good target area. Try and locate one area where the demand is limited to a niche or a small group. It can be anything that you can think of, but just in case you can’t zero in on anything you can always conduct research.

• Niche marketing is easier to tackle than large scale marketing especially for the newcomer. It is very focused to a limited group of people who have certain demands, and it is those demands that are catered to by the niche marketer. A bigger market doesn’t necessarily mean better profit. A large market seems to have a lot more money.

• The temptation of money is indeed hard to resist. But you must understand that big money also means tough competition. New entrants often don’t stand a chance against established players in the world of online marketing, at least at first until they gain experience and momentum.

• You can make a significant impact in the field of niche marketing pretty easily. What you need to do is to find out a consistent demand for a product from a small group of people and deliver the product without any hassle.

• Another great thing about a focused market is that it reduces the problems of advertising. You already know your customers so the ads you place are already targeted to one specific group guaranteeing its success. As a result, advertisements as well as the promotion of products or your company becomes a smooth process.

• If you are worried about finding a niche market, don’t be. It’s quite simple. The answer lies in locating a niche group that is can generate enough of business for you but has been till now overlooked. Search forums, news articles and other resources.

• A lot of niche products exist. Some of them have very tough competition and is hard to break into. There are also others that are relatively easier to get into. Working from home or making money online are two arenas that are very competitive with more and more people entering every day. The important thing in such a scenario is to give your customers a high level of satisfaction. You can only bring in the targeted amount of visitors to your site if you are the best one in your chosen field. Another thing of vital importance is to keep publishing online about your venture. This will at one go give you plausibility and authenticity, brand visibility and generate increased traffic.

• Remember that it is a dog eat dog world out there. So do the necessary research before you take the plunge. However there is no need to worry if you can convince your customers that they are getting more than their money’s worth from you.

To stay ahead of the game you should start with a market where you can beat your competition. Fields that are expanding and that in which you have the greatest knowledge should be ideally chosen. Lastly, count on the golden rule of supply and demand to sail you through.

Chris Freville can show you how to locate the most profitable niches full of hungry buyers. Dominate the niche by creating intense customer loyalty by visiting http://www.dominatingniches.com

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • LinkedIn
  • Live
  • MySpace
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • TwitThis
  • Upnews
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • YahooMyWeb
  • Blogsvine
  • Furl
  • Print this article!
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • Fark
  • feedmelinks

6 Steps to Affiliate Marketing

The secrets of affiliate marketing lie not only in making more and more sales today, but developing a strategy that would help you maintain more sales in the future. So, make sure that you are not an affiliate marketer who just gets people to the sales page without that visit resulting in an actual sale.

Affiliate marketing is a good way to earn additional cash. It doesn’t require much of your time, but this business could get you the side cash that you always wanted. If you follow the 6 steps listed below, there is no reason why you wouldn’t do well in affiliate marketing:

• Maintain a good system: For your business to function properly, productive workers are a must. The ones who do not follow the high standards set by you should be expelled. Besides, you must have an eye for competent affiliates who would help you in generating sales. For this purpose, you can screen your helpers to find whether they really fit the bill.

• Conducting an integrated operation: Most of the product owners are of the opinion that there should be little or no connection between their operations and those of the affiliates. This is baseless, since the affiliates would help you in getting more sales and they should be a part of your marketing plan. Have plenty of tools for them to use.

• Follow the leaders: Conduct research work and see what the successful business person has done. Provide a good case study about what works and what doesn’t to share with fellow team members, affiliate marketers and others who help with your sales..

• Seek professional help: If you believe that you can’t handle this business due to lack of knowledge, don’t have hesitation in seeking expert opinions and help. Experts can provide you enough help to ensure that you succeed in your venture.

• Aggression in traffic generation helps: Having good traffic to your website is very important for your business. If less people visit your site, fewer people will know anything about you and you will have still lower sales. So ensure that you maintain a decent amount of traffic coming to your site in order to boost up your sales. Just stick to the basic rules of getting more traffic to your website.

• Investment of income: For growth of your business, it is very important that instead of taking profits home, you invest them back into the business. The investment of initial profits can be made in getting more traffic to the site, for getting designers for the creation of graphics for your site, and many other activities. Consider the money that you put into your business as a long term investment.

In summary, these are the basic principles you need to follow to be successful in affiliate marketing, and you should consider these principles even prior to starting the business. If you religiously follow the above mentioned principles, you will surely succeed in your venture. Good luck!

If you are interested in finding out more about Internet marketing, refer to the works of the great man named Chris Freville who is widely known for his works and expertise in the business. Visit his site and get to know him and his success at
http://www.sneakyaffiliatecheat.com

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • LinkedIn
  • Live
  • MySpace
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • TwitThis
  • Upnews
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • YahooMyWeb
  • Blogsvine
  • Furl
  • Print this article!
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • Fark
  • feedmelinks