At the risk of sounding sensational, if you understand
the concepts introduced in this article it could literally mean the difference
between miserable failure and insane online profits for your business. I'm not
talking about a magical formula that will guarantee success, but it's something
that all online marketers need to understand.
Unfortunately, most do not
- and therefore they spend every waking minute just trying to stay in business.
And within a year, most small businesses give up any hope of making it big
online - firmly believing that "this Internet thing just doesn't work."
Well I'm here to tell you that it does. In fact, the Internet is the
best thing that has ever happened to the home-based or small business owner
wanting to reach a global market. As with anything else in life, it's actually
pretty easy to profit online if you know how.
When it comes to making
lots of money, all that really matters is marketing. This is easily proven by
the fact that you don't need a better product or a lower price to make more
money than your competition. The truth is that you can literally make millions
selling mediocre products - if you know how to market them effectively.
Of course, you should always strive
to deliver quality products and great value to your customers - but the point is
that marketing is all that really matters. It's what you need to be spending 90%
or more of your time doing if you have any hopes of developing a profitable
online business. Doing paperwork, building web sites, answering email, and
processing orders doesn't help grow your business - only advertising does.
Advertising is the
lifeblood of any business. If you do not learn how to advertise your products
and services both efficiently and effectively, you won't be in business long.
While the Internet has lessened or eliminated many of the costs normally
associated with starting and running a small business, and it's now easier than
ever, you'll never realize significant profits if you don't grow your business
through effective marketing.
There are really just two kinds of
advertising - that which you pay for and that which you get for free. And both
should have their place in your overall marketing strategy. The problem arises
when one does not understand how or when to use each.
Everywhere we look
it seems that someone is claiming you can get rich online by taking advantage of
the free advertising the Internet offers.
While it's a true statement,
the misleading part is that it's almost always followed by something like,
"We'll give you a list of over 984324984 places to advertise for free!" They
normally go on to explain how anyone can get rich on the Internet because all of
the advertising is free, and if you just send them $29.95 ... well you know how
it goes.
Unfortunately, as anyone who has tried posting zillions of free
ads on the Internet will tell you it just doesn't work that way. What you really
need to know about posting free ads online is that for the most part it's a
waste of time - unless you're targeting other marketers - because an
overwhelming majority of people who visit free ad sites are other online
marketers like you who are trying to promote their own business.
Effective "free advertising" strategies do exist, but they aren't what
the average online marketer thinks of when hearing this often hyped-up phrase.
In future issues we'll discuss things like networking, swapping links,
joint-ventures, press releases, and the other "free advertising" strategies that
you will want to pursue.
But back to the story at hand - free versus
paid advertising.
Are you ready for the one concept that separates the
men from the boys, so to speak, online? Here it is:
Paid advertising is
the laziest way to promote your site!
You don't really think that Yahoo
became the most popular web site on the Internet, getting millions of visitors
per day, by using free advertising strategies do you? Heck no. Among other
things, they spend millions of dollars per year on things like buying
advertising on other big sites and advertising on both radio and television.
Now before you say you don't have millions per year to spend on
advertising, allow me to show you how you can apply these concepts to your
business on a smaller scale. The good news is that if you use the right approach
you can start with a few dollars. It doesn't really matter what you're
marketing, but let's assume that you sell widgets at your web site. How could
you utilize paid advertising profitably?
Now before I scare you off with
the thought of having to spend lots and lots of money on advertising, there's
something that you need to realize. And it's a basic concept you should be able
to immediately agree with:
If you spend $50 on advertising and it
generates more than $50 in net profits, that's a good investment.
Simple
right? Well, through the use of proper testing and a "scientific" approach to
advertising, there's no reason you can't turn your original $50 ad into millions
of dollars in profits. It's just a matter of developing a system that creates a
profit, and then reinvesting your initial profits back into your business in
order to further expand your advertising.
Remember the widgets? Assume
that through proper tracking of your web you're able to determine that 1 out of
every 100 visitors to your site buys a widget. Let's also assume that on the
sale of every widget you make a $50 profit. Do you see that any ad you buy which
delivers more than 100 visitors to your site per $50 spent is a profitable
investment?
Promoting a site should be approached with this type of a
scientific or mathematical attitude. Any advertising you do is either profitable
or not, and you need to know which it is so you don't waste time and money.
Here's a somewhat simplistic strategy that you could use to get started:
1. Use a combination of free or low-cost strategies to promote your web
site, generating initial traffic which will serve as a starting point.
2. Through proper tracking of your site, determine the exact "value" of
a visitor in terms of dollars and sense. This is absolutely critical.
3.
Utilize paid advertising that proves to be profitable according to step 2, based
on the value of a visitor and the number of visitors generated.
4.
Through ongoing testing, tracking, and tweaking, try to increase the value of a
web site visitor as well as response to your advertising.
5. Repeat
steps 2-4 as necessary - or forever.
The power of this scientific or
mathematical approach to web site promotion is that once you have completed the
steps you will have an almost automated advertising campaign that can literally
send you all the traffic you need. Rather than spending hours and hours each day
promoting your site, you simply buy more advertising.
The bottom line is
that there are only 24 hours in a day and there's only so much you can do during
that time. Free advertising strategies can be effective, but normally, anything
that's "free" is going to "cost" you time.
On the other hand, if you
could spend $1,000 a day on advertising to make $1,000 a day in profits --
without spending hours doing it -- why wouldn't you just do that? It's not hard
at all. Consider GoTo.com for example, where you can buy click-thrus for as
little as 1-25 cents.
That fits the formula quite nicely. GoTo alone
won't send you enough traffic to make you rich, but it's a good example of
effectively promoting your site without spending much time doing it. There are
lots of others.
Give this 5-step scientific approach a try. If you find you
just can't seem to make the formula work, there can only be a few reasons for it
- either you're not advertising in the right places, your web site isn't doing
its job, your profit margins are too low, or your product or service itself is
the problem. Figure out which it is and you can't fail.
