1. Marketing 101 for your Web Site Some basic tips

2. What is Marketing? In my eyes Marketing is different from Selling. For me Marketing is the means by which you get people to visit your site. Selling is what happens when potential customers get to your site My aim today is not to specifically show you how to market your web site but to ask you a few questions and give you a series of points for you to follow up on by doing your own planning and research on the web.

3. What is the purpose of your site? Before we look at how to market your web site you need to answer a question. What is the purpose of your web site? Is it:- To tell people what’s going on in your life or what you are doing with your hobby (a blog). To share an interest in something that you are passionate about ( cooking / jazz / a sport / a sporting team / a lifestyle). To make money by selling items that you make. To make money by selling items that someone else makes (you are an importer or agent).

4. If you want to make money How much money do you want to make? do you want to make some extra pocket money to treat yourself to something special from time to time? OR do you want to supplement your income to be able to travel on a regular basis or educate yourself or buy a better car? OR do you want your web site income to replace your regular income with a much better income and a flexible lifestyle, where you are your own boss and control your own destiny?

5. Your action plan – point by point do a web search to see if there are similar products / services to what you planning to offer spend some time looking at the first 5 sites listed on the search results page to see:- how does their site look – are the colours attractive / soothing, does it look professional? does the first paragraph on their page tell you (the visitor) exactly how they can help you solve your problem Is this information displayed above the fold (you don’t have to scroll down to read it) how do they get visitors to their site to “opt-in” and give them their email address – what are they giving away? Is the site easy to navigate What is their domain name? Have they used words which relate to the product?

6. Action Plan – Domain Name If you don’t already have a Domain name then you need to write down as many words or phrases as you can think of that relate to what you are trying to sell Now go to Google Adwords Keywords Tool or Trellian Keyword Discovery or Noble Samuri for Marketing Samuri and check how many on-line searches are being made for your words of phrases. Again, make notes in Notepad or Word. Time spent here is well worthwhile as if you are able to register a domain name with a keyword in it that is attracting reasonable volume in the on-line searches it can make it easier for the search engines to match your site with a search request. If you write the text on your site naturally then Keywords that rank well will be scattered through the text on your site to help the search engines identify what your site is promoting and match that to searches. DO NOT stuff keywords into your site as the search engines will penalise you for it.

7. Action Plan - SEO SEO – Search Engine Optimisation helps your site get found. There are numerous websites offering help with SEO however one of the better ones for WordPress is in the form of a plugin and is available from Yoast, as a free version and as a Premium version starting at $89. If you ask Maeve nicely she may walk you through the features whilst we are having Pizza. However, once again I emphasise that you should do your own research on SEO as you may find something that you like better.

8. Action Plan – Meta Tags Meta Description Tags – this is what causes the 1 or 2 lines of descriptive text to appear after your URL (your web site address) on the search page. Those one or 2 lines give you a chance to tell people what your site is about and invite them to visit the site. Keep it short and punchy – eg. Lose 5 kg in 10 days without exercising, we will show you how! Make it benefit orientated so that the person reading the search results page wants to come and visit your page. There are heaps of sites and videos on-line which will walk you through the process of setting up your Meta Description & Meta Keywords Tags so check them out.

9. Action Plan – Building a List – Pt 1 You build a list by inviting visitors to your site to give you their email address in exchange for a freebie, which is usually something of value related to what you are promoting on your site. It can be a report or an ebook, an Mp3 audio file or a video, something they can receive immediately after you get their email. You do this by using an Autoresponder like MailChimp, AWeber or Get Response to capture the email address of the person who is accepting your offer of a freebie and “opting in”. You can use an opt-in form provided by your autoresponder and your opt-in box should use as few fields as possible (no more than 2) such as a name and an email field, a call to action button (make the call to action powerful) and a privacy statement promising that they won’t get spammed.

10. Action Plan – Building a List - Pt 2 The autoresponder will send out a series of emails that you have written including a Thank You / confirmation email, and a number of follow up emails to build a relationship with the person who has shown interest in your site. The autoresponder will let you program how often the follow up emails are sent out and at what time of day they are sent. Once you have set up the email content and when you want them sent the autoresponder will automatically send out the series of emails to each new person who opts in.

11. Action Plan – Building a List - Pt 3 I would recommend that you program 7 or 8 emails to go out and here’s some do’s & don’ts Do - keep each email short and to the point. Do - make sure the content is relevant to the email subject line Do- put a video in your email if you have access to one or can make one and upload it to YouTube. Just create a clickable link to your video in your email and keep the video short. Do – offer something of value in each email. It can be more free items or it can be a link to an article or a site or a video which reflects the values of your web site

12. Action Plan – Building a List – Pt 4 Don’t – send multiple emails out in a day or even on consecutive days. Just think how you feel when you receive multiple emails on the same day from the same sender !! Don’t- send out invitations to buy in each email. You are trying to build a relationship with the email recipient so in a series of 7 emails spread over 2 or even 3 weeks there should probably be only 2 emails asking the receiver to buy something from you, the first in email 4 then again in email 7 and yes it can be the same product that you offer each time.

13. Action Plan - Building a List – Pt 5 Once you have started to grow your list and have made some sales you need to start segmenting your list at the autoresponder by classifying the receivers of your emails according to RFM. Recency – when was the last time a customer bought from you. Frequency- how often does the customer buy from you. Monitary Value – how much do they spend when they buy from you.

14. Action Plan – Building a List – Pt 6 Obviously it will be more productive to spend time corresponding with those whom you have built up a relationship to the point where they trust you enough to spend money on your recommendations. However do not discard or totally ignore those that are not buying from you as their circumstances may change (money, lifestyle, relationships) or they just may not find that they need the product that you are currently offering them. That is it doesn’t solve their particular problem (need), however they could decide to buy the next item you put in front of them.

15. Action Plan – Google Analytics And last but not least DO track what’s happening when people visit your web site. Google Analytics (there are others available) will allow you to see how many people visit your site, how long they stay, which pages they looked at etc and you need to collect these stats on a regular basis to monitor how your site is performing and be alerted to whether you need to change things on the site. Once again there is lots of information on the web on how to use GA and what the stats mean.

16. Additional Ideas PS: You don’t need your own products you can promote a digital product and sell it as a commission agent at Clickbank – but that’s another story. There’s plenty of info on-line. PPS: If you want to sell physical products like Cameras etc then you don’t need a warehouse or money tied up in stock you can “dropship” it. Again there is plenty of information about that on the web.