So what actually works these days?
Sunday, November 19, 2006
I was chatting to a friend the other day and we got talkingabout Internet marketing. During our conversation, he
asked me what the latest 'thing' online was and what
actually works these days?
When I asked him to clarify exactly what he meant by
'works', he said, 'Oh you know, what's the best way of
getting traffic and making sales?'
When I took a step back and thought about it, there is no
'latest thing'. The things which work tend to be exactly
the same things as worked a year, two years, even five
years ago.....
Let's take getting traffic as an example. Broadly speaking
you can spilt traffic into two main camps: free traffic
and paid for traffic. Free traffic can come from a variety
of different sources such as organic search results,
affiliates, virally via eBook links and so on. Paid for
traffic can also come from a variety of sources including
pay per click advertising and general banner advertising.
Five years ago (actually probably longer than that), a
large percentage of my traffic came from organic search
results from the main search engines such as Google.
Nothing has changed today - Google and the other engines
still send me tens of thousands of visitors every single
month. So clearly this still works :-)
I was a couple of years into my Internet marketing career
before I really discovered the true power of affiliates but
again, going back five years, my (much smaller) team of
affiliates were sending me a reasonable number of paying
customers each month. These days I rely far more on
affiliate traffic and I would say it is probably my
favourite type of traffic. Not only is it great when
someone sends you a new customer but it also makes me
genuinely happy to send my affiliates their commissions
every month. I am all for earning money with the minimum
of effort and if I can help someone earn a few hundred
dollars a month for doing nothing more than having a link
to one of my sites on one of their sites then I am all for
it!
I wrote my first eBook over five years ago and I still sell
the same title today (albeit a more updated version). In
addition, countless people have purchased resale rights to
this product which means I have a small army of resellers
distributing the eBook on my behalf. The eBook contains
links back to some of my websites and every single day
these sites receive traffic as a result of these links (as
they have done for the past five years). Of course, I
haven't written just one eBook since I have been marketing
online, I have written several and each one of them is a
little traffic generator.
Another example of 'old fashioned' marketing is writing
newsletters and articles such as this one. Again,
something I have been doing for years and something which
is still very effective at driving traffic to sites today.
Email marketing is another example. Fair enough, getting
emails delivered has become far more difficult in recent
years because of spam/junk mail filters etc but it is still
a very effective way of reaching customers and staying in
touch.
It's the same story with paid traffic although the main
downside with this is that the costs have risen sharply in
the last couple of years. However, with the right product
and sales page, it can still be worth buying traffic and I
know many marketers who do exactly that week in and week
out.
So once you have a visitor at your website, what's the
latest technique to persuade them to get their credit card
out? Again, in many cases, exactly the same as would
things as would have persuaded them five years ago.....
An informative and well written sales page which outlines
the benefits of the given product to the buyer. A choice
of payment options. Fast shipping if it is a physical
product and clear instructions if it is a download. In
short, a site which makes it quick and easy for a potential
customer to make a buying decision and gain access to their
purchase.
To support this view, I have sales pages which I wrote
years ago and which I have only slightly tweaked since
originally uploading them and they still convert at very
satisfactory levels today.
The bottom line therefore is that even though things do
change very quickly online, the basic rules of marketing
often stay the same. When I launch a new product or
website, I tend to stick to the same procedure as I have
done for years. Why? Because it works. Sure there will
always be little twists and new techniques which help to
improve results but these are normally things to be tried
AFTER you have adhered to the basics in order to squeeze a
couple of extra sales out of your visitors.
Stick to the basics and you won't go far wrong :-)
About the Author:
Richard Grady has been helping people earn online since
1998. To view Richard's latest website, SimplyWholesale,
visit http://www.simplywh olesale.co. uk To subscribe to his
bi-weekly newsletter, please visit:
http://www.thetrade ronline.com/ newsletter. html
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