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Date: Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Distributing Advice Before spending time and money on promotion it is worth going through a short checklist to make sure that you are ready to promote the products and services you have selected or developed: By AdlandPro
IS YOUR WEBSITE READY FOR VISITORS?
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1. You have good products and services supported by good sales copy
2. Your website is easy to navigate and well laid out with an appealing design
3. It is clear to your visitors what the focus of your website is.
4. Your website hosting is stable and able to support the volume of visitors that your promotions will target
5. You are not anonymous and provide your visitors with disclosures that will give them confidence of your credibility:
- Your contact detail, including a physical location and telephone number is recommended
- A statement relating to the Privacy of information you request visitors to enter in forms on your site
- A statement relating to the security for transactions entered into on your site. If security is provided by third parties (like Paypal, for example) state this - it provides confidence that transactions will be carried out on secure servers.
6. Your webpages are complete with no "dead" links, and meta tags for keywords and descriptions placed for search engines.
Finally, are YOU ready?
Your attitude must be focused to success, the provision of service and support to your visitors - and committed to allocate the time required for promotional processes.
Let's go then!
MECHANISMS OF PROMOTION.
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First of all - promotion is about exposure, not just selling.
What you are looking to do is expose your products and services (through the medium of your promotion) to the RIGHT audience.
The right audience are the prospective buyers of the products and services that you are promoting.
The more targeted your promotion - the better YOUR result.
The objective of your promotion, at the most basic level, is to get a viewer of your ad, banner, article, email - whatever...
to CLICK on a link
That link, may take the viewer (among other things) to:
- your website home page, or a webpage on your website
- sales copy for a product or service you earn commission from
- the signup page for a program you get a referral benefit from
- a subscription form for a newsletter, course or report (or this can be done direct via an email link to an autoresponder)
The BIG question of promotion, then - is how and where do you place YOUR links to expose them to your target audience?
There is no single promotional element that will provide for all your promotional needs.
A combination of methods must be used to create a balanced campaign that reaches prospective buyers over a range of different media.
You must also consider the "lifetime" of links that you place
- is it just there for an hour, a day - or sometimes only seconds as is the case with much email promotion, that is only a subject line away from the delete button.
The longer that your link remains, the greater the exposure potential.
PROMOTIONAL MEDIA
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We now look briefly at some of the key media for internet promotion:
SEARCH ENGINES:
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Search engines use many methods to index and rank websites, and they vary from one to another. Most are keyword-driven to a large extent, and some of the most important engines also draw relationships between keywords and the content of your website. For some, the number of links pointing to your website are also a factor as this can indicate site popularity.
Search engines will pick up keywords from the meta tag on your webpages when they "spider" the web - either independantly, or following the submission of your webpage URL to them.
Competition for keywords is intense, so you should choose them carefully
- there is little point in competing for listing and ranking, for example, for the keyword "free" against many well established, highly ranked websites.
Similarly, there is often little value in having the top ranking for an obscure keyword that is seldom searched -although you could be sure that any clicks that came your way would be well-targeted.
Most search engines allow submission of single words or phrases as keywords (but, as many databases don't like spaces we suggest you use an underscore
(_) in any keyword phrases.)
Many new marketers make the mistake of submitting too frequently to search engines - often using every free submission service that they find.
This can not only result in your webpage being banned for "search engine spamming" - but produce a huge volume of confirmation emails hat also add you to many different mailing lists. This makes YOU the promotional target and the mail will come (frustratingly) day after day.
Of increasing importance is the relationship between your keywords and your webpage content. This measurement by search engines is called "keyword density" and it looks at how many times a keyword appears in the content of your page. This is not to say that simply repeating the keywords over and over will improve your ranking - in fact a density that is too high is likely to damage your chances.
A maximum density of 4-5% is recommended.
Gateway pages are also used by many marketers, but care needs to be taken not to have too many of these on one domain.
A gateway page simply focuses on a single keyword, using a single page of content that has a high density of the keyword in the content text. Again, don't overuse this as it could work against you.
SEARCH ENGINE TIP
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Use only a single, established submission service that can submit for you at regular timed intervals (usually monthly) AND, that can suppress the email confirmations for you so you don't get your inbox flooded.
These features are available from the link below - allowing you to set up your submission once, and then forget it.
It is this form of automation that helps you work more efficiently towards success.
PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINES
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With ppc search engines you bid for the ranking of your keyword and only pay each time a visitor clicks on the ad or listing that is associated with your keyword.
The benefit of this is that your visitors are targeted to your keyword.
There are now many ppc search engines and you must choose carefully which ones you use. PPC engines like Overture can be quite expensive, so you need to calculate the conversion ate of your clickthroughs to sales so that you don't nd up paying more for the visits that your returns justify.
There are also many "emerging" ppc engines that do not have the volume of visitor traffic to deliver you with visitors over a reasonable period of time so you can find you have promotional cost invested that is not being used.
A new concept being introduced by AdlandPro is "Paid Keyword Advertising" Through this you can associate keyword(s) with your ads at AdlandPro (even the free ads) and bid to determine how high they are ranked in search results.
With a high traffic site like AdlandPro you can be sure of good targeted results, so get in as soon as they are available to get the benefit of best prices before the bid cost increases.
Check it out here.
SEARCH DIRECTORIES
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There are many search directories on the internet that are specialised and have an audience related to their particular category.
Links placed at these directories autmatically act as a filter for argeted visitors for any appropriate products and services that you can place links to there.
A good example is the FreeBonanza search directory which lists free resources in the areas of affiliate programs, website development and promotion.
If, for example, you were offering a free course to visitors that subscribe to your newsletter, you could place some links in the directory (which also has a high volume of visitor traffic)
To place links at search directories, look for "suggest a site"
or "add URL" on their webpages.
At FreeBonanza you could link to your free reports at:
And, you could list your newsletter at:
You will also find categories for most other promotional listings
- simply go to the main page of the directory
- browse through the categories and click the "suggest a site"
link wherever you can appropriately add your url.
These listings have a good lifetime also - they are permanent links.
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING
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There are many classified directories that you can place free ads and links in. You will find a selection of these at:
If you want to place free ads that you can enhance with various advanced options the AdlandPro Classified Network is definitely the place to start.
Enter your free classified ads at:
TRAFFIC GENERATION
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There are many programs that help you to build traffic sources by exchange methods. With these you get a ratio off impressions of your banner or ad that relates to websites that you visit that are in the program, or links clicked through by visitors to your website.
The most commonly used (with resource link) are:
- Banner Exchanges
- Traffic Exchanges
- Link Exchanges
browse for some to build your traffic at:
With some traffic exchanges you can get a false impression o visitors, when it is really just other exchange members clicking to get credits.
With the AdlandPro system there are a number of ways that you can earn credits and the dead click problem is solved as all visits are optional
- resulting only in qualified and responsive visitors to your website.
WRITING ARTICLES
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Perhaps one of the most effective means of wide exposure for free is to write articles and comments for targeted newsletters ublished by others.
The core benefits of this are:
- you are reaching subscriber lists that others have built
- you are putting your name and url "out there" and can establish and reinforce your credibility with well written topical articles and comment.
We believe the Adland Digest to be the best moderated discussion list there is on marketing, promotion and income generation.
All the content of the Digest is contributed by an active readership, and you are able to participate in this in many ways:
- responding to articles and comments
- contributing articles and comments
- reviewing other reader's websites
- requesting review of your website
With more than 25,000 readers, the Digest is a valuable forum or learning and introducing yourself to others pursuing online business activities.
You can visit the Digest archives - and see for yourself!
Here:
EMAIL PROMOTION
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We believe that email marketing and promotion must be approached with care and responsibility. Resistance to unsolicited commercial email and spam is rising with the sheer volume that is flooding mailboxes.
If you don't know what spam is go to any search engine and type "spam"
If you are serious about developing a long-term, successful business activity on the internet, being seen as a "spammer" will damage your reputation and credibility, and will inevitably lead to risks of other penalties as legislation is introduced in your various markets.
OPT-IN MAIL LISTS
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The solution, to avoid these risks, is to ensure that you use verifiable opt-in procedures when building your Mailing Lists.
Using professional services and/or software is also part of the efficiency path to success through automation.
- Subscribes and unsubscribes are automatic and immediate
- Follow-up sequences can be set up once and require little maintenance
- Don't waste bandwidth on "bad" addresses and frequent bounces (you can verify and set remove conditions)
Offering free reports, courses, downloads or other value to your visitors is a proven method of increasing the subscribe rate to your newsletter or mailing list.
A targeted mailing list with responsive subscribers is the most valuable asset that you can develop for your promotional platform.
BUT, you must give value to your list and not just PROMOTE to them
- a mailing list gives you the opportunity to develop a relationship with your subscribers.
Don't waste the long term benefit for a short term profit.
As discussed in a previous segment of this course, Autoresponders that allow you to set up a sequence of messages are a powerful promotional tool. Many purchase decisions are not made until the 4th or 5th message has been absorbed (and progressively reinforced) - just remember that at the point your promotional material (needs to) lead to a sale - YOU MUST MAKE A CALL TO ACTION.
If you don't ultimately tell a viewer to "click here" or "buy now" it is most likely that they won't.
To review and refresh your knowledge of the benefits of building YOUR list with the AdlandPro opt-in list builder, autoresponders or advanced advertising options decide now - and follow the link
EMAIL SIGNATURES
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You send emails every day.
Do they all have a one line pitch and the URL of your website under your name?
If they don't you are losing valuable exposure.
Simply check the options in your email program and set up signatures to promote your website or merchandising pages. Don't overdo it - many find more than one signature line link offensive.
Finally for this section (which could be a book on it's own) don't
overlook the promotional power that you create for yourself as an active
affiliate recruiting others to a good reputable program.
The people you sponsor become part of YOUR sales force, and anything that
you can do to motivate and support them will repay you many times over.
Because Affiliate Promotion is such a powerful platform for promotion we
have added a further two lessons to this course that will show you how, as
an affiliate of an established and reputable program, you can use some actual
products and services to put you on the path of success.
Good luck with your website!
Bogdan Fiedur.
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Copyright 2004 AdlandPro
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