A Website Without Online Marketing: A Fruitless Tree
Have you quit your day job and invested time and money into your
own online business? Are you wondering where those promised
visitors and the profit from them have gotten stuck? Then read
on before your precious investment is fully wasted.
Nowadays, many people save money to quit their day jobs in hopes
of achieving their own customized version of the American Dream
by starting what is commonly known as an e-commerce business or
a "dot com" venture. They then proceed to spend the savings of
their labor on great looking, functional and hopefully practical
websites. However, a large percentage of such venturesome
warriors that take the initiative to quit a steady job and
embark on the bumpy road of e-"self employment" do not end up
reaping the fruits of their courage.
The initial phases of website development both financially and
emotionally drain the average venturous individual to a point
that at the end of the process they are impatiently waiting for
miraculous profit to be pouring their way. In reality, this
seldom happens since there are thousands of such individuals
both from the past and the present on the very same path
striving to prosper. In order for a website to be profitable, it
would have to contend in the race for traffic against hundreds
of thousands, or even millions of competitors.
It is possible to attract visitors to your website via countless
means however the best and the most efficient are what have been
rounded up under the roof of Online Marketing. Online or
Internet Marketing addresses the concerns of all those website
owners that are astounded at the low returns on their
investments. It helps strategize a plan to increase the
popularity and traffic of the website and tackle the issues of
low profits. The most important aspects of Internet Marketing
are as follows:
1. Spreading the Word: Since other online venues require a
relatively longer initial period of time to yield results, it is
quick and efficient to spread the word about your website via
submitting articles and news releases to be published. An
informative and useful article will intrigue other website
owners to syndicate the article hence exposing your website to
the visitors of their own websites. On the other hand a
carefully prepared news release if published at the right time
will drive major media publishers to run stories on your website
which in turn will expose your website to a very wide base of
potential visitors and in turn converted customers.
2. Networking: Propagating the word about your website is a
great way to jumpstart your internet marketing campaign, however
you need stability from within to be able to sustain your
website's popularity. By partnering or simply having a
relationship with websites in and out of your industry you will
be able to increase your website link base and provide a
one-stop solution for your visitors. You can achieve this by
being an active participant in online forums, chat sessions and
even seminars not to mention offline venues such as business
mixers and conferences.
3. Search Engines: Once you have created an initial surge of
visitors via press releases and worked on networking to maintain
your traffic, your website will be seasoned and ready to benefit
from a very precious medium that lets targeted visitors come to
you rather than you going after them. Search engines are
inundated with searchers looking for products and services in
virtually every single industry and category imaginable. By
using keyword popularity tools you can find out approximately
how many people search for keywords relevant to your website on
a daily basis. Once you find the keywords that would bring
valuable visitors to your website, then you can target them by
optimizing your website. This process is referred to as Search
Engine Optimization which will be discussed in much more detail
in future articles.
4. Refining the User Interface: Refining the User Interface is
certainly one of the most ignored yet extremely important
aspects of owning and operating a website. You can be getting
hundreds of unique visitors on a daily basis to your website yet
making less profit than a direct competitor of yours with half
the traffic. The secret lies in your user interface consisting
of elements such as forms, navigation, contents, links, buttons,
customization, localization and more. By using these elements in
the correct places and at the correct time and constantly
monitoring your visitor retention and conversation rates, you
can not only increase your conversation ratio and therefore your
profit but also maintain a larger visitor base potentially
creating word of mouth and return business.
The above are the main areas in which you have to be active in
order for your online marketing campaign to be successful.
However it is sometimes not possible to achieve the best results
in all areas without rigorous research and extensive training.
This is where internet marketing firms come to your help in
devising and implementing a successful campaign. Internet
Marketing is virtually the only way to turn your investment of
time, patience and money into measurable profit that could get
you closer to achieving your goals and fulfilling your dreams.
This is why I invite you to read my future articles where I will
be providing more detailed information on each of the above
categories as well as information on how to find do-it-yourself
information and shop for internet marketing services.
About the author:
Sevan B. Director of Technology ViPSEM - A Subsidiary of APR
Network Inc. http://www.vipsem.com
Written By: Sevan Baghdasarian