Ok, you’ve got your website set up, you are sure that it is search engine friendly, and you are pretty certain what your customers want. You’ve identified at least 3 affiliate programs/products that you want to promote, and you think that they meet your potential customer’s needs. So now what?
Unfortunately, I can remember the days of “build it, and they will come” have long gone. Unless you promote your website — no one will know that you are there, and no visitors means no sales. So where do you go from here?
Well, take a deep breath, a pen, and paper, and let’s start on your Marketing Strategy. Briefly, for a new business, with a relatively inexperienced marketer, your strategy will probably include the following options:
? Pay Per Click Advertising
? Article Marketing
? Email Marketing
? Community Marketing
? Classified Advertising
Let’s get started — and before you start panicking, you are just writing your Marketing Strategy. This course will explain how to do all of the following.
Your Advertising Kit
For each of your programs/products
1. Write a short advert — say 50 words.
2. Write a very short advert — say 15 words
3. Write a short article — say about 400–600 words.
4. Decide on your keywords — say about 30–50 words.
Your Marketing Kit
For your web site theme
1. Write at least 6 short autoresponder messages.
2. Find or write at least 2 giveaway products.
Your Marketing Tools
1. Your web site
2. An autoresponder
3. A good email account
Now let’s put all of these together into your first Marketing Strategy.
1. Submit your web site to all the major search engines. This will start to get your web site noticed. As this takes a long time, it needs to be the first thing that you do. You can do this yourself or pay someone else to do this for you. We provide this service for our customers for $20 a month, including submission to Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
2. Set up your autoresponder form on your web site and load your messages into the autoresponder. Ensure that you offer one of the giveaway products as a bonus for signing onto your ezine. The second giveaway can be set up for message 3 or 4. Your messages should be sent in the following intervals. Day 1,3,7,7,7,7
3. Set up your download pages for your bonus products and the products you are selling. Ensure that you provide an extra offer on each download page.
4. Submit your article — including your resource box, to about 6 major ezine article sites. Limit yourself to 6 at the moment. Each of these submissions, if accepted, will give you a link to your website. If too many links to your new web site appear very quickly, search engines assume that you have been using “black hat” SEO tactics (a total no) and will not list your site.
5. Identify 4 forums that discuss the topics of your website. Set yourself up an account name that describes you well. We use the name “Biz Guru,” which is our trademark and name. Set up your signature to include your web site address. Start answering questions asked within the forums. Do NOT post adverts for your website or products. Use this time to establish your credentials. If you answer questions well and contribute to the forums, your web site tag will be noticed.
6. Set up a PPC campaign — you can start with the smaller search engines first. Take your tiny advert and your keywords and use them in your campaign. Most search engines will help you with your choice of keywords. Remember to set a budget and test, test, and test again until you get quality and converting traffic.
7. Set up some classified ads. You can do this in two ways: i)choose one or two major sites/email lists and advertise with them. ii) use an ezine ad blaster to send your ad out to numerous lower quality places.
8. Test, Update and Modify. Review, change and add to your PPC keywords. Submit more articles and adverts. Start tactfully promoting your products in the forums.
Well, that’s what to do — we’ll go into the how to’s in greater detail in the following weeks.
Contact GrowSmart for all your Digital Marketing needs.
