The Complete Guide to Internet Marketing
Fireproof Strategies To Grow Your Business Faster!
By
Nkem Mpamah
Founder and CEO, Cognition Global Concepts
http://www.cognitionglobal.com
Smashwords edition
License Notes: Copyright Revised 2011. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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I have written this eBook with one objective in mind; to teach you the simple and easy techniques of marketing and succeeding in your online business.
This book is a must-read companion that reveals the secret you must know to market successfully on the internet even if you are a beginner!
It covers wide range of very important and often neglected results-oriented tactics like: how to set up auto-responders, search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, pay-per-click campaigns, affiliate marketing, press releases, blogging and much more.
If you are a Marketer, Consultant or Small Business Owner, this 105 pages eBook, is the companion you need to understand the techniques to develop and implement prospect-pooling auto-responders, pay-per-click campaigns, search engine optimization strategies and successful marketing tactics for your clients and business.
This eBook will teach you:
•How to set up auto responders
•Website content optimization
•Successful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategies
•Press Releases and Blogging implementation techniques
•And much more!
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3- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Internet marketing know-how has become a must for most businesses whether they are Internet based or not.
This eBook is the guide that any beginner could adopt to succeed in online marketing. It has been packaged in easy terms, and provides tactics and measures any business can apply immediately and achieve results.
From marketing ideas to website add-ons and new services; you should be able to successfully market your website and communicate intelligently with prospects, vendors, outsourced contractors, and customers.
Most importantly, the information in this book should help you serve your customers more efficiently and increase business.
Whether your website is a simple one page declaration of your offer or a catalog, there is a voluminous of Internet marketing options and virtual website enhancements available.
1. Build Your Website for Speed
People have come to expect speed on the Internet and they do not waste time with confusing websites or poorly maintained websites with broken links. You have seconds to capture a visitor’s attention. People must be able to understand your website and find what they are looking for instantly.
Minimize your load time by keeping graphics to a minimum and small; compress them where possible. Use flash technology such as Javascript, Flash, Streaming Audio/Video, and animation, sparingly.
Bear in mind that majority of customers are impatient. Overloading your website with heavy graphics and streaming videos ultimately slows down the time it takes your website to load. This annoys most customers and sends them away to your competitors.
2. Know Your Market
If you must succeed in business, you must first identify your primary market. This is otherwise known as a niche. Your niche is the certain group of people (male, female, youth, children, professionals, retired, and much more) that your business is set to serve.
You cannot be a “Jack of all trade” in an attempt to serve the whole world. People are interested in buying from particular businesses that specialize in addressing their particular needs.
Understanding your market means that you understands their needs as well. This knowledge will help you to be able to address those needs more professionally as an expert.
Your website must understand and cater for your potential customers. Eliminate any unneeded information and keep your site clean and professional. Build your site with your customer’s preferences and expectations in mind.
3. Focus on Your Business Objective
Your website layout and its design is critical to the success of your business, what is more important is that you want your website to convert your visitors into buying clients.
Be sure your website is focused on your goal and your customer’s expectations. Do not offer unrelated products or services with the hopes of netting extra money.
Do not over crowd your home page with information that is not relevant to what your business stands for; this would put your visitor off, and send him over to your competitors.
Be sure to state:
The goods or services your business offers
What problems the products are meant to solve
The benefits your customers will receive from using your products
What makes you different from your competitors
4. Maintain Credible Reputation
You must overcome the automatic distrust that the Internet has come to radiate. Build credibility and make sure the goods and services you offer on your website are exactly as described. Proof-read your content for good use of grammar and spelling.
Display your privacy statement and provide contact information including address, e-mail and phone number where you can be reached. Consider to display your personal photo on your website. This is absolutely important to build trust because customers buy from who they know and like.
Customers are more likely to trust and buy from you if they have the assurance that they are dealing with a person rather than website, and that they can always reach you by phone or email.
If it is possible, offer some form of money back guarantee. This will help you to eliminate risk and build trust.
5. Align With Well Known Names
If you are a state-up business, it is likely that you are not popular yet, and would not have been very well known. Aligning your business with well known brands would help you to boost your business popularity.
One way you can achieve this is by establishing relationship with businesses like Visa, Mastercard, American Express, or PayPal to accept online payments using their brands, and displaying their logos and icons on your site.
If you are representing well know products, display their brands and logos on your site also. This will help you build credibility with your customers and prospects.
6. Maintain Simple Navigation
Make your website easy to navigate and keep the look consistent throughout your pages.
One of the best things you can do for your prospects is to structure your pages so they would find what they are looking for quickly and effectively.
Before designing your website, determine the pages that would link to another to ensure that your site has continuity and flows logically. Consider it the same as when you lead them from one isle/section of your store to another without missing the primary objective of what they are looking for.
Be sure that any page that must be linked to another has been linked appropriately. Test the links to confirm that they are working as intended.
7. Design Your Website to be Indexed Easily by Search Engines
Focus on keyword density without compromising your message. Make sure you include relevant keywords in your page titles and names.
8. Maintain Good and Fresh Content
Create compelling ad copy that sells. Make sure the content flows and leads your visitor to the desired action.
“Content say is King.” Your content must be relevant to your page, and describes your product and service in such a way that your prospective customer is not in ambiguity to make a decision. Display product or service images to create impact in your prospects mind.
Contents must be compelling but not misleading. They should answer the most common question in the mind of every customer “what’s in it for me?”
Because your business is mostly about your customer, try using more of “You” word than “I.”
E-Commerce
Receiving Payment over the Internet.
Even though transactions carried out over the Internet are more secure than ever before, fear of providing credit card details remain the number one reason cited for not doing business via the Internet. This fear has been shown to be baseless as credit card problems are usually the result of a company getting hacked after transactions are completed, not the result of credit card information being intercepted. Regardless, in order to conduct business over the Internet you have to be able to collect payments for the products and services you are offering.
There are three major ways to enable you as an online merchant to accept credit card payments online: merchant accounts, live payment gateways, and third-party payment services. Merchant accounts are those offered by major credit card companies, such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.
Setting up a merchant account involves filling out paperwork and agreeing to the company’s fee schedule. Make sure that you understand the total amount of fees that you will be responsible for, including setup fees, percentage of transactions or fixed price per transaction, and monthly fees. The amount of these fees is determined by your type of business, the amount of an average transaction, and your credit rating.
Live payment gateways are systems that allow customers to be charged in real time for the order they are placing online. These systems result in a reduction of the work required for your personnel to process an order. Payment gateways are a necessity for products that a consumer wishes to download immediately. Most merchant account providers provide you with some type of live payment gateway with your account, but it may not be what your company needs
Gateways can be compared using three criteria: features, cost, and reliability. The first feature a gateway should offer is a virtual terminal, a web form accessible to the merchant that allow him or her to enter credit card information manually. This feature is invaluable when dealing with technologically-challenged customers, returns, or voids. Another feature to be considered is fraud prevention, including address verification and use of credit card security codes. Recurring billing is a great feature for subscription or membership-based companies. Some gateways now offer eCheck processing in which customers can enter their bank information in lieu of having to physically mail in a check for payment. The last feature that should be considered for comparison is ease of integration. Does the gateway install easily or does it require more advanced skills to get it up and running?
The cost of utilizing a live gateway varies greatly. The setup fees for live payment gateways can range from hundreds of dollars to nothing. Monthly fees are usually independent of sales volume and most gateways charge for every transaction, whether the credit card being utilized is approved or denied. Any additional features you subscribe to will result in additional charges. Owners of new businesses typically do not have large budgets to draw from and should be particularly conscious of the fees for which they will be responsible. The following is a list of six of the most popular gateways and the fees associated with each.
Live payment gateways send an email receipt to both the merchant web server and to the customer when a purchase is made. Money is subtracted from the purchaser’s credit card and that amount is placed in a 30-day holding account owned by the merchant.
The third basis for comparison when shopping for a gateway is reliability. Your gateway must be up and running 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Your business cannot risk the possibility of a transaction going awry and the subsequent loss of a potential customer.
The industry standards for live payment gateways are Authorize.net, which is the largest provider, and Payflow Pro, which is considered by many to be the best provider available. Authorize.net’s popularity is based on its compatibility with almost any shopping cart system and its low average monthly fee of $15. Payflow Pro has the advantage of being able to handle heavy volumes of traffic without malfunctioning, even though it is more costly.
If you are confident that your organization will meet or exceed $20,000 in monthly online sales, then you should feel comfortable applying for a merchant account and an online gateway service. However, small businesses can save money entering the world of e-commerce by using a third-party payment service. These services have multiple benefits. They give your business access to its own merchant account. They charge little or no setup fees. Their application form is simple and usually more readily approved than a bank’s. Finally, theses services often come with tools that make it easier to accept payments via your website.
Although PayPal is probably best known as the payment system utilized for eBay auctions, it has payment options that businesses can use even if they are not selling items on eBay. PayPal offers Website Payments Standard to businesses as a third-party payment option. This service charges no setup, gateway, or monthly fees. Businesses are required only to pay $.30 per transaction and a commission of 2.9% or less, depending on their monthly sales volume. The PayPal system accepts payments using major credit cards, bank transfers, and other PayPal accounts.
Website Payments Standard is relatively simple to set up on your website – only requiring the merchant to add one or more payment buttons using a small amount of HTML provided by PayPal. These buttons direct your customers to PayPal’s secure site which will process their payment. PayPal also has the capability to set up subscriptions and recurring payments.
As your online sales grow, you will likely qualify for lower commission rates via a merchant account than those charged by third-party payment services, such as PayPal. Having your own merchant account also gives you more control in resolving any payment disputes, since PayPal usually rules in favor of the consumer in these situations. Some experts also claim that using PayPal on your website gives consumer’s a less sophisticated impression of your organization – in fact, it can make your site look like an online yard sale. This statement can be proven by comparing the conversion rates of organizations which use PayPal and those which use merchant accounts and live payment gateways.
If you are selling more than one product or service on your website, you may want to add a shopping cart feature that will allow a customer to accumulate several items until they are ready for checkout. Website Payments Standard includes its own shopping cart. There are a multitude of shopping cart software packages available for installation on your own Web server, or you can use a third-party shopping cart service, such as the one available through Netsuite.
The following is a list of the top ten shopping cart software packages available to businesses as ranked by http://www.toptenreviews.com. Ratings were determined based on the features of each program, ease of use, ease of installation, and access to assistance.
1.ShopSite Pro
2.MerchandiZer Pro
3.Monster Commerce Pro
4.Store Front 6 AE
5.Mercantec Softcart
6.Free Merchant Gold
7.GoEmerchant I-Store
8.Miva Merchant
9.1ShoppingCart Pro
10.X-Cart Pro
Autoresponder
An autoresponder is computer software that automatically answers email. These programs can also be written to collect and organize data.
Autoresponders were originally used to send messages such as “your mail could not be delivered because… “back to email originators. Now autoresponders are valuable marketing tools that can immediately provide information to their prospective customers, track customers and inquiries, and even follow-up with people at preset time intervals.
Such follow-up autoresponders can be divided into two categories:
Outsourced ASP models -these autoresponders operate on the provider's server and are usually configured via a web-based control panel for a monthly usage fee.
Server-side model - Usage of this model enables users to install the autoresponder software on their own server and requires technical skills.
Autoresponders can also be used with mailing list programs to track subscriptions, posts, and other activities.
Other features now available include:
Unlimited autoresponders.
Unlimited follow up messages.
Unlimited campaigns & lists.
Unlimited newsletter/broadcast messages.
Automatic RSS feed creation.
Personalized features.
Lead import and export features.
Easy point and click HTML and plain text message creation with attachments.
Open rate and click thru tracking.
Web form pop-up generator with split testing.
Broadcasts, including split testing, multiple lists, and exclusion of lists.
An autoresponder will help you make more sales. An autoresponder allows you to follow-up indefinitely and automatically with your customers through email. You’ll build more rapport, customer loyalty and confidence.
Here are 4 reasons why you absolutely must get an autoresponder…
1.More revenue. Repetitive contact has proven to produce more sales. The more offers you send out to your list, the more orders you’ll receive.
2.Less work. Contact thousands, even millions of people immediately, on-time, and without any extra effort!
3.Build a reputation. The best way to brand your product or service is to keep yourself in front of your customers and over time develop a relationship with them. Sending out emails in an auto-responder series is the perfect way to let people know what you or your company stands for, who you are, and what you are all about.
4.Get customers for life! People stay on your autoresponder forever unless they unsubscribe.
External Linking
As you enter into the world of internet marketing, don’t forget to utilize traditional advertising to promote your website as well. Advertising an organization’s website in traditional media, whether independently or as part of an advertising campaign, can be very effective. Don’t discontinue print advertising that you have used in the past and found to be effective. Just make sure that you include your URL in those magazine ads, newsletters, posters, billboards, newspaper ads, or other classified ads that you may purchase in trade journals, the yellow pages, etc.