Once your website is up, everything is one and you can sit back and relax and watch the customers and money roll in right?
No so fast tiger.
Now, the real work begins. Most business people fail because they fail at consistently promoting themselves. You can’t just set up your website and forget about it. Here are the key concepts you need to know about marketing your website and growing your business:
- Direct Marketing: the key to marketing online is learning direct marketing concepts. All the gurus you read about in Internet Market are basically teaching direct marketing response concepts for the Internet.
- Copywriting: Copywriting is the art of persuasion in print. If there was any one element to successful businesses (online or offline) is great copywriting. We talk more about copywriting in the next lesson.
- Being Relevant: Do you know why commercial email and ads are so frowned upon? It’s because the senders aren’t being relevant. People actually enjoy receiving email and seeing ads for products and services that are relevant to their lives. To cut through the clutter – be relevant and don’t treat everyone in your audience the same.
- Focus on a few channels first, then keep adding. When you first start out, it can be overwhelming. Where do you start first? There’s so many tactics and strategies but there’s only one you or you only have limited resources. So start with 1 channel first (say PPC). Then, start adding another channel. And so on.
- Focus on Conversions. Most people starting out focus on the wrong metrics, like “Wow, I go x amount of hits or views.” That’s great, but how many of those visitors bought from you? Focusing on constantly improving your conversions (whether it be sales or leads) is key.
- Focus on the RIGHT metrics. As mentioned in the previous point, you need to figure out which are the right metrics for YOUR business. you can get an idea from others but ultimately, every business will have some slight difference and you need to choose the right metrics that matter to your business the most.
- Measure and Test. Marketing online means your job is never done. Things change so rapidly. One offer may work for awhile but it may not work forever. That’s why you have to constantly measure your results and test and repeat the process over and over. The great thing about the web is that it makes it easier to measure and test to improve the returns you get from your marketing investment.
- Know when to get help. There’s so much to learn to be successful online (and offline). The biggest mistake most newbie entrepreneurs make is that they think they have to do everything themselves. You can only do so much, know when you need to invest in help (notice I didn’t say pay). Because investing in someone who knows what they’re doing can free you up to focus on the things you do best.