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Social Media "OnLine Promotion" Strategy

There are several options for those who want to promote their websites.

I will go over some of the most effective ways of getting traffic, but before I start,

I want to give you a word of warning: not all these techniques are good for all the businesses.

Some might work very well for a certain industry and not work at all for a different niche.

In general, these are among the most effective ways to increase website traffic and sales.

Search Engine Optimization - Advantages
  • SEO is great. Think about it.
  • People go to Google, search for what you sell, your website pops up,
  • They click on it, and there you are, offering them what they were searching for.
  • Then it is up to you whether they become customers.
Search Engine Optimization - Disadvantages
  • The downside of SEO is that if you don't know what you are doing, reaching the top positions is extremely hard
  • You need professional SEO people working for you
  • But once you are at the top, be prepared to get more business than you will be able to handle
  • It is a great investment
Pay Per Click
  • Pay Per Click is one of the most effective Internet Market techniques
  • It is one in which you can start generating incremental sales, in less than 15 minutes
  • Yes, you are paying for that traffic, but if you sell a superior product, price it right, and do a great job marketing it, there is nothing for you to worry about.
  • You will get your investment back several times
  • Just like with SEO, if you don't know what you are doing, you better hire someone to manage that campaign for you or you will be overpaying for each visitor you acquire.
Forum Marketing
  • Let's say you sell AIDC equipment specializing in RFID solutions
  • It would be smart to post valuable information on forums where people are asking things like -
    How do I increase my inventory turns / reduce inventory costs?¯
  • There is one golden rule, though: don't just spam the forum with self-promotion
  • You have to be willing to give, give, and give before you receive anything
  • Once you have established yourself as an authority, people will come to you for advice
  • It is up to you then to show them the value of your services
  • You can also use article distribution services to post articles on subjects you are an expert at
Online Classified Ads
  • Online classified ads work very well for some, and for some there is little relevance or value
  • If you sell your product or service to consumers rather than businesses, or if you are a small business or home business,
    classified ads can provide a steady stream of revenue and sales for your business
  • They are free, so there is not much you can lose by giving it a shot
  • The most popular classifieds websites are Craigslist, Kijiji, and US Free Ads
Direct Marketing
  • This is one of my personal favorites
  • You need to think who your prospects are and where you can find them
Obtaining Target Prospect - Profiling and Contact Information
  • Jigsaw (trade in old leads and contacts for new valid contacts)
  • NetProspex
Automated System To Capture Targeted News Releases
  • For example, most companies would benefit from having an immediate notification of companies that are buying, building or expanding their operations.
  • You can download a free RSS Newsfeed application like BlogBridge
  • You can program BlogBridge to search the Internet 24x7x365 searching for news articles about companies buying, building or expanding operations
  • Ninety plus percent of these articles include a public statement made by a C-Level Executive of the company with the expansion plans
  • You could set the system to identify these news releases as they are posted on the Internet and have each article captured and retrieved via RSS feed and then categorized and stored in folders on your desktop
  • Providing a non-stop flow of targeted sales leads to generate new business
Effective Outbound Call Campaign Strategies
  • This would provide you with a valid business reason to contact the target prospect company that released the article and have the value in your opening statement to engage your target prospect in an immediate qualification discussion.
  • Instead of calling asking for the person responsible for making purchasing decisions on the offering you sell, and putting up a big red flag that you are making a sales call, and that you have done very little research to prepare for your call, you could make a call that sounds like this:
  • Hello Jim, this is Dave Kalstrom with Outbound Excellence. Jim I just saw an article come across the newswire where you were announcing the release of your new video application for the iPhone. On August 16th we're having a Unified Communication on-line summit which is a day of back to back live interactive webcasts by thought leaders and niche solutions providers in the UC sector and I was wondering if showcasing your application at that summit would fit into your marketing and messaging strategy?
  • That type of opening statement, will get you right past the gatekeeper, right past the executive assistant, right to your target decision maker, and in over 90% of the cases where you reach the target decision maker will allow you to engage in an immediate qualification discussion
Value Packed e-Marketing
  • You could also create targeted emails that introduce your offering to these companies
  • By adding a registration form to your podcast or webcast you would capture
  • detailed contact information on each prospect.
Tracking - Target Prospect - Interest
  • Using Jigsaw and NetProspex you could identify the email address of the target contacts at these prospect companies.
  • Using an emailing tool such as Group Mail you could send these target prospects an email indicating you had read the article about their expansion, and indicate how your offering might be able to add value to their expansion plans.
  • Using Group Metrics tracking software, you could track in Real Time each prospect that opened and viewed your email, including their exact contact information and their specific area and level of interest.
  • IMPORTANT NOTE:
Tracking of Prospect Interest in Real Time¯
  • What makes this technique so effective in generating new sales, is that the tracking and reporting of your target prospects, as they open, view and click on your emails, is captured, retrieved and displayed on your desktop in "Real Time"
  • By identifying when your prospects are at their desk, next to their phone, on their computer, viewing your products and services, you can make a follow-up call while your products are at the top of their mind / peak of their interest
  • This process will increase your outbound calling close rate 6-7 fold over conventional cold calling
Press Releases
  • Press releases are one of the best things that you can do to promote your business
  • The most important elements to effectively leveraging Press Releases to generate new sales for your offering are to: 1) Choose The Right Topic 2) Effectively Write The Press Release
  • Make the press release about something that the media will want to publish
  • If it doesn't sound like news, it probably isn't
Affiliate Programs
  • Affiliate marketing, if done properly, is a "silver bullet."
  • Affiliate marketing is a risk-free way of getting traffic
  • Affiliates send visitors to your website and they only get paid when a sale is made
  • If you sell services, you can pay them for each lead that they help you get
  • It is almost impossible not to gain significant value with affiliate marketing
  • A key element to the success of Affiliate Marketing is to determine the right
  • affiliate marketing program for your products, services, industries and markets
Industry Specific Programs
  • Each industry has some promotion techniques that are specific to that industry
  • For example, if you are a programmer you can get projects on Elance or GetAFreelancer
  • If you are a travel agency you can list your packages on Expedia
Alliance Marketing
  • Let's use an outsourcing accounting service example
  • What companies would be target prospects?
  • One type of companies would be startups
  • What do startups need?
  • Well, maybe a website, office space, office supplies, and startup money
  • They could have arrangements with web designers, office space owners,
  • Office supplies vendors, and investors
  • Contact these companies and form an affiliate program and share complementary leads
Advertising
  • There are two main ways of advertising: graphic and text.
  • Graphic advertisement is usually in the form of banners, both static and animated.
  • Text advertisement is when a blogger or webmaster writes an article about your products or services and includes a text link to your website.
Some good options are:
  • Pay Per Post
  • Blog Ads
  • Text Link Ads
  • Advertising Dot Com
  • Facebook
  • Business Dot Com, etc.
Local Services & Directories
  • DMOZ is a free directory
  • If you are not listed there, do it right now
  • There are also niche-specific directories
  • If you are an accountant, search for accountant directory on Google to find them
Paid Directories
  • There are also some paid directories, such as Yahoo and Business.com
  • If your budget allows you to list your website there, by all means do it
  • It also helps with SEO
Local Directories - Free!
  • If you have a physical store or an office, local websites such as Local Dot Com, Google Local, Yahoo Local, and MSN Local will give you some free links and also show your business on the map when someone is searching for it
  • And they are free
Offline Marketing
  • Don't make the mistake of thinking that the only way of promoting a website is online
  • There are a lot of things you can do to promote your business offline
  • Brainstorm a little and you will come up with several ideas
Tracking, Testing and Optimizing
  • The most important thing is tracking, testing, and optimizing
  • Set up a tracking system to figure out how your visitors found you, which marketing campaigns are bringing you profits, and which ones are losing you money.
  • Chances are that after testing everything on this list plus your own ideas you will keep two or three strategies and discard the other ones.
Focus
  • And that's fine
  • This is about doing a couple of things right, not doing as many things as you can
  • Focus. It pays
Social Media
What do we mean by social media? Ask that question to 10 different people and you will get 10 different answers. What each of those people will probably agree on is that the internet has completely changed the #1 factor that influences purchase decisions, which used to be word-of-mouth. Today the internet is the top purchase influencer by a factor of more than 2:1 over traditional word-of-mouth. Social media often refers to Blogs, RSS Feeds, Webcasts, Social Bookmarks, Press Release and Article Distribution, Pings, Webcast, Search Engine Optimization, communities, video portals and hundreds of sites that aggregate user content. The internet has not only put individual voices online, but created an environment that is both participatory and collaborative. It has spawned a whole new movement, conversational marketing. This is word-of-mouth on steroids.
Automate "Updating" of Content
  • Set up your own automated content on your website or blog
  • Keeping content refreshed is hard enough on it's own without any help
  • I use FeedRinse to aggregate content for over 30 different blogs
  • You can have the latest industry news automatically coming to your blog every day
  • How great is that!
  • You'd have to have a slew of reporters working on your behalf
  • But for free, you can have the best target industry content available on the web added right to your blog - automatically
  • This is a great example of the power of social media and conversational marketing
Maximizing Twitter for Business
  • Twitter is one more way to meet people that you never would have before.
  • When you get out and start using it, and look past all the non-sense, then it can be a great marketing tool.
  • Twitter for business about things that add value to your niche.
  • Also, get followers by following others.
  • A large percentage of people that you follow will follow you back, especially if you are adding value.
  • To find followers, find a company or person in your industry, click onto their twitter home page and click on the view all followers link below the thumbnail images and start hitting the follow button for their best followers.
  • They are great people that have an interest in what you do, because they are following somebody else that is respected in your same industry.
Outbound Excellence - Complete "TurnKey" Social Media Business Solutions - David Kalstrom - 877-337-2674 www.outboundexcellence.com - success@outboundexcellence.com
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