New Websites appear in the thousands on the World Wide Web daily. Some new webmasters build a site, use a free submission service, and expect hordes of visitors to knock on their cyber-door. The problem is: the visitors never show up.
What this group of webmasters miss is the fact that in today's competitive web arena, their sites will be buried in a sea of many others if there is no attempt at some forms of web marketing. But what actually is web marketing? Does it simply mean driving traffic to your site? I think not. In fact, web marketing encompasses a variety of techniques that serve different purposes, although the ultimate objective is always to make your Website a success.
Web marketing techniques fall into four main categories:
(1) The Initial Contact
This means diving first-time visitors to your site. For obvious reason, initial contact is important since without it, we do not have to go on discussing other web marketing categories. Ideas like submitting your site to the search engines, forming strategic alliances, and becoming a reseller on auction sites fit into this category.
(2) Participation
After you have enabled your site to be found by new visitors, you need to entice them to stay in it and look around. Towards this end, you can encourage your visitors to participate in your site. Participation is best fostered through interactivity like contests, polls, trivia and even asking for visitors' opinion.
(3) Loyalty and Trust
The Internet can be cold and impersonal. Therefore, you need to inject elements that build loyalty and trust into your site. One way of doing this is to post and adhere strictly to a privacy statement. Web surfers nowadays are defensive when it comes to surrendering their information via the Internet because of rampant spam. It helps to reassure your visitors that any personal information, especially email addresses, that they give you will be strictly confidential, and will not be sold to third parties.
Other ways to build loyalty and trust is to answer your email in a timely fashion, to produce an email newsletter, and to offer free trials and testimonials. Of course, the list goes on and is only limited by your creativity.
(4) Repeat Sales
Survey has shown that it is easier and cheaper to sell to a repeat customer since new customers acquisition can be costly. You will be missing out on a large amount of potential revenue if you don't make repeat sales.
There are numerous methods to promote repeat orders. A few apparent examples are producing a great newsletter that is sent to your visitors' mailboxes on a regular basis (so they won't forget about you), putting up fresh content, offering targeted contests, and asking your visitors to bookmark your site. The last example has further developed into what the industry now calls "desktop marketing". This refers to asking your visitors to install an icon, a wallpaper, a screen saver or anything that market your products on their desktops. Naturally such gadgets must link to your site.
Your business will thrive if you market it constantly. Practise the above 4 categories of marketing techniques to turbo-charge your business.
------------------------------------ Valerie Tay is the Webmistress of AdHomeBase.com, an ezine co-op that provides advertising in multiple ezines. Visit http://track.ezinetactics.com/?id=ebooks-1528 to receive FREE 500 visits to your Website, grab a FREE copy of Val's eBusiness Starter Kit (worth $200.85), and place your solo ads. ------------------------------------
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