FREE
ADVERTISING!
Few things excite the
newcomer to internet marketing like the notion of being
able to drive traffic and make money without spending
any.
It's a startup
entrepreneur's dream come true:
FREE
ADVERTISING!
And many throw
themselves into the excercise of getting free traffic with
enthusiasm bordering on the obsessive.
I should know. I've
been there.
I am in fact very good
at getting free traffic.
And know what? It's
harder than you think. It takes work, ideas, and
consistency to get free traffic and keep getting it.
I'll tell you about a
few methods and why they might or might not be appropriate
for your situation. Then I'll tell you a method that always
works to grow your income if you do it correctly.
SEO
Search Engine
Optimization is a deep, complex skill - the search engines
shake things up and change the mathematical algorhythms
that determine rankings often - you could have your site
ranking number 1 on Google and getting lots of traffic, and
then Google does it's "dance" and you are on page 35... and
if you've built yoir whole business on such a shakey
foundation you could watch your revenues disappear into
thin air.
You COULD, if highly
motivivated, become a search engine optimization expert -
going to seminars and seeking after all the newest
"loopholes" and "blackhat" tricks, while they still work.
It is not worth the trouble in general in my opinion, but
if it fascinates you to a level of obsession you may find
your calling in it. People who do
this become very
sophisticated and here's a shocker for you: Google
says only 5% of it's users's time is spent in the
"search" part while 95% is spent browsing sites that
are not part of the search system but ARE part of the
adsense ad network - meaning that more and more people
are getting their information from content sites, not
Google.
To
illustrate - today people interested in baking get their "how
to bake cookies" information from sites they already hang-out
on, and any new sites they visit pertaining to the topic are
20-to-1 likely to be discovered through clicking on ads and
links within those relevant cooking sites, not by general
search with the Google search bar.
Article
Marketing
Article marketing can
be tedious - and let's be honest - there just might not be
that many people interested in reading about your product
in articles. It depends on your niche obviously - but if
you cannot come up with 10 article ideas right now that
might work for promoting your website chances are high that
your market niche just doesn't lend itself to
article-driven visitors.
You can actually hire
cheap (and usually quite bad) writers to crank out articles
for "content sites" - but the practice of using such
articles is deeply intertwined with Search Engine
Optimization - and vulnerable to the same problems.
Press Releases &
Viral Video Marketing
Press Releases
sometimes work - especially if your product or website ties
in with current events in some way.
Same thing with
YouTube video marketing... if your product is topical to
what people are searching for it can work for you in that
near-magical "viral" way that every online business owner
dreams of. True viral marketing phenonmenons rarely sell
products, though the commercials may be popular and build
brand awareness.
Examples: the Taco
Bell Chihuahua, "Joe Suzuki", and the "Where's the Beef"
old lady all failed to produce much, if any, increase in
sales - though people loved the commercials.
(
Viral
video usually occurs through
entertainment value - usually not productive,
unfortunately, for getting sales... though in the case
of sites like FaceBook the "mind virus" gets people
looking at and clicking on ads inside FaceBook - such
runaway viral success stories are rare indeed and
FaceBook's reputed 1 Billion dollar value is grossly
inflated in relation to it's revenue from advertising.
Big companies
buy
these Web properties more as a
way of preventing others from acquiring them and
for bragging rights than for any realistic
expectation of earning much
revenue.)
Should you say no
to free traffic? No. Absolutely not.
Should you make it
your main marketing method? No. I say not.
Should you invest in
advertising to get the most high quality, targeted and
ready to buy visitors?
Absolutely. No
question about it. YES! Paying for traffic and testing to
get paid-traffic advertising that works is a business
assett like no other - a competition-killer in many niches,
a necessity for survival in others, and the only realistic
way to create large-scale, explosive growth on-demand in
any business.
And if you don't make
money with paid advertising there is something wrong with
your business, probably in the foundations. As the great ad
man Claude Hopkins wrote:
"Advertising
often looks very simple...But the men who know
realize that the problems are as many and as
important as the problems in building a
skyscraper. And many of them lie in the
foundations."
Problems deep within
the foundations of your business may be many, among
them:
 selling
something people don't want or no longer
want
selling
to a marketplace in which your product has become a
commodity differentiated only by price in the minds of
shoppers
lacking any
easily spotted way in which your business is different
from a sea of competitors
putting
your customers through a shopping and buying
experience which is uncomfortable for them or
out-of-date compared with what the experience they
expect today
In the new science and
art of online marketing the ability of a website to turn
browsers into buyers is termed "conversion" - when visitors
to your website buy or agree to receive more information
from you via email and other media you've converted a
vague, amorphous ghost into a flesh-and-blood person who
wants to get the benefits of what you know or sell.
With your website and
follow-up marketing system there will always be leaks. The
passing of time makes obsolete some selling systems. For
example: a shopping cart system that was pretty good a few
years ago might look amateurish to visitors today. If you
don't keep up with the expectations of today's shoppers
your business will suffer.
In most cases then
improving "conversion" with your web business is an ongoing
process, like tending a garden... and sometimes massive
weed-clearing is in order.
If your website hasn't
had a serious writing and layout overhaul from a conversion
specialist in the last 24-36 it is a good idea to look at
getting one. After all, your competititors are working to
improve their conversion processes, shouldn't you
be?
The truth is that if
you don't keep a constant keen eye on your website's
conversion-ability you'll have lots of lots revenue
slipping through your fingers.
That's right: your
business will be losing money it could have gotten, losing
customers to your competitors, and losing customer trust as
web users seek the best quality experience.
Simply put: if your
website is offering a less-than-optimal user experience you
better have a very unique and desireable product, because
if you don't your customers will go looking for the same
sort of product you sell and buy it elsewhere from,
gasp!, another vendor - maybe
even moving the buying decision away from one based on
value to one based on price... and once you've lost your
customers to cheaper vendors it can be hard to win them
back.
Today with an online
business presence you can try to compete on low prices but
I wouldn't recommend it. Of course browsers find it very
easy to shop online for the lowest prices and are getting
very cagey about it... these are not the people you want.
They are fickle and a customer base built on low prices is
a problem in itself. Who you should be courting is the
market of people for whom the EXPERIENCE, not the lowest
price, is the primary factor in WHO they choose to do
business with.
| 
