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Getting Hits and Getting Customers
Getting hits to a website in order to make sales is the desire of everyone on the Internet. However, getting sales is more exciting and much more important. I had a conversation with an affiliate the other day and his goal was to get 10,000 hits a day to his sales page. I tried to explain to him that because he is getting hits, it does not necessarily mean he will make a lot of sales.
In my early days in Direct Marketing, I was taught to send hundreds of thousands of brochures to get 20 people to sign up for a class. This never made a lot of sense to me, but this is the way the Director of Marketing was taught and this is what she taught. I kept telling myself that when she left the company and I was promoted, I was going to change this complete waste of money and resources and focus in on getting 20 people to a training class without sending all those brochures.
I spent a lot of time doing research into what works and what does not work. How could I get 20 people into a training program and reduce my costs at the same time? I knew if I could accomplish this, there would be more money in the company, and more promotions for myself. To make a long story short, within 3 months of taking over for the Director, I was able to slash our costs by 80% while maintaining the same numbers regarding our training classes.
I was not a genius, I just did not believe in doing things the same way as everyone else just because that is what they had always done. I searched for something better and I found it!
Now, I am in the Internet marketing arena and I hear from everyone that lots of hits mean lots of sales. Again, I do not follow this reasoning. I have affiliates for ISORegister.com who get hundreds of hits to their sales page every day, but no sales. I have other affiliates who get 20 or 30 hits and they consistently make 3 - 5 sales each week. Why the difference?
Those affiliates who are getting lots of hits are getting just what they pay for--hits. This is not baseball, this is business and in business, hits don't count as much as sales. Qualified customers are the final goal of everyone on the Internet. I want qualified customers coming to my site and I would rather have 20 qualified customers, then 20,000 hits of people being paid to view a website.
How do you get those qualified customers is the question I have been asking myself? What I have found is again not rocket science, but simply business 101.
Targeting your traffic should be the number one goal of anyone doing business online. Guaranteed hits are a waste of money--great for the hit counter, but nothing in the way of sales are going to come from these venues. I have tried over half a dozen of these types of hit guarantees, and I have never received one sale.
Safelists and FFA pages are great to spike the hit meter, but again, not so great from a sales standpoint. Mass emails are great if you want Spam complaints and nasty messages from people receiving your message. Desktop messaging is really a great way to kill your business and get millions of people ticked off at you. Free classified ads--how many do you read?
If you are really interested in building your business and not just getting hits, then you need to use specialized and targeted marketing and advertising. How do you do this? The answer is two-fold. Solo ads and viral marketing.
There are tens of thousands of ezines on the Internet covering all types of business, products and services. 99% of them accept advertising of some form and the vast majority of them accept solo advertising. With a true solo ad, you get to write the subject heading and your ad and only your ad is delivered alone and usually on dates and at times you choose. I have never had much luck with weekend advertising, so I make sure I schedule all ads on Tuesday - Thursday.
Here are some tips for sending your solo ads:
1) Send your ads on Tuesday - Thursday only--Weekends are generally a bad time. People are thinking about what they are going to do on the weekend on Friday and thinking about what they did over the weekend on Monday.
2) Send your ad during the day to your desired market. If you are targeting the USA, send the ad between noon and 7pm. Sending an ad overnight so it will be in the in-box first thing in the morning is a bad idea. What is the first thing you do when you turn on your computer in the morning? You start deleting ads because you have acquired so much junk overnight. Sending ads during the day allows people to look at the subject line individually when they hear their email ding or tell them, they have mail.
3) Make sure you control the subject headline. Some ezines send solo ads with the word solo ad in the subject line. This has got to be one of the worst mistakes these people can make. All this does is alert the reader that an ad is waiting--Delete!
4) Don't make the ad too long. Capture the readers attention with a nice subject and draw them in with a short and solid ad that will get them to your sales page.
5) Do Not put Re: in the subject line. This is dishonest and sets you up as someone who cannot be trusted. I get over 100 RE: emails each day and not one gets opened unless I know for sure it is actually a reply from someone I sent a note to.
6) Make sure your ad is sent by itself and is read first. I have seen some solo ads that have a couple of paragraphs of text about advertising options for the ezine above the ad itself. You are paying for the ezine to get more solo advertising. Again, not a good idea on the part of the ezine owner.
7) Track your ads--Even if they are free, track your ads so you know what is working and what is not. You do not want to waste time or money with your advertising, and free ads take time which directly translates into money.
The other avenue to get qualified traffic to your site is called viral marketing. This is simply placing an ad or article or link in an ebook that is given away by other people. Sometimes these ebooks are branded by the company or person giving them away and sometimes they are just solid and valuable information that people can use. Your name, link, ad, or article is associated with this book and you can get a lot of exposure over a long period of time.
The difference between a solid viral marketing vehicle and a classified ad or safelist is the reader of the viral marketing book is actually interested in the subject of the book and will take time to review it. If you provide software for marketers, then you will want to associate yourself with a viral book that is targeted to marketers. If you are selling houses, then associate yourself with a viral book to people who will be interested in buying houses, etc.
Advertising and marketing success depends on research and finding avenues that not everyone else is using. Too many people buy guaranteed hits, post links at FFA sites, join safelists and send free classified ads, thinking they have all the bases covered.
Remember as you invest your time, energy and resources in advertising, that hits do not generate sales, qualified customers generate sales and the sooner people understand this simple yet forgotten concept, the sooner their business will start getting more sales and less hits.
Finding affordable ezine advertising that works is always a chore. One of the benefits of ISORegister.com membership is that we have partnered with some of the best ezines and ezine co-ops to bring you members only discounts that will dramatically reduce your advertising cost without reducing your results.
In addition, you will get a top of the line Ad and Link tracker with AdAlyzer. This tracking program provides all the features you need to save money and time on your future advertising. Best of all, you get AdAlyzer free with your ISORegister.com membership. Want to know more? Follow this link for a business unlike any other.
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Darryl Graham has over 20 years of marketing experience and is the CEO of ISORegister, Inc. He has single handedly built three successful internet businesses. ISORegister.com, Ad-Alyzer.com, and Look2Gain.com. ISORegister has helped 100's of ordinary people profit online. Visit us today and let us start helping you grow your online business.
http://www.ad-alyzer.com/727/ISOResourcesforsuccess
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