Archive for September, 2007

When a customer visits your website, you have roughly ten seconds to capture their attention, so you better think carefully about what you want to include. Some websites go directly into the navigation and content of their websites on their first “index” page.

Customers can surf around the site and decide if they want to buy the product or service. This is not really the wisest option available. Of course, every site does need the standard index page chock full of frequently asked questions, testimonials, order form, etc.

But there is a better way to “capture” your visitors by using a squeeze.

A squeeze page captures your audience with a screaming headline and brief key points about the customer’s problem and how you intend to solve it. Sometimes a squeeze page offers a free report or newsletter. Either way, all squeeze pages purpose is to retrieve the customers name and email address, or sometimes they ask the customer a burning question.

For example, you can check out my squeeze page at http://www.imbasics.com

So what is the point in retrieving the customer’s name and email address? Have you heard of opt-in lists? An opt-in list is gold to an internet marketer because you can send your customers information which will hopefully attract the customer back to the website to either purchase a product or service being offered.

Spamming is illegal and having a great opt-in list is really necessary to any Internet marketer.

You can also use your list to make money as an affiliate with another company. You can send customers an email from the site you are promoting and make profits as an affiliate. This is a great way to earn extra income indeed.

Squeeze pages are sometimes the first page found on a website. Sometimes they are pop ups on the index page of a website. They are very crucial to any Internet marketer’s business.

With creating lists using squeeze page, you can promote your products or information again and again. Building a list is your bloodline for your business.

Again here are the Key points to remember for your business website:

1. A Name Squeeze Page (A Way of contacting your customers, prospects with email).

2. Information booklet as a gift for subscribing to your list.

3. Sales pitch for your products.

4. Contact Us, Legal Disclaimer and About Us pages.

5. Your First page of the website is about your customer not yourself.  Talk about how you can help them…

This topic is about getting attention from your prospects. Its all about Headlines. – Varun

Headlines…

The difference between advertising and personal salesmanship lies largely in personal contact. The salesman is there to demand attention. He cannot be ignored. The advertisement can be ignored.

But the salesman wastes much of his time on prospects whom he can never hope to interest. He cannot pick them out. The advertisement is read only by interested people who, by their own volition, study what we have to say.

The purpose of a headline is to pick out people you can interest. You wish to talk to someone in a crowd. So the first thing you say is, “Hey there, Bill Jones” to get the right persons attention.

So it is in an advertisement. What you have will interest certain people only, and for certain reasons. You care only for those people. Then create a headline which will hail those people only.

Perhaps a blind headline or some clever conceit will attract many times as many. But they may consist of mostly impossible subjects for what you have to offer. And the people you are after may never realize that the ad refers to something they may want.

Headlines on ads are like headlines on news items. Nobody reads a whole newspaper. One is interested in financial news, one in political, one in society, one in cookery, one in sports, etc. There are whole pages in any newspaper which we may never scan at all. Yet other people might turn directly to those pages.

We pick out what we wish to read by headlines, and we don’t want those headlines misleading. The writing of headlines is one of the greatest journalistic arts. They either conceal or reveal an interest.

Suppose a newspaper article stated that a certain woman was the most beautiful in the city. That article would be of intense interest to that woman and her friends. But neither she nor her friends would ever read it if the headline was “Egyptian Psychology.”

So in advertising. It is commonly said that people do not read advertisements. That is silly, of course. We who spend millions in advertising and watch the returns marvel at the readers we get. Again and again we see 20 percent of all the readers of a newspaper cut out a certain coupon.

3. Market Metrics
Get many Size estimates (current and future) for all of the following:

• Overall market
• Current size as it stands
• Potential size for the future
• Actual penetration of current products/service within the entire market

Individual market segments

• Current size
• Potential size
• Actual penetration of current products/service within the total market
• Usage rates
• Frequency of product purchases
• Growth estimates (current and in the future) for:
• Overall market
• Individual market segments

Competitive Analysis

You must include a Summary of who your Current Competitors are

Listing the competition by market share ranking (by each target market if possible) is a good way to size them up. You can also be more specific by searching for individual points listed below.

Current Competitors – full analysis of top competitors including:

• Products & Services (e.g., description, uniqueness, pricing, etc.)
• Their Market share at current
• Current customers (targeted audience)
• Positioning and promotion strategies
• Partnerships/Alliances/Distributors
• Recent news

SWOT Analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats

It is extremely important to focus attention on the SWOT section of this report. While most other information in this report can be gleaned from company and secondary materials, much of what appears in the SWOT section is based on the researcher’s own opinions of the competitor based on the information that is collected.

Consequently, this is often one of the hardest areas of the report to write as well.

Potential Competitors (any competition in the future)

You will need to get an explanation (though it need not be as detailed as Current Competitors) on who they are or maybe and why they are seen as potential competitors

5. Additional

• Extraneous Variables
  Discuss factors that may affect this market (e.g., technological, social, governmental, competitive, etc.)
• Market Trends and what is expected to happen in the future

If you can follow these basic tips for finding and selecting your target market, you should be ready to search online and check out the competition and their rankings in the search engines.

If you are trying to research your market for online business, things doesn’t change much. The marketing metrics, competition, demographics from offline real world doesn’t change much.

In order to be able to conduct a decent targeting and marketing campaign, you must first understand the fundamentals of finding out who they are. They only way to do this is to follow a specific guideline for you to follow. Check out the guideline below.

1. Your Objective to the Research

Explain in one paragraph why the research is being done, what you hope to learn and for what purpose the information that you attain may be used

2. Description of the Market

This should be general like one paragraph

Who is your Target Market(s)

• Why you chose this particular market
• Get a complete profile of your market (e.g., demographics, psychographics, behaviors)
• What benefits does your market seek (i.e., what points-of-pain or problems are being solved)
• What factors can affect their decision to purchase or use your product/service
• What attitudes do they have about the products/services that are currently not on the market
• How is the product used
• Products and Services that appeal to the target market
• In general terms, what is currently so appealing to this market
• If there are no current providers, what types of products/services may appeal to this market in the future (i.e., what is used now to solve the problem).