How to create a Business Website
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…
Does Your Headline Attract Attention
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.
Marketing Research and Competitive analysis
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.
Online Marketing Research Doesn’t Change
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).
Mail Order Advertising – Why?
We cannot often follow all the principle of mail order advertising, though we know we should. The advertiser forces a compromise. Perhaps pride in our ads has an influence.
But every departure from those principles adds to our selling cost. Therefore it is always a question of what we are willing to pay for our frivolities.
We can at least know what we pay. We can make keyed comparisons, one ad with another. Whenever we do we invariably find that the nearer we get to proved mail order copy the more customers we get for our money.
This is another important chapter. Think it over. What real difference is there between inducing a customer to order by mail or order from his dealer? Why should the methods of salesmanship differ?
They should not. When they do, it is for one of two reasons. Either the advertiser does not know what the mail order advertiser knows. He is advertising blindly. Or he deliberately sacrifices a percentage of his returns to gratify some desire.
There is some apology for that, just as there is for fine offices and buildings. Most of us can afford to do something for pride and opinion. But let us know what we are doing. Let us know the cost of our pride.
Then, if our advertising fails to bring us the wanted returns, let us go back to our model – a good mail order ad – and eliminate some of our waste.
Mail Order Advertising- More about testing
Sometimes the advertiser uses small ads, sometimes large ads. None are to small to tell a reasonable story. But an ad twice larger brings twice the returns. A four times larger ad brings four times the returns, and usually some in addition.
But this occurs only when the larger space is utilized as well as the small space. Set half-page copy in a page space and you double the cost in returns. We have seen many a test prove that.
Look at an ad of the Mead Cycle Company – a typical mail order ad. These have been running for many years. The ads are unchanging. Mr. Mead told the writer that not for $10,000 would he change a single word in his ads.
For many years he compared one ad with the other. And the ads you see today are the final results of all those experiments. Note the picture he uses, the headlines, the economy of space, the small type.
Those ads are as near perfect for their purpose as an ad can be.
So with any other mail order ad which has long continued. Every feature, every word and picture teaches advertising at its best. You may not like them. You may say they are unattractive, crowded, hard to read – anything you will.
But the test of results has proved those ads the best salesman those lines have yet discovered. And they certainly pay.
Mail order advertising is the court of least resort. You may get the same instruction, if you will, by keying other ads. But mail order ads are models. They are selling goods profitably in a difficult way.
It is far harder to get mail order than to send buyers to the stores. It is hard to sell goods which can’t be seen. Ads which do that are excellent examples of what advertising should be.
Mail Order Advertising – Layout of a Mail Order
Understanding Layout and profitability
Mail order advertising is always set in small type. It is usually set in smaller type than ordinary print. That economy of space is universal. So it proves conclusively that larger type does not pay.
Remember that when you double your space by doubling the size of your type. The ad may still be profitable. But traced returns have proved that you paying a double price for sales.
In mail order advertising there is no waste space. Every line is utilized. Borders are rarely used. Remember that when you are tempted to leave valuable space unoccupied.
In mail order advertising there is no palaver. There is no boasting, save of super-service. There is no useless talk. There is no attempt at entertainment. There is nothing to amuse.
Mail order advertising usually contains a coupon. That is there to cut out as a reminder of something the reader has decided to do.
Mail order advertisers know that readers forget. They are reading a magazine of interest. They may be absorbed in a story. A large percentage of people who read an ad and decide to act will forget that decision in five minutes.
The mail order advertisers that waste by tests, and he does not propose to accept it. So he inserts that reminder to be cut out, and it turns when the reader is ready to act.
In mail order advertising the pictures are always to the point. They are salesmen in themselves. They earn space they occupy.
The size is gauged by their importance. The picture of a dress one is trying to sell may occupy much space.
Less important things get smaller spaces. Pictures in ordinary advertising may teach little. They probably result in whims.
But pictures in mail order advertising may form half the cost of selling. And you may be sure that everything about them has been decided by many comparative tests.
Before you use useless pictures, merely to decorate or interest, look over some mail order ads. Mark what their verdict is.
A man advertised an incubator to be sold by mail. Type ads with right headlines brought excellent returns. But he conceived the idea that a striking picture would increase those returns.
So he increased his space 50 percent to add a row of chickens in silhouette.
It did make a striking ad, but his cost per reply was increased by exactly that 50 percent.
The new ad, costing one-half more for every insertion, brought not one added sale.
The man learned that incubator buyers were practical people. They were looking for attractive offers, not for pictures.
Think of the countless untraced campaigns where a whim of that kind costs half the advertising money without a penny in return. And it may go on year after year.
Mail order advertising tells a complete story if the purpose is to make an immediate sale. You see no limitations there are on amount of copy.
The motto there is, “The more you tell the more you sell.” And it has never failed to prove out so in any test we know.
Mail Order Advertising – What It Teaches
The severest test of an advertising man is in selling goods by mail. But that is a school from which he must graduate before he can hope for success. There cost and result are immediately apparent. False theories melt away like snowflakes in the sun.
The advertising is profitable or it is not, clearly on the face of returns. Figures which do not lie tell one at once the merits of an ad. This puts men on their mettle. All guesswork is eliminated. Every mistake is conspicuous.
One quickly loses his conceit by learning how often his judgment errs – often nine times in ten.
There one learns that advertising must be done on a scientific basis to have any fair chance of success. And he learns that every wasted dollar adds to the cost of results.
Here is a tough efficiency and economy under a master who can’t be fooled. Then, and only then, is he apt to apply the same principles and keys to all advertising.
A man was selling a five-dollar article. The replies from his ad cost him 85 cents. Another man submitted an ad which he thought better. The replies cost $14.20 each. Another man submitted an ad which for two years brought replies at an average of 41 cents each.
Consider the difference on 250,000 replies per year. Think how valuable was the man who cut the cost in two. Think what it would have meant to continue that $14.20 ad without any key on returns.
Yet there are thousands of advertisers who do just that. They spend large sums on a guess. And they are doing what that man did – paying for sales from 2 to 35 times what they need cost.
A study of mail order advertising reveals many things worth learning. It is a prime subject for study. In the first place, if continued, you know what pays. It is therefore good advertising as applied to that line.
The probability is that the ad has resulted from many traced comparisons. It is therefore the best advertising, not theoretical. It will not deceive you. The lessons it teaches are principles which wise men apply to all advertising.
Varun- This is something that every small business owner should read many times and then follow, I’ll try to keep things simple and easy for you to understand. Don’t forget These laws are based on experiments. They haven’t been changed in years and won’t in years to come… Its called Direct Response Advertising.
Better and more powerful than your common Brand Advertising. Of course brand has its own place but for small business owners, this is MOST important.
Play Only if you can Expect to Win
Everyone reading this can succeed online with their business! I can say that with 100% confidence. There is room for everyone online. The Internet is big beyond your dreams and is getting bigger every moment.
So expect to Win. Expect to Succeed. Why? Because you will. There is nothing standing in your way… Only you can stop yourself to succeed. One of the visitor on my blog left this amazing comment…
Pogo who was made famous for his words, right in the midst of VietNam war days:
– I found the enemy…
– The enemy is us.
You say, “Well how can you say that. Look at my financial situation.” Or, “I don’t have the education so I’ll never be able to compete.” Or, “I don’t have the time!”
Well I’m here to tell you none of those hold water. They are temporary problems. They can be overcome. And giving up is a permanent solution to those temporary problems.
If you commit yourself 100%, burn your bridges, and put all of your energy to task, YOU WILL SUCCEED! There’s no question…
There are a few things you need to get through your head.
- You can’t put a time limit on it.
- You have to expect to fail before you succeed. So fail faster to succeed.
- You have to create a Burning Desire.
- You must walk before your run… Get educated.
- You must have complete focus on your goal.
- You need a defined purpose.
- You have to find YOUR opportunity.
- You have to employ patience.
- You have enjoy what you are doing and believe in it…
- And You Must Learn From Others…
Your commitment to Online Success is the key to finding it. Commit to enjoying the journey. Someday in hindsight you will realize the journey itself produced your life’s dreams. The ups and downs are just brush strokes on your life’s work.
Offer Service -II
Did you read the first part of this article? If not then read here Offer Service -I
The maker of the electric sewing machine motor found advertising difficult. So, on good advice, he ceased soliciting a purchase. He offered to send to any home, through any dealer, a motor for one weeks’ use.
With it would come a man to show how to operate it. “Let us help you for a week without cost or obligation,” said the ad. Such an offer was resistless, and about nine in ten of the trials led to sales.
So in many, many lines. Cigar makers send out boxes to anyone and say, “Smoke ten, then keep them or return them, as you wish.”
Makers of books, typewriters, washing machines, kitchen cabinets, vacuum sweepers, etc., send out their products without any prepayment. They say, “Use them a week, then do as you wish.” Practically all merchandise sold by mail is sent subject to return.
These are all common principles of salesmanship. The most ignorant peddler applies them. Yet the salesman-in-print very often forgets them. He talks about his interest. He blazons a name, as though that was of importance.
His phrase is, “Drive people to the stores,” and that is his attitude in everything he says.
People can be coaxed but not driven. Whatever they do they do to please themselves. Many fewer mistakes would be made in advertising if these facts were never forgotten.
Strategic Internet Marketing- Article Writing – Turn Articles Into Ebooks and get paid
- Why You should Ignore Search Engines?
- Affiliate Marketers – Can You reduce Your Time/Money expenditure by 70%?
- How Not To Suck at making Money?
- Internet Marketing Strategy – Why Do Some Affiliate Marketers Fail?
- My Secret Behind High Speed Writing.
- Market Positioning – 4 Tips to Position Yourself As an Expert in Any Market
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