How to drive Targeted Traffic
To your Website.
There are basically two types of
Traffic your website will receive based on your advertising efforts. Some
people feel that if you get 30 thousand visitors to your website
each month, that is a good start. However if only 2 people buy from
you during that month, I call that pathetic. the reason being is
that if most of your website visitors are not really interested in
what you are selling, then your efforts have been wasted both in
time and money.
However, if one thousand people visit
your website and you make ten sales, then I would call that a
success. The reason being is that the one thousand visitors were
really interested in what you had to sell. These types of people are
called Targeted visitors. In my opinion, I would rather have one
thousand Targeted Visitors visiting my website than thirty thousand
non-targeted people anytime.
Some ways of finding these types of
people is to advertise in places where these people look for
information like:
Pay Per click (PPC Advertising)
joint Venture Advertising
Viral Marketing
Online Forums
Safelists
Usergroups
Trade magazines
Ezines
Newspaper Classified Ads
Postcards
Letters
Word Of Mouth
Purchase Leads
As you can see, there are many ways
of advertising through various Targeted Media Outlets. The one thing
to remember here is that advertising can cost you very little
or can be a major expense like your monthly car payment.
Now lets go through each one
separately:
Pay Per click (PPC Advertising)
Pay Per Click advertising is one of
the most popular and fastest ways to get Targeted Traffic to your
website. Search Engines like Google.com and Overture.com allow you
to create a small classified ad, setup search terms that people would
use to find your classified Ad and then you actually place bids on
your search terms to gain more visibility against your competition.
Now based on how popular your products are, you can spend from.05 up
to hundreds of dollars everytime someone clicks on your ad.
As you can imagine, you could spend
from a few dollars up to hundreds of dollars a day advertising this
way. If you're not careful, you could be in the poor house in no
time please be careful. The advantage here is that you can test
several of your ads in a few days to see which are successful. I
have found that the best Guru on PPC Advertising is Perry Marshall.
His material is some of the best I have read. He material will lead
you to successful Ad campaigns using Google Adwords.
Click here to visit his website
joint Venture Advertising
Joint Venture Advertising is another
extremely lucrative way to make money. This type of advertising is
usually great for people who already have their own product or
service they wish to market. The idea here is that you form an
agreement with a marketer who already has a list of people they
market to. Many times their list has thousands of people who have
purchased the marketer's products in the past. In exchange for a
commission for each product sold, the marketer will sell your
product or service to their list of Opportunity Buyers. Sometimes
the commission can be quite high. One of the most successful
Marketers I have seen is Mike Filsaime. I have purchased many
products from him and he is a genuinely nice guy.
Viral Marketing
Different strains of Viral Marketing
(forgive the pun I couldn't resist) have been around for many years.
One of the first Viral Marketing Websites was Jokeoftheday.com. The website includes text and
banner advertisements from other companies for people to view and
visit. These websites receive tremendous amounts of traffic because
visitors will read the Joke of the day, then pass the joke off to
friends and family to read. Then your friends and family will pass
it off to others. As time goes on, your website has the potential of
being visited by millions of people around the world. Now mind you,
chances are all these millions of people won't be rushing to buy
your product or service from your advertisement on the Viral
Marketing website, but you have a good chance of making many sales. I don't mind
touting my own horn but I also have a Viral Marketing website I'd
like to show you.
Online Forums
Online Forums are also a great way
for you to get your name known as an expert on a topic or business
opportunity. You see human behavior suggests that most people will
not buy your product or service the first time they see your
Advertisement or website. However, with forums people get to know
you as long as you interact with other members of the forum. The
best feature of a forum is that your signature file can contain a
list of links of your products and services. Overtime as forum
members get to know you, they will be more apt to look at what you
are selling.
Safelists
Safelists are a great way to
advertise, because the people who are members of the Safelist are
very targeted to the types of products and services you sell.
Usually the memberships are free to join but also offer a paid
membership which is usually the Pro version. How it works is that
you are allowed to send emails to he Safelist members based on a
schedule. Sometimes, the schedule can be every 2 days, 3 days, or
even 7 days. It's all based on the rules set by the Safelist owner.
Also, sometimes the Safelist will provide further targeting of your
ad by providing categories to select from.
Trade magazines
Advertising in Trade Magazines will
give you a very concentrated Targeted audience. Also, if the
magazine is printed, your ad will be active for a long time. The
issue here is that the cost to advertise can be high. Sometimes, an
Ad can cost up to thousands of dollars for one publishing.
Ezines
Ezines are an electronic form of a
paper magazine. There are thousands of these Ezines active on the
Internet today. Ezines are targeted towards a specific type of
audience. Your advertisement can be sent to the Ezine Subscribers as
a Solo Ad (Your ad is sent to all of the Ezine Subscribers by
itself). Solo Ads are the most expensive ads to send, but there is
usually no limitation on the amount of content your ad contains.
Ezines also sell advertising space via classified ads. The cost of
these ads are based on the placement of the ad. Usually the most
costly appear at the top and the least expensive appear at the
bottom.
Newspaper Classified Ads
Newspaper Classified Ads can be a
very effective media to advertise your products or service based
on the size of the newspaper's circulation. Also, in many states,
for one price your classified ad could appear in multiple newspapers
at the same time. This increases your exposure by leaps and bounds.
But before you place your ad in multiple newspapers, it would pay to
place test classified ads in local or statewide newspapers first to
see which ad brings the most visitors to your website. An
alternative would be to place these same ads through Google.com or
Overture.com for 3 - 5 days to see which ad is most successful. Just
remember to watch your daily budget and not to overspend. that you the fact that the Newspaper has a large circulation. The issue
here is that the newspaper audience is not targeted to what you are
selling.
Postcards
Postcards can be a great way to
advertise because most people love to receive postcards in the mail.
You have a greater chance of having your postcard read because both
the front and back are exposed without the recipient having to do
anything but read it. Also, you can specifically target your
demographics based on Age, Income, Address.
Letters
Mailing letters is similar to
postcards as far as targeting your demographics. However, the cost
is higher because of the amount of time and labor stuffing and
mailing the envelope. The advantage to a letter is that you can say
as much as you want when selling your product.
Word Of Mouth
Of all the advertising outlets, word
of mouth is the easiest, most cost efficient, and most successful
way to advertise your business.
Purchase Leads
Purchasing leads has proven to be a
loser for me. Many times the lists you purchase have been sold so
many times that your success is very slim. If your product commands
a premium price, most people will not respond. Instead of purchasing
Leads, the other methods above will provide greater success at a
lower cost.
