Devour The Web

Here is a story of four traders who each started with a website built by us, retailing the same products Australia-wide from different cities. It’s hard to compare businesses with different products in different markets, but these four businesses had all those factors in common.

Start-up:

• Trader A started with a website and a spare room at home, and became so successful that he needed to open a shop.

• Trader B (in another city) liked Trader A’s website, so he also started with a website and a spare room at home, and became so successful that he also needed to open a shop.
• Trader C bought Trader A’s website, shop lease and business and employed someone to run it for him.
• Trader D (in a third city) liked Trader C’s website so started with a website and a spare room at home.

Current status:

• Trader A, after a break, started a new website and a shop with the same products (but a different part of the city). He now has two retail stores plus he is starting a wholesale division.

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Here I will explain precisely how to advertise effectively, including:

1. The single most important thing to understand
2. Why you must understand the benefits your customers seek
3. The most important element in your advertising
4. Appealing to the reader’s self interest
5. Hints for body copy
6. Emphasizing risk reversal
7. Closing the sale
8. Effective testing
9. Using keyed responses

Here’s a topic that many business owners find confusing and frustrating. It’s something that can eat huge holes in your budget yet, if done correctly, can create huge profit windfalls and massive growth for your business.

I’m talking about advertising, the bane and boon of small business. How do you keep from throwing away your profits on ineffective ads? How do you target the right people with the right message in the right medium? How do you know if the ads you run are actually working? Excellent questions.

And now it’s time for some simple, profitable answers. My goal over the next few pages is to help you unlock the secrets of successful advertising and put them to work for your business. I’ll show you how to put together a winning ad one that produces an immediate, direct, measurable response from your target audience. No ad agency fees, no confusing hype. Just good old-fashioned salesmanship that gets results. Ready? Let’s talk advertising…

The emergence of globalise trade, increase in foreign investment and cross-border transactions have put many small businesses under pressure to find innovative ways to continue to market their products and services. This is especially difficult given that they often operate on tight marketing budgets.

In the quest for cheap marketing alternatives, these small businesses continue to use conventional marketing tools such as newspaper, magazine, radio and television advertisements, unaware of the advantages that Internet Promotion offers. All too often, these entrepreneurs focus on the disadvantages of Internet Promotion and fail to adequately take advantage of the opportunities that it presents. Moreover, their preoccupation with conventional marketing strategies is driven by a misconception that these are cheaper than Internet Promotion.

To most small business entrepreneurs, marketing or promoting their products or services via the Internet can be a daunting task. However, with adequate information small businesses can benefit significantly from Internet Promotion while minimising the disadvantages that it presents. In fact, it may prove to be the marketing strategy that generates the highest return on investment.

The Advantages

Cost Effective and Enduring Marketing Strategies

It happened twice during the same week. All I wanted to do was make a purchase, and they were making every effort to keep me from it (or so it seemed). Why would a business who wanted me to buy from them so badly put enough roadblocks in my path to make me want to click off the site and go someplace else?

The roadblocks that almost kept me from purchasing were repeated upsells. You know the kind. You go to a site and add something to your cart or speak with a person on the phone and tell him/her you want to buy. Then it starts. The upsells.

But Wait? There’s More

“As a special offer - only for people who buy today - you can also get?” I’m a copywriter so I understand the power of upsells, and one, maybe even two, is a good thing. Lots and lots of people will add more to their carts (or agree via telephone to buy more) when given the chance to upgrade or buy exclusive offers at the same time. But there is such a thing as overdoing it.

#1 ~Look at your past customers~

Notice trends in the type of clients you attract and pay particular attention to the ones who provoke you to be our best. How do you feel when you get off a call with a client who’s “got it together”…Great, right? What about the client who’s a real downer? The phone rings and you glance at the caller id. Ugh! Not her AGAIN! I’d rather stick my hand thru the paper shredder than answer the phone. (LOL, we’ve all been there!) Remember the tolerations from unpleasant encounters and be sure not to allow them into your newly formed target market.

#2 ~Think about ideal future prospects~

Make up an imaginary customer. For example: mine is "Caroline Everson". She’s a 35 year old coach/therapist, married, lives in LA and works out of her home office. She’s been in practice for 3 years and has two daughters-10 and 6. Caroline’s website is so stagnant it stinks because it hasn’t been updated for over a year. She wants to revive her online presence, and attract a full roster of clients from all over the country in the next 6 months.

For a web site to make the most money it must be a direct response web site. That does not mean that sites with contents do not make money. But for a small business owner the direct response website is the key to real profits.

Purpose of direct response website is very simple. It just takes orders. The customer reads your product and decides either to buy or leave. Simple and pure business. No confusion at all.

What is a direct response website?

It is a site which aims at stimulating a response from the customer. It focuses on selling a product and getting an immediate response. The response can be a purchase or a lead generation. Mostly it is in form of a sales letter featuring a product and having an order link at the end.

When a customer comes to direct response website he simply has two options. Either he buys the product or leaves.

Beauty of this site lies in easy to reach and accomplish the final deed or sale in just one or two clicks.

The Public has Embraced Local Search and Want to do More

Although Local Search only caught on in the last year, such queries already account for over 36% of all search engine queries. When a person adds a geographic term (like city, town, or zip code) to their search query, the results only show them the small pool of businesses located within that area - and not necessarily all of them.

Entering the search terms: “garden supply” + Denver only returns gardening stores in Denver - rather than the many thousands listed in the Google database. They’re even shown clustered on a map, to help the searcher easily spot the closest ones.

That’s significant since people prefer to shop on the basis of convenience. Research shows that over 50% of Yellow Page directory users scan for location first, before deciding which ads to read or consider. Local Search simplifies that preference further.

Too Many Small and Mid-sized Businesses are Missing the Boat

Their widespread mistake comes from assuming that the Internet is not crucial for their brick and mortar operations. The main reason for people going online is not to buy online. They find it more convenient (that word again) and faster than the traditional methods like Yellow Pages or newspaper ads.

When you make your living on the Internet, you sometimes forget that the resources you use every day (and take for granted) might rate an incredible discovery to anyone who doesn’t already know they exist.

Whether they help you make money, save time, save money, or avoid frustration, these ecommerce tools and services rate my highest recommendation for anyone who conducts any form of ecommerce online.

ClickBank.com -

If you sell a downloadable product such as an ebook, report, or software, you can’t beat ClickBank for processing credit card payments. Not only do they take the payments and send you a check twice a month, they also plug your product into an existing network with tens-of-thousands of affiliates who can sell it for you. Also, unlike a traditional merchant credit card processing account, ClickBank assumes all the fraud risk and prevents many of the “horror” stories you hear in connection with online credit card processing.

MySiteSales.com -

Since ClickBank only allows the sale of downloadable products, MySiteSales.com comes to the rescue for anyone selling a physical product or service. Offering a suite of integrated product catalogs, follow up autoresponders, advertising tracking, a secure server, and even limited-time coupon offers, this tool rates a “must have” for setting up and integrating a professional ecommerce solution on virtually any size website.

The Internet has opened up a whole new era of business opportunities. Falling trade barriers combining with easy access to trade information thanks to the Internet have created dramatic possibilities and sparked the growth of global online trade in virtually every area.

Many companies are taking advantage of electronic media quite aggressively by making new contacts, tapping into new markets and reducing costs with the help of online technologies.

Whether you are starting a new import business or planning to expand your existing business, you too can use the Internet as your primary channel for getting information, sourcing products or services, finding suppliers and doing your marketing.

Before the Internet era, finding a viable product for importing was not an easy job! Trade shows and traveling to foreign lands were the two best options available for getting hands on information on a product and its supplier. Today, required information on any conceivable product from virtually any market is available at your finger tips.

Finding a product

If you know what you are planning to import, a substantial work is already done! Otherwise, your first step is to choose a feasible product or service to import. Whether you are planning to import a general merchandize or an industry-specific product, do your homework right.

Since most of the businesses throughout the world have access to the Internet, many astute entrepreneurs and trading companies are using the Internet as one of the primary means for developing their import and export businesses.

Already a big slice of global trades are taking place through the Internet. According to Forrester Research, a major marketing research company, worldwide online exports will escalate to US $1.4 trillion in 2004, and cross-border e-marketplace trade will exceed US $400 billion in this year alone.

However, cross-border trading will create a division between the companies that actively import and export using the Internet and those that don’t. Companies that are slow in adopting the Internet will loose competitive edge to the more proactive Internet-savvy counter parts.

If you are already involved in international trade or planning to either import or export products, Internet could be your primary source of gathering data, researching prospective market, finding clients and, may be even, for doing your entire business online.

First, let’s look into the export side of the international trade. Like any other business, exporting requires proper planning. Well-documented and clearly written export marketing plan will work as your road map to success. The following steps are essential for any export endeavor. Identifying products for export