Archive for online business
3 Steps to Creating Your Online Sales Funnel Plan
Posted by: | CommentsWelcome back
3 Steps to Creating Your Online Sales Funnel Plan
Recently I took a look at my online business sales and marketing plan and realized that I don’t have all the important pieces in place. I thought I did but in the excitement of starting my online business I rushed through the most important step – the planning phase. As a result I’m taking a step back and re-evaluating my plan and making the necessary changes.
The planning stage is especially important when you’re creating your sales and marketing strategy. Take the time necessary to map out how your content, products, services, and marketing are all going to work together to build your profitable online business.
If you’re new to Internet Marketing take these steps now, right away. If you’ve been in the business for awhile it may be time to take a step back and look at your original marketing plan (you do have one, right?) and re-evaluate it to make sure you have all the pieces in place.
Step One:
Promote high quality products that will be of use and benefit to your potential customers. The products could be affiliate products or you could create your own high quality products. First impressions really do matter in business especially the online business as you may only get one chance to gain your prospects trust. So starting off on the right foot with your customer service plan is very important in building your business. Quality products, from the very first freebie to your largest ticket item, will help you gradually build a positive reputation for yourself. It’s also important to remember that any future dealings you have that may result in repeat business should make the customer feel as good as they were treated the first time and maybe even better.
Step Two:
Plan your product line. A sales funnel is a series of increasingly more valuable and possibly more expensive products or services to offer your customers. However, people are going to enter your funnel at different stages. Some may begin by taking advantage of your free offer while some may jump right in and buy a product or service. Create a plan for each type of customer. Plan to have products ready for each level of your funnel. Figure out which ones might be of interest and useful to your customers. Provide them with information on how each product can benefit them and also show them how your products can be implemented in their own businesses.
For instance, if your freebie product (the entry point of your funnel) is a report on “PLR Content” then your next more valuable product could be an ebook “How To Use PLR for Profits” at a low cost. The next level could be a monthly paid membership site providing high quality PLR content for their niche. Remember that at each level you’ll want to point out the benefits of these new products to your customers. If your products are of interest, add quality and usefulness to the customer they will become repeat customers.
Step Three:
Maintain the Communication. In addition to planning for a line of high quality products and services, you’ll also want to establish consistent communication with your prospects and customers. You can do this by continuing the flow of valuable information in the form of blog posts, email messages and maybe even a newsletter.
By continuing to stay in touch and providing valuable information you will not only keep customers in your sales funnel longer but it could also result in referrals to your business. You could soon find yourself starting the process all over again with new prospects.
Planning is the key to online business success. Create your sales funnel plan, marketing plan and content plan and work to integrate the three into a seamless and efficient system. Consistency is also very important and by using the same plan over and over again with each new person, your online business will grow. All of your customers will be receiving the same great quality products and services you have to offer.
I’m taking these steps seriously to improve my online business and also realize that the planning process can’t be rushed and that it needs to be reviewed and possibly tweaked on a regular basis.
Are you happy with your online sales and marketing plan? Do you have a sales funnel in place?
To learn more about creating and managing your Sales Funnel check out this report: Sales Funnel Strategies
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=9dab2768-9665-4c05-93c2-053fc7bd95bf)
Online Business Ideas That Will Help You To Get Started
Posted by: | CommentsA huge number of people interested in taking control over their careers have discovered the opportunities presented by plenty of online business ideas. While the most common cases of Internet businesses include affiliate promotions, website creation, freelance writing, selling or promoting a product or a service, there are some more individual ones that can be carried on independently and based on personal knowledge, education and work experience. Thus, some people make money from writing e-guides and e-books they afterwards sell online, others develop a personal product or provide consultancy for a variety of problems and last but not least there are people for whom discussion forums moderation is one of the most profitable online business ideas.
The interest in online business ideas has got higher with the international financial crisis and the national economies in recession. With the perspective of thousands of jobs being reduced, it is only natural that people will focus on home-based opportunities that can save the entire family from the risk of working for corporations. Getting serious about the possible online business ideas you’ve felt tempted to try is the best advice that you can get. Some changes are obvious on the Internet too with Google discarding more and more sites considered spammy.
According to this new policy put into practice by search engines, older sites are preferred to newer ones. Statistics actually indicate that nine out of ten sites displayed on the first search engines are sites with older activities online. One can check the site history according to the record domain, and don’t be surprised if some of the sites are actually a few years old. Nevertheless, getting discouraged is not the point here, what specialists stress out is the fact that age could affect the evolution of the online business ideas into profit making machines.
While disadvantages come from some directions, the good news is that the cost for some services required for online business ideas are getting lower. If you plan to create a website that needs a domain registration and hosting; well, competition makes host service providers to drop fees drastically. Moreover, it has become obvious that blog owners are the ones who profit more from search engines due to the highly specialized rich content. Even if time is ticking and you feel you have to choose from the online business ideas, it is important to think everything through so as to make a wise and financially advantageous choice.
How to Make the Most of Your Online Advertising
Posted by: | CommentsIn order to be successful advertising must have a number of key elements. A successful advertisement will appeal to your target audience, it will be positioned in a place where they will see the advertisement and it will have a measurable result. Let’s take a look at each of these elements independently.
Make the most of your advertising by appealing to your target audience. To appeal to your target audience an advertiser must do their research. To understand your audience it’s important to know not only what their problems are but what their fears, desires, and passions are. This means demographic and psychographic analysis.
Once you understand your audience then you can craft a compelling advertisement which will address their concerns, needs, and desires. A successful advertisement doesn’t need to capture your audiences’ imagination and sell them your brand image. What it does need to do is capture their attention, make a compelling promise, back it up with some proof or credibility and then provide them some means to act – a measurable call to action. “Buy now.” “Visit www.yoururlhere.com to claim your free report,”
The second phase of making the most of your advertising is by placing your advertisement in a location where your target audience will see it. This involves both research and trial and error on your part. Research complimentary websites in your industry to find websites and blogs to advertise on. Consider what your customer might do before or after they make a purchase from you. For example if own a dating membership site then one thing someone might do before they join a singles website is lose weight or visit a tanning salon or gym.
Also look to find out where your competition is advertising. If they’re advertising on weight loss sites then you know you may have success there too.
The final element in making the most of your advertising is to make sure you can track and measure results. The only way to know if your advertisement is hitting the mark is to make sure you have data to compare. One excellent way to make sure you have a call to action.
A call to action is a statement which tells your reader what to do next. It is the “call now,” “buy now,” or “grab your free pen before they’re gone,” command. If you send people to a unique phone number or URL then you know how many people have responded to your advertisement.
Couple that with the data from the number of people who have viewed the advertisement – this data is usually provided by the place you buy your advertising space – and you have a percentage to compare with other advertisements.
For example, if you place an advertisement in a national magazine with a readership of 100,000 and 500 people respond to the ad then you have a 5% response rate. Compare that to an ad that runs for 10 days on a website that has 10,000 views a day and 1000 click throughs or results in a 10% response rate. If the ads cost the same then you would likely repeat the website advertisement more frequently for a bigger return on investment.
Advertising can be a great way to build your income when it is approached strategically and you keep the three factors for advertising success in mind.
