Tips from
nzwebs.com about cyber marketing
It has been said that having a web site without good internet marketing is as effective as having an advertising billboard in a forest. However, there is more to advertising your cyber business than being listed in the search engines. Below are low-cost or no-cost suggestions and resources to help you reach your worldwide audience.
To build a successful internet business takes time. If you put four hours a week aside for cyber networking, cyber door-knocking and cyber giveaways, it will add credibility to your cyber business and bring you more traffic and loyal, returning customers than you thought possible.
The following suggestions are not Urgent, but they are Important.
The Cyber Office
If you are wanting to market your business around the world by using the World Wide Web, then the design of your web site is as important as your physical shop or business premises. Make sure that everything is functioning perfectly and all the hyper links work. See that the design and layout is easy to read. Proofread your site twice to check that there are no spelling or grammatical mistakes. Be certain that the total of image kilobytes per page including images does not exceed 30 kb so that it doesn't take too long to download. For a few more tips about designing your web site, click here.
The Cyber Yellow Pages
So now that you have your cyber office is up and running and looking fabulous, you'll need to list it with the search engines. There are various kinds of search engines, some more like directories and others that scan web pages and their sources for keywords. However, most people don't scan past search engine result number 20, so you need to ensure your site is right up there. Click here for more details about how you can improve your rankings in search engines.
Cyber Networking
You have your cyber business card* ready, and you want to get out there into cyber-space and give it away. Your signature, or cyber business card, is the message that gets automatically attached to the end of every email and has all the information needed to get customers to your cyber office. In other words, it should at least include your web site address, which hopefully will be something short and punchy.
Business people in the real world get told to "go out and get involved in community activities" to meet new people who could be future customers. It's the same with cyber business, you have to figure out at what kind of community organisation you will meet people of similar interests. If you contribute to cyber discussion lists on your topics of interests and you have a signature attached to your email messages, you are effectively telling a large group of people at once about your business. At yahoogroups there are thousands of "lists" or email discussion groups on every topic imaginable. These lists all give information about membership numbers, and topics up for discussion. The idea is that as people in the list get to know and like you through your email contributions on your mutual topic of interest, they are more likely to follow the hyper link to your web site and do business with you.
Regardless of whether or not you join discussion lists to get your web site information out there, if you don't have a signature attached to every email that you send, a valuable cyber networking opportunity is passing you by.
Go
back
to free stuff page.
Cyber Door-knocking
Otherwise known as direct-mailing (as opposed to spam, which is sending unsolicited bulk email). If you were door-knocking in the real world to sell babies' milk products, for example, you wouldn't bother going to a retirement village. However, you may go to the new subdivision in town where lots of new parents are setting up house. To find where the new subdivisions are, you may consult a street directory. Or you may find a retailer to stock your product for you, forgoing all your hard work. It's the same with cyber door-knocking. Why bother irritating people who have no interest or need for your product? And how do you find those that do have an interest in your product? You could consult your cyber directories, in other words, the search engines. Search using relevant keywords like infants, babies, milk substitutes. Then, using the search engine results, find out what need people have for your product. Thoroughly look through their web site to see if your product can help them. If so, don't hesitate to contact them. They'll be glad you did when you tell them how they can benefit from doing business with you.
Cyber Advertising
There are many types of advertising,
some which you can do for free, or in exchange, and others which cost.
Reciprocal Banner Ads.
Actually, I don't think these really work. Speaking for myself, I
hardly ever get sidetracked by banner ads, because I never feel I have
the time. So I wouldn't recommend anyone get into a banner exchange
programme, or even necessarily pay for banner advertising unless it's absolutely
relevant to the site. For example, I should imagine having a banner
ad to an airline's web site on a related travel page of some sort would
be useful.
Classified Advertisements in
e-zines. These would be slightly more effective because you're reaching
a targeted audience, providing you pick an e-zine about the topic that
your target market would most likely read about. For example, you
wouldn't advertise your infants' milk powder in an e-zine devoted to mothers
who breast feed. On the other hand, busy working mothers, who don't
have time to breast feed may be interested in your product, so if you can
find an e-zine of interest to them, you could pay for an ad in it.
Reciprocal Links*. This
is technically not advertising, but a service that some web sites offer
which provides links to other web sites that may be of interest.
For example, a web site on parenting may have a links page to lots of other
parenting related web sites. If your web site also happens to offer
other useful information to parents, such as how to correctly sterilise
bottles and prepare your infants' milk products, chances are good that
a parenting web site would be interested in linking to you. This
should be free (I'd be suspicious if it wasn't), but as a gesture of gratitude
you would include a link back to them on your links page. This also
gives your site credibility, having links to other helpful parenting resources.
*To find sites to link to, consult the search engines again. Make
sure you have a good look at their sites before you contact them about
linking.
Newspaper and Other Offline Advertising.
If your market also happens to be local, don't forget to include your web
site address wherever you advertise. You may not have a budget to
include a full-colour advertisement in your national parenting magazine,
but if you take a classified advertisement and include the web site address,
you can put your full-colour brochure on the World Wide Web for people
to access.
CONTACT
ME
Julianne of nzwebs.com
Em: j@nzwebs.com
Tel: +64 3 331 7022
Mobile: 02 747 66 33 4
PO Box 30-048,
St Martins 8246,
Christchurch,
New Zealand.