Preparing For Web Site Promotion

There have been hundreds if not thousands of articles written on the subject of web site promotion. Many contain good information that tell you how to promote your site once it is up. However, most of these articles don't prepare you for what must be done BEFORE you begin your promotion. Failure to do this will greatly reduce the effectiveness of any campaign. With thousands of new sites coming online every week, it is more important than ever to make a good first impression. The real online money is generated from repeat business so it is vitally important to give your visitors a good reason to come back.

I think promotion actually begins in the planning stages of your web site Having a clearly defined purpose will enable you to have a better idea of how you will be marketing and to whom. Since this topic was covered in another article, I won't spend much time on it here.

I think it is very important to have to have the proper infrastructure in place before you even think of promoting your site. Here are some good guidelines that will help you accomplish that more effectively.

1. Determine Your Advertising Budget
As with any business, you must be committed to investing a certain amount of money every month for promotion. The initial outlay can be small but it must be set aside. You can always reinvest the profits once the money starts rolling in. There are plenty of places on the Internet that offer free advertising, however the traffic and income from those sites will be small in comparison.

2. Have All Your Pages Totally Finished
I've said this before, but it's worth repeating. It is imperative that you make a good first impression, so don't have any "Pages Under Construction". Make sure the graphics load properly, all the links work and above all check for typographical or grammatical errors.

3. Test Your E-Commerce Functions
This point is often overlooked and it can be devastating. If your site offers online ordering through a merchant account, online checks etc., I suggest you thoroughly test the service before going live. Pay a friend to buy a few of the products/services or do the same yourself to make sure everything flows smoothly. Having 50 orders waiting to be processed is NOT the time to discover any flaws.

4. Have A Follow-Up Plan Of Action
We are going to assume that once you start promoting your product or service, people will be interested in learning more about your offer. It is important to have a game plan designed with regards to follow-up. Your prospects expect a prompt response. If you don't provide them with that kind of attention, perhaps your competitors will. Your chance of a sale greatly diminishes with each passing day so it is important to follow-up quickly.

Here are some suggestions for developing a follow-up plan:

Determine if your follow-up will be manual or automatic.
I suggest you employ an automated method from the start. Though the workload may be small initially, you don't have to worry about switching over later. There are a few autoresponder services I personally recommend. The first is Aweber Systems which can be found at http://www.aweber.com/?330. They are the Cadillac of autoresponders and are well worth the slightly higher price. Both GetResponse at http://www.getresponse.com/?12863 and SmartBot at http://www.smartbotpro.net offer free and paid versions that are very good.

Have your sales letters written and plan how often you will send them. I suggest the first one be sent within 24-48 hours, then every 2-3 days after that. Rather than bombard them with continual sales messages, send a free report or something else of value at no cost. This will help build rapport and gain your prospect's trust because they will feel you are sincerely trying to help them.

As part of your follow-up, you may also want to send out a questionnaire especially if they have not yet decided to buy. People love to voice their opinion and you just may find out what their real objection is. Any information such as that can be very useful in fine tuning your advertising campaign.

5. Have Follow-up Products
Ask any successful marketer online or off and they will all tell you the same thing. The majority of your money will be made on backend sales. Backend sales are those sales made to customers you have already purchased from you. As you could probably guess, those people are much easier to sell. However, it is important to keep them supplied with a regular flow of good offers that will benefit them. These should be planned for in advance. I suggest at least once per month you send them a update so you can stay in touch. Include a valuable freebie along with your offer.

The success of any ad campaign or web site can never be guaranteed. However, by following the above steps and preparing your site in advance, you will be more likely to achieve the financial goals you desire.

About the author:

Barry Craft has helped thousands of entrepreneurs develop more income from their online businesses. He publishes "Cyber Marketing News" which provides the latest Internet marketing tips.


barry@profitmatters.com
http://www.profitmatters.com/