Breaking Down the Online Sales Process…

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Breaking Down the Online Sales Process… 

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the components of the online sales process. At first, many people including myself would consider it to be a no-brainer. You have a product or service; you market it to people who are interested in such a product or service and you make sales. Simple! Not quite.

 

True: You need a product or service to sell.

 

However everything; and I mean every single little step from here on gets complicated with multiple scenarios. So how can one simplify this for the newcomer to the online game of internet marketing?

 

Well let’s break it down.

 

A product or service: You may have your own or you may be working as an affiliate marketing other people’s products. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this today. If you don’t have a product of your own just jump over to www.clickbank.com and browse the marketplace.

Marketing to people who are interested… 

There’s the puzzle that eludes almost every single new person online. How do you find someone who is searching for what you’re selling?

There are several well known ways to do this… however they also include a puzzle as you’re probably well aware.

PPC (Pay Per Click) – Placing paid ads on a search engine using specific keywords related to the product or service your offering

Forum Marketing (Commenting on posts related to your product or service and having a link to your salespage in your Signature file) A Signature file is a 3 or 4 line signature you’re allowed to create on most forums that appears at the bottom of all of your posts.

Social Bookmarking – Done in much the same fashion as Forum marketing

 

The list goes on… but there is one common denominator to all of these and any other type of marketing… which is; who are you marketing to? Who is your target market? What keyword or keyword phrases are you using to attract your target audience?

 

Everything you do online is centered on a target audience and you determine this audience based on the keyword they used to find you. If you use the wrong keyword you find the wrong market. Yes you’ll still get visitors; but likely no sales.

 

Finding and using the ‘Right’ keyword or keyword phrase is the single most important task to making any sales online. And in my opinion this applies to whatever type of marketing you’re doing.

 

For instance, lately there are a huge number of Giveaways all over the internet. Everybody is launching a Giveaway! Giveaways are a great way to build your list if you become a JV partner and add your own product to the Giveaway.

However, here’s something that I don’t think most people consider about using a Giveaway to still attract targeted prospects.

I was speaking with a friend of mine yesterday who is also an Internet marketer and has been for a little over a year now. His statement was that the lists built from Giveaways are all just freebie seekers.

 

True or False?

 

It’s True to a certain extent. But consider this…

 

What happens if you apply the same principles you use in any other area of your online marketing to list building with giveaways? What happens if you target your new subscribers? How do you this? It’s easy.

 

The product (gift) you offer in the giveaway has to be something that will be most interesting to someone who is in your target group! Now follow this up with a series of relative unadvertised bonuses and some good solid information specifically about your niche.

What happens? Some of the freebie seekers convert. They think they’ve hit the jackpot… and they have if they’re interested in your niche. Some of the freebie seekers will unsubscribe. That’s good, because they are not your target audience so why would you want to beat your head against the wall trying to figure out why they won’t buy from you.

 

“I hope you’re starting to see the importance of finding your target audience.”

 

The internet is being scoured constantly by millions upon millions of people. But only a handful are looking for what you’re selling. All successful marketers have figured this out; found their niche market and guard it with their lives.

 

Million Dollar Marketer Reveals Secrets!

 

You think? Never! The one secret they will never tell you is where their niche is specifically. Why would they. That would be suicide! Suddenly millions upon millions of people would flood that particular niche and it would dissolve into internet dust!

 

No. You have to find your own niche market; your own niche traffic, and to do that you need good tools and research and research some more.

 

Pay close attention to that statement!

 

Research and research some more… and then research some more. Test your research by doing searches do see how many search results you get (competitive websites) and how many ads are displayed (competitive marketers). Click on some of the top website listing and view their source code to see what other keyword phrases they are using.

 

Verify your results by searching forums, blogs and social bookmarking sites to see if there is any interest in these communities. Pay close attention to the kinds of questions being posted on these sites and ask yourself ‘Does my product or service answer these questions?’.

Beware of Information Overload 

Step One – Stop buying the same products over and over. Find out what the best of the best is and get it. If you can’t afford it then either wait until you can or ask someone you trust to recommend a good alternative. How many hammers does a carpenter have? Maybe two. One good one he uses all the time and perhaps a spare in case he breaks or looses his good one. The same thing applies in Internet marketing. Get the tools you need and then go to work. Stop trying out new tools to see if this one works better than that one.

 

Step Two – Plug yourself into your niche. Join forums, social bookmarking sites, etc. Read blogs related to your niche and subscribe to their RSS feeds. Make sure you read all comments posted on a blog article. These are your target audience telling you what they think, feel and need!

 

Step Three – Research and Test and

Split Test.

 

Step Four – Go to work. Put up your sales page. Post your ad and signature files. List your gift on Giveaways and start building your list.

 

Step Five – Research and Test and

Split Test

 

Step Six – Go back to step four!

 

And that, my friend is the Internet marketing game.

 

I’ve put together a list of what I consider to be necessary tools of the trade as well as a reprint of this article.

 

Tools of the Trade 

• Keyword Elite – Requirement for all forms of Internet marketing
• The Dowser – Requirement for all forms of Internet marketing
• Hyper VRE – Adsense marketing but very effective for any affiliate marketing plans. Upgrade and get access to the 40,000 keyword list. This is a constantly update list of the top 40 keywords for Adense giving value per click, number of searches and competition.
• Sonic Redirect – Hide your affiliate links (Protect your niche!)
• Elite Minisite Sales System – Create protected affiliate ready minisites in minutes without the headache of deciphering scripts
• Article Submitter – I don’t use an article submitter. I only submit my articles to 3 major directories to avoid duplicate content. From there the articles will syndicate on their own through hundreds of other directories in a natural way with no ill effects from the search engines.
• Directory Submitter – You can get a great directory submitter for free when you join Hyper VRE.
• HTML Editor – Of course you need a good HTML editor. Either Dreamweaver or Frontpage.
• Butterfly Marketing Manuscript – This is the one book that has been used by every single top marketer that I know of. They all swear by it and even years later still use it in their daily businesses to virtually control the industry.
• Blog Profits Blueprint – Must Have for Bloggers.
• The Essential Clickbank Guide – Must Have to affiliates using ClickBank.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Online Sales Process. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.