Marketing Strategy

With the plethora of websites online and hundreds added each day, how are you going to separate your website from the others? When I began my first online venture I was so excited to have my website up and running and I remember thinking "wow, the toughest part is behind me", referring to finally getting the aesthetics and functionality of the website just how I wanted them. I thought that marketing the website would be the easy part. Boy was I wrong.

My site was up and running and was designed very professionally. I had no doubt that visitors would be confident in my ability to deliver top notch services. The only problem was that I had very few visitors. I made a couple of ignorant marketing mistakes early on that cost me.

One mistake was simply not planning. I had no plan in place on how I would go about marketing the website and reaching my target market. I really had not even truly defined my target market. Sure, I thought about it a lot, but I had not written down who my target market consisted of. I find that actually writing down your goals in business and life is key to your reaching them. By writing down what you wish to accomplish you can have your plan there in front of you and it makes it easy to analyze and ask yourself if you are taking the correct steps to achieve your goals. How on earth could I have expected to successfully market the website if I had not defined my niche market and written out my course of action on how to position my business within this group? So what sort of things should you think about when planning your marketing strategy? Here's a basic list to get you on the right track.

Basic Steps to Planning Your Marketing Strategy

1. Decide whether you are going to sell products, services or both.

2. Test the waters to ensure that there is a legitimate demand for your product and/or service. Do this by simply talking to friends and family and ask them if they would find your offerings useful. Also, make up a short questionnaire and have people fill them out. On the questionnaire include questions pertaining to the problem that you are solving with your products/services. This will give you insight into the number of people that are experiencing this problem as well.

Also on this questionnaire include questions such as "What magazines/newspapers do you read?" "What type of websites do you most often view?" What we are now doing is ensuring that there is indeed a market for our products/services and at the same time gathering valuable information on how to place our products in front of them and others like them, once we bring our products/services to the market. Use your imagination and ask other insightful questions that will give you additional information into their lifestyle, shopping habits, and tastes/preferences. Now we have proof that there is a demand for our products/services and the information on how to target this market.

3. Get your website up and running and optimize it for the search engines before submitting it. Please see my article for more on this topic.

4. Take the information you gathered in step two and decide how you will place your products/services in front of your niche market.

An additional mistake was submitting my site to the search engines before it was fully optimized. It is much easier to achieve a great ranking if you optimize your site first and then submit it rather than submitting your site and then trying to pull it up to a higher ranking. So how can you optimize your website for a better ranking in the search engines? This is a topic in and of itself and entire books have been written on this subject. Below are four basic steps to get you on the right track. These four steps were taken from Obtaining a #1 Ranking in the Search Engines by Ryan Allis.

I highly recommend this book and it can be found at http://www.search-engines-guide.com/.

Four Basic Steps of Page Optimization

1. Select the keywords you want to focus on.

2. Create an optimized page for each of your targeted keywords by having ample page copy, focusing on keyword prominence, and using related page names, proper meta-tags, proper title tags, proper alt-tags, heading tags, and text links.

3. Avoid dynamic database-driven content, JavaScript, keyword spamming, and multiple use of content.

4. Make sure there are lots of web sites linking to yours.

So before you embark on your e-business journey be sure to develop a marketing plan. This plan must be flexible as it will change as your business grows, but it is critical to the success of your business to identify how you will position your products/services to your target market; and remember ? optimize your website BEFORE submitting it to the search engines.

About The Author

Brandon Milford is the President of Pimil.com, a web solutions company based in Georgia, and the Marketing Director for Email Marketing Software Center, a website devoted to providing knowledge and product recommendations on permission based email marketing.

brandon@pimil.com

---

Raising Your Rates Can *Increase* Your Business

How many times have I heard literal horror stories from... Read More

A Few Things I?ve Learned About Doing Business On The Internet!

A few things I've learned about doing business on the... Read More

Year In Review: Top Ten Internet Businesses 2004

The internet boom hit a high mark in 2004. With... Read More

List Building Through Cooperative Partnerships....

This is a little tip I got from Alex Sampson,... Read More

I Finally Figured It Out - The Largest Stumbling-Block To Online Success

We're going to talk about one of those issues that... Read More

George Bushs Secret To Successful Internet Marketing

Former U.S. president, George Bush Senior told the following story... Read More

6 Steps to Establish Your Expertise

Like the Internet itself, online marketing resources such as blogs,... Read More

The Vital Tools To Marketing Success

Special Article Report: Theses Keys Work!Many times over the past... Read More

You Can Become A Successful Internet Entrepreneur!

Everyday people ask me if they will make money with... Read More

Online Advertising Techniques

Online advertising is necessary for your computer business to grow.... Read More

How Do You Increase Your Conversion By Over 70% Instantly?

At times, marketing your business online can seem incredibly complicated.... Read More

Internet Marketing ? Long Term Strategy

Once your site is up and running, the best method... Read More

How To Be An Internet Marketing Champion

How bad do you want to make money on the... Read More

Making Money in the Online Dating Gold Rush of 2004

Have you noticed the explosion of Websites related to love,... Read More

Paid Customer List On Autopilot?

How do you get a truckload of buyers eager to... Read More

How To Profit From HOT Niche Markets - Every Time!

Do you want to learn two proven niche marketing business... Read More

The Undeniable Value Of Differentiation

With all the people offering products and services online, what... Read More

Niche Web Sites Do Not Have To Be Small

I've been marketing for a long time now and I... Read More

Creative Offline Website Marketing Techniques

Although the vast majority of website traffic is the direct... Read More

The Forbidden Fruit: Marketing Credit Cards Online

A common question and topic of discussion among Internet marketers... Read More

What Great Online Advertising Really Is!

Many business people have a distorted view about the distinction... Read More

Now, Even A Monkey Could Easily Accept Online Payments

I just came across this web site called PayDotCom.comAfter reviewing... Read More

Milk Your Winners, Drop Your Losers

In my previous article How To Be 100% Sure That... Read More

Getting Visitors To Stay Through Web Based Marketing

9/10 times your web site visitors won't stay for more... Read More

The Niche Website Naming Secret

Today I was optimizing a couple new websites for search... Read More

Effective Time Management Earns You More Money!

In this article, "product" means any tangible product, digital products... Read More

Viral Marketing: Is Your Website Infected?

Viral?Viruses?Infections?not pleasant subjects for most situations. Unless you're discussing Viral... Read More

Internet Marketing And Public Speaking: Ten Tips For When The Twain Shall Meet

Internet marketing and public speaking? Not quite ham and eggs,... Read More

How to Profit From Your Ad Space in this Economic Downturn

Recent research predicts that the online ad market will decline... Read More

Website Sales: 10 Magical Awesome Tactics To Multiply Your Orders

Do you want to open the floodgate of orders at... Read More

3 Steps To Online Marketing Competence!

Whoever said knowledge is power, was wrong.Way too many people... Read More

Niche Marketing - The Way to Succeed Online

If you think that all money to be made online... Read More

10 Sure-Fire Viral Marketing Strategies To Increase Traffic To Your Website

"Viral Marketing" is giving something away for free and allowing... Read More