|
Master marketing by mustering clusters
A great benefit of ecommerce, when compared to the traditional
brick-and-mortar world, is the ability for an online marketer to track,
assess and correct marketing endeavors -- almost at the click of a mouse.
A specific product, service of offer is hot (or not) right now? A particular
marketing effort is doing (or not doing) so well? A specific sales letter,
text or even graphic on your website is causing sales to go way up (or
way down)? Or one webpage is more popular than the others?
That's the beauty of online marketing.
This opens the question: If tracking, analyzing and correcting one's
online marketing is so simple to do, why are people not taking advantage
of this to its fullest extent? One can easily and quickly find out if
any activity is producing the results anticipated. But questions I'm often
asked include, "Will this (or that) work? What's best? What should
I do? What ... Etc." Then a great debate ensues.
My answer is usually quite simple: "Why not test it?"
Test, test and test some more! That's the "secret" to online
success. There are no other "secrets." There are no specific
ways of doing things that will work for everyone all of the time. In fact,
many of the experts in and contributors to the Marketing Challenge private
site are far from being marketing experts per se. They are only entrepreneurs
like you and me.
All they really did was try different things and in different ways. And
if they're anything like me, they failed countless times. They tried,
tried and tried -- until one day something worked (and made them a fortune)!
They are master "testers," so to speak. And you should be one
too. Internet marketing, particularly the web itself, is really one big
testing ground.
For example, one particular Internet marketer I know has staff on his
payroll that -- and believe it or not -- test all day, every day! That's
all they do. Is it worth it? To illustrate, one thing his staff found
was that, after removing one small graphic from his home page, it increased
his sales by 26.3%.
Granted, the problem does not stop at the lack of testing but also includes
the inability for most marketers to aggregate, analyze and use the mounds
of data available to them. Harvey Mackay, author of "Swim With the
Sharks (Without Being Eaten Alive)," once said, "People say
'knowledge is power,' but I say knowledge is *not* power -- using that
knowledge is used."
The Internet is one huge ocean of information that can make anyone drown,
which is probably the reason why analyzing all of the marketing intelligence
at one's disposal can be quite cumbersome -- and thus easily ignored.
One can surely measure the results of a marketing campaign or a website's
traffic, even the site's conversion ratio (be it action- or sales- based).
But there is more to marketing analysis than that. There are many ways
of making use of information.
There are even many ways to analyze it. But if there's one thing to keep
in mind when working with all the data you collect, it's this: Information
alone is never enough. In other words, it's not bits and pieces of information
that provide insights into a specific marketing activity but "information
based on changes in a cluster of activities" that can provide some
real clues.
For example, if your website is running in a certain way, with a certain
copy and with a certain content, that's one cluster of activities right
there. Document as much as you can, such as what your site is currently
offering and doing in terms of results. Then, as you implement any change
whatsoever to your site, no matter how significant or infinitesimal, you
should gauge the difference in results your change has incurred.
There's the key to testing.
To illustrate the importance of testing and analyzing clusters of information,
here's a case in point. In her book, entitled "Now or Never,"
author and Forrester Research's VP of research Mary Modahl has found that
a site's download speed is almost directly proportional to its sales ratio.
Using a client as an example, she wrote that, after he had cut down his
website's download time in half, her client tripled his online sales.
Look at it this way: If your site takes X number of seconds to download,
measure that against not only your level of traffic or sales but also
your current conversion ratio. Try to speed up your download time by,
as an example, removing unnecessary graphics, compressing them (like with
GIFBot, a tools offered by http://NetMechanic.com/)
and reducing the number of tables. After a while, compare your site's
conversion ratio against ratios of various download times. Is there a
difference?
And don't stop there. Try different approaches, different sales copies,
different graphics, different formats, different color schemes, different
offers, different layouts, etc. And compare the results before and after
you make these changes.
Become a "master tester" instead of a master marketer, in other
words. Heck, you might just be pleasantly surprised!
About the author
Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter and consultant dedicated
to turning sales messages into powerful magnets. Get a free copy of
his book, "The 10 Commandments of Power Positioning," when
you subscribe to his free monthly ezine, "The Profit Pill."
See http://SuccessDoctor.com/
now! |
| » Change
your mind about an eBay bid?
We have all made choices in life that two seconds later
we know we should take back. Especially when there is money involved
this can become a problem.
» A
simple way to create 7 effective autoresponder messages
Email is the Net's most powerful marketing tool. And autoresponders
are the best idea yet for marketing with email.
» 7
ways to drive laser-targeted traffic to your website
Getting people who matter to see one’s website
is a difficult undertaking if he tries to consider the fact that
there are rivals everywhere waiting to pin him down.
» Website
valuation: Why standard website pricing methods will emerge
The market of buying and selling developed websites is
becoming more and more liquid each day.
» One
way links are better than reciprocal links
You probably know by now that where your website ranks in
the search engine rankings dramatically affects how many visitors you
have to your site. Did you also know that you can change where your
site is ranked by being proactive and getting as many one way links
to your site as possible?
» How
to make visitors stay at your website
The very first thing which you should provide the visitors
with is some free interesting reading material.
» How
to make your visitors click your ads
Here is a simple solution; Convert your banner advertisement
to look like a text advertisement!
» Offline
advertising should be a part of your online strategy
Day by day, online business has become more & more
complicated and competitive.
» How
to sell traffic
Selling the traffic arriving at your site is a good method
to increase profits from your portal.
» Make
money from online auctions
Online auctions have the best benefit of a vast platform.
Your product is viewed by loads of people & hence there is
more possibility of finding a suitable bidder.
» Groupware
explained in easy terms
Groupware is a term used frequently to describe collaborative
software. Groupware is application software that integrates work
on a single project by several concurrent users at separated random
workstations.
» Timely
back up can save you from disasters
Few things which people often back up are e-mail addresses,
bank records, photographs, personal records, software’s,
music etc.
» Why
should one go for autoresponders
Autoresponders are programs which get automatically
executed in particular situations.
» Become
your own boss - Start your own online business today
A survey conducted by SBA states that two third of new
business survives at least two year and about forty four percent
survives at least four year.
» Express
your thoughts - Creating your own blog!
What exactly is a blog? Technically speaking it is a
journal or a newsletter which is regularly updated and can be used
by any one.
» Pop-up
ads - To be or not to be?
According to a study conducted by the Bunnyfoot University, “The
Efficacy of Pop-ups and the Resulting Effect on Brands” Internet
users feel harangues and harassed by pop-up ads.
» Why
content is king on the Internet
The advantages that Internet holds over the rest of
the other communication mediums should not wasted because of
the inability to find a comprehensive plan that will bind all
these faculties together.
» 10
niche marketing tips
In our increasingly driven consumer economies, the average
customer is bombarded by choices. With increased saturation of the
market, companies look towards niche marketing to search new, ever-evolving
and sophisticated consumers.
» Using
free traffic exchange
These days internet has emerged as both, a market and
hub for marketing. Unlike the ‘brick and mortar’ world
where large manufacturers manage to squeeze out the market bases
of smaller companies, the internet provides haven like the free
traffic exchange.
» Ten
ways to drive traffic to your website
Developing a web site and then letting it grow is
like planting a tree and then nurturing it.
» Marketing
through keyword articles
One of the most effective tools of Internet marketing
is the use of keyword articles.
» Want
to make money online? Market a service to businesses
Don walked across the street from his house to mine to
announce he had finally retired. "But I'm not ready for the
golf course," he said. "I want to make a living on the
Internet. What can I sell?"
» Web
site design mistakes - Database parameters in URLs
Creating a web site takes thought, planning and execution.
Unfortunately, many designs are dead in the water before they are
even published as far as search engine optimization is concerned.
Whatever you do, avoid these critical mistakes.
» Alexa
Toolbar - The ultimate internet tool
There are numerous tools available on the Internet to
assist online businesses. A valuable tool that you should use is
the Alexa Toolbar. Even better, this tool is free.
» Web
site design mistakes
Some wise human once said "Learn from the mistakes
of others. There isn't nearly enough time to make them all yourself."
Hence this article. Here are five of the most annoying and common
web design mistakes.
» Abandonment
- Why visitors don't turn into customers
Every good Internet business understands the value of
conversions versus hits received. Far too often, businesses become
fixated on the hits they are receiving instead of monitoring their
hit to sale conversion rate.
» Creative
search engine optimization - A case study
Search engine optimization this and search engine optimization
that. You read and hear about it all day, but what about your site?
|
|
| Tools & services to enhance your online
business |
|
» Site
Build It!
Over 100,000 small businesses of all kinds outperform
larger, well-financed competitors. Read about this all-in-one site-building-hosting-marketing
system of tools that delivers results.
» Secrets
To Their Success
Take a private tour of two "Mom & Pop"
web sites every month that earn $100,000+ a year... and discover
the exact step-by-step strategies they have personally used to generate
these massive profits. |
|
|
Remember to join our newsletter and be notified when new web building
articles are released.
Privacy policy:
Email addresses are never sold or given out to anybody.
|
|
|
|
