There’s just so much good stuff in this book, I might have to turn this into a multi-part series. Chapter 4, “Direct Response Marketing” (from Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet by Jay Conrad Levinson) really got me thinking about how many sites I’ve come across that don’t do anything for the business. In very few cases, having the simplest of ‘brochure websites’ (strictly informational and usually for credibility purposes) may be appropriate, but there are so many opportunities to get your web site to do more for your business.
The easiest thing any website can do is collect your visitor’s contact information. This can be used as a targeted list for your marketing offers (as long as you have their permission of course). There are many things you can offer your visitors in exchange for their contact info (specifically, e-mail address):
- Free “White-Paper,” E-Book, or How-to-Article (ex: see our web design landing page offer - 9 Tips for Better Web Marketing)
Read more…
E-Commerce, Guerrilla Marketing, Web Marketing
call to action, customers, E-Commerce, Guerrilla Marketing, internet marketing, sales, web design, website
Besides a website being a necessity for PR, marketing, credibility and communications, it can also bring in revenue and drive sales. If your business sells a product (or many products), or a service that can be packaged as a product, consider having a storefront on your website. This will allow you to take orders 24/7 from anywhere in the world (you can always limit sales to “domestic” or “local,” but the capability for global sales is there). Additionally, there are options to seamlessly accept orders on your own website, or inexpensively process them on a third party site.
In order to make a sale, companies used to have to sendout an expensive catalog, personally contact potential clients, or wholesale their product to a retailer if they did not have their own store. Today, it is possible to make a sale without a per-customer cost (time or money) or applying a huge wholesale discount. The miracle of the Internet allows Read more…
E-Commerce, Web Site Design
E-Commerce, marketing, sales, web design, website
People are inherently lazy. Especially internet users. They’d much rather put off until tomorrow (or next decade) what they could easily do today. Your website’s job is to motivate them to overcome their lazy programming and actually DO SOMETHING today.
Creating an effective call to action is necessary to get your visitors to take the next step - contacting you, signing up for your newsletter, buying your product, etc. There are a few main techniques to achieve this, and I will detail them below:
Make your offer timely.
By putting a time limit on your offer, it encourages your audience to take action or they could miss out. By saying ‘This Weekend Only!’ or another relevant time constraint, you’ll receive a much better Read more…
Guerrilla Marketing, Web Marketing
business, call to action, marketing, sales