The Marketing Miracle
Marketing strategies are very important to every business, large
and small. I've seen a lot of businesses in my time take almost
a cavalier attitude toward marketing. As if they say to
themselves "Ok, I have to advertise. Here is some money let me
know how it goes." I assure you there is or should be more to it
than that. People today are always looking for the quick fix,
the instant gratification. I see it all to often as I am sure
you have. The post in the blah blah forums asking "What is the
best way to advertise". I do have the answer. Are you ready. The
answer is........It depends. It depends on who your market is.
What age group are you targeting? What demographic are you
stalking? If you can answer these questions you are on the right
track for success. The answer is not a simple one. Most often
the answer is a medley of different answers and quite often one
that nobody hasn't thought of yet. When advertising, never do
it out of emotion. When starting an advertising campaign make
sure it can be tracked. Weather you pay for it or not, if you
can't track it, your wasting your time and or money. Lets say
you want to start an opt-in e-mail campaign. You send out
300,000 e-mails. You get 3000 responses(by the way, that is
extremely good). Where did the they come from. Why didn't they
or did they buy? If you can learn something from it that makes
the next campaign better it is not a failure. By constantly
analyzing and readjusting your campaigns, you can zero in on the
most effective form of advertising possible for your specific
business. In the words of Colin Powell, "There are no secrets to
success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and
learning from failure." Most hosting companies today offer web
site analysis software. Use it! I can not stress this enough.
Its amazing to me how many webmasters don't know what there
highest traffic days are. How many unique visitors are you
getting? What is the most popular page on your web site? What is
the least? What time of day does the bulk of your visitors show?
There is so much useful information that can be harvested from
these programs. I had a friend of mine come to me and asked for
my help. He was getting a lot of visitors to his site but they
were leaving and not buying. He did know that but he should have
dug deeper. After reviewing his site statistic reports I noticed
that a lot of shopping carts were being abandoned. This isn't
really all that uncommon accept for the fact that 90% were being
abandoned at a specific point in the check out process. I ran
through the check out process myself and discovered that
selecting payment page was very confusing. I let him know about
it. After fixing the issue his sales went up 150%. That's huge!
How much would you pay to increase your business 150%? This is
one of many examples of the potential benefits of knowing the
visitor flow and behavior of your site. Don't let your ego get
in the way. Don't get dragged into an advertising war with a
competitor. Its human nature to be competitive and that isn't
necessarily a bad thing but it can turn into a disaster if it
gets the best of you. Just take a look at Google Adwords. I've
seen certain search terms as high as $3000.00. I've seen
businesses fold partly due to there advertising budget that had
gotten out of control. Always have a plan. Always know were you
are going, were you are now, and were you have been. If you
follow these simple guidelines, success is just a matter of
time.