Above And Beyond Promotion

Posts Tagged ‘site promotion tools’

Site Promotion Tools ? Who’s Your Customer?

Word Count:
515

Summary:
Site promotion tools can be enhanced when you pay attention to the many details associated with knowing your target demographic. A demographic is a specific age range and even economic range the primary individual will likely be who may use your product or service.

Radio stations will target a specific age group. They may even target a specific gender. These media outlets attempt to learn as much about their audience as they possibly can.

One group even refers to their …

Keywords:
marketing,internet marketing,site promotion

Article Body:
Site promotion tools can be enhanced when you pay attention to the many details associated with knowing your target demographic. A demographic is a specific age range and even economic range the primary individual will likely be who may use your product or service.

Radio stations will target a specific age group. They may even target a specific gender. These media outlets attempt to learn as much about their audience as they possibly can.

One group even refers to their target listener as ‘Becky’. She is a soccer mom in her 30s, she is a mother of two, drives a mini-van and spends a lot of time taking her kids to sports, band and dance practice. She is hurried and harried and likes music that is upbeat, but she also likes the familiar. It is this particular person this group of stations attempts to reach and they are doing an effective job as she manages his day of multi-commutes.

How well do you know your demographic (or typical customer)?

It could be that your product defies an age or gender barrier, but for many businesses that are interested in site promotion tools it can be a great benefit to know as much as possible about those who might be making a purchase of their products or services.

The general alterations made to a website for demographically focused site promotion is online knowledge-based content. If your typical customer is 45-55, female, lives in the Midwest and is generally thought of as middle income you might not be interested in pitching the product to twenty-something males who live in urban areas. That’s not to say that your product may not have value to someone in this age group, but if your can craft the online promotional material to be attractive to a mature adult without giving reference to age, gender or residential preferences you may also find the material is acceptable for other customers that fall outside your target demographic.

If, however, you target your content to appeal to the vernacular and preferences of a twenty-something, chances are pretty good your target demographic (primary users of your product) will be disenfranchised and move along in an effort to find a company they can trust (and understand). This approach may only work marginally if your demographic is highly specific to the age group and needs of your target.

I recently saw a commercial on television where some adult parents were trying to connect with their teenagers and were using phrases that were in use in the not too distant past. The beauty of the commercial is it points out that the phrases that kids think are wonderful today will be out of date very soon. Accept that as a free bit of advice ? try not to use current pop culture phrases in your content because it will appear very dated to readers in the not too distant future.

Site promotion tip: Learn all you can about your target audience and strategically reach out to them. Rather than diminishing your ability to sell you can actually build brand loyalty.

Site Promotion Tools ? Twisting The Cube

Word Count:
513

Summary:
If you’re old enough, think back two or three decades. Everyone owned one of these and you wanted one even if you deny it today. You could just imagine yourself twisting and turning the item trying to unravel its mysteries. It was both mind numbing and time consuming, but always left you with the urge to come back and try it again.

Some would get frustrated with the square shaped toy and simply remove the stickers and place them where they wanted. The Rubik’s Cube was a ph…

Keywords:
marketing,internet marketing,site promotion

Article Body:
If you’re old enough, think back two or three decades. Everyone owned one of these and you wanted one even if you deny it today. You could just imagine yourself twisting and turning the item trying to unravel its mysteries. It was both mind numbing and time consuming, but always left you with the urge to come back and try it again.

Some would get frustrated with the square shaped toy and simply remove the stickers and place them where they wanted. The Rubik’s Cube was a phenomenon that captured the world’s attention. Children and adults spent hours on this low cost entertainment. It became a part of a pop culture phenomenon.

I would wager that many of you still have a Rubik’s cube somewhere in your belongings, perhaps in a box in storage or maybe sitting on the desk in your office. Maybe your cube even sports stickers that curl on the end from too many ‘replacements’.

Site promotion tools may be described as the Rubik’s Cube of online marketing. Most of the tools you can use to promote your site may not cost much, but like the Rubik’s Cube may take some time to learn.

Site promotion tools can seem like a six-sided cube with multiplied thousands of possible combinations that could lead to the successful completion of your promotional endeavors.

Site promotion can seem a bit intimidating because it appears complicated. Sometimes you have to be willing to settle for small victories like three greens in a row or better yet one side of the cube that is all the same color.

However, once this victory is achieved you will want to keep working the combinations to find an even greater level of success in your business. Even the Rubik’s Cube had manuals available that could help the serious Cube student learn how to find the right combination for success.

As a cyber store owner your online visitor will not see your proverbial site promotion cube, they are simply drawn to the success you’ve been able to achieve as you twist, turn and think about what site promotion tools will help you best achieve your objectives.

Perhaps this is why when it comes to site promotion there have been so many different success stories and none of them take the exact same path to success. They simply twisted the site promotion cube until they found a combination that worked for their business.

I suppose the owner of the site promotion cube could leave it fully intact with no twisting and turning, but the game doesn’t actually begin until that first twist is taken ? then there is no looking back.

As a business owner you want your site to succeed and you can’t do that if you can’t generate traffic to your site. To get to this place of success you must work toward marketing and site promotion strategies.

So if that site promotion cube has been sitting on your desk gathering dust perhaps it’s time to do the twist.

If you’ve ever attended a trade show then you know you will be bombarded with freebie promotion items. Sure there are the popular items such as promotional pens, key chains and note pads, but you will likely encounter unique items such as private label bottled water, customized battery operated fans, water globes, bobble head dolls, envelope openers, mouse pads and Ethernet retractable cable complete with company logo.

The above is just a small sample of the laundry lists of promotional items businesses use to generate leads and develop impressions. How can you translate the promotional aspect of a trade show to the promotional needs of an online business?

The truth is you may not be using promotional items in the same way, but you can provide your customers (and potential customers) with free promotional rewards.

Site promotion has becoming big business and it can be helped along through link building. Not only will your site ranking improve with inbound links, but you can also reward both the visitor as well as the site the visitor came from.

How?

Visitors can be provided with an exclusive electronic download. This could be informational; it could be educational or even simply fun. It could be free access to an arcade game exclusive to your site, an ebook or even a member only ecourse.

You can reward the most productive site in click thrus with a gift certificate to your online business. This could be done monthly, quarterly or semi-annually.

Your choice in site promotion tools may only be limited to your imagination. Find ways to keep site visitors coming back and explore ways to reward them for their patronage.

You could use the model of ‘trip rewards’ as a bonus for customers. For instance you could provide an automatic price reduction on a future purchase or a gift certificate good for the next purchase with an expiration date of three months or less (you want to give them an incentive to use the certificate instead of forgetting it).

You can include samples of complimentary products with each purchase. The idea is to give customers every opportunity to view your business as one worth returning to.

If you’ve developed a promotional budget you can include a promotional item in each order that is in direct relation to the total purchase piece. For instance a small item for a small purchase and something worth more for a larger purchase.

Some business owners feel promotional items are a waste of money, but both cyber based promotional items as well as those items that may seem more traditional may have meaning among many of your customers causing them to return to a business that rewards their patronage.

How are you promoting your online business?

The wonderful world of site promotion tools is really about learning skills and either adapting them to your need or adapting you thinking to adequately utilize the tools available.

As with the toolbox out in the garage you have many tools and not all of them are used for the same purpose. For example you wouldn’t use a crescent wrench as a screwdriver and you wouldn’t use a hammer as wire cutters.

Some site promotion tools can be adapted for use while others may have a very specific use. Because our society is moving from a mechanical world to cyberspace it is possible that a new way of thinking is required when seeking to let people know about your site.

For someone new to ecommerce the whole idea of promoting your website through SEO strategies and using html code to highlight keywords for search engines may resemble Greek more than a meaningful description of how to drive customers to your website.

For these entrepreneurs there are web design experts that can guide you through every step of both web design and site promotion. This approach may be advisable in many instances, however I highly advise finding knowledge-based articles on site promotion and begin implementing strategies that will work to let others know about your site, offerings and ultimate solutions to their real or felt needs.

As you begin to search for the site promotion tools that best fit your ecommerce business you will likely discover some tools that are either too advanced or ones you want to learn more about. Take small steps first. Utilize the tools that you do understand and then keep adding to your tool chest.

You can add an incredible amount of tools to the workshop tool chest in your garage. Screwdrivers come in different sizes and blade widths, wrenches come in precise sizes and hammers come in differing weights and functions.

This picture remains one of the best in seeking to describe the options available in site promotion. The truth is you can customize your approach using a series of tools you are both comfortable with along with a series of tools you are willing to learn to use.

Perhaps one of the things that derail so many potentially viable sites is a fear us learning how to promote the site using the same (or similar) site promotion tools that the largest ecommerce sites on the web use. The information is available, the tactics are defined, and the tools are in the workshop. Commit to learning and then implement the skills you learn ? and always be willing to look at more tools.