Saturday, February 25, 2006

How To Improve your Credibility And Gain More Sales

How To Improve your Credibility And Gain More Sales Newcomers to the world of internet marketing find it very difficult to get their first few sales. This is largely due to an apparent lack of credibility in the eyes of the customer.


Let's face it you are completely unknown, why should they trust you? Your first major hurdle to cross is that of improving your reputation and credibility. One way of improving your credibility is to become well known amongst those members of the internet community that frequent your market niche.


There are other relatively simple things related to your website which also have a huge impact on your credibility. The following points all contribute in some way to the first impression your website creates in the minds of your customers and they all go a long way to establishing or destroying your credibility... 1) Nothing destroys your credibility quicker than if you use unprofessional graphics on your website. That first impression created by your website is incredibly important and it does not take much to turn a seemingly terrible graphic into something that looks neat, clean and professional, but if you don't have the ability to modify the graphics yourself, either find suitable free graphics on the internet or hire a graphic artist to do the work for you.


2) Use full contact details on your website. People feel a lot more comfortable when they are dealing with a real person, and not a "front" for a money making scam. Use your full business address on your website, not a P.O.


Box. People like to know that you will respond to their requests for help, so put their minds at rest by also including your business, and mobile phone numbers. Make sure you use an answering service for those periods when you are unable to answer your phone. 3) Don't leave your email address on your website; it will be harvested by spam bots.


Use a "Help Desk" system... Your customers have to register first and then create a support ticket. They immediately get an automated response explaining that their customer service issue is logged, gives them a tracking ticket number and explains that a customer service representative will respond shortly.


This appears very professional to a customer and greatly increases your credibility. 4) Nobody likes to wait for an answer regardless of the circumstances, so include a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) on your web site.


Many customer service issues happen more than once and by supplying the solution to a problem on a FAQ mean your customer gets the answer to their problems immediately. Every time you get a new customer service issue, add it to your FAQ, that's one less issue you'll have to deal with in the future. One spin off from having a comprehensive FAQ is your credibility increases because you've dealt with all those issues (or at least thought about them) in the past.


There are also a number of "off site" issues which greatly affect your credibility... 1) Not responding to customer service issues is a pretty quick way to destroy your credibility. Many people won't buy directly from the sales page and will have questions about your product or service that they want answers to before they consent to the purchase. Delay your reply to them and you loose the sale.


Many customers may have a problem with the sale itself and if you don't reply quickly, they will ask for a refund, and what's worse is they will never buy from you again. 2) A very good credibility building task is writing articles related to your website's theme or topic. Submit these articles to as many article directories and ezine editors as you can, the more the better. Your articles will be included in many different ezines and newsletters and will also be included as website content.


Hundreds, if not thousands of people will read your articles and over time your reputation and credibility will grow. 3) Participate in web forums or discussion boards as they are also known. Post your own comments, answer other people's questions, and even ask your own questions, always being honest and truthful.


Never advertise blatantly, rather include a text link under each message you post. People will get to know you the more you post especially if they like what you write. Quite apart from the additional traffic you will get from people clicking on your text link to see what else you have to offer them, your credibility will increase dramatically.

How to Build a Website to Sell Your Niche Product or Service

How to Build a Website to Sell Your Niche Product or Service The most effective way to sell your niche product or service is to build a niche mini site, which in its simplest form has only three pages: - A sales page - A payment processing page - A thank you / download / order fulfillment page Let’s take a look at each of these pages: 1) The sales page. This is a carefully constructed web page which gives your visitor two options: either buy your product or leave. Obviously you must do everything in your power to stop your visitor from leaving without buying, and this is where a few sales page basics come into play... Use each of these features in the order they are presented: ~The headline. You need to state a compelling and powerful benefit your customer will receive from owning your product.


~The introduction. Your introduction should explain the problems facing your customers that your product will solve.


You do not mention your product at this point, all you are doing is making your customer feel comfortable because you know and understand their problem and their pain. ~The lead-in to your product. At this point you need to introduce your product. This takes two forms, the first being a visual representation of your product and the second a description of your product and how it solves the problems you outlined earlier.


The visual representation is particularly important if you are selling an e-product (an intangible product that your customer will download onto their computer). The visual representation could be a picture created to look like a physical book or the box that a physical software product would be packaged in. ~Customer testimonials. Customer testimonials are a very potent motivator to somebody who is unsure about your product or service.


After you have introduced your product or service you need to display any testimonials you might have from your satisfied customers. To start with you won't have any testimonials leaving you with two options: - The obvious... Don't include a customer testimonial section.


- Advertise free copies of your product in exchange for testimonials. ~Benefits.


An important part of your sales page is a list of benefits explaining how your customer will benefit from owning your product. These benefits will create the desire for your product.


~The call to action. In this section you will ask your customer to buy your product. You may wish to include a few free bonuses to make your customer feel they are getting a good deal. You might also wish to include some kind of deadline which could motivate an undecided customer to purchase; the thought of loosing out could just tip the balance in your favor.


~Your Guarantee. People are very nervous about buying on the internet, so offering a guarantee will put them at rest. ~The Summary. This is last part of your sales page and where you summarize your offer.


You need to state your major benefit once more and ask the customer to buy. 2) The payment processing page In nearly all cases you have little control over the design of the payment processing page you use. It largely depends on how you process payments for your product or service.


Most payment processors (and all third party payment processors like PayPal, ClickBank etc.) have their own processing pages. You would be given a code to use on your sales page and when a customer clicks the payment button they will be automatically taken to the third party payment processor's page. 3) The thank you / download / order fulfillment page As soon as your customer's purchase has been verified they will be forwarded to your order fulfillment page.


If your customer has never purchased anything online before, it is quite possible this was a traumatic experience. To put their mind at rest and to complete the transaction, your order fulfillment page should: ~Put your customers at ease It is vital that you inform your customer that their payment has been verified before giving them any other information.


Tell them what to expect on their credit/debit card statement. ~Describe how your customer's order will be fulfilled Explain to your customer, in detail, exactly how their order is going to be fulfilled. For offline fulfillment, explain when their purchase is going to be shipped, how it is going to be shipped, and when they can expect delivery.


For online fulfillment, you need to explain how they can download their product. If you have used a compression tool, explain how they can uncompress (unzip) their product.


If you have used a special medium for viewing your product, explain what your customer needs to do in order to view you product, for example most e-books are created as a PDF file and so Adobe Acrobat is needed in order to view them.

Monday, February 20, 2006

How to Choose a Pulling Domain Name

How to Choose a Sales Pulling Domain Name Why settle for second best with a meaningless domain name when you could easily find a sales pulling domain name for any website that sells a product or service? A good domain name that describes your product or service gives it credibility, for example www.goldjewlery.com looks professional, is descriptive and easy to remember. Compare that to www.geocities.com/jewelry/gold.html... If you have created a product, don't name it and then try to find a domain name... The trick is to find your domain name first and name your product after it using these brainstorming tips: 1) Conduct keyword research related to your product or service by using these services to see what people are searching for: - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ - https://adwords.google.com/select/tools.html - http://wordtracker.com 2) List the key benefits your product or service will give to your customer, and because the shorter a domain name is the easier it is to remember, you might want to use single words that imply a benefit.

For example the word "cheap" implies you will save money which is a major benefit. Using a thesaurus will help you find all the synonyms for your words and phrases. 3) Mix and match the words you have researched to come up with a domain that is: - Short. - Easy to spell.

- Easy to pronounce (if it has a rhythm to it and rolls of the tongue, it will be more memorable. If it is difficult to quickly say your domain name out loud, your potential customers will mentally trip over it and not remember it).

- Descriptive. When choosing your sales pulling domain name, pay attention to the following ten tips and you could make (or save) a pile of money: 1) Avoid using trade marked names, it's unethical and could land you in an expensive legal battle. 2) Try and avoid words which have different spellings in other countries such as color and colour, humor and humour. 3) Avoid unnecessary words and keep it simple.

You would never search for "low cost high quality garden utensils", you're more likely to search for "cheap garden tools" and it's easier to remember. 4) Avoid using numbers as these tend to be forgotten. 5) Avoid starting a domain name with the word 'the' or the letter 'a' as they tend to be forgotten. 6) Avoid using domain names where the end of one word and the beginning of the next are vowels.

For example, free ezines reads OK as two separate words, but as one in a domain name freeezines.com looks ridiculous and chances are people will omit the third letter 'e' when typing the domain into a browser. The same applies where one word ends and the next starts with the same letter e.g. next topic - nexttopic If you are using a hyphen (dash) to separate words then this is not a problem. 7) In the US a .com domain name will be noticed far quicker than any other domain name.

Perhaps because .com is the oldest extension and therefore the most associated with reputable websites. On the other hand local domain names will get the attention of local surfers.

For example, if you live in the United Kingdom, mydomain.co.uk will get your attention far quicker than mydomain.com because you know it is a UK specific domain name and probably more relevant. 8) People will tend to type a domain name into their browser without dashes.

For example, they will type mywebsite.com instead of my-website.com. A long domain name with dashes is easier to read, but it's more annoying to type into a browser. If you optimize your website for the search engines, having a domain name with dashes has the advantage of making it a little easier for the search engines to understand. 9) Domain names can only contain letters, numbers, and dashes.

Spaces and symbols are not allowed. Don't worry about upper and lower case characters as domain names are not case sensitive. 10) It is not true that most of the short domain names have been taken, thousands of domains expire every day and many of them are not taken up again.

Type the phrase "deleted domains" into any search engine and you will find loads of websites dealing in deleted domains. Try it out and you might find the short sweet sales pulling domain name you were looking for.

An Introduction to Niche Marketing

An Introduction to Niche Marketing. What's all this hubbub about niche marketing? Why is every successful marketer preaching niche marketing as being vital to your profitability as a marketer online or offline?

In answer to that, let's paint a little picture... Imagine you have an idea for a great product, an idea so great you decide to turn it into a product and sell it. You're going to make millions so you labor away hour after hour creating a masterpiece, well... It’s a masterpiece in your eyes. Hours of feverish activity, a month goes past, then another, and finally the great day arrives when you launch your product. You have a superb product and the best sales website on the internet.
Another month goes buy, then two and... Not one sale! In desperation you hire an experienced marketer for their advice, but what they tell you, crushes you... "You don't stand a snowballs chance in hell of making any sales!" You see you have picked a massive market to sell to; you are competing against big established suppliers who are seen as experts. The market trusts them because they are well known and have great reputations.

It's David against Goliath only David forgot his sling. If this has happened to you, you're not alone. This little scenario plays itself out day after day. Each month thousands of people find themselves in this situation.

Doesn't it infuriate you to see others seemingly doing exactly what you did, but they make money? From their product launch they bank the profits.

Want to know what they did differently? They found a niche market, created a product specifically for it and they sell that product to that niche only.

Don't make the mistake of thinking niche marketing is something new, savvy marketers have always sold to niches. It's only recently that niche marketing has been so heavily publicized.
Niche marketing is the process of finding small profitable segments of a much larger market and involves a lot more effort. Established suppliers to larger markets are usually not prepared to spend this time and effort required to seek out smaller segments, leaving them ripe for the picking.

One way of explaining the niche marketing concept is to picture a tree - it has a big trunk which leads to branches leading to even smaller branches and finally tiny twigs.
Take the topic of fishing which can be likened to the trunk of the tree having branches leading away from it including: - Deep Sea Fishing - Salt Water Fishing - Game Fishing - Fresh Water Fishing The smaller branches leading from Fresh Water Fishing include: - Fishing Baits - Bass fishing - Fly Fishing The tiny twigs leading from Fly Fishing include: - Trout Fishing - Steelhead Fishing - Fly Tying This is a good example of niche marketing because people who fish tend to be nuts about the subject. Drill all the way down to the tiny segment of Steelhead fishing and there are still avid enthusiasts who will go to any expense to catch the "big one", including buying books or e-books. One point worth noting is that any book or e-book on Steelhead Fishing had better be full of useful advice (i.e. the advice works), so you had better be an expert and know what you're talking about if you intend to write one... Finding niche markets is not as easy or obvious as you might think.

Sitting down with a piece of paper and drawing a tree listing all your ideas is NOT the way to go. You are listing your ideas... your ideas won't sell! You need to find what your potential customers want, and to do this you need to conduct some research, here are a few ideas to get you started:
1) Visit a few online forums related to your interests.
Take note of the questions people are asking and how many times similar questions are asked. 2) Visit a few book stores and go to the magazine section.
Take note of the types of magazines on sale. Ask the sales assistant which magazines sell the most.
3) Take a look on eBay and spend some time going through the categories related to your interest.

Take note of popular items and how often they sell. By finding a small segment of a much larger market in which people are actively buying, and where there are not too many competitors, is the best chance you have of making money from selling your own product.

An Introduction to Niche Marketing. What's all this hubbub about niche marketing? Why is every successful marketer preaching niche marketing as being vital to your profitability as a marketer online or offline? In answer to that, let's paint a little picture... Imagine you have an idea for a great product, an idea so great you decide to turn it into a product and sell it.
You're going to make millions so you labor away hour after hour creating a masterpiece, well... It’s a masterpiece in your eyes. Hours of feverish activity, a month goes past, then another, and finally the great day arrives when you launch your product.

You have a superb product and the best sales website on the internet. Another month goes buy, then two and... Not one sale!

In desperation you hire an experienced marketer for their advice, but what they tell you, crushes you... "You don't stand a snowballs chance in hell of making any sales!" You see you have picked a massive market to sell to; you are competing against big established suppliers who are seen as experts. The market trusts them because they are well known and have great reputations.

It's David against Goliath only David forgot his sling. If this has happened to you, you're not alone.

This little scenario plays itself out day after day. Each month thousands of people find themselves in this situation.

Doesn't it infuriate you to see others seemingly doing exactly what you did, but they make money? From their product launch they bank the profits. Want to know what they did differently?

They found a niche market, created a product specifically for it and they sell that product to that niche only. Don't make the mistake of thinking niche marketing is something new, savvy marketers have always sold to niches. It's only recently that niche marketing has been so heavily publicized.

Niche marketing is the process of finding small profitable segments of a much larger market and involves a lot more effort. Established suppliers to larger markets are usually not prepared to spend this time and effort required to seek out smaller segments, leaving them ripe for the picking.

One way of explaining the niche marketing concept is to picture a tree - it has a big trunk which leads to branches leading to even smaller branches and finally tiny twigs. Take the topic of fishing which can be likened to the trunk of the tree having branches leading away from it including: - Deep Sea Fishing - Salt Water Fishing - Game Fishing - Fresh Water Fishing The smaller branches leading from Fresh Water Fishing include: - Fishing Baits - Bass fishing - Fly Fishing The tiny twigs leading from Fly Fishing include: - Trout Fishing - Steelhead Fishing - Fly Tying This is a good example of niche marketing because people who fish tend to be nuts about the subject. Drill all the way down to the tiny segment of Steelhead fishing and there are still avid enthusiasts who will go to any expense to catch the "big one", including buying books or e-books. One point worth noting is that any book or e-book on Steelhead Fishing had better be full of useful advice (i.e.
the advice works), so you had better be an expert and know what you're talking about if you intend to write one... Finding niche markets is not as easy or obvious as you might think. Sitting down with a piece of paper and drawing a tree listing all your ideas is NOT the way to go. You are listing your ideas... your ideas won't sell! You need to find what your potential customers want, and to do this you need to conduct some research, here are a few ideas to get you started: 1) Visit a few online forums related to your interests.
Take note of the questions people are asking and how many times similar questions are asked. 2) Visit a few book stores and go to the magazine section.
Take note of the types of magazines on sale. Ask the sales assistant which magazines sell the most. 3) Take a look on eBay and spend some time going through the categories related to your interest. Take note of popular items and how often they sell.
By finding a small segment of a much larger market in which people are actively buying, and where there are not too many competitors, is the best chance you have of making money from selling your own product.