getting back to the basics of helping the search engines find your web site and some tips to help you build a list of potential customers

1. Marketing 101 for your Web Site
Some basic tips

2. What is Marketing?
• In my eyes Marketing is different from Selling.
• For me Marketing is the means by which you get
people to visit your site. Selling is what happens
when potential customers get to your site
• My aim today is not to specifically show you how to
market your web site but to ask you a few questions
and give you a series of points for you to follow up
on by doing your own planning and research on the
web.

3. What is the purpose of your site?
• Before we look at how to market your web site you
need to answer a question.
• What is the purpose of your web site? Is it:-
• To tell people what’s going on in your life or what
you are doing with your hobby (a blog).
• To share an interest in something that you are
passionate about ( cooking / jazz / a sport / a
sporting team / a lifestyle).
• To make money by selling items that you make.
• To make money by selling items that someone else
makes (you are an importer or agent).

4. If you want to make money
• How much money do you want to make?
• do you want to make some extra pocket money to
treat yourself to something special from time to
time?
• OR
• do you want to supplement your income to be able
to travel on a regular basis or educate yourself or buy
a better car?
• OR
• do you want your web site income to replace your
regular income with a much better income and a
flexible lifestyle, where you are your own boss and
control your own destiny?

5. Your action plan – point by point
• do a web search to see if there are similar products /
services to what you planning to offer
• spend some time looking at the first 5 sites listed on the
search results page to see:-
• how does their site look – are the colours attractive /
soothing , does it look professional?
• does the first paragraph on their page tell you (the visitor)
exactly how they can help you solve your problem
• Is this information displayed above the fold (you don’t have
to scroll down to read it)
• how do they get visitors to their site to “opt-in” and give
them their email address – what are they giving away?
• Is the site easy to navigate
• What is their domain name? Have they used words which
relate to the product?

6. Action Plan – Domain Name
If you don’t already have a Domain name then you need to write
down as many words or phrases as you can think of that relate to
what you are trying to sell
• Now go to Google Adwords Keywords Tool or Trellian Keyword
Discovery or Noble Samuri for Marketing Samuri and check how
many on-line searches are being made for your words of phrases.
Again, make notes in Notepad or Word.
• Time spent here is well worthwhile as if you are able to register a
domain name with a keyword in it that is attracting reasonable
volume in the on-line searches it can make it easier for the search
engines to match your site with a search request.
• If you write the text on your site naturally then Keywords that rank
well will be scattered through the text on your site to help the search
engines identify what your site is promoting and match that to
searches. DO NOT stuff keywords into your site as the search engines
will penalise you for it.

7. Action Plan - SEO
• SEO – Search Engine Optimisation helps your site get
found. There are numerous websites offering help
with SEO however one of the better ones for
WordPress is in the form of a plugin and is available
from Yoast, as a free version and as a Premium
version starting at $89.
• If you ask Maeve nicely she may walk you through
the features whilst we are having Pizza.
• However, once again I emphasise that you should do
your own research on SEO as you may find
something that you like better.

8. Action Plan – Meta Tags
• Meta Description Tags – this is what causes the 1 or 2 lines
of descriptive text to appear after your URL (your web site
address) on the search page. Those one or 2 lines give you
a chance to tell people what your site is about and invite
them to visit the site.
• Keep it short and punchy – eg. Lose 5 kg in 10 days without
exercising, we will show you how!
• Make it benefit orientated so that the person reading the
search results page wants to come and visit your page.
• There are heaps of sites and videos on-line which will walk
you through the process of setting up your Meta
Description & Meta Keywords Tags so check them out.

9. Action Plan – Building a List – Pt 1
• You build a list by inviting visitors to your site to give you
their email address in exchange for a freebie, which is
usually something of value related to what you are
promoting on your site. It can be a report or an ebook, an
Mp3 audio file or a video, something they can receive
immediately after you get their email.
• You do this by using an Autoresponder like MailChimp,
AWeber or Get Response to capture the email address of
the person who is accepting your offer of a freebie and
“opting in”.
• You can use an opt-in form provided by your autoresponder
and your opt-in box should use as few fields as possible (no
more than 2) such as a name and an email field, a call to
action button (make the call to action powerful) and a
privacy statement promising that they won’t get spammed.

10. Action Plan – Building a List - Pt 2
• The autoresponder will send out a series of emails
that you have written including a Thank You /
confirmation email, and a number of follow up
emails to build a relationship with the person who
has shown interest in your site. The autoresponder
will let you program how often the follow up emails
are sent out and at what time of day they are sent.
• Once you have set up the email content and when
you want them sent the autoresponder will
automatically send out the series of emails to each
new person who opts in.

11. Action Plan – Building a List - Pt 3
• I would recommend that you program 7 or 8 emails to go
out and here’s some do’s & don’ts
• Do - keep each email short and to the point.
• Do - make sure the content is relevant to the email subject
line
• Do- put a video in your email if you have access to one or
can make one and upload it to YouTube. Just create a
clickable link to your video in your email and keep the video
short.
• Do – offer something of value in each email. It can be more
free items or it can be a link to an article or a site or a video
which reflects the values of your web site

12. Action Plan – Building a List – Pt 4
• Don’t – send multiple emails out in a day or even on
consecutive days. Just think how you feel when you receive
multiple emails on the same day from the same sender !!
• Don’t- send out invitations to buy in each email. You are
trying to build a relationship with the email recipient so in a
series of 7 emails spread over 2 or even 3 weeks there
should probably be only 2 emails asking the receiver to buy
something from you, the first in email 4 then again in email
7 and yes it can be the same product that you offer each
time.

13. Action Plan - Building a List – Pt 5
• Once you have started to grow your list and have
made some sales you need to start segmenting your
list at the autoresponder by classifying the receivers
of your emails according to RFM.
• Recency – when was the last time a customer bought
from you.
• Frequency- how often does the customer buy from
you.
• Monitary Value – how much do they spend when
they buy from you.

14. Action Plan – Building a List – Pt 6
• Obviously it will be more productive to spend time
corresponding with those whom you have built up a
relationship to the point where they trust you
enough to spend money on your recommendations.
• However do not discard or totally ignore those that
are not buying from you as their circumstances may
change (money, lifestyle, relationships) or they just
may not find that they need the product that you are
currently offering them. That is it doesn’t solve their
particular problem (need), however they could
decide to buy the next item you put in front of them.

15. Action Plan – Google Analytics
• And last but not least DO track what’s happening
when people visit your web site. Google Analytics
(there are others available) will allow you to see how
many people visit your site, how long they stay,
which pages they looked at etc and you need to
collect these stats on a regular basis to monitor how
your site is performing and be alerted to whether
you need to change things on the site. Once again
there is lots of information on the web on how to use
GA and what the stats mean.

16. Additional Ideas
• PS: You don’t need your own products you can
promote a digital product and sell it as a commission
agent at Clickbank – but that’s another story. There’s
plenty of info on-line.
• PPS: If you want to sell physical products like
Cameras etc then you don’t need a warehouse or
money tied up in stock you can “dropship” it. Again
there is plenty of information about that on the web.