Okay. You want to make money online. You have a product or service you really like, a brand new website from which to sell it, and all the motivation in the world to launch your new business venture. How do you go about finding people to sell to, to really make money online? Today’s interactive web environment has dramatically changed the way people experience the internet, a fact the prudent online business owner should always keep foremost in mind. Unlike yesteryear, when most people in the market for a product or service either physically showed up at the brick and mortar store or reviewed print ads, television ads, or hard copy catalogues prior to shopping, today people start shopping or doing their due diligence with the click of a mouse button.
A potential buyer’s typical first step is to “Google” the product or service desired (or use whatever search engine they favor) and begin comparing what is out there. Who sells for less? Is the store convenient or should I order online? Does the store have it in stock? They can even see what other items are popular with people who have purchased the same item they are looking for.
What to do when information about different products and vendors is available without the potential customer even having to interact with your company directly? If your website is not appearing in the search engine being used, typically on the first one or two pages of search results, then you aren’t going to be competitive.
The problem? By the time they may eventually reach you, they are much farther along in the sales process than before, but you know next to nothing about them. In order to succeed online, a business, regardless of what products or services it provides, needs to:
- Drive quality visitors to its site (that search engine ranking helps!)
- Capture these visitors as leads (web page design and compelling message)
- Convert the leads into customers (again, design and message. If no initial buy, follow up)
- Continually analyze all site activity to evaluate what marketing is working, and what is not (example – use Google Analytics, a free service)
Luckily, just as consumers now have impressive tools to shop and compare with, the same search engines give businesses the opportunity to reach out to customers effectively and potentially in-expensively with targeted messages that customers are actually looking for. The traditional sales funnel no longer applies; it has evolved to consist of the following elements:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Pay per click (PPC) advertising
- Social Networking (to include blogging, spinning off Social Bookmarking at sites like myspace.com and facebook.com, from which you can spin off “buzz” marketing)
- Targeted landing pages (AKA “splash” pages, “capture” pages, “squeeze” pages)
- Site activity analytics and customer conversion tools
If your volume of business is not what you would like it to be, odds are you are either not incorporating some or all of these elements in your business model at all, or they have been incorporated ineffectively and should be reviewed.
To make money online, it all begins with getting the customer to your site. In future articles we will discuss the relative merits and pitfalls of both search engine optimization, to get search engine “spiders” to rank your site high; and pay per click advertising, to catch the customers eye via paid listings. If you want to make money online, stay tuned. More to follow.
