Nov
23
Congratulations on starting your home business! Now is the time to get the word out, and marketing is the way. No matter whether you are an eBay seller or a freelance writer, you need to be seen to get hired. Consider the following questions before beginning your marketing journey.
1. What marketing platforms fit your business?
Every business is different, and because of that not every marketing platform is a great fit for every business. You don’t need to market yourself across the county if your business is very local. Look at what your business requires, then choose your marketing platforms accordingly. There are many of different options: direct mail, flyers, internet, social media, telephone marketing, mobile marketing, word-of-mouth, viral and many more. Choosing the right mix for you will help lead you to great success!
2. If a print or internet marketing campaign is a good choice for you, what are the publications, newspapers or websites that best fit your target audience?
Don’t simply choose to advertise in a magazine because it is local. There may be a better choice that is more targeted to the real buyers of your products or services! If you are a dog walker, and you have the choice of advertising in an expensive county-wide newspaper or a popular (and cheap) local pet-owners newspaper, which do you think is the better choice to try first? The same goes for magazines and websites. Know your target audience and what they are the most apt to read. Advertise accordingly.
3. If you use the internet for marketing, have you weighed whether display banner advertising is better for you than search marketing?
Banner advertising can be very expensive, and if you haven’t done your homework on what websites work best for your business, you may be wasting your money! Search advertising, on the other hand, costs you nothing unless a person clicks on your link via the search ad. But to be successful with search advertising, it takes daily work on your part! You need to be up-to-date on search terms that are trending and the popularity of those terms. The popularity affects the price you will pay per click. Consider the ramifications of both internet marketing techniques, and choose what works best for you.
4. Do you have a website up and running?
No matter what your business is, you need to have an online presence. Not only is it great marketing, but it also acts as a legitimacy chip for when you are being vetted by potential clients. If a potential client can’t find any information about you, they will be less apt to purchase. Take the time to develop a professional looking website. It doesn’t need to be big, it just needs to show you are for real, that you are professional and that others have trusted you before.
As you can see, there are a lot of questions to consider when beginning your home business marketing. Make sure you do your homework. When you do, and you have a targeted campaign at hand, you may be very surprised at the results!
Jul
19
Houston Web Hosting Tips - Part 1
Advertising / Branding / Internet Marketing / Leads / Market Research / Marketing / Sales Posted by TonyMack
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1 comments
Web designing has become the in thing today. There are hordes of web designers and web designing companies across the globe ready to flaunt their designing skills and innovations with latest techniques of designing. But all said and done web designing is not as easy and simple as it seems. There is much thought process to be done before the actual web designing commences. The following are the questions are to be considered before designing your web site:
What is the purpose of your business? What is the market situation for your product or service? What is the problem area that you need to address? What is your overall marketing strategy? What is your marketing plan? Who are your competitors and what is their strategy? What are your priority markets? Whom do you wish to target? What budget do you allocate to promotions and advertising? What would be the role of Internet advertising? What are the goals you wish to accomplish through your web site? Do you wish to have the web site just for the sake of having it? Or do you have a clear vision and purpose to have the web site? Do you take the web designing seriously?
Ideally one should have the clarity of thoughts and action on all the above areas to come to the decision of designing a web site. The web design should be such that it serves the basic purpose of your business and it appeals to your target audience wherever they are there across the globe. You need to know your target audience, and keep them in mind throughout the web development process. Say clearly what you want to convey, concisely and focused on what they want and plan to give them all the information they need.
Your web site content is the most powerful aspect of your website?s presentation ? more than anything else. Creating effective text will bring you the response you expect from your visitors. If your website is well written, it?s guaranteed to be more successful than sites that rely on mediocre writing, no matter how amazing their graphics may look. It takes some work! Please note one thing ? if you expect success, your text needs to be clear by each and every word!
Presentation Of web site: When you start to develop graphical concepts for your site, remember the benefits of simplicity. It?s easy to get carried away with web graphics, but having too many flashy visuals can be very distracting ? and they can take ages for browsers to load. You are developing website to give information about your company not to show the designing skills of your web designers. Even limited use of images and graphics can create a wonderful site if used smartly.
Smooth Surfing: Avoid links that makes the visitor to leave your site. Make the links for only those pages that are very important for you to promote your business or visitor must know. Good web navigation helps people to orient themselves in your website and find what they?re looking for. Each page should also give your visitor easy access to all of the features of your site. There are many options for laying out your menus for the web site design but it?s vital to keep your navigation simple, clear and consistent throughout your site. The visitor should be very comfortable with your web site whether he reads or navigates through your site.
No page counters: Page counters do nothing except make you look like an amateur, mess with your design and tell competitors about your site you probably don?t want them to know! If you want to know how many people are visiting your site, just ask your web hosting company for the server stats.
Focus on result orientation: You are more concerned with the result, regardless of the technology used by your designer. Avoid using back ground music on web page as music file is pretty heavy and takes time to down load. You should focus more on content on web pages to generate inquires rather than entertaining visitor by placing undesired flash, music, marquee, animation etc.
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