A Body Shop At Home independent consultant tip s... at 2005-08-18 10:22:23
A Body Shop At Home independent consultant tip sheet for search engine marketing.
Day by day, tick by tick, and click by click, time is passing and none of us are getting any younger. Has anyone mentioned to you that 192 days have passed since the beginning of our current year?
Indeed, 2005 is rapidly marching on, yet for may web entrepreneurs few visitors are marching over to see what's up. Are they marching to a different drummer or is it that your traffic generation strategy is just not keeping the beat?
Marketing to women? It's important to note that the e-commerce gender gap appears to be widening, as more women opened their purse strings than men last quarter: the percentage of online purchases made by women reached 62 percent in the fourth quarter with men accounting for just 38 percent of transactions. (BizRate 2004)
With 173 days remaining in 2005, imagine how much different your business would be if you could get just ONE serious customer, prospect or visitor to take action each day.
If you're asking "Wait a minute, just how can I do this?" Maybe a little internet advertising is in order? Seems that's what a lot of successful online marketers are doing. And of all the methods out there, nothing seems to beat setting up a little search engine listing under keywords matching your niche audience and pay on a "per click" basis as they arrive at your site.
Search marketing will represent 39% of all online advertising spending this year and will account for 44% of online ad spending in 2010. (Source: Forrester Research 02/2005)
In the U.S., Canada, UK or most any internet savvy country you'll discover stories and statistics that prove "it can be done". Yes, online sales are happening. Reports are continuing, sales are up, and the drum beats on.
91% of merchants ranked keyword search as "very" to "somewhat" valuable, the highest percentage of 39 features that respondents were asked to rank. Other highly ranked features include E-mail as a merchandising tool, 89%; Sales and specials, 89%; Seasonal promotions, 84%; Cross-sells/up-sells on the product page, 78%. (e-tailing group, 2004)
But I'm A Body Shop At Home independent consultant, I'm certain it's a waste of time marketing what I have?
Maybe you are thinking that "some things" sell online but not your personal care, haircare & skincare. Nothing could be further from the truth. In most cases, it is not the product or service that hinders a sale, it boils down to traffic, strategy and page presentation. Whether you advertise using Google's AdWords, or do pay-per-click at Overture, Yahoo or MSN search, it's the campaign strategy that's important.
In my previous blog entries (last week and the week prior) we started our series of PPC search engine tips. These tips will unquestionanly help your marketing campaign and hopefully put some of the statistics on your side. Ready or not, here they come. This weeks PPC tips to make you rich and famous (well perhaps that's stretching it a bit):
Search engine campaign tips:
When cooking-up your keyword phrase list, use an extended "keyword discovery" phase. Your competition, like you, will do basic keyword research. You can only beat them if you take it to the next level, and that won't happen in the first day. Having a large number of targeted keywords in your campaign is a side effect of an extended period of brainstorming, discovery, research, or whatever you want to call it.
Not very wood with gords? There is a hidden target market of quality visitors who type in incorrect spellings of what they are looking for. Site owners often overlook this. In a recent 30 day period on a major search engine at least 108 people where searching for a 'buisness'? Hundreds more were searching for: 'vitiamins', 'vitimans' and even 'vitamens'... You can bid on misspellings and have very little competition on the search results page.
Assume that at least half your keywords will be rotten eggs, that is, no one will ever look for them and end up at your site. Because there is no extra cost to add as many keyword phrases as you can think up, treat them like biscuits and bake-up as many as you can... 100 or more keyword phrases for each destination page you list in any PPC search engine.
Looking for more suggestions? Check my posts from previous weeks for more ideas and strategies.
In addition, I've written a many 'how-to' articles specifically to help get your internet marketing strategy on-track. You might find these internet marketing articles for The Body Shop At Home interesting or helpful.
To make certain you don't miss this series of PPC tips, you might consider subscribing to my RSS feed.
Search marketing will represent 39% of all online advertising spending this year and will account for 44% of online ad spending in 2010. (Source: Forrester Research 02/2005)