Internet Marketing: How To Turn Failure Into Success

Filed in Homebased business info on Oct.31, 2008

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Every year, thousands try their hand at generating income from internet marketing, and over 95% FAIL!

Why is this?

Is it because they don’t try?

Is it because they lack the necessary business skills?

Is it because they are marketing the wrong products?

Is it because they don’t have their own website?

………. The answer to all these questions in most cases is NO!

The simple fact is that anyone can succeed at internet marketing, provided they have the desire to succeed, are prepared to learn, and committed to spending that most valuable of commodities - time - on their business. There really is no limit to the potential earnings from internet marketing, so just why do so many people fail?

It’s a reasonable assumption that you’re reading this post because you’re one of the many who have been trying but have yet to see a decent return (or even any return at all), but as you’re reading this post I can also assume you’re not ready to give up - so you have already demonstrated that you have the necessary commitment to finding success. Hopefully by the time you’ve finished this post you’ll be on your way to turning your business around.

What makes a successful and profitable online marketing business?

It’s not the product - no matter what the product is, there’s sure to be a market for it online

It’s not the website design - I’ve seen some terrible websites that still make money

For sure, having a ‘must have’ product helps, as does good site design.

But perhaps the biggest single cause of lack of success is staring you right in the face.

No matter how good or otherwise the site design and product(s), if not enough people are visiting your site you can never hope to succeed.

The lifeline for any online marketing is marketing, and by marketing I’m talking about driving traffic to your site.

Not now and again, not once a month, but constantly.

Simply put, the better your site design and your products, the fewer visitors you need to succeed. But your online business can succeed only if you generate sufficient traffic, everything else is secondary.

You don’t need to bankrupt yourself with Pay Per Click, AdWords etc. There are many free and low cost traffic generation schemes - banner exchanges, traffic exchanges (Traffic Swarm, FreeTrafficBar and Instant Buzz are probably the best known), free article sites where you can generate links back to your site, social networks like Facebook, blogs (e.g Blogger.com).

Do you have a signature that is added to your outgoing emails linking to your site? If not, set one up.

All of these can be used to great effect at driving more traffic to your site.

Simply put, you need to spend the better part of your time - at least 90% - generating traffic.

Developing your site design, adding products, and developing your marketing skills should all fall into the remaining 10% of the time devoted to your business.

Once you have traffic and have started to increase your sales, you should then look to maximising those sales; all successful businesses aim for repeat business from existing customers.

Generating new customers is a lot more time consuming than marketing to your existing customers.

Make sure that every customer provides you with their contact info and keep them all in a simple database; you can then contact them easily to promote additional products ( a good autoresponder will save you time here ) - after all, they had the confidence to buy from you before so may well do so again.

Don’t make the mistake of over promoting though; make all your follow up marketing pay by offering value and don’t over contact. Contacting your customer base too frequently will only serve to irritate - instead, create a regular mailing or newsletter that you send out every few weeks, and always give an option to unsubscribe. (Monitoring the number of unsubscribes will help you determine if you are over contacting or not offering value)

Even if your site visitors don’t buy on a first visit, you can still benefit by providing a free product (newsletter, ebook, report for example - find some free products that you can use here). In return, obtain their contact info as a condition of the free offer. You’ll then have a further opportunity to convert a free visitor into a paying customer.

Another worthwhile strategy is to offer a special deal, for example a bundle of products at a special price. If you can’t think of one, you can get preset One Time Offers for your site from here (you’ll receive commission from each OTO sold).

When designing your sales message, seek to promote the benefits your product will provide for your customer (time saving or problem solving for example); people buy benefits or solutions, not features.

Identify the problem and then promote your solution. Create interest, and follow this up with a reason to act now ( a limited time discount for example ). Encourage feedback from your customer - negative feedback is really helpful in uncovering why you may not be able to make repeat sales, but make sure you respond to the customer by offering something to restore their confidence.

Here’s to a successful new dawn for your business!