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Archive for August, 2009

Tips for choosing search engine friendly merchandising

August 26th, 2009 | By Simon In Building Your Business, Traffic Generation | No Comments »

Now that you know the importance of using online marketing for both offline and online businesses, I thought it important to give you a few pointers about choosing and using the right search engine friendly merchandising in your website.

The first thing you have to remember if you wish to generate sales from your website is to ensure that your products get listed in your website in a search engine user-friendly manner.

Ensure easy navigation

This means that the navigation in your website should be easy, where each of the products that you have to sell has to have its individual page. It would be better if you included tabs leading to these pages in your home page. This makes it easier and faster for visitors, and probable customers to reach your products.

Not only do you have to provide easy access to your products, you also have to make sure that the checkout process of your website is a really easy and smooth one where the customer can check out with as little input as possible.

It is better to include emails or notices in your site that just instructs the buyer to mail an email to a third person, with which the checkout process is taken care of. Though this addition to a site costs more, in the long run, you find it much easier to add and remove products from the site. This will in turn make it easier for you to update the products you have to offer on the site.

After implementing all these tips to your website, I have to remind you that not all websites will start converting visitors into customers immediately on going live. It is not however impossible as it is quite possible with some careful preparation and great marketing plans which will be mentioned in the next post.

More integrated offline and online marketing strategies for your business

August 12th, 2009 | By Simon In Building Your Business | No Comments »

In my previous blog post, I mentioned a few essential online and offline marketing strategies that you could use to improve your business.

When you use both offline and online marketing techniques, you could roll out both campaigns together or have a system of using an offline campaign first, followed by an online one. The absolute key and something I preach about a lot is to test – test which works best and then try and beat it next time.

Tease your customers

This is best done by choosing a specific date for the launch of your campaign. Once you have set the date, you should however work at ensuring that everything is ready in both marketing techniques so that you will be able to launch your campaign on the selected date.

A unique and effective means of integrating your marketing efforts is to tease your customers about any promotion you are organizing in your business. You can do this by giving your potential customers details of your campaign in bite size pieces, and this should lead your customers to your site, where they will be able to get more information about your promotion.

Print special coupons

Another effective offline marketing technique to get your visitor to visit your website for more details and deals is to offer special coupons that they can redeem. These coupons should offer special web-only deals, and is a great means of getting people interested in your website, and at the same time, improve your sales.
By taking a look at this type of integrated marketing, you should be able to get the most out of all your advertising campaigns.

Strategies for integrating offline and online marketing for your business

August 5th, 2009 | By Simon In Building Your Business | No Comments »

No matter how old or new your business is, you should always consider the benefits of  both online or offline marketing in your business. This is because whether you know it or not, online businesses can benefit from traditional, offline marketing techniques and brick and mortar stores are finding more and more that the internet is extremely beneficial in marketing their business.

In this post I will reveal some easy to integrate offline and online marketing techniques that should enable you to get even better returns from your business.

The main thing you have to keep in mind is to have both these marketing techniques as they can work together to promote your business, as they compliment each other. You could include your URL in all your promotional products like pens, stationary, business cards or even diaries.

Make sure you have a professional looking website

You should also include it in any offline ads that you run so that people who see you in the local newspaper etc will decide to pay a visit to your website. This thus gives them an additional means of contacting you and even doing business with you.

As you will be drawing visitors to your website, I have to remind you that you ensure that your website looks professional and has a suitable call to action. This is because if visitors come to your site, and don’t find what they are actually looking for, it is very likely that they will leave your site, not to return to it again.

Online and offline marketing should compliment each other.

If you are not adept at designing the perfect website, you can hire a professional such as myself to design your website for you. Just make sure all the information you place in your website is up to date, easy to find and compliments your offline marketing efforts.

This is because you wouldn’t want one form of marketing falling behind the other. This means that if you send out promotional cards to your clients about the sale you intend to have in your store, your website should also display the same promotion. If it does not, you will only end up with unhappy and confused customers.