Back in the early days of developing my home based business, I
went for the big numbers instead of focusing on targeting
prospects. It took me a while to appreciate the importance of
targeting (quality) instead of just going for the big numbers
(quantity).
For online marketing, it helps greatly to get your website in
front of people who are actually looking for the product,
service, or opportunity that you are offering. This refers to
the concept of marketing your sites to your target audience,
rather than wasting your time, effort, and money on people who
are not already interested in what you have to offer.
Be wary of "massive action" techniques in this era when many ISPs
feel their hottest marketing theme is the blocking of incoming
emails, which they decide their customers do not want to receive
(they are the self appointed "information police").
Many of the sources of cheap, high volume leads supply you with
leads that have absolutely no interest in your particular
business (or product or service) and furthermore, have been put
into the list in such a manner that can get you into trouble with
your ISP because you are unwittingly spamming (many of these bulk
lead lists are created by robots that crawl the Internet and
harvest email addresses) the recipients.
In order to be effective in the promotion your particular
proposition, whatever it is, you have to seek out your target
market. This is as true online as it is offline. Just because
you are able to reach huge numbers of people with your message on
the Internet far more cheaply and quickly than you can offline,
does this necessarily mean you should?
What's the point of devoting your time and energies to marketing
to a massive group of people without first knowing whether they,
as a group, have a general interest in what you are offering?
It is much more efficient and effective to first find out where
your prospective customers congregate, and then target that
congregation, than it is to use a shotgun approach and hope that
one of your pellets will somehow find its target (you know...
throw enough up against the wall and something is bound to
stick). You will find that by selectively targeting your
prospects before marketing to them, your conversion ratio (the
proportion of your target market that takes positive action and
actually purchases your product or service) will be much higher
than the results you would otherwise achieve without first taking
the time to target your prospects. Once again, quality wins out
over quantity.
It seems that a great many webmasters have not stopped to ask
themselves the all-important question...What is the purpose of my
web site? For some reason, many of them seem to think that the
purpose of their web site is to give away freebies. Or it could
be to be a "showcase" for their products. Or it could be to
create links to all kinds of resources. Or it could be to have
fancy flash graphics and build a brand name.
One of the biggest mistakes people new to web design make is
going for more "flash" than substance. They bog down their site
with a bunch of fancy colored backgrounds, 3-D text, flash
presentations, etc. If a visitor to your site is using a 56K
connection and has wait to more than 8 seconds for it to load
(which can easily happen on sites heavy with graphics), you can
expect to lose about 1/3 of your visitors.
If you're a business, the purpose of your web site is to sell a
product or service. Your web site should have one main focus.
It should not be selling a dozen products, a dozen opportunities,
or linking to a bunch of different affiliate programs. Presenting
too many options has a tendency to confuse your visitor.
When someone visits your site, it should be clearly obvious what
one action you want him or her to take.
About the author:
Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and coaches others seeking to start their own home based business. Visit his website at http://www.business-at-home.usfor more details.
