Then most difficult aspect of marketing a new product or web site is to find enough people that are interested in it so that they are ready to buy. Mastering Google AdWords will enable you to drive traffic to your web site and start making sales immediately. You can create a Google AdWord campaign in a matter of minutes and be making sales within 24 hours.
So you've launched your website and you're happy with the content, the design, and with its placement in cyberspace. Now, it's time to track your traffic. How many people visit your site each month? Where are they coming from? What do you need to know to be an informed analyzer so you can beef up your site traffic? And what tools can help you along the way? Ladies and gentlemen, sit back, relax, and enjoy the following answers to all these questions.
Why You Should Know Your Dinner Guests
Knowing where your visitors are coming from and knowing where they go on your site are the two most important pieces of acquisition arsenal you can obtain. This is because on one hand, knowing where people are coming from will help you focus your offsite advertising and marketing plans. On the other hand, and knowing how visitors navigate within your site will help you gauge what pages work and which ones need to be revamped. Maybe you have important content that would be most appealing to your visitors but it is difficult to get to due to poor design choices and hence no one is going to that page. You can use metrics to figure out what pages are most popular. That is the best way to understand what type of content and design works and will guide the future development plans for your site. The main goal is to reduce what are know as the dreaded "bottlenecks," pages of your site where visitors exit before they reach your purchase or sign up page.
Know the Ingredients
First, acquaint or reacquaint yourself- as the case may be- with the terminology so that you know what you are actually analyzing. If you know that unique visits is distinct from unique visitors, for instance, you will have a better grasp of what figures to use for reporting purposes, setting advertising rates, and a host of other options specific to your company's needs. Learn what an entry point means and where people travel to once on your site. Some tools, like Webalizer, allow you to see what URL people visited before coming to your site. This is an excellent way to learn more about your audience and perhaps point you towards potential advertising or link exchange opportunities.
Know the Recipe
Analytics tools can be tricky. The most important research you can do is to find out how each metrics system calculates its findings. For instance, the company I work for employs several reporting tools to track traffic to the site. When we first started using these tools, we were very confused. Google Analytics told us a very different figure for unique visitors than Webalizer did. In fact, Google's figures were just about half that of Webalizer! After further investigation, we learned that Webalizer was picking up on traffic behind our paywall where Google was unable to track. Some worthy reporting tools that you should check out include AWstats and WWWstats. AWstats presents their data in an easy-to-digest format and tells us things like usage by the hour and a breakdown of what countries our visitors are from. WWWstats presents the data in a pretty raw format, but allows you to track things like transfers by client domain and transfers by URL or section. Both of these services provide fairly reliable information.
Google Analytics is an extensive - and free! - program that can help you measure just about anything on your site. This includes conversion tracking, which allows you to follow a visitor from the point of entry on your site to each subsequent page that he/she visits. This is an outstanding way of gauging your site's navigability index and where work needs to be done to maximize the user experience (and attract more traffic to places on the site where you want visitors most). You can also track how your keywords are performing on the major search engines. Google's reporting tools, though respectable, can be confusing to use. It is not entirely clear how to access certain tools and, although they offer video instruction for some of their services, if you have specific problems or questions, an actual customer service person is difficult to nearly impossible to contact.
Crazyegg.com is another lesser known tool for tracking your traffic. Though there is a fee to participate, you can try their services for free. They offer a full service program for setting up, deploying and tracking tests, advice on how to properly track click-throughs, live reports, and easy-to-read results. Hey, you have nothing to lose so it's worth trying a free test. Be sure to also check out these other good sites that offer reporting and analysis for your traffic: Clicktracks.com, Fireclick.com, NetTracker.com, and WedTrends.com.
Taste the Results
Perhaps the best way to gauge your traffic more accurately is to look at several different reporting tools and make an educated guess. More likely than not, the actual number of visitors to your site- much like the truth between the claims made of two feuding parties- will lie somewhere in between.
Remember, the web is still in its infancy in many ways and there is no one, overarching, epistemologically respectable reporting tool currently available that beats out all the rest. The existing tools may change as our understanding of the web becomes more comprehensible or if sites become standardized or regulated in some way. But for now, use the tools I've recommended coupled with your best judgment and you will be on your way to making your site the best it can be.
By mastering Google Adwords Ads, you can confidently expand your marketing campaign to include other PPC advertising companies ie Overture, FindWhat and also try offline advertising.
by: Nickolie Greer
Showing posts with label Marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marketing. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Learning to Love S & M… (Sales & Marketing)
The Marketing-Phobic Author’s Guide to Profitable Book Promotion
(Excerpted from The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living, by Peter Bowerman. Fanove, 2006. www.wellfedsp.com).
I saw a great series of billboards in Atlanta recently. It was for Apartments.com, an online clearinghouse for apartments that allows you to search for exactly what you want in any state. The first billboard had just one short sentence (their tag line, actually) across the middle: “You want what you want.” Then, simply their logo and the Apartments.com name; a thing of simplicity and beauty. In one five-word sentence, they nailed THE hot button for their audience: personal taste and choice in an apartment.
But, say “marketing” or “sales” to a roomful of right-brained author types and watch the sweat beads pop. But, getting comfortable with the whole sales and marketing thing really is easier than you think…
It’s ALL About the Customer
In the course of promoting your masterpiece, you’ll be crafting a pretty steady stream of promotional materials: press releases, marketing proposals to wholesalers, distributors, and booksellers, email pitches to book review targets, queries to publications to submit articles, notes to groups soliciting invitations to speak (and accompanying promo materials, and much more. As such, it’s good to understand what’s important in this process (your audiences and what they want) and what’s not (you and your book).
Here are the three fundamental principles of sales and marketing – principles that, incidentally, are already a part of your frame of reference as a consumer:
1) “Audience” – Always understand who your audience is and what language will best get through to them.
2) The Features/Benefits Equation – Focus on driving home what you know is important to your audience, not just talking about you and your book.
3) The Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – Figure out what sets your book apart in the marketplace and drive that difference home – early and often.
Sales = Making it Easy
Developing a marketing mindset means always looking at things through the eyes of your target audience. For example:
• You want someone to post an Amazon review (after they gushed on about your book in an email), so you send them the actual Amazon link to your book.
• When sending out review copies (and the heads-up emails), you include a prominent link to your “Media Resources” section, which includes everything a potential reviewer might need to put a review together.
• You want some “key influencer” to promote an upcoming event of yours, so you send an actual ready-to-go promo blurb, as if written by them, so that it’s just a simple cut-‘n-paste to get it handled.
• You contact a journalist to get some publicity, and you include a link to “News Pegs” in your Media Resources section.
In all these cases, you’re thinking about their reality and that you’re not a high priority in their world. As such, you need to make it as easy as humanly possible for them to do what you’re asking them to do. Let’s explore each of the three in a bit more depth…
“Who’s the Audience?”
This is absolutely THE first question you need to ask yourself whenever you’re about to put together any promotional copy. When you buy a product you heard about through some form of advertising, it’s because something spoke to you. Someone knew what to say to make you sit up and take notice – which is exactly what will happen when a message is well crafted. What’s amazing – and tragic – is how much marketing material, put together by authors and prestigious publishing houses, is poorly written and doesn’t consider the intended audience. If you can get it right, you’ll set yourself apart.
The Features/Benefits Equation
Some time back, I was contacted by an author who wanted me to review a press release for their new book. It was full of superlative adjectives about the book, hyperbolic gushing-on about the author, and other unforgivable self-indulgences. In short, tailor-made for a quick trip to the circular file. So common. So unnecessary.
The Features/Benefits Equation is an absolute cornerstone of sales and marketing and a concept with which we’re already intimately acquainted.
Basic Definitions
In the publishing context, features are all about a book and its author. Benefits are about your target audiences – what’s important to them, and how your book addresses those issues. Always begin with benefits, follow with features. The more you make it about you and your book, the more likely your intended audience will ignore you.
A Book Example
Okay, using my first book as an example, you think people care that Peter Bowerman leveraged a sales and marketing career into a new career in the lucrative field of commercial writing and then wrote a book about it? That the book covers X, Y and Z subjects? Yawwwwwwwwn. That’s all about me and my book.
If you were a prospect for my book, I’d wager good money that you’d care far more about the fact that there’s this lucrative field called commercial writing, where you fulfill your dream of making a good living (i.e., $50-125 an hour) as a writer. A field that can provide a great income while letting you work from your home, have more time for life, loved ones, and leisure. Sound better? Course it does. Because that’s all about you – your favorite thing in the whole world! Then, once I get your attention with things I know mean something to you, I can tell you more about me.
Just remember, if you’re an unknown author, journalists couldn’t care less that you’ve written a book. A release about a book and its author is…features. That reporter wants benefits: “Tell me why that book is important to my readers/viewers.” Not the book, but the angle represented by the book. Those are the benefits.
USP - The Unique Selling Proposition
Every book is unique in some way. Once you determine the audience for your book, zero in on its Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – THE thing that sets that book apart in a marketplace full of competitors (more important with non-fiction than fiction). What does it do that others don’t? Once you determine your book’s USPs, make sure they show up in your back cover copy and in most everything else you send out. Drive the message home.
Getting comfortable with sales and marketing doesn’t have to be painful. And when you make these concepts your friends, and they become second nature, you set the stage for some serious promotional success.
***************
Can’t land a publisher? Do it yourself, and make a living from it! Check out the free report on self-publishing at www.wellfedsp.com, the home of the award-winning 2007 release The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living. Author
by: Peter Bowerman
(Excerpted from The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living, by Peter Bowerman. Fanove, 2006. www.wellfedsp.com).
I saw a great series of billboards in Atlanta recently. It was for Apartments.com, an online clearinghouse for apartments that allows you to search for exactly what you want in any state. The first billboard had just one short sentence (their tag line, actually) across the middle: “You want what you want.” Then, simply their logo and the Apartments.com name; a thing of simplicity and beauty. In one five-word sentence, they nailed THE hot button for their audience: personal taste and choice in an apartment.
But, say “marketing” or “sales” to a roomful of right-brained author types and watch the sweat beads pop. But, getting comfortable with the whole sales and marketing thing really is easier than you think…
It’s ALL About the Customer
In the course of promoting your masterpiece, you’ll be crafting a pretty steady stream of promotional materials: press releases, marketing proposals to wholesalers, distributors, and booksellers, email pitches to book review targets, queries to publications to submit articles, notes to groups soliciting invitations to speak (and accompanying promo materials, and much more. As such, it’s good to understand what’s important in this process (your audiences and what they want) and what’s not (you and your book).
Here are the three fundamental principles of sales and marketing – principles that, incidentally, are already a part of your frame of reference as a consumer:
1) “Audience” – Always understand who your audience is and what language will best get through to them.
2) The Features/Benefits Equation – Focus on driving home what you know is important to your audience, not just talking about you and your book.
3) The Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – Figure out what sets your book apart in the marketplace and drive that difference home – early and often.
Sales = Making it Easy
Developing a marketing mindset means always looking at things through the eyes of your target audience. For example:
• You want someone to post an Amazon review (after they gushed on about your book in an email), so you send them the actual Amazon link to your book.
• When sending out review copies (and the heads-up emails), you include a prominent link to your “Media Resources” section, which includes everything a potential reviewer might need to put a review together.
• You want some “key influencer” to promote an upcoming event of yours, so you send an actual ready-to-go promo blurb, as if written by them, so that it’s just a simple cut-‘n-paste to get it handled.
• You contact a journalist to get some publicity, and you include a link to “News Pegs” in your Media Resources section.
In all these cases, you’re thinking about their reality and that you’re not a high priority in their world. As such, you need to make it as easy as humanly possible for them to do what you’re asking them to do. Let’s explore each of the three in a bit more depth…
“Who’s the Audience?”
This is absolutely THE first question you need to ask yourself whenever you’re about to put together any promotional copy. When you buy a product you heard about through some form of advertising, it’s because something spoke to you. Someone knew what to say to make you sit up and take notice – which is exactly what will happen when a message is well crafted. What’s amazing – and tragic – is how much marketing material, put together by authors and prestigious publishing houses, is poorly written and doesn’t consider the intended audience. If you can get it right, you’ll set yourself apart.
The Features/Benefits Equation
Some time back, I was contacted by an author who wanted me to review a press release for their new book. It was full of superlative adjectives about the book, hyperbolic gushing-on about the author, and other unforgivable self-indulgences. In short, tailor-made for a quick trip to the circular file. So common. So unnecessary.
The Features/Benefits Equation is an absolute cornerstone of sales and marketing and a concept with which we’re already intimately acquainted.
Basic Definitions
In the publishing context, features are all about a book and its author. Benefits are about your target audiences – what’s important to them, and how your book addresses those issues. Always begin with benefits, follow with features. The more you make it about you and your book, the more likely your intended audience will ignore you.
A Book Example
Okay, using my first book as an example, you think people care that Peter Bowerman leveraged a sales and marketing career into a new career in the lucrative field of commercial writing and then wrote a book about it? That the book covers X, Y and Z subjects? Yawwwwwwwwn. That’s all about me and my book.
If you were a prospect for my book, I’d wager good money that you’d care far more about the fact that there’s this lucrative field called commercial writing, where you fulfill your dream of making a good living (i.e., $50-125 an hour) as a writer. A field that can provide a great income while letting you work from your home, have more time for life, loved ones, and leisure. Sound better? Course it does. Because that’s all about you – your favorite thing in the whole world! Then, once I get your attention with things I know mean something to you, I can tell you more about me.
Just remember, if you’re an unknown author, journalists couldn’t care less that you’ve written a book. A release about a book and its author is…features. That reporter wants benefits: “Tell me why that book is important to my readers/viewers.” Not the book, but the angle represented by the book. Those are the benefits.
USP - The Unique Selling Proposition
Every book is unique in some way. Once you determine the audience for your book, zero in on its Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – THE thing that sets that book apart in a marketplace full of competitors (more important with non-fiction than fiction). What does it do that others don’t? Once you determine your book’s USPs, make sure they show up in your back cover copy and in most everything else you send out. Drive the message home.
Getting comfortable with sales and marketing doesn’t have to be painful. And when you make these concepts your friends, and they become second nature, you set the stage for some serious promotional success.
***************
Can’t land a publisher? Do it yourself, and make a living from it! Check out the free report on self-publishing at www.wellfedsp.com, the home of the award-winning 2007 release The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living. Author
by: Peter Bowerman
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