Here
we provide a
free
marketing plan, which focuses on the needs of the small
business or home office
By: Celia B.
Savaris
www.continentalmarket.com
Before getting into
the step-by-step free marketing plan, you should ensure you have done
a bit of business planning as well. What are you selling? If you are
still working on that, try our report
www.continentalmarket.com/art1-i.htm .
But you came here for
the free marketing plan... so here it is...
#1.
Define your mission and vision. You must set reasonable goals for
yourself. Once you have goals you will be able to measure your
progress against them. Goals will also let you think through trade
offs, like how much you want to spend to market.
#2. Produce a
quality site that will market itself. Maybe this is easier said than
done. But if you don't do this you shouldn't be sitting around
dreaming about making money with your WebPages. There is real money to
be made from web pages, but only if you are determined to produce
something of quality. This is critical to marketing. If you market
without quality you will get visitors, but most will leave within
seconds. If you need ideas for a quality site see our reports in
www.continentalmarket.com .
-- But the idea is simple. Build a site that focuses on your
customers.
#3. Begin
your marketing by using free services. NEVER use free web hosting or
free e-mail address in your business or you will lose sales! Full
report:
www.continentalmarket.com/inf4i.htm Free services will not make
you rich. But they will very likely generate a stream of income that
will give you a real confidence boost. This will allow you to
calculate how much income you can make with more traffic and will let
you determine your adverting budgets. –
#4. Get
spidered by the search engines. Be sure to pick the right metadata for
your page. Many search engines will not index your site at all unless
you have good Meta tags. Specifically:
- Add a descriptive page title to each page of your site. Your webpage
software probably has an easy way to add this title. In the actual
HTML code it will be located between the <HEAD></<HEAD> tags in the
tags <TITLE><TITLE/>. Try to use descriptive terms that will be a
close match to what your customers will be searching for.
- Add keywords. Like
the title, these are important. Check out what we have done by viewing
the source of this page. Look in the header section of the source code
of the page for the work 'KEYWORDS'. The best keywords will be ones
that match the content of the page. Try not to repeat keywords; it
will likely have you considered a search engine 'spammer'.
- Add a page
description. This is like the title or keywords, but is meant to be a
short sentence or two. Again, view the source code of this page to see
how it is done.
#5. start a
marketing newsletter. There are too many others doing this. If you
have your heart set on being a publisher and you think you have a
niche, then go for it, but we highly recommend checking out other
newsletters first.
It’s the best and more effective way for stay in contact with targeted
visitors
If you have a passion, a hobby, an area of expertise, some knowledge
that you are going to write about, then by all means put it in an e-zine.
I'll be glad to be one of your subscribers, and 1000's may beat a path
to your door to sign up.
Ask your web page
readers to sign up for the newsletter
#6. Be sure
to ask your visitors to bookmark your site. Remind them that they can
do that by hitting "CTRL-D".
#7. Use professionally designed banners. We have never seen
a free banner site or home-made banner we like. There are just too
many professionals designing banners. You will eventually need one to
work something up for your site. There are several available.
#8. Get in
global business directories.
Atnetworld.com
is the ultimate on- line Yellow Pages with e-commerce, databases, and
links to over 60 million listings. Not only is Atnetworld the most
complete directory where businesses in the USA can list on the
Internet, it's also a world wide directory.
#9. Study.
Never stop studying. We will always have new items for you to study
here. Please check back frequently.
#10. Swap
links. Contact other webmasters to swap links. Do this by a "link
letter" which outlines why you want to swap links and give your URL so
the other Webmaster can see your site. The best link letter will
indicate that you have already placed their link on your page.
-- I hope I am one of the first people you send your link letter too.
Address it to
publish@continentalmarket.com
#11. Be sure
to add your URL on your stationary and any off-net advertising you do.
#12. When you
are ready, craft your press release.
#13.
Become an active participant in discussion groups. Do not Spam USENET
or mailing lists, but if you become an active participant in
discussion groups and mailing lists and have a good signature file you
will generate additional traffic.
#14.
Write articles about what you know and submit them to e-zings. As you
review the many articles on the web
page
profits site check out the
signature blocks at the bottom of each. The articles you write should
contain the same type of signature block. Doing so can establish you
as a professional and can help generate additional traffic.
#15.
Write
e-books. Many modern readers prefer e-books. Write about anything you
are an expert on. Be sure to include hot links to your site and you
will generate traffic.
#16.
Use auto responders to serve your visitors. Configure several auto
responders to provide valuable information to your visitors. This will
keep them coming back to you. For a free auto responder visit
getresponse.com
#17.
Sign up with professional online marketing companies. There is no
getting around it, to get professional results you must hire the big
guns. If you are on a budget you can start slow till you start seeing
results. How do you pick one? That's the hard part. There are 1000's
out there. Below are a few we have dealt with that we recommend:
www.qksrv.net
Thanks for viewing our free marketing plan. Remember to keep your content
fresh and never stop marketing.
