Driving Qualified Prospects To Your Site Without A High Page Rank Or A Large Marketing Budget!
FINDING YOUR TARGET MARKET ONLINE
Whatever your product is, there are ezines, newsletters and article sites devoted to its subject area. If you sell bikes there are probably hundreds if not thousands of online publications and sites focussed on the subject of cycling. All you have to do to put yourself in front of your target market is to submit articles to these sites. Sites are constantly in need of fresh content relevant to their subject area so it is fairly easy to get published.
LET YOUR TARGET MARKET QUALIFY THEMSELVES
With every article you publish include a free offer for more information, a sizeable discount on your product or a free consultation. To take advantage of your offer all a reader has to do is to click on the link you include with your free offer. The offer can be embedded within your article or included with your signature.
PICK AND CHOOSE WHICH SITES TO PUBLISH IN
Don’t try to submit articles to every ezines, newsletter and article site that caters to your subject. First of all it would take weeks to submit to all of them and a lot of them don’t have enough readers to make it worth your while. You need to know the number of subscribers a newsletter has and the number of visitors and/or page rank of ezines and article sites. The larger the number of readers the greater the amount of traffic you will get from them.
Newsletters should willingly supply information on the number of subscribers they have. As for ezines and article sites the easiest way to find out their page rank is to download a free tool from Google. This bar is placed at the top of the page. When you place your cursor over the central area (usually a grey colour) it will give you the sites page rank. Google rates are 0-10, 7 or 8 is an outstanding rating given that even some of the other search engines are only rated at 9.
Check out any reviews or comments about the site that you can find? If you have any challenges finding information hire a student and pay them to do the research. In the eyes of the readers the quality of the publications and sites your articles appear in will reflect on your expertise.
ARTICLE CONTENT
The goal of your articles should be to provide useful information, not to sell. Remember people don’t read ezines and newsletters to find something to buy. In the case of cyclists they want information on the latest trends, reviews of popular products, event calendars and suggestions for training and bicycle repair.
Before anyone is ready to buy anything from you they have to be convinced of your expertise. This is especially true for the higher priced products. Publishing articles let you demonstrate your expertise and offer more information with free reports or your site content, both of which they can access with the convenient link embedded in your article or with your signature.
FRINGE BENEFITS OF ARTICLE WRITING
Publishing articles not only drives traffic to your site it also improves your standing in the eyes of the search engines. When search engine crawlers visit a site they follow the links within the site. Article sites and ezines have an easier time earning a higher page ranking because one important criterion for search engine ranking is the amount of relevant content. By relevant content I mean content that is about the key words or phrases sites have used in their page title and other tags. If your link is one of the links a high page ranking article site has and your site has lots of relevant content it can boost your ranking substantially.
FOCUS ON YOUR TARGET MARKETS PROBLEMS
Whenever I offer article writing as a marketing and promotion solution I hear groans. For some reason few people like to write. Fortunately, articles are really just short letters. Start by listing the problems your target market has in relation to your product area. Choose one you have a solution for and write out the solution in point form. Then just fill in the details.
Ask a friend or family member or friend to proof it for you. It is harder to catch the mistakes in something you’ve written then it is in something totally new to you. If there is no one around to proof read for you take a break or turn your attention to something else for awhile so your article feels fresher to you and you’ll be more likely to catch mistakes.
If you freeze when faced with a blank screen then hire an English student to write the article for you. You still have to come up with the problem and solution but all you have to do is to tell the student what they are and let them take it from there.
MULTIPLY YOUR ARTICLES REACH
At the end of every article is an “about the author”/ signature block. By adding an extra sentence offering the right to reprint your article you can extend your reach exponentially. Just be sure to that you require anyone wishing to reprint your article to do so in it’s entirety including your signature block and any embedded links.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/internet-marketing-strategies-for-small-business-421464.html
About the Author:
Gilda Stein is a Senior Consultant with Concepts Consulting – Simplifying success with easy to implement small business solutions and Internet marketing strategies tailored specifically to small business.
This article is free to republish with the signature block