Getting in Front of People Who Are Online Searching for Your Product or Service

Posted on 05. Apr, 2009 by Staff in Internet 101 for Georgia Businesses

The great thing about the Internet is that no matter what type of product or service you’re selling, there are a group of people actively searching for that product or service at any given time.

If you’re selling jump ropes, then at this precise moment, someone is actively searching for jump ropes. If you’re selling organic doggy treats, someone is actively searching for it right now.

The thing you must do is position yourself so that you show up when these hot prospects are looking for what you have. There are a multiple ways of making that happen, and here are just a few that have worked for me and my clients…

1) Advertise on Other Related Sites:
For example, if you sell ‘religious apparel/t-shirts’, you can find other religiou/Christian web sites that will allow you to advertise your banner/text ad on their site for fairly cheap. They have your audience and what better way to spend your advertising dollars on people who are likely to be interested in what you have.

The following site for example gets a great sum of traffic each day, yet you can advertise on them for fairly cheap, like $59/month:
http://www.christianforumsite.com/

His stats suggest he gets about 8,000 unique visitors per month… obviously, it’s not 8 million people, but for $59/mo you’re able to put your targeted message in front of ‘your audience’.

Same thing with Organic Doggie Treats… this site has an entire network dedicated to dogs (and healthy dog eating)

http://blogs.dogtime.com/raise-a-green-dog/by-tag/organic%20dog%20treats

Remember.. the goal is to get your product/service in front of your targeted prospects, and a properly written ‘ad’ (banner or text) will help you accomplish that.

2) Article Marketing: I’m sure you’ve heard about this one a million times, but it works. You should make a habit of writing one article per day, Monday - Friday. If you can’t, hire someone who will, and you can get it done cheaply, that way you have quality, unique content. (After writing this post, I’m simply going to post it as an article myself :-)))

After you write your article, then post it to the various article directories. Pick 5-8 and stick with that, you don’t need to submit it to 900 directories.

Now here’s the real secret!

After you write that article and submit, take out a headset microphone and then read your article so you can get it in an MP3 format. Now you have ‘podcast’ material, and now you submit this mp3 format. Again, your goal is to repurpose this content and submit it. Not only do you have just an article, you now have it in audio form (remember, people like content in a variety of formats — some like listening, some like reading, and some like watching video, which leads to my next point).

Either take out a video camera and record yourself reading your article (don’t make it so obvious — maybe talk about what you wrote), or create a power point slide show, and use screen capture software so you can make a presentation with the power point and microphone and now you have video content — which you will then submit to the various video directories (youtube, metacalf, yahoo, viddler, etc…)

Now that one article is now in 3 different formats submitted to maybe 8 different places (8 submissions x 3 formats equals 24 places where your content will appear or be seen). If you wrote 20 articles per month using this same formula, you’ll have your content sitting in over 480 places.

Now obviously, your goal is to provide quality relevant content with a way for them to find a way back to your site. If you provide the goods, they will follow you back.

You can also place your articles on your own blog/site as well.

3) Forum marketing is obviously another — the goal should be to find a variety of forums where your audience hangs out at and participate in the community by offering solid content. If you bring the quality, people will likely follow the signature in your post back to your website. You can do the same with blogs as well — post quality and relevant comments with helpful information. Add value to the post you’re commenting on.

4) Run Ads in Print Media – If you sell a product for horses, run ads in the various print newsletter publications. There are many journals and newsletters that your prospects read and subscribe too. Place your message there as well. Many people don’t do this, but it’s a great strategy and you generally get a great conversion rate if your ‘ad/message’ is able to get them from the print media to the website — offer a free report or something they must have in an effort to get them onto the site.

5) Pay Per Clicks – Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter, and Yahoo of course. This can turn into a long post, so I’ll just leave it at this. Pay per clicks will allow you to get targeted traffic to your website almost immediately. It works and it works well!

6) You Tube – I mentioned this earlier, but provide quality and useful content. People are looking for it. Video is so big right now and chances are your competitors aren’t using it to educate their prospects.

Combined, my videos on youtube have generated millions of targeted visitors to my website and it didn’t cost me a dime, see for yourself, this video has been watched over 1.5 million times alone, and I direct all the traffic to one of my sites:

Don’t laugh, this was when I was first learning how to use a camera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQhdK8l6CuY

And guess what, type in the phrase: How to Do Magic
and my VIDEO itself shows up #2 in Google
http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+do+magic

And #3 in Yahoo:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=how+to+do+magic

And we’ve duplicated the same results in other industries as well. Quality and relevant content will get you in places where others really want to be….

Use video and use it now!

7) Make Your Own Widget — Is there something that your niche would love to have on their webiste? Is there a tool or certification seal you could create that they’ll put on their site’s? This could potentially create thousands of one-way backlinks to your site.

For example, I have a piece of chat software I’ve developed for a particular niche. A free version with a “powered by” link will come back to our site… What can you come up with for your niche?

I also give away free video templates to certain niches like this (which includes a link back to my sites):
http://nchomestv.com/ (this is not the niche — I don’t want to reveal that…)

Get Links From Social Network Sites — Many of the social network sites will allow you to create a profile, where you can also put a link back to your site, here is a brief list:

http://www.youtube.com
http://www.Squidoo.com
http://www.Twitter.com
http://www.EzineArticles.com
http://www.FaceBook.com
http://www.HubPages.com
http://www.StumbleUpon.com
http://www.Flickr.com

You can also create an account here and submit to multiple other social networks:

http://ping.fm/

There are many other methods for driving traffic such as SEO, finding and contributing quality information to the different social networks where your prospects hang out, joint ventures (online & off), offline advertising, etc…

DOn’t rely on one traffic generation strategy alone, you should take a multi-prong approach. Relying on only one strategy or source of traffic could put you out of business really quick. Many people spend most of their time on SEO/SEM and that’s not a great idea. You have no control over SEO because the engines can change their formulas or someone else who is eager to get on the front page could affect your placement as well. Depending on this one strategy alone just doesn’t make get business sense…

Well… that’s it for now, I hope this has been helpful!

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