Internet marketing - Putting an Online and offline models together. Part 4

You Need More Than Two Cans and a String

3) Promotion: people enter your world (the internet) via a browser. Since "the internet" is intangible, many people confuse the vehicle (AOL or Yahoo!, for example) with the destination itself, the internet. So let's be gentle with our potential visitors and make their journey from landing pad to your neighborhood as effortless, pleasant and convenient as possible.

If they are interested in buying widgets online, they will soon realize that there are a million widget salesmen out there. So they start narrowing down their search, and they comparison shop. First and foremost, they are information gatherers. Where do they go first? Probably to a search engine. Then they start exploring. They visit a site; if it fits their needs, they may bookmark it before they move on. When they move on, they may return to their Google or Yahoo! search results, or they may follow a link off of the page they visited.

So getting yourself listed in the search engines is important. This does not require your own domain name, although it's the best route to go, but a website where you can control your page content is essential. A search engine will not list a replicated affiliate website, such as http://any-old-program.com/aff_id=102109 but it will gladly list http://your-domain.com/any-old-program. Search engines want new, original information, so write something original on your website about every program you join. Link your articles, etc. to your web page, then link that page to your affiliate program.

Your own domain name, carefully chosen, will help to brand either your name or your website name, such as wallywalton.com wallyswidgets.com widgetworld.com etc. If you get a free website with finitesite.com, your url will be finitesite.com/wallywalton or something like that. It might be finitesite.com/member/wallywalton -- I forget, it's been a while since I had a site with them :) With some work, you can get a site with a url like this into the search engines. It's a great way to start if you can't afford domain name, hosting etc.

Sooner or later, your site visitor will be ready for a purchase. Maybe they will drive off to the nearest hardware store armed with all their new information and buy a widget there. If they found your site in the search engine, visited and bookmarked it, maybe they'll return and buy from you. Maybe they'll buy from the site they went to after your site. But 9 times out of 10, once they've left your site, they're gone forever.

So how do you make them to come back? We will talk over it in the next post.