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Direct Marketing Methods
As a follow on to the previous article, we will take a brief view at product creation, and do a basic over view of the launching process. Looking at the steps of website creation. generating traffic. Targeted marketing.. Product branding. So we have a scenario, where a developer has created a new product, and wishes to sell it as an online product. For the sake of this example we will assume the product is a simple information item. The format is a downloadable ebook. The vendor has decided to use a direct marketing approach via an existing website.. Setting up a sales page on a website can work in many ways. Influenced very much on vendor preferences or company policy. However, most consist of a single information page, which gives the product details in the form of a well written sales pitch. Here the vendor will paint a picture of the product, what it is, the way it works. How the customer benefits from owning the product. It will include customer testimonials, and above all a buy it link.. This page is vitally important, in that it is the gateway to your product. Time spent on good design, product representation and, ease of use will make the customer want to see more. The sales page, or to use another term, the landing page. Will be linked to a purchase page. The purchase link will be a secured payment page powered by the vendors preferred online payment provider. Most readers will be familiar with sites such as Paypal, Clickbank etc.. Once the payment has gone through, the buyer will be redirected to a download page. From where the product can be downloaded.. This is more or less the standard procedure There are variations on the theme, maybe an email capture link, whereby the buyers email address is used to send an email containing the download link.. This is how the product purchase and delivery are achieved A quick look at any of the product links on this site will show a wide variety of such pages. Branding. This is an often mis-understood term. The brand is frequently recognized as being the product itself. As can be readily seen when reference is made to consumer items of all types. However with online marketing, the brand applies to much more than just the product. It applies to company selling the product. It is the identity the company uses to make itself stand out from the masses. It needs to be carefully considered in all marketing and advertising processes. Once this has been accomplished, the next considerations have to be, how to get the product to the public eye Advertising There are any number of ways that can be used to generate product awareness via advertising. Here we will briefly cover the main ones we have used. Website marketing,, like any advertising method this is all about getting your message or product details out there. Traffic generation via advertising works on many levels and can be as simple as a banner add, to something more complex such as full site optimization.. So simple first, banner adds, many examples of these can be found on our pages, they are simply a product banner, which links to the product sales page. They can be placed anywhere, usually for a fee. Normally placed on sites where the content is related to the product on sale. As an example, You created an e book on home electrics. Space for links to your product page can be purchase on sites which sell electrical products. Buying traffic. This is quite simply where you use a search engine ad, to drive traffic to your product or offer. We have used Google ads, so we'll use our experience of that medium . We designed an ad, for a specific product, and started an ad campaign using google. With these kind of ads, you essentially purchase traffic in one of two formats. PPI or PPC PPI means Pay per insight, or cost per insight. An insight is simply where someone sees the add itself. Which simply means you pay for traffic to view your ad. PPC Pay per Click, or cost per click, Here someone sees the ad, and clicks on the link to visit your product page. These methods are what we term as directed traffic, Traffic is directed to your page via a web link.. Website optimization, or to give it the better known name of Search Engine Optimization. SEO. This is a model whereby you use search engine rankings to drive traffic to your pages. The object is to have your product site appear at the top of search engine listings related to your product. This can be accomplished in several ways, the first would be to have a unique product name which will appear no where else. The chances of that happening are remote, but we do know of cases where this has occured. The other option is to use what are called key words. These are simply words which relate to your product that may be regularly used in searches to find products related to yours. To use our earlier example of a electronic e book. Keywords used in a search engine may be home electronics, electronic components, electronics made easy. DIY electronics, etc. These terms can be added to your site. pr marketing pages. Where they act as filters, which when used bring your page to the forefront of the search engine listings. The final method we will look at in this article is that of subscription list or email marketing. It simply means, that your are aiming your advertising at an existing list of contacts who have either, previously purchased product from you, or have shown an interest in your product by subscribing to an information or email update. This method of marketing to an already established audience is the most desirable of all the options available.. These then are examples of targeted or directed marketing methods. and completes this brief over view of marketing options. In the next article we look at subscription and email list building Thanks for taking the time to read this article, and we hope it proves to be informative and useful. Thank you for your visit and enjoy your time with us All the best Admins
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We have received a number of questions regarding the promotion of electronic products. ranging from how to start, what to promote. Where to promote it, and to whom these promotions should be aimed at. This is quite a wide range of areas, all of which will have a variety of answers. So what we intend to do, is describe the process we use to promote a product. After which we will produce a series of articles, where we use some of the products themselves. to illustrate various methods used to generate product awareness. Firstly a few basic definition explanations may be called for. E-Commerce, what is it? Simply stated is the sale of products or services online. You can buy virtually anything online, but for the purposes of this series of articles. The subject will be exclusively related to E-Products E-Products: These are classified simply as electronic products or services. They tend to be information products or services, which are downloadable in digital format via a website, or offered as part of a membership package via an exclusive web portal. Promotion Methods There are basically two methods of promotion for e-commerce products. These are what we refer to a direct marketing. This is where The individual or company that created the product, market it themselves via their own outlets, be that website, specialized web pages, email, directed advertising etc. The second method, is called Affiliate Marketing, and it is the method we use for the products on this site. It works thus. The individual or company that created a product. Uses a strategy where other people to do the promotion work for them. They essentially grant a license to these promoters to showcase the product. They pay a commission to the promoter for every lead that makes a purchase. It has two advantages to the product owner, it allows them to focus on the product development. Plus saves valuable time and resources in setting up and testing for the marketing methods which will work best for their product. Which Method is better. Both work well, however, as a product developer the returns from Direct Marketing will be greater. If you already have a market base. Namely an email or webpage subscription list. You can plan a marketing strategy based on the goodwill contained within your list.. Thus dispensing with the need to set up an affiliate program. Affiliate marketing, because, your promoting another persons product.. You are effectively pointing or driving traffic to another organization/individuals page. You have no control over the marketing strategy of the product owner. Also Vendor changes can have a profound effect on your promotion strategy. This makes it significantly more difficult to generate income from this style of marketing. Why use affiliate marketing? Most uses of this method are where an affiliate product will add additional value to a content related site. As an example you run a website about a hobby interest,. This has content where the focus is on a specific fashion style. You simply add links to your pages which point to sites with related content and offers. For passing traffic to these sites. You will receive a commission on any sales generated. It's a way to effectively and easily monetize your site or blog. The other way is to work the way we have gone with providing what we term as an e-product supermarket. Not the way for everyone. Affiliate marketing has it's advantages over direct marketing. You are promoting another persons product. You are pushing traffic in the form of leads to this persons page or site. that's it. You have no overheads in the form of promotion costs, website setup or even product generation and delivery. Finally, by the very fact your promoting another persons product, unless it's very well known, or has a high turnover. Do not expect to generate a massive income. The pure fact is, affiliate marketing is a long, slow and difficult process to master. However, when used in conjunction with other methods. It can work, above all please do not fall for the hype of instant riches. That covers direct and affiliate marketing In the next installment, we will look further at online marketing. May we thank you for visiting the site and hope this article has had something of interest and use. Till the next time All the best Admins |
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