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I Advice - 10 Things You Must Do to Drive Massive Traffic to Your Local Small Business Website
Free Advertising Tips - Three Free Advertising Tips your target customers are, specifically, before you embark on any traffic-generating program, will dramatically increase the chances that the new visitors you drive to your site become new customers for you. The more you know about your target customer, the better your chances of driving those new customers to your website with these techniques below.Many small business have a shoestring operating budget and can't afford to spend thousands of dollars on advertising. So here is a few free advertising tips to help you save a bit of cash.You can use these free advertising as much and as often as you need to.#1 - Submit a press release.One of the best free advertising tips is to write a press release for your business.A press release can be a story about how you got started with your business or about a unique product or service you offer.Make your release interesting and not a blatant ad for your business.People love success stories and that is a good way of writing your press lease.Then once it is finished, you can submit it to local news outlets or you can publish it online.The best place to release your story is by using the website at http://prweb.comThis is a very method of all the different free advertising tips to choose from.#2 - Write a magazine article.This is one of the more commonly used free advertising tips because it simply works.There are hundreds of magazines on a variety of topics.All you have to do is find a few that deal with your what your business is about.Then you simply write up a 500-700 word article and submit it to the editors of your chosen magazines.You will be able to put an authors resource box at the end of your article.This is where you will put your contact information for your business.This is a favorit So now the 10 Things You MUST Do to Drive Massive Traffic to Your Local Small Business Website:< E-mail 101: The Dos and Don'ts In my consulting practice, the thing my clients ask me most often about marketing online is, "how do I get people to find my website?"Even though many people have been writing e-mails for a few years now, you would be amazed at some of the pure gibberish that arrives in my e-mailbox on a regular basis.Many people seem to think that because they aren't dealing directly with another person (or as directly as they would be face-to-face or by telephone), all forms of civility and basic respect for the other person (i.e. the recipient), and the English language, can go out the proverbial window.Not true! Writing e-mails is still communicating. Both the recipient and the language still deserve your respect.The following Dos and Don'ts of writing e-mails have been adapted from my eBook entitled "Instant Home Writing Kit". The first version of these appeared in another one of my books "Internet Basics without fear!" (2000).E-MAIL DOS AND DON'TSDO... Use A Descriptive Subject LineThere is nothing more annoying than receiving e-mails in your e-Inbox with no heading, or a heading that does not explain what the contents of the message is all about.When one receives multiple messages every day, the subject-line is important when reviewing and prioritizing e-mail that is in one's mailbox. Also, if you include a descriptive title, your message is almost guaranteed to be read before the ones with blank or meaningless titles.Tip: I even revise the Subject Line when I am sending a Reply, to reflect the essence of my response. This is especially useful if it's one of those e-mails that travels back and Generating traffic for your website is simple but it's NOT easy. Let me explain what I mean There are multiple tactics that you can and should use to make people aware of your website and to encourage them to visit. Each one of these tactics is very simple to do BUT you cant just do one. That's where it gets tricky and why I say that driving traffic is simple but not easy. You MUST take advantage of a variety of tactics available to you to drive traffic to your website because these tactics have a cumulative effect. Each one builds upon the other, helping to raise your ranking with the search engines, establishing you as THE "go to" expert in your field, and raising awareness with your potential customers so they come flooding to your website to buy your products or services. While there are dozens of tactics that you can use to drive new traffic to your site, to be effective you need to focus on a few key items first. Become a master of those tactics, then move on and add additional tools to your toolbox. I've listed below the tactics that I recommend to my clients that they start with and master first. Before you jump into the list though, remember all traffic is NOT created equal. You dont just want any visitors to your site you want visitors who are interested in your products and services. I've seen far too many small business owners spending time and money getting traffic for the sake of traffic. Bad move. Sure, you get to see your site visitor count increase, but it's a waste of your time and theirs if the visitors you are driving to your site aren't interested in what you have to offer. Knowing who your target customers are, specifically, before you embark on any traffic-generating program, will dramatically increase the chances that the new visitors you drive to your site become new customers for you. The more you know about your target customer, the better your chances of driving those new customers to your website with these techniques below. So now the 10 Things You MUST Do to Drive Massive Traffic to Your Local Small Business Website: Small Business Credit Cards: Make Your Accountant Obsolete e it gets tricky and why I say that driving traffic is simple but not easy.Small business credit cards can play an important role in the success of many enterprises and small businesses. Yet currently most folks view of small business credit cards is extremely limited. Mostly they only think of them as tools to aid them in obtaining certain incentives for small businesses that credit cards have become famous for giving.Problems That A Small Business Credit Card Can SolveThe more significant potential role that small business credit cards can play is that of helping entrepreneurs manage their businesses more efficiently and easily by greatly simplifying the accounting and financial record keeping tasks. There is no doubt that this is a critical area in the management of the affairs of any business and yet keeping constantly updated and accurate records is quite a challenge for any small business.Many people thought that with the advent of popular and easy to use small business software accounting packages like Quickbooks, this problem was gone forever. Alas, some old problems persisted. One of them was that somebody still had to enter the details and somebody still had to keep all the receipts. Then there is always the struggle to separate personal expenses from business expenses for a small business. Not to mention the need to divide all the expenses into various different categories for tax reasons.All these headaches instantly create the position for a full-time, experienced and therefore expensive accountant for any small business.How Small Business You MUST take advantage of a variety of tactics available to you to drive traffic to your website because these tactics have a cumulative effect. Each one builds upon the other, helping to raise your ranking with the search engines, establishing you as THE "go to" expert in your field, and raising awareness with your potential customers so they come flooding to your website to buy your products or services. While there are dozens of tactics that you can use to drive new traffic to your site, to be effective you need to focus on a few key items first. Become a master of those tactics, then move on and add additional tools to your toolbox. I've listed below the tactics that I recommend to my clients that they start with and master first. Before you jump into the list though, remember all traffic is NOT created equal. You dont just want any visitors to your site you want visitors who are interested in your products and services. I've seen far too many small business owners spending time and money getting traffic for the sake of traffic. Bad move. Sure, you get to see your site visitor count increase, but it's a waste of your time and theirs if the visitors you are driving to your site aren't interested in what you have to offer. Knowing who your target customers are, specifically, before you embark on any traffic-generating program, will dramatically increase the chances that the new visitors you drive to your site become new customers for you. The more you know about your target customer, the better your chances of driving those new customers to your website with these techniques below. So now the 10 Things You MUST Do to Drive Massive Traffic to Your Local Small Business Website:< Increase Your Orders By Answering Questions ite to buy your products or services.People will contact your customer service to ask questions about your business or products. Did you know you can increase your orders by training your customer service to actually sell products?You should include your signature file with all the questions you answer by e-mail. Your signature file should be no longer than 5 lines, 65 characters per line. Include your contact information, business name and an attention getting headline.Tell people about the new products and services that you offer after you're done answering their question(s) by phone. If they have already bought products from you in the past, offer them add-on or backend products.If you're using FAQ "Frequently Asked Questions", include your banner ad on top of your FAQ site. You could also include a subscription form for your free e-zine on the site as well.When you answer peoples questions by snail mail, include an insert advertisement for the products or services your business offers. Include your web site address, e-mail address, logo, slogan and other information on all marketing material you send. While there are dozens of tactics that you can use to drive new traffic to your site, to be effective you need to focus on a few key items first. Become a master of those tactics, then move on and add additional tools to your toolbox. I've listed below the tactics that I recommend to my clients that they start with and master first. Before you jump into the list though, remember all traffic is NOT created equal. You dont just want any visitors to your site you want visitors who are interested in your products and services. I've seen far too many small business owners spending time and money getting traffic for the sake of traffic. Bad move. Sure, you get to see your site visitor count increase, but it's a waste of your time and theirs if the visitors you are driving to your site aren't interested in what you have to offer. Knowing who your target customers are, specifically, before you embark on any traffic-generating program, will dramatically increase the chances that the new visitors you drive to your site become new customers for you. The more you know about your target customer, the better your chances of driving those new customers to your website with these techniques below. So now the 10 Things You MUST Do to Drive Massive Traffic to Your Local Small Business Website:< Can PO Funding Take Your Business To The Next Level? d equal. You dont just want any visitors to your site you want visitors who are interested in your products and services. I've seen far too many small business owners spending time and money getting traffic for the sake of traffic. Bad move. Sure, you get to see your site visitor count increase, but it's a waste of your time and theirs if the visitors you are driving to your site aren't interested in what you have to offer.If you ask the owner of a successful re-seller or importer company to identify their biggest challenge, their common answer will be: lack of working capital. Working capital is the lifeblood of all resellers and importers, enabling them to pay suppliers and allowing them to grow their businesses. Many times, their ability to grow is directly linked to their access to working capital.So, where do re-sellers that wish to take their businesses to the next level go to get working capital? The bank? Unlikely, as banks are tough sources of business financing. To qualify for a business loan you'll usually need to provide reports showing three years worth of profitable operations - and - the owner will need to have a spotless credit record. Oh, and if you are a startup, don't bother. Few banks will provide working capital to startups.Are there any alternate options? Fortunately, the answer is yes. Purchase order financing (commonly known as po funding) is a great source of financing for startups and growing companies that have exhausted their bank financing options. However, you won't find PO Funding at your local bank, you'll find it at your local factoring company.PO funding is an ideal source of financing for resellers, wholesalers, importers, or just about any business that buys goods from third parties and resells them. PO financing covers up to 100% of your supplier expenses, enabling you to close big sales and deliver on them. As opposed to traditional financing, purchase order financing uses your purcha Knowing who your target customers are, specifically, before you embark on any traffic-generating program, will dramatically increase the chances that the new visitors you drive to your site become new customers for you. The more you know about your target customer, the better your chances of driving those new customers to your website with these techniques below. So now the 10 Things You MUST Do to Drive Massive Traffic to Your Local Small Business Website:< Niche with Passion and Reap Your Financial Rewards your target customers are, specifically, before you embark on any traffic-generating program, will dramatically increase the chances that the new visitors you drive to your site become new customers for you. The more you know about your target customer, the better your chances of driving those new customers to your website with these techniques below.One of the keys to creating a successful business is finding a market niche that is small enough to corner the market but big enough to make money. Let me tell you about a few people who have done that well, and why it works for them.Tony Cox, Catalog Solutions: Tony only focuses on small specialty foods catalog companies. He's found a niche that is very profitable and he has developed a national reputation for being able to grow customer lists and improve profitability for these small companies. This works for him because there are plenty of small specialty foods companies that need help, and he is able to significantly make a difference in their return on investment because he knows how to drive more business their way.Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound, shares her publicity expertise every week with over 12,000 subscribers. By concentrating on how to get terrific publicity, Joan specializes in something that every small business wants and needs. She has become "the" publicity expert, and is sought after for her public speaking and articles. When companies ask her to write a marketing plan (a complementary need), she refers them to other specialists because doing a marketing plan would take more time for her than the project would be worth. It's not her specialty, so she turns it down.Annie Jennings of Annie Jennings PR, focuses on book publicity for authors, speakers and experts. Her unusual pay-for-placement method of generating publicity is different than what most publicity firms offer, creating a So now the 10 Things You MUST Do to Drive Massive Traffic to Your Local Small Business Website: # 1 List Your Website with Search Engines & Directories Google alone attracts more than 250 million searchers every day. 3,000 people PER SECOND type something into the search box and visit someone's website. And that's just Google it doesn't include all the searching done on Yahoo!, MSN, Ask and all the other smaller search engines. It only makes sense with this many people searching on the web, that you would want to list your website where the people are looking for what you sell. Get your website listed in all the top search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Research directories on the web with listings for products and services your customers would be interested in. Some directories offer free listings, others require a fee; I've found paying the nominal fee that they charge is worth it, as your listing will get posted faster and more reliably than with the free directories. # 2 Use Article Marketing to Your Advantage This has been one of the most successful ways of driving traffic to my website that I've found and the good news is, it's free! Don't worry you dont have to be the world's best writer to put together useful, readable articles that your potential customers will read. Whatever your industry, there are thousands of electronic newsletters (or e-zines) that are hungry for articles they can use to publish to their subscribers. There are also hundreds of directories where you can publish your articles some of them are extremely popular and will result in your article being seen by hundreds or thousands of potential customers. Unlike advertising, which people tend to be skeptical of, articles are more like "news," which people tend to trust. When your prospects read your article, they will also see your bio, which will include your websit
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