Tag Archives: selling
Your Business Needs an Internet Marketing Plan
If you’re going to use online marketing techniques, then you need a plan. Here is how you can do it.
Any business owner that wants their company to be successful will need to put together a complete business plan. However, when it comes to online marketing, there is a large number of business owners that come to a internet marketing company without first analyzing what they want to achieve online or how they will get there. While partners such as online marketing companies can help you put together a strategy, as a business owner you’re the one who is the best placed to set some goals for your online activities and figure out how exactly you will achieve your objectives.
Creating an online marketing plan isn’t so difficult and a recent report from Webmaster World has given some insight on what one needs to include in one.
The first step, before you even contact a Boston search engine marketing company or other online partner, would be to do an analysis of your situation. Define what your business is, what your products and services are and what groups of customers are going to be targeted by your business or by the specific products and services you will be selling. Write down the benefits that your products will bring to your customers and the problems that they will help them solve.
Then, you should analyze your competition. You already know what you’re offering and who you’ll be offering it to, now is the time to do some research on your markets so that you can figure out who your main competitors are. This analysis needs to be thorough, as in many cases it will lead to you making adjustments to your business strategy in order to be more competitive in your niche. It shouldn’t be limited to only doing a Google search to see who is selling the same products and offering the same solutions you are. Take a look through online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. Look through classified ads sites to see who else is selling products similar to yours. And don’t forget your brick and mortar competitors and their offerings. After you’ve done this analysis, note down what makes your offerings better and more valuable than those of the competition.
One other important step would be to analyze the marketing channels that you will be using. Your website is the main point of contact that your customers will have with you and can be created by a Boston web development company or done in house. But you need strategies to get traffic to your website. Look at SEO, pay per click ads, social networks, video ads, email marketing, classified ads, etc. Analyze every marketing channel that is usable by your business and determine which ones are likely to bring you the most advantages as a business owner. However, be careful as to not to launch too many marketing campaigns in different channels at the same time. Start off by focusing your efforts on the tactics that are the most likely to be successful.
Your Business Needs an Internet Marketing Plan
If you’re going to use online marketing techniques, then you need a plan. Here is how you can do it.
Any business owner that wants their company to be successful will need to put together a complete business plan. However, when it comes to online marketing, there is a large number of business owners that come to a internet marketing company without first analyzing what they want to achieve online or how they will get there. While partners such as online marketing companies can help you put together a strategy, as a business owner you’re the one who is the best placed to set some goals for your online activities and figure out how exactly you will achieve your objectives.
Creating an online marketing plan isn’t so difficult and a recent report from Webmaster World has given some insight on what one needs to include in one.
The first step, before you even contact a Boston search engine marketing company or other online partner, would be to do an analysis of your situation. Define what your business is, what your products and services are and what groups of customers are going to be targeted by your business or by the specific products and services you will be selling. Write down the benefits that your products will bring to your customers and the problems that they will help them solve.
Then, you should analyze your competition. You already know what you’re offering and who you’ll be offering it to, now is the time to do some research on your markets so that you can figure out who your main competitors are. This analysis needs to be thorough, as in many cases it will lead to you making adjustments to your business strategy in order to be more competitive in your niche. It shouldn’t be limited to only doing a Google search to see who is selling the same products and offering the same solutions you are. Take a look through online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. Look through classified ads sites to see who else is selling products similar to yours. And don’t forget your brick and mortar competitors and their offerings. After you’ve done this analysis, note down what makes your offerings better and more valuable than those of the competition.
One other important step would be to analyze the marketing channels that you will be using. Your website is the main point of contact that your customers will have with you and can be created by a Boston web development company or done in house. But you need strategies to get traffic to your website. Look at SEO, pay per click ads, social networks, video ads, email marketing, classified ads, etc. Analyze every marketing channel that is usable by your business and determine which ones are likely to bring you the most advantages as a business owner. However, be careful as to not to launch too many marketing campaigns in different channels at the same time. Start off by focusing your efforts on the tactics that are the most likely to be successful.
Web Site Flipping or Exit Plan
Web site flipping or Exit Plan as it is commonly referred to, is a process of selling a web site. There are a number of locations on the internet that specialize in web sites for sale. This is not like selling a domain name, as you are selling a fully functioning site with visitors and everything else that is related to it.
Flipping is not broadly discussed around the internet but it has become a very large industry for internet marketers. Large profits can be made by flipping web sites only a few months old. Most sites that are flipped generally have a money making source attached to them. The income derived from a web site can be varied in many different ways from AdSence to selling of physical products.
Why choose to flip a site?
The main idea behind selling sites is to make money as you have probably worked out by now. Deciding which sites to flip and when, is the key to making money with this method of marketing. A web site needs to show that it is making a profit and has a healthy visitor rate over several months.
Some people wonder why you would sell a site that is making money. To this question there are many answers. Some people just get bored with the niche the site is in and feel that a new challenge or project would be fun. These sites are generally the higher cost sites to purchase.
Some people build these flip sites just to make money. The idea is to start a web site and make it profitable with a good amount of traffic to maintain the current profit margin. The reason they sell them straight away once profitable is the return is normally around 10 x what the site makes per month. They sell them so that they do not have to maintain the site or have to worry about changes in search engine logarithms that could affect the traffic. What they are making as profit today might not be what the site makes 10 months from now.
There are some that sell a site because they need the money and it is a relatively fast way to raise cash. For example, let’s imagine you need a new car because your car was wiped out in an accident and the other party was not insured. Selling a web site that you have had for several years that makes a steady profit is a good way of raising the cash needed. There is an endless list of reasons some one might want to sell a site in this category.
Another big player in the flipper market place is test site builders. These individuals build a small niche site. These sites are generally fast to build and used to gauge the market place for such a site. Once the site shows that it is a profitable niche the owner will sell it while it is making a profit and invest the money back into a larger authoritative web site on the same subject knowing that it is a profitable market to go into.
Who would buy a flipper?
There are many people who are looking to invest in these web sites. One reason they are attractive to people is the development costs associated with a web site today. By purchasing a site already up and running with traffic cuts the costs dramatically and from day one you are making money. Due to these facts more and more people are deciding to purchase these types of sites.
The down side when looking at investing in to such a web site is working out that the traffic is truly organic and not CPC traffic or traffic purchased from some traffic system that only gives the impression that a site has lots of traffic. When deciding to buy such a web site one must pay very close attention as to the rankings of keywords, Page ranks and traffic sources.
Always investigate the site under a microscope before buying one that you are interested in. As with any industry there are sharks out there that will manipulate figures in both traffic and sales to make the site look better than it is. Unfortunately if you were to buy such a site you have little if no recall on the seller once the deal is done.