Internet Marketing For Solopreneurs

I have heard many business owners say: “I want a nice looking web site for my business.”

They find a web designer and the web designer delivers exactly what the business owner asked for - a nice looking web site. The business owner really likes the look and feel of the web site, but after a month or so the business owner notices that nothing is happening with the web site. No one is using the web site to find out about the business and contact the business owner about his products and services.

It seems that when a business owner says: “I want a nice looking web site”, what the business owner really means is “I want a nice looking web site that brings in clients and markets my business”.

Once the business owners realize that their nice looking web site does not deliver clients, many opt to hire another designer for a re-design. I have talked to quite a few business owners, who have had their web sites designed and re-designed many times, all without producing the desired result (services and book/product sales).

The truth is, having a nice looking web site is just not enough to get sales. In addition to having a nice looking web site you need to heavily market it - optimize it for search engines, have a newsletter list, write and publish articles, start a blog and more.

Getting a web site designed is just like getting a brochure made for your business. It is nice to have a brochure, but until your potential customers see it and decide to buy your book, nothing will happen.

Exactly the same is true for a web site. Until you start getting your target customers to come to your web site and stick around long enough to buy your products and services, nothing is going to happen either.

Some web designers may include some marketing into their design package, but many don’t. This means that it is up to you to get your web site marketed. Here is what to do:

- Make sure that you know who your target market is. Your web site should speak to your target market, so your first step is knowing who your web site will be speaking to.

- Design a marketing plan for your web site. Yes, you may not have a web site yet, but knowing how you will market it will help you in the long run.

- Decide what you will need on your web site in order to market it properly. This may include a blog, pages optimized for search engines, articles, etc.

- Now, talk to web site designers and pick the one that will help you not only with design, but with marketing of your web site. It is very important that your designer is aware of your marketing plan, and will be able to implement the web site-related pieces of the plan.

Need help creating a marketing plan for your web site? Join my online business mentoring program to discover how to create a marketing plan for your web site.

Biana Babinsky

About Biana: Biana Babinsky is the online business coach, expert and author who teaches coaches, consultants and other business owners how to get more clients and make more money online. Join her online business mentoring program at http://www.MarketingSalad.com for online business coaching, support and masterminding with other members.

One of the most important concepts in online marketing is a landing page. A landing page is a page where your visitor lands to do something. It could be a page where your web site visitor lands following a link from your PPC ad. It could be a page where your web site visitor lands to purchase your ebook. In short, it is a page, where your web site visitor comes to take action.

The best rule to remember about a landing page is one action - one page. What is an action? An action is the action you want your web site visitor to take on the landing page. The action can be subscribing to your newsletter, buying an e-book or registesting for a telseminar.

The most successful landing pages don’t try to be all things to all people. Rather, they concentrate on getting a user to take one action and one action only. When someone lands on a landing page like that, they only have two options - take action or leave.

So, what about your landing pages? If your landing pages are not producing results, it is time to take action!

- Review your landing page. Are you only asking your web site visitors to take one action per page? If you are asking them to take more than one action, make a change to ask them take just one action.

When I helped a client change her landing page for a teleseminar to only have one available action to take, she was able to double her sign-ups!

- Review your web copy. The sales copy on your landing page is very important as well. Does it convince your web site visitor to take action? If not, you need to improve your sales copy to make it convince your visitor to take action.

- Review your marketing. How do you promote your landing page? Do your promotions help you qualify your visitors, so that the ones who do come to your landing page are already targeted customers?

I will be talking about effective landing pages during this month’s MarketingSalad.com teleseminar. You can register for it at http://www.marketingsalad.com/websites.html

Biana Babinsky

In the past two years I have had many business owners asking me how to get more web site traffic. Many of them thought that if they just add more stuff to the web site, such as a blog, they will get more traffic.

However, many times they neglect to make their web site ready for marketing. If you do not make sure that your web site is ready to accept the web site traffic you are going to send to it, you are not going to get results.

Marketing a web site that is not ready is like sending customers to a store without cash registers and without a simple way to buy. People may come to check out the store, but they will not buy.

Unfinished does not mean that your web site design is not finished. You may have a web site that has been beautifully designed by a talented designer. However, if your web site does not have the marketing elements that will turn your web site visitors into customers, it will remain just that - a beautiful store where no one buys.

If you want to get customers from your web site, it should be effective - it should explain to your visitors the benefits of what you are offering, it should help them decide to buy from you.

Your web site should be user-friendly - it should be easy to explore everything on your web site, your web site visitors should be able to easily travel from page to page, etc.

You should also optimize your web site for search engines - use good, descriptive tags for search engines and add good, useful content that search engines can index.

In my Complete Step By Step Online Marketing Course I discuss how to make your web site effective and how to get web site traffic. You may get the Course at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zcourse

Biana Babinsky

There are two things that your web site must do:

1. It needs to attract your target market. In order to do this, you will need to optimize your web site for search engines, use article marketing to get people to come to your web site, etc.

Read more on how to get web site traffic in the Online Marketing Techniques To Increase Website Traffic article.

2. Your web site needs to SELL your products and services. In order to be successful at selling, your web site will need to be very user-friendly, so that people stay and read it for a while.

It needs to have good marketing copy that sells, so that your web site visitors would purchase from you.

It also needs to turn your web site visitors into leads by giving them a no charge gift and asking them to subscribe to your newsletter.

Make sure that your web site does both, it brings traffic AND it converts traffic into customers.

If your web site does just gets people to your web site, you will have lots of traffic, but no one will be buying.

If your web site can sell, but can’t get traffic, you will have no one to sell to.
Read more about creating an effective web site:

- What Makes A Web Site Effective?

- Does Your Web Site Do ALL This?

- Your Web Site Is Losing You Clients

Discover how to get more web site traffic and promote your web site online in the Complete Step By Step Online Marketing Course For Service Professionals.
Biana Babinsky

I teach coaches how to use their web site to get coaching clients. Every time I have a new client, we discuss what the client’s web site does and does not do. And almost every time we find out that the web site does not do lots of things that it should.

In order to have a web site that works for you, a web site that generates coaching leads and clients for you every day, you must have a professional and customizable web site. Here are just some of the things you need to be able to do on your web site:

- You need to be able to have many pages on your web site

- You need to be able to add a blog to the web site

I strongly recommend that before doing anything about creating a web site you sit down and create a list of goals you need your web site to achieve. Write out the goals first, then start making decisions about the web site builder, the web site itself, etc.

You need to be able to use your web site to generate coaching clients for your coaching business. But first you need to create a web site plan to get your web site right the very first time you try to create it.

Join my online business mentoring program at http://www.MarketingSalad.com to learn more about web sites and how to use them to generate coaching clients.

Biana Babinsky