Jon Capriola
The short answer is the Internet. The long answer is the Internet. Why is that you ask? Here are my top 10, first-come-to-mind, thoughts on why the best place to distribute your product is the web:
- Low overhead. Even if you don't know how to build a web site, you can easily hire a company, like odesk.com, to do it for you.
- You're open for business on the web 24/7.
- It's global coverage in an instant.
- Minimal start-up cost, even with a savvy overdone website it costs less to start than a small local business.
- Search engines rule, and you just need to enable them to bring quality customers to your website through key phrases that describe your product or service.
- Networks of others in your vertical market space will want to link to you.
- Tracking and monitoring capabilities are far greater than any other media.
- Enables focusing on prospects looking for you one on one.
- Banner ads, audio/video interviews, and starting a click-or-culture.
- Your next customer can be e-mailed by a friend suggesting your product in less than a second.
Bonus thought: you can resell the customer again and again and again and again.
You knew all the above…of course you did…but wait, there is a little more information here and it's called defining quality web traffic . Someone e-mailed me the other day to tell me I was all smoke
and mirrors. He said he researched my company and found barely any traffic going to my website. Typically I don't reply, but I had to let him in on a little secret. I said, “If 50 people a day come to my
website and 5 of them buy something that means I am turning 10% of my traffic into sales. Wouldn't you agree? I continued that all that matters on the web is where you obtain your traffic and if 50 people were searching for my website or my products, do you believe the percentage of people who purchase would be higher than 10%?” After all, they are searching for me… I am not asking them to come looking for my site or products!
I never heard from him. If people like him would learn about Internet marketing, they would see the
math is very simple. It doesn't take a lot of traffic to do unreal numbers on the web. Only 50 people a
day is 1500 a month in quality traffic . At the 10% hit rate, that's 150 sales a month. If your profit is
$10 a unit, that is $18,000 a year. Not bad, but with a profit of $100 per unit, the annual take is a nice $180K. This is from literally 50 people a day coming to your website from all over the world 24/7.
The key is driving quality traffic to your site.
How do you obtain quality traffic cost effectively? It's easier than you think with a phased approach.
It may seem to be the hardest part because inventors are typically going into unknown territory with the marketing side of things. But if you put forth the effort and learn the process, it can be almost as much fun as the inventing process.
First and foremost, you can't manage what you are not monitoring! A basic need for any form of marketing is a monitoring system to tell you if your core messages are being responded to with a decent percentage rate. What is a decent percentage rate? That depends on what you are doing…mass mailing, mass e-mailing, PPC, TV, radio, newspaper ads, banner ads, social networking, retailers, and specialty retailers. Because there is software that can monitor who comes to your website, when they come, and from where, it is easy to see what is working and what isn't! Many people do not understand why Google's stock price is so high. The fact is Google can increase your revenue in less than two hours and bring you tons of quality traffic from simple Pay Per Click campaigns or sponsored links. Also, when
you learn how Google works, you can easily choose many keyword phrases, which people do mass searches on to find the product or services you are selling. By taking these phrases and running them through the Google keyword tool, you will have instantly the search volume for each phrase. A sample report would list the volume by monthly searches performed in Google on that particular keyword phrase,
which is where your customers are! Now they key is driving those searches to your website cost effectively. I believe if you cannot sell your product or service to people searching specific keyword phrases, you cannot sell your product or service to anyone. If the people you are after are coming to
your website and they are not buying, then you need to review your website's message, the price of your product, the terms of your offering, or maybe even the nature of your product or service.
Remember the masses tell you what they are willing to pay for your product or services!
Too many inventors or entrepreneurs want to sell to everyone and anyone! That's a foolish and very
costly approach. When I first made the Laser Laces® product, I made them for everyone thinking the jogging market is so huge I cannot lose. I was making 36-inch laces and my wholesale costs were very high. When I realized the vast majority of my sales were coming from the moms who wanted their 3-to-7 year-olds to wear them and were cutting the excess laces off and throwing them away, I woke up.
After wasting thousands of dollars, I finally found my “focused” market , modified my product, and was able to reduce my product costs. The lesson here is, don't fall in love with your product or service until it demonstrates its love to you. Don't keep throwing time and money into something that doesn't show you there is a relatively large cliental out there willing to purchase your product or service. The search engines are the keys to the web to directly deliver and sell your product to the masses. The key is you want quality masses coming to your site searching for your products!
Websites offer some great marketing opportunities that other forms of media do not! Most people do
not realize that 80% of the USA population uses the Internet on a daily basis. They use it for three main reasons: to get information, to read something (like email), and to look for instructions or advice! It is clearly a positive place to get focused potential customers to review what you are selling, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all over the world. Also, unlike retail, your product isn't sitting next to another item just like it. You have the full undivided attention of prospects as soon as they hit your website. That is, your website is designed correctly. Less is more, I found, and I believe Google agrees with me.
Clean, simple websites seem to generate sales after the trust issue is gone. To overcome the trust issue, you must establish your credibility. When you do, they will purchase from you.
Like any great relationship trust is earned over time!
A lot of people who write me, tell me they don't have the money but want the product. If the desire is great enough, people always seem to find the money. The future is people doing business with other people, just like you and me. This may come back to bite me, but it seems like every inventor wants the grand slam home run in distribution field…but the grand slams aren't necessarily the best avenues for every service or product. Building a slow but steady customer base is the key to picking from the fruit
tree over and over. Money does grow on trees, if you consciously plant the right trees and nurture them.
Get a clean easy-to-use website, repeatedly drive quality traffic to it, and support your customers, who will buy from you again and again. It's by far the most cost-effective way to obtain customers and build
a long lasting business. That's the way of the future and the future is now.
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