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Give ’em a Taste (and they’ll surely come back for action)

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the original ice cream shop that offers you a taste of any flavor ice cream you want before you make your decision on which scoop you are going to enjoy. You getting hungry now…but keep reading..

Giving you a taste (or as many tastes of different flavors as you’d like) is a brilliant way to ensure that you not only order a cone at that moment, but it’s also a way to bring you back to try more flavors on another day.

You can use this brilliant marketing strategy in building your business, too. Offering your prospects a taste of what it is that you provide is a proven and easy way to get people to become part of your community, and part of your marketing/product funnel (the funnel is the “journey” (that builds a relationship over time) that your clients follow from the first visit to your website, where they enter by giving you their contact information, down through each level as they make their way through each purchasing step in the funnel). By offering them a sample, you’re giving them an opportunity to get to know you without risking anything more than perhaps a bit of time.

In your marketing/product funnel, the taste you are giving your potential clients is at the top of the funnel, the widest part. The taste is your freebie/complimentary/gift offering and is your first (and usually only!) opportunity to engage your prospect. Your taste needs to be something of value that you offer for free to people who visit your website in exchange for their contact information, usually their name and email address.

This is often one of the most overlooked steps in building an online business. A prospect needs to see your message many times (it ranges anywhere from 5-10) before they will feel confident enough to risk handing over their money to you. In order to build a relationship with people you need to be able to contact them again, which means your goal is to capture their email address before they click away from your website.

If they leave, it’s unlikely that they will come back, so don’t lose the opportunity to welcome them into your community, your funnel. They landed at your website because they were looking for something (usually a solution to a problem they are having, right? :)). Give them a taste of the solution you offer. And remember to make it easy for them: make your sign-up form or email so obvious that they’d have to trip over it not to notice it (yes, that includes pop-ups and the like, because even if they annoy you as much as they do me, they work!).

So, what can you offer of value in exchange for their email address? A newsletter, an ecourse, an audio clip, or a special report, are all good options.

Personally, check what you like to offer.You give them a taste of what your services are like with something wild, and then you keep in touch with them on a regular basis with another hot stuff. This all allows you to build a bond with your readers in a uniquely personal way, letting them get to know, like and trust you over time, with you having to build that bond one-on-one.

So, one caution is to not offer any one-on-one interaction with you at this level. You want to leverage your time, and offering free consultations or one-time meetings with you is not a good use of your time. Let them get to know you over the course of your freebie offering. When and if they become serious about you and your products or services, they will move further down the funnel (from free to fee) without you having to “sell” them on what you provide during a complimentary session (how nice is that?).

So what is your taste going to be? Here are some other ideas:

write a Top Ten article about the benefits of your products and services, convert it to a PDF file, and offer it as a special report/product/service guide.
record a short audio/video about the three key things your niche needs to know about X.
or create a quick-start guide that helps your market focus on how to get started.

Once you’ve given them a taste, they will likely come back for more, eventually turning from a prospect to a client. Creating a taste of what you provide is easy and it’s fun. Try it and watch what happens!

My dear friends/readers I know the above will trigger you all to ignite and explode.But there is more. So if you have more to share, feel free to run to the comments and let it flow.

Promoting Your Website Before Launching

Launching a website may be stressful and overwhelming. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a personal blog or a business website, the issue is still the same: you can start promoting your site so real, human visitors can find you and enjoy your content.

Over the past month I’ve been working on my payments blog. Before I started I made a lot of mistakes. What people don’t understand is that building and designing your site is only the first step. How you launch your site is what will determine how quickly it takes off and starts working for you.

This post will give you a game plan for what you need to do when you’re ready (or almost ready) to launch your site so that you can avoid some of the problems I had:

1. Set up a pre-launch page

Just because your site isn’t ready for visitors doesn’t mean you can’t start promoting it. In fact, promoting your site with a pre-launch countdown can generate even more interest and enthusiasm than promoting it after it’s launched.

Include a signup box so visitors can get notified when you actually launch. LeadPages offers low-cost launch page templates you can use for your site. If you use WordPress, you can download and install a plugin like EZP Coming Soon Page or Easy Coming Soon.

2. Create at least 3-5 pieces of high-quality content

Any promotional strategies you use will rely heavily on content. Visitors will expect to see excellent content that’s highly valuable in your niche; if they don’t, they’ll likely never visit your site again.

Before you launch, write several (minimum 3, preferably 10) pieces of amazing content. If you can shoot for 1,200+ words per piece, you have the best chance of ranking in the search engines, and the best chance of getting links to your site.

Some content ideas for these inaugural pieces could be:

How to posts.

Expert roundups: Ask leading experts in your field for their opinions or advice on a certain topic.
Tutorials.
Practical advice for overcoming a common problem in your niche.
FAQ’s in your industry.
A list of industry definitions.
For more tips on creating excellent content, see my post 12 Tricks To Take Your Content From Good to Great.

3. Give your visitors a way to sign up for your email list

An email list will give you a way to connect with your visitors, even if they never end up on your site again. Sign up with an email marketing service like MailChimp or AWeber, and then use one of their pre-designed templates to add an opt-in box to your site.

Remember to give visitors an incentive to join your list; for instance, a free ebook or guide that offers valuable information to your target audience.

4. Start networking with influencers in your field

This strategy works best if you have a non-commercial site; however, it can also work for business sites that have a bunch of great content.

Reach out to well-known people in your field and let them know about your new site. Not sure who to contact? Use a tool like BuzzSumo to find bloggers, businesses, journalists and social media influencers who might be interested in sharing your site with their followers.

I recommend starting off slow by following them on social media, and sharing their content with your audience (no matter how small). Read their blog posts, and leave thoughtful comments. After a little while, you can send them an email giving a brief introduction. Don’t ask them to share your content; if your content is truly valuable, they’ll recognize that and share it on their own.

5. Set up online alerts for your blog name

As you promote your site, you’ll want to stay up to date with when and where your site is being mentioned online. This will help you gauge the success of your outreach efforts and focus your efforts on the strategies that are working.

To get notified of any blog or media mentions, be sure to sign up for Google Alerts. To see what people are saying about your site on social media, try Mention or Hootsuite.

6. Start getting free links and publicity with HARO

As the owner of a brand new website, getting publicity can be a challenge. However, using a service like Help A Reporter (HARO) is probably your best bet at getting free PR right out of the gate.

After signing up, you’ll receive media queries to your inbox three times a day. When you see a query that you can answer, send an email off to the journalist immediately, offering detailed insights into the question and providing links to one or two of your most awesome blog posts that are relevant to the query.

7. Upload an XML sitemap

An XML sitemap is a document that provides the search engines with a listing of pages and posts on your site. It allows Google to crawl your site more efficiently, meaning your content could be indexed more quickly.

If you have a WordPress site, you can download and install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin. If you use any other platform, you can create a sitemap using the XML Sitemaps generator, and then upload it to the root directory of your site (e.g., www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml).

8. Learn the basics of SEO

While you don’t need to be an SEO expert to start ranking in the search engines, it is important to have a few basics in place. A few of the most important elements to have in place when you launch your site are:

Use your keywords (words and phrases you want to rank for) in strategic areas of your page: your navigation bar, your title tags, post titles, header tags, alt image tags, etc.
Consistently add original content.

Build links to your site. For more on this, see my post 6 Easy Link Building Strategies For Your New Website.

Make sure your URLs use words instead of numbers or symbols (this is referred to as your permalink structure).

Make sure your site is mobile-friendly.

If you have a WordPress site, start by downloading and installing a plugin like Yoast SEO. This will ensure that you at least have the basics covered.

9. Install Google Analytics

Given the time and effort you’re going to put into promoting your site, it’s important that you know exactly how much traffic you’re getting and where those visitors are coming from. Google Analytics is free, easy to set up and will help you figure out exactly which strategies are working (and which ones aren’t).

10. Add your site to Google Search Console

The Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is a set of tools put together by Google to help you manage the health of your site in the search engines. If Google finds any issues with your site, this is where you’ll be notified.

Can Web Promoting Be a Long haul Business?

Here is the fundamental legit truth: the greater part of the general population get into Web Promoting in light of the fact that they are persuaded it is a simple approach to gain fast cash. Their methodology is to make a quick site, set up some promoting and a couple partner connections and after that kick back and watch while they procure genuine money. There are a lot of people who do this furthermore acquire bunches of cash on the web. Yet, imagine a scenario in which you need more than some additional or even brisk money (snappy money, normally being a misnomer. Can Web Promoting truly be utilized to deliver a beneficial and long haul vocation?

The no-nonsense answer is that yes, you can make Web Advertising your long haul and maintainable profession. You just need to tackle the task appropriately. The strategies and projects you use to fabricate something to win quick cash are not too not quite the same as the techniques and frameworks you will use to manufacture long haul benefits. So what might you do on the off chance that you have to build up a reasonable profession on the web?

It is imperative that the main thing you do, keeping in mind the end goal to procure long haul cash on the web, is acknowledge the way that you must do genuine work. You will need to do real and genuine work every day and you will have days when you feel phenomenal about what you do and days when you wish you could discover another thing to tackle. This causes it to be just about like each other occupation that is out there. On the off chance that you need to create enduring income by working parts at this moment and not in the least later on then you will be in for a reality check in a short time. So be set up your sleeves and get the opportunity to work.

There are a couple ventures that loan themselves much better to a long haul profession than others will. Offshoot showcasing, to utilize one case, is an incredible assignment for somebody who needs to acquire cash on low maintenance premise or to supplement your effectively existent salary. Is it genuinely conceivable to win a full time wage in this way? You could on the off chance that you choose just the right items and afterward work like insane to advance them. A far superior methodology, by the by, is to make your own particular items or sites and afterward advance those. This gives you full control over the undertakings you tackle and how you fulfill them. Furthermore, you will wind up more prone to stay with it over the long haul. On the off chance that you need to give an administration on the web this works similarly. Journalists, for instance, need to make sites for themselves and make portfolios that they can indicate as case of their work.

At last, maybe the most critical thing that you have to perceive is that, when you need to construct a long haul and solid salary on the web, you have to genuinely devote yourself to your assignment. You may have some good times and feel remunerated by your endeavors yet first you ought to let yourself know “yes, I truly need.” a weak exertion is not going to go anyplace.