So many online entrepreneurs search high and low for aneffective, affordable online advertising tool. They may spendloads of time and money on website development, search engineoptimization, email marketing, ezine and classifiedadvertisements, viral marketing campaigns, pay-per-clickcampaigns and other forms of paid advertising. These onlineadvertising tools may generate vast amounts of traffic, but ifthe website visitors arent converted to buyers, all of the timeand money spent getting them there is wasted.
Thus, website operators simply must give adequate attention tothe one online advertising tool that will transform targetedprospects into paying customers. Conversion rates are vital tothe success of a website. The one and only online advertisingtool that will do that is your sales copy.
By tracking your website performance using conversion rates (thepercentage of buyers vs. the total number of visitors) will clueyou in as to whether or not your sales copy is doing its job asan online advertising tool. If your conversion rate isnt prettygood, chances are that your sales strategy, and relatively yoursales copy, needs to be improved.
Other factors that can cause inadequate conversion rates are the speed at which your website loads and broken links. People are impatient and they wont usually wait too long for a site to load up and if they click on links that go nowhere, they will likely leave the site without a second thought. If these factors are not issues for your website, your sales copy is probably the culprit, the online advertising tool that isnt doing its job.
The biggest mistake website operators make that causes sales copyto be ineffective as an online advertising tool is usingtraditional, brick and mortar advertising techniques indeveloping their sales copy. Traditional advertisements, likedirect mail, radio ads, or newspaper advertisements are designedto get shoppers into a retail store. From there, a salespersontakes up the selling process and closes the sales.
On the internet, your advertising through search engines,directories, email and other sources takes care of getting thevisitors to your website, your retail store on the web. Oncethey get there, they dont meet a salesperson like they do in abrick and mortar store. Your sales copy IS your salesperson. So,in practice, the sales copy isnt an online advertising tool atall. Rather, it becomes an online sales tool.
The part of your copywriting that acts as an online advertisingtool for the purpose of driving traffic to your site includes thecopy for your actual advertisements and your website page titlesand descriptions. The rest of your copywriting should be salesoriented. Without your website copy acting as a sales tool, youruse of the best online advertising tools on the net to attracttraffic to your website will be fruitless.
There are two basic types of sales copy that can be used to establish your credibility and to convey your unique selling proposition. The most effective is long sales copy that takesyour website visitors through the entire selling process, justlike a salesperson would, from product or service introduction toconveying benefits, establishing credibility, counteringobjections and closing the sale. Short sales copy may bepractical if you have a catalog-style website, but as an onlineselling tool, it just doesnt usually do the trick.
The secret to success in the online marketplace is to use anonline advertising tool to get visitors to your site and then todazzle them with results-oriented sales copy that will close thesale. Your sales copy is much more than advertising. Withouteffective sales copy, no online advertising tool will achieve theresults you desire for a profitable online business.
Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope,fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketingadvice youre getting Whether you are new to internet marketing,or a website owner who wants to make more money from yourwebsite, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket yourinternet business at
Executive summary: for a website to be truly successful, it cant just be a shopping cart, a page full of advertisements, or a lead capture form. You can keep such sites alive with massive advertising outlays. But to enjoy natural traffic, a website needs to be a destination that people actually want to go to willingly. And that requires some kind of content. Almost every successful website is built on content, as Ill show with some big-name examples.
If you think about it, there is not a single solitary major successful website that is not based on content. Its amazing how often businesses on the web forget about this. Partly thats because weve come to think of content so narrowly, usually as static text.
Certainly, most content is text, and text usually presents by far the best return on investment. In no small part because its a magic amulet that draws search engine traffic to a website like suitors to an unmarried princess. But there are other kinds of content besides text. These other kinds of content include games, quizzes, and other interactives, but above all, images. In short, no major website has ever gotten along without some kind of content. True, you can advertise your way to the top, but thats a whole lot of free web traffic, not to mention mindshare, goodwill, and sales opportunities to pass up.
Dont believe me Lets look at some of the webs most phenomenally successful sites and how they depend on content. For the sake of argument, Ill leave out the sites everyone would recognize as content sites, such as newspaper sites and online magazines such as cnet.com, bankrate.com and salon.com
Oft-overlooked Content-Based Sites
Ive deliberately chosen the above sites because they dont rely exclusively on articles, the most traditional type of web content. Still, for most sites, articles are the way to go. Their natural advantages include the facts that they are magnets for search engine traffic, and have a built-in audience in the still millions-strong group of literate web users, who may not like images or interactive content as much.
In short, while you can throw advertising at a lead capture form or shopping cart and make it successful, for truly natural success, a site needs something that makes people want to come on their own. And that means you need content, whether naughty pictures, unique web-software, or well-written articles.
About the author: Joel Walsh writes extensively about web content and marketing, and owns UpMarket, a service dedicated to :