Chapter 24 - Checking Your To-Do ListTake Stock Before You Get Started Coaching you one-on-one through the maze of options, tactics, strategies and opportunities to succeed online is tough. There s too much information available. This info-glut results in wasted time and money for both new and experienced marketers. So where should you start? You need to take stock of your unique situation; you have to find out where you are now before you can take the first steps toward where you want to go. Take stock by going through this online business audit. It is broken into key sections, each with a number of questions. Write a short note to yourself about items that you feel need attention. Some questions may only require a yes/no for the answer. Some of them will not necessarily apply to you and that is OK. This is just to let you know where you are before you decide which tactics and strategy are best for you. Relax. It s not a test! Print the list of questions out or photocopy the pages so you have some room to scribble and revisit the answers. Key AreasKey 1: A unique and professional website with your own domain name. A website will be the cornerstone of your success online yet that does not mean it has to look different from the rest of the pack. What it does mean is that you have a unique domain name. I could go on and on with this one but I will not. Just surf the web awhile and decide what sites YOU would buy from. That will tell you volumes. What is your website address? Who designed the site? Who did the HTML? Can you update the site when and if you want? - By yourself? Do you have a copy of Frontpage/Dreamweaver/Go Live to manage your website? Where is it hosted? Key 2: A product line you can control. Ideally, you should sell at least one product or service that you own. If you prefer to resell or market affiliate programs, then make sure you align yourself only with the strongest companies and affiliate programs you can rely on long-term. Do you have any products to sell today? Are they digital information products or physical? Are they selling now? - If so, how well, how much and where? How current are they? Can you confirm that there is existing demand for the products? Do you know what your conversion ratio is? Have you thought about products? Do you have some ideas ready and tested? Key 3: A way to accept secure payments via credit card at your website. The best solution is to have a merchant account of your own. However, if that is too costly for you in the beginning, a solution like paypal.com, ccnow.com or ibill.com will do. (International businesses can use Worldpay.com as a solution.) Offering a FAST and SECURE way for your customer to purchase from your website with their Visa or MasterCard is a must on the web. Do you have a merchant account with your existing bank? Where (what countries) do you expect to sell your products or services? What currency do you charge? Are you considering one-time subscriptions as well as one-time purchases? Does your website hosting company offer these services? Have you already looked into these services? Which ones do you have or use? Key: 4 An opt-in e-mail strategy. You MUST continually grow a list of prospects. It's the only way you can capture a percentage of the folks who visit your site and do not buy the first time (Which is nearly all of them!) An opt-in strategy works best when you give something of value away in exchange for a visitor's name and e-mail address. Then you must stay in touch with these people on a regular basis, providing VALUE for them. Do you have an existing customer list? How many names are on the list? Do you have any e-mail addresses for this list? How many? Is the list current? What kind of shape is it in? Are the e-mail addresses valid? Does the list have names that have requested to be there for your current business? How did you collect them? Are you able to capture e-mail addresses on your existing website? How are you doing it? Do you use pop-up or pop-under pages to capture new contacts? Do you give any free items to your website visitors in exchange for their e-mail addresses? Key: 5 Sales copy that is proven to sell. If there is one aspect that KILLS website sales it is poor sales copy. You may THINK your site is fine, but tiny details in your sales copy can be costing you countless dollars. I have personally experienced visitor-to-sales ratios as low as 250 to 1 and as great as 8 to 1. The difference in dollars is thousands a week. What makes the difference in most cases is the sales copy. It is that important. I know that if you follow proven, successful cyber sales formulas, you will be able to sell just about anything online! Who wrote the copy for your website? Do you have a page or pages dedicated to selling on your site? Are the URLs or addresses accessible from the rest of the site?? Do you know how effective they are? Have you tested any variations on the copy? Can you track the response rates for the pages? Do you have an up-sell or down-sell strategy? Key: 6 Offer an affiliate program at your website. OK, some may say this is not an absolute necessity, but look around. Nearly ALL successful online selling sites offer some form of affiliate program. You can pay for visitors, leads or commission sales, but you need to offer SOME way of rewarding folks who bring you business. If you have a merchant/shopping cart system set up already, does it have an affiliate program? Do you have an existing affiliate program or referral program in place? you had a product today, how much would you want to charge for it? Do you know any other websites or competitive sites that sell/do what you do? List a couple of URLs. Do they have affiliate programs? If you were able to form a partnership with another website owner, who would it be? What is their website? Why would they want to partner with you? Why do you think they would be a good partner? Key: 7 Recommended products and services While we're on the subject of offering an affiliate program at your site, on the flip side of the coin you need to join a few affiliate programs yourself! Find affiliate programs that tie in well with what you offer, use the product or service, and if you like it recommend it to your visitors. You'll increase your website income literally overnight. Over the years, I've found that the best programs are the ones that offer residual or recurring income on each sale. Have you joined as an affiliate for any other website? Which ones? What is the website? Why? Have you earned any commissions from them? How have you promoted them? Key: 8 New products or services on a regular basis. If you can create a new product of your own once or twice a year, you will stand a better chance of growing your income continually. Also, be sure to update your existing products on a regular basis to keep content and sales fresh. If you're not able to create your own products that often, then you have to find a product you can get behind and do a joint venture with the owner. Even if the owner does not offer an affiliate program, you can offer to promote the product or service for a percentage of sales. Do you have any long-term plans for a series of products? What part of your business are you most passionate about? If you had your choice, would you like to sell mostly products or mostly services? Why? What services are you offering now? Can your services be duplicated? Are you the only one who can provide them? How hard is it to duplicate your products? Do you consider your existing products and services exclusive? Are they proprietary? Key: 9 A support strategy that keeps your prospects and clients happy. Today, how are you handling support issues online and offline? What kind of support do you have to provide? Are you the only one who can provide it? Key 10: A marketing strategy that includes free promotion and paid advertising. Do you know how many unique visitors there are to your site each day? Do you know where they are coming from? How are you promoting your site today? What free tactics are you using? List as many as you can. What paid tactics are you using? Are you able to track how effective they are? Last Question.....What are your top 5 goals for your online business? Moving Forward: Think about where you are now and then consider where you want to go. What will your business look like 1 year or 5 years from now? Look at these areas and start to fill in the blanks. Online Selling Tools? Personal Tools Like: Copernic, Alexa, Frontpage, Google toolbar List Your Research Activities! Customer Homework, Market Homework, Product Homework, Search Tool Testing to Confirm Your Market. Build Out Your Site: Start Collecting E-mail Addresses, Write Articles, Schedule Events, Fill In Content. Create Sales Pages/Offers Create and Test Your Web Copy, Create and Test Your E-mail Marketing Copy. Have Fun Marketing Your Online Business
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