[Editor's note: I chose today's article because the author mentioned an often ignored element of niche marketing: providing a valuable product or service. In other words, to be successful in niche marketing, you have to provide value to the customer. Enjoy today's post!]
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I’m going to break the hard news to you right off the bat. Make sure that you are sitting down. Internet surfers are not looking for you or your business. They are searching for one of two things: Information or Solutions. Failure to understand this rule is the reason that at least 98% of all Internet businesses fail. If you are reading this article, there is a good chance that you are one of the 2% who succeeds.
If you plan to sell anything online, then your primary task is to provide the information and/or the solutions that people are searching for. But it doesn’t stop there. You must do it in a way that the Search Engines like. The most proven model to achieve this is what we call a “Theme-Based Content Site” or “Niche Site”.
Once you understand the concepts discussed here, you will make the critical offline-to-online mind shift and you will join the 2% of small business owners who succeed at Internet marketing.
An effective niche website will be searched, and found, by prospective customers in ever growing numbers. Over time your sale will continue to rise as well. Simply put, you will be building a site that works for you, not the other way around! One caution here, however. You cannot be impatient at this phase. You cannot create the perfect page and expect there to be sales within a day or two. You must consider this to be a long term project. At the same time, you should be happy to know that once you have the engine running, you almost can’t stop it. The only way to stop it is to take the page down, and even then customers will still find you!
So how do you build a site that works? It all boils down to this workable process.
1) Develop a valuable product or service — your own creation or someone else’s.
2) Develop your own site in the niche that you know and love.
3) Fill that site with high-value content.
4) Use that content to attract your own niche-targeted traffic.
5) Build trust and credibility with your visitors.
6) Use content to Soften your targeted visitors.
7) Convert that Softened, warm, willing-to-buy traffic into sales…and
Diversify your minimization to include several options that are all related to your site’s niche.
The critical thing here is that you must succeed at all steps to end up in that 2% group. The good news is that anyone can succeed if they combine motivation with the right process and tools.
We really can’t just talk about how to be successful without pointing out the paths that you want to avoid. These would be the paths that 98% of newbie marketers mistakenly take!
Briefly, the failing sequence looks like this. Newbie marketers create a product or service. They then create sites to sell that product or service. Next, they add a payment and possibly fulfillment solutions. And finally, they die due to lack of traffic. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Most small businesses fail because they skip several important steps. They prepare to sell and collect money, before they have provided what their visitors are searching for – information and/or solutions. This can be so devastating to newbies, most of whom are doing this business off the side of their desks and against the better judgment of their wild-eyed wives who are lurking in the background waiting to say, “I told you that was a dumb idea…”
Editors Note: Before the reader starts berating me and calling me a misogynist, I just want to point out that statistically, women don’t make the same mistakes. They normally think it all of the way through before doing what us “problem solving” Neanderthals do. We are much more likely to just run out and do it.
That said, the 2% of us that do succeed in Internet marketing build targeted, interested traffic by providing the type of high value content that their visitors are searching for. These intelligent marketers warm up their visitors with excellent content related to the concept of their product or service.
Always remember that in truth the typical visitor to your website is just going to skim over your sales copy, reading only small bits of information (in the F-Pattern that I talked about in another article). The site visitor will only get enough of the site to understand the overall sense of what the letter is about. In reality, this takes place in about 7 seconds.
If you want prospective customers to slow down and take in more information, you have to have outstanding ad copy that will attract them and hold them. We will talk more about that part in another article.
For now, the “rule of thumb” is that you want your paragraphs to be no more than four lines long. But you want the focus to be squarely on the copy and not on the noise that surrounds it. Attract customer attention with a very good graphic at the beginning and avoid the use of flash. For marketing sites, flash is one of those cases where “just because we can – it doesn’t mean that we should!”
Nick Walsh is a professional researcher and information technology analyst with 30 years experience in alternative health care, strategic information technology, and entrepreneurial development. Nick maintains several blogs on alternative health care, anti-aging, green energy systems, technology, and internet marketing in general.
Nick has been a successful internet marketer since 1996. Consistently reviewing the internet marketing industry, Nick is always up to date with the latest successful internet marketing tools and resources.
Nick works from his home in Vancouver, BC
http://www.siliconcentral.net
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nick_Walsh
http://EzineArticles.com/?Successful-Niche-Marketing&id=4589718
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