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| Courtesy of Wikipedia |
Millions of new products and services
are launched for sale on the internet every
year. Some become profit makers for their respective companies. A few become big
profit makers, and a very small percentage
become mega-hits generating millions of dollars
in profit. What are the elements that produce mega-hit
sales? How is it that many great products never achieve much success and some products
of mediocre quality take off and soar to sales heights? In this episode of Working
the Web to Win, we will look at four very
important elements that control the life cycle of successful sales on the internet.
We will explore many of the aspects of a sale that include; “Good Internet Products
and Services,” "How to Get Found," "Increasing Conversion" and
"Creating a Positive Image." So,
take notes and share this with your friends as we delve into the Life Cycle of Successful
Sales on the Internet.
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| Courtesy of Wikipedia |
Element #1 - A Great Product or Service. If you look at any long-lived success story, you
will see a product or service that fits the phrase “Whose Time Has Come.” This product or service filled a pent-up need. I found
the roots of this phrase in an article in the Wall Street Journal by Barton Swaim.
It stated; “No army can withstand the strength of an idea
whose time has come,” remarked by Sen. Everett Dirksen on the floor of the U.S.
Senate at the height of the debate surrounding the Civil Rights
Act of 1964. Since then, this phrase
has been used thousands of times to describe new products and services launched
on the internet and old-school
media. If you look at the Apple iPhone, its success was not
based on coming out with a smartphone. There were lots of smartphones already on the market. It wasn’t because it provided a touch screen, or graphics,
or video or had a built-in personal assistant. It succeeded because it made it easy
for the average person to take advantage of all these high-tech features without
being a high-tech geek. It solved the problem of making high technology easily accessible
to the masses, at a price point affordable to many. It did this in a very
elegant way that leap frogged the competition by several years. Soon after iPhone
sales took off, competing products like the
palm pilot died off and the iPhone accessory industry was born.
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| Courtesy of Flickr |
This one product has done more for boosting the mobile online sales industry than any other smartphone. And today mobile sales and traffic account for more than 60 percent of all internet traffic.
To have mega success, your product
must be at the top of its class. However, to be successful,
you don’t need mega success, you just have to provide perceivable value at a price
that is affordable. It must provide a value-add
over the competition whenever possible. Ten
years after its introduction, the iPhone is still the best-selling smartphone
on the market. However, the marketplace has evolved into a multi-segmented arena delineated by price and features.
Today there are dozens of successful smartphones that don’t compete head to head
with Apple entries. Smartphones, in fact,
have become commodities. Many wireless providers give away a smartphone
when you sign up for their service. However, the iPhone, which was the first to
make it easy for the average person to take advantage of technology, is still the
leader in its field.
Also, there are some items that lend
themselves to internet sales more readily than others. For
example; small, unique,
products that also need consumables lend themselves easily to internet sales because
shipping cost is low and delivery can be performed quickly. It can also spawn additional
sales for accessories or add on products. The iPhone definitely fits this model.
On the other hand, products that have a lot of legal caveats and shipping restrictions,
or are large and heavy, won’t sell as easily or at all. An example would be flammable
liquids, stocks and bonds, heavy equipment, travel trailers etc…
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| Courtesy of Wikimedia Common |
There are lots of products that have
achieved massive success which are not at
the top of the food chain in their industry. Take commodity items as an example.
I liked to talk about the sale of bottled water because not long ago, people would
laugh if you said bottled water is going to
be big! In fact, if you had predicted that people would be drinking bottled water
in the 1980s, you could have become a billionaire
today. Bottled water has been around for a long time, but the average consumer in
the US was not buying bottled water. Then in the 1990’s bottled water sales took
off as consumers became more health and convenience conscious. Today 50 billion bottles of water are consumed each year. In the
80’s the average consumer did not perceive the value of bottled water over that
of tap water. Today's health-conscious consumers rarely drink from the
faucet unless the faucet is filtered in some
way. Having said this, the bottled water market is widely segmented with bottles coming in all kinds of sizes, flavors,
purity, and enhancements. And yes, there are people selling bottled water on the internet
based on price, quality, special ingredients and
more. The convenience
of internet sales and delivery is a concept whose time has come!
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| Courtesy of Pixabay |
The last point I want to make in this
section is this. No product or service has had massive
long-term success unless it filled a need, provided a useful service and
came with perceived value. Useless products or services are called scams, frauds,
tricks, and people who sell them are called
crooks, con artists or worse. Now let’s move on to the next important element.
Element #2 - Getting Found. It’s not good
enough to have a great product or service. Your product or service must be found! So, what does it take to get found today?
Is it top notch SEO? Do you need tons of great authoritative content? Do you need
a large audience? The simple answer is YES to all three. However. the first thing
it takes is a budget (no matter how small, even if it’s you’re time). Rarely do products or services actually get found because a video goes viral. Even
when a promotional video goes viral like the Orabrush or the Dollar Shave Club,
these items still had a small ad budget. On top of that they reinvest their profits
to engage in a lot more advertising once they got found! Most successful marketing campaigns are multifaceted which in turn gives them synergy.
Google points out the importance of having a synergistic multichannel approach for getting found in Google search. Watch the following short video to learn exactly what Google is looking for when determining a webpages organic ranking.
Learn what Google has to say about SEO Marketing.
I know several authors who have bestselling
eBooks (so-called eBook millionaires) who
still had to prime the marketing pumps with several thousand dollars to get their
first books onto the bestseller list. Getting found strictly with guerrilla tactics
like word of mouth, social media and networking is an uphill battle because of the
number of new products and services launched every day. A minimal budget for launching
a bestselling eBook is about 30k (which covers online marketing, travel expenses,
interview services, your first printing, book giveaways and more). Also, to get
found, you must do your research. Due diligence will make it much easier to get
found if you know the precise target market, the best marketing venue – the best
marketing message that works and so on. Market research can cost a lot. A shoestring
research budget is about $500 to $1,000 is the least you should spend If you really
want to glean valuable insight into what will
work best. I see a lot of good writers who have good books, but aren’t getting found!
Many have a great blog with lots of well written and valuable information, but nobody
is reading it! This is because they don’t
have distribution or a large following. We have spent a lot of time, energy and
money building our 100k plus following. Having a large social following gives you
a large distribution channel. Also, we don’t just use one social media network; we use multiple social networks and other
internet channels to help build traffic. It’s also important to cover all your bases.
Make sure your on-page SEO matches you content SEO for keywords and phrases. Create
a
diversified marketing approach which include several different marketing venues.
Include social, video, blogging, good landing pages, possible PPC ads and a consistent
deliver of the right message.
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| Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons |
Your campaigns need to be synergistic,
not one dimensional. On top of that, your research needs to be ongoing. Continuing
to re-evaluate your methods and results is critical for long-term success. Getting found is not a one and done event because out of sight is out of mind. Check
out these articles on how to get found.
- The Zen of Search Marketing
- The Four Golden Keys to Maximizing Online Sales
- How to Triple Your Blogs Views in 60 Days or Less
- How to Make Money with Internet Radio and Podcasting
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| Courtesy of Max Pixel |
The most common question I get about
conversion is; How do you know if my product or service is working (i.e. converting)
at its best or do we need to tweak the message, (the compelling offer or some other
element of our internet sales). My answer is simple and almost common sense. Do
research. However, most business people just seem to ignore this obvious answer
and do nothing except advertise by the seat of their pants. We believe in pre-marketing
research and ongoing evaluation and research. Not doing so, is just guessing, and
you can’t achieve massive success by just guessing. Check out our articles on how
to convert a visitor into a customer:
- How to Keep Your Ecommerce Dream from becoming a Nightmare
- What Exactly Does SEO Really Mean Today?
- Internet Marketing: Lessons Learned and Best Practices, Part 2 – Website and SEO Principles
Element #4 - Creating and Maintaining Positive Image. The next step
in achieving massive internet sales success is spreading your positive image! In
most cases, before you can achieve massive long-term success, you must build credibility
and a loyal following. I often hear people say that this is putting the cart before
the horse. The fact is that these items are highly dependent on each other. Once
you get found you must deliver the goods in a way that not only provides value from your product or service, the actual buying
experience, become important as well. Then you must convince the new customer to
sing your praises with positive reviews and testimonials. This is a little
easier said than done since a happy customer is ready to go on their way
where a disgruntled
Here follow up is key and sometimes
a little bribery helps as well. If the follow up of asking for a positive review is
not enough, adding some small useful incentive will often help a reluctant (or lazy)
happy customer to go the extra mile of providing you a positive review. You also need
a way to handle unhappy customers in the follow up process. Always provide an easy way
for an unhappy customer to get in touch with customer service and if possible listen
to their complaints and resolve their issues. This
is another easy way to make a new happy customer. A way of turning a lemon into
lemonade if you will. Not making them happy will cause a lot more damage than you
can repair by doing more future marketing. One negative review will kill the positive effects
of 10 positive ones. Save yourself a lot of money and make them happy. Today the
king wears no clothes in social media. Check out these articles on how to create
a positive image for your product or service.
- Understanding the Difference Between Branding, Marketing, and Advertising
- Branding Your Business – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
- Can Competitors Harm Your Business With Impunity Online?
- What's in a name? Reputation Management in the Digital Age
It is my hope that you take
the time do your research and due diligence before you begin marketing your next
big online sales offering. I also hope you take the time to read the support articles
listed on this blog and that you take the
time to watch the video that features one of Google’s webmasters that I have included above. Doing so may not yield
instant sales in your industry, but it will provide the best chance for sales success
verses any other method for product or service Internet sales.
That's my opinion; I look forward to reading yours.
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This article explores the four elements involved in any highly successful
internet marketing sales effort regardless of product or service involved. This
four-step process will yield the best results possible. Included are additional
links to additional reference material and videos to help the reader maximize their
results.
If you feel your business could use some help with its marketing, give us a call at 904-410-2091. You can also fill out the form in the sidebar of this blog. It will allow us to provide you with a free marketing analysis to help you get better online results. Our claim to fame is that we are one of a few companies who actually provide ironclad guarantees.
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