Step
3: Identify your target audience. Define your
audience, and then find out where they are going online for
information. E.g. which sites, newsgroups and discussions
boards are the most popular. This technique alone will greatly
build your traffic as well as your name. You’d be
amazed at how many businesses still define their audience
as "all people" or "EVERYONE needs my product".
This is absolutely not true! Contrary to popular business
myth, the Internet is not a mainstream medium. Communities
are usually quite passionate about their interests. Find your
community and become an authority to them.
Step 4: Create
content. By providing quality content, you can build a successful
business online. Content works in becoming your company’s
USP (Unique Selling Proposition).
The quality of the content you provide will mean the difference
between your site being a significant online business or just
a “brochure site”.
Step 5: Create
and maintain your mailing list.
Step 6: Produce
your newsletter. Email newsletters are great because you can
include “hot links” that will open a web page.
Make sure you include the http://
because this is what most email software requires in order
to understand text to be a live Internet address, make it
clickable, and open the page in an Internet browser.
Step 7: Make
sure you have autoresponders in place to field often-asked
questions, and to subscribe and unsubscribe your recipients
automatically. You will always lose a few but don’t
take it personally. Make it easy for people to unsubscribe
from your mailing list.
Step 8: Never
SPAM. Spamming is the practice of sending information to people
who didn’t actually ask for it. It has been an accepted
practice in the offline direct marketing
world but not online. Don’t even try it. You could find
yourself switched off by your internet service provider or
having other serious actions taken against you.
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