Do you have an Internet marketing strategy for your online business? You should. Internet marketing and Internet advertising, when done properly, can drive traffic to your website and practically double your sales overnight. In fact, advertising your site may be the only way for you to compete with larger, more established competitors.
While there are many different forms of Internet marketing strategy that you can employ, one of the easiest and most reliable forms is results tracking. When you track the results of your Internet advertising campaigns, you can quickly learn what works and what doesn't work. For obvious reasons, this method is much better than a random hit and miss advertising method, which can turn out to be quite costly, not to mention ineffective. Of course, this form of Internet marketing strategy isn't anything new.
Direct marketers have been using results tracking for years, and it can easily be adapted for the Internet. The key is to come up with a way to measure the results of Internet advertising accurately. If you're tracking is not accurate, there is little to no point in doing it.
To make sure their tracking results are accurate, many direct marketers use a trick known as split testing. Split testing uses a specific key or tracking device to associate a sale with the advertisement that produced the sale. For example, in a print ad, the key or tracking device that may be used could be a specific phone number or extension. When a customer utilizes the number or extension, the marketer knows exactly which ad drove the customer to seek out the advertised product or service.
If the same ad produced repeated sales, the marketer knows that the advertising is effective and worth doing again. On the other hand, if the ad didn't even produce enough sales to pay for the advertising, then the marketer knows not to try that again. The same split testing method used by direct marketers can easily be adapted and incorporated into your Internet marketing strategy, allowing you to determine exactly how effective or ineffective your Internet advertising is. To track the success and failure of Internet advertising, most Internet marketers typically use some sort of tracking software to associate the key with sales.
A simple way to do this is to develop two web pages that feature two different ads. You can then track the sales results of each ad to see which worked best, and if necessary, adjust your Internet marketing strategy accordingly. For example, let's say that on one of the pages, you received a total of 2,000 page views and 20 sales. This means that you have a success rate of one percent. Not bad.
This is the average for both direct mail advertising and Internet advertising. Now that you have this information, you have statistics you can rely on. You can test other pages to see if they perform better or worse. You can also adapt the original pages to see if your changes have any effect on the sales outcome. For example, try adjusting headlines, graphics, text, and anything else you can think of. Then, compare the results of these changes to the original results.
After you have tested different variations of your Internet advertising, you can quickly determine exactly what works and what doesn't. Your Internet market strategy and any future advertising that you do can then be adjusted accordingly. If you succeed, you may be able to double your sales without throwing away good money over and over again on advertising that doesn't work.
Cliff Posey, owner of CRP Marketing, owns and operates http://webbusinesstoolsonline.com. Cliff Posey has also operated several other successful web businesses including Love Song Cards and Radio Career Consultants. The content in this article was developed from his experience in these businesses.
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