If you're looking at low cost ways to generate prospects for your new complementary therapy business, particularly if it has an online shopping cart, the best way is Article Marketing because it's free and the traffic keeps coming, year after year, from one piece of work. So if you are looking for product launch ideas read on.
Article Marketing isn't a fast way to get started online, but it's a low-cost, risk-free method anyone can adopt. First let's compare it with some alternative ways to get Internet traffic. Let's take the example of promoting a new shopping cart.
A traditional way of drawing customers to your new site, taught by other on-line marketing training, is to get in touch with other webmasters requesting a link exchange. This can work, but it's a slow process and you need to take care who you target. For example, if I sell dog collars by mail order I may be happy to do a link swap with someone who runs dog training classes, but not someone else selling dog collars.
Another method is answering questions on forums in your market-place, with your URL in your signature. Also effective, but time-consuming.
In theory a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign is easy to set up and you could see prospects the same day. In practice unless you're experienced at these campaigns, you can spend ages testing for the best settings and exhaust your budget without making a single sale. I did! And being cynical , I often wondered how many clicks were by my competitors, spending my cash!
Additional online strategies include FFA (Free For All) sites and traffic exchanges where you view other people's sites, in return for them viewing yours. This strikes me as a waste of time. I am trying to sell, not buy, so why sit heedless, clicking on other people's websites so that they will sit bored to tears clicking on my web-page? They probably never even see my site. With tabbed browsers the temptation is just to open the following tab to click on the one, without reading the adverts.
These strategies are time-consuming and ineffective for a serious product launch.
Offline marketing methods include networking to swap cards at business clubs. Time-consuming, costly and again in general, others are attending to sell, not to buy.
In contrast, article marketing targets people who have suggested that they are interested in the product your website targets. Choose the correct keywords and visitors will be actively looking to buy, not sell.
The idea of article marketing is that you draft an article and submit it, with your website details, to article directories from which publishers can download articles for blogs etc so long as they include your website details with your article. Then as interested parties read your article, they can click through to your website.
The article you have produced in an hour or so stays (theoretically) online forever and you have the potential to receive focused traffic from it in perpetuity.
For example, I submitted an article in October 2005 and 4 years later it is still generating traffic, with no extra effort, and had received 28,897 lifetime views, with 5,961 clicks through to my website. How much would that have cost by PPC? Another advantage is that the best article directories email you a report showing the keywords on which your article is being found.
In my opinion article marketing has so many advantages over alternative methods that I cannot think of any reason why it would not be one of your marketing strategies.
Much of my success with article marketing was learned through trial and error. With a little free, or low cost, training I would have seen rewards much earlier.
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