Following our marketing consulting, we have already had more than twenty participants and published a dozen articles.
Here is a series of tips on using the internet to grow your sales!
Pierre Lechelle, WebMaster, and Developer of the site www.you-exitst.com gives us 4 bits of advice to become known thanks to the Internet when one is business create.
Here are 10 strategies to increase sales on the internet
1.Use Viral Marketing
Viral Marketing is about getting your visitor to talk to you about their knowledge. For that nothing more difficult, because it is necessary that you provoke an emotion with the user. For a well-orchestrated Buzz Marketing, you have to help, shock, amuse, surprise ... the user to remember you.
For example, you can offer an ebook that can easily relay to friends by placing a link at the bottom of each page to your site. You can also make a video. For example, the one I created on Dailymotion and youtube brought me 9 contact requests and 3 big projects, for the launch of my company.
2.Give advice
A website is a tool used to convert the prospect into a customer.
The best way to make this conversion as quickly as possible is to post your advice directly to your showcase site.
You can share your expertise via this means. Prospects will judge your expertise and will call on you if you give good advice.
This is the best way to prove what you are worth easily and quickly. For my part, I try to publish a lot of advice via our corporate blog they have managed to convince 7 customers to do business with me instead of another company.
3.Optimize your site for SEO Natural
Theoretically, once you have put your site online it is visible to the whole world. However, this is only theory ...
In fact, for your website to be seen, the user must find it somewhere.
There are many ways to make your site known. The first being search engines, knowing that the most used in France remains Google with more than 80% of market share, then come to Yahoo, MSN Live and a string of minor engines.
Directories are also useful (especially specialized directories). It is also possible to do sponsorship (specialized blogs, business newsletters), buy promotional links (Google Adwords, Textlinks ...), launch an advertising campaign (banner, skyscrapers.
Nevertheless one of the best methods is to optimize your site for SEO and then add content, and let time take care of your SEO. Of course initially you will be a little disappointed by the low number of visits that you will receive despite all the time you spent there, but the SEO is a step not to be missed and if you allocate some hours to the basic actions of SEO, your investment will be returned to you in the medium and long-term.
Search engines via SEO represent 90% of visits to the showcase site of our company, for an investment that yields over time (unlike an advertising campaign that has a limited life).
4.Open a Business Blog
Opening a business blog may seem odd for some people who still think that blogs are just diaries.But blogs have become a few months/year the way to communicate the most effective for a company that wants to be known.
For example, you can share your advice and convince the visitor to become a customer just by reading your blog.
You can use it to communicate around your company and inform all your customers at once that you are releasing a new product or that you can, for example, create a "mobile site" at a lower cost, publish testimonials from satisfied customers. This blog will have helped my company to develop a community and to inform my readers of new offers (5 contact requests and 5 new projects).
5.Use social networks
Laurent Bourrelly, the long-time Web marketer, and Webmaster of the site www.7-drogons.com explains how social networks can help you reach your target audience and assist you in your development!
A tip to quickly become a reference in a sector of activity, drastically increase its visibility on the Internet, retain its audience, influence opinion leaders ... it is to use social networks.
Today, not everyone is aware of the enormous surge of social networks. It should be noted that social networking is still a predominantly horizontal sector. Trucks such as Facebook or Myspace are for a general purpose.
Some precursors such as Viadeo understood that the sector was going to experience a certain tendency to verticality. In other words, thematic social networks will emerge en masse on the Web in the coming months. Thus, each theme will know the emergence of specific social networks.
The challenge for 2008-2009 will be for those who understand the social networking issue to be the first to generate a platform that can attract a large community, or at first the precursors and opinion leaders.
It's not about simply creating a forum or a blog or a chat or a space for sharing content. The challenge is to build a social network offering all the social attributes available today. Members of such a social network can share their photos, videos, audio, and text. They can also chat on forums, chat or discussion groups.
The goal is to make friends who share the same passion, but for those who control the site, the stake is huge.
The owner of the social network has a database of targeted users that is of great value. In addition, opinion leaders on the theme will be active members to whom it will be possible to interact to direct future trends. At the level of visibility on the Internet, it should be known that search engines favor sites that have social attributes.
In addition, members build the content of the site themselves! Compared to the press release, if you are the first social network in the sector, you are likely to interest journalists. Then, your competitors will drool with jealousy when they learn that you are at the head of such a monument.
It does not matter if your industry is microscopic or huge because social networking is the key to success in the months to come. For my part, I bet on a social network in my favorite theme: Poker! Indeed I launched a few months ago the site www.pokersocial.org, the community of fans of poker!
If you are looking for advice on marketing g visit Laurent Bourelly's website www.7-dragons.com, and if you are a poker lover, become a member of www.pokersocial.org
6.Establish yourself in Second Life to promote your business and your site!
Michel Reverte, Webmaster of the Web Marketing site www.roussillon-concept.com, gives us an original advice to make known his company: the use of virtual universes!
Second Life was the revelation of 2007, with dozens of press articles, TV shows ... in short, a huge craze that has not been denied by an explosion in the number of subscribers and visitors.
It's the result of more than 15 years working on the web: I explain everything I would have liked to know when I started on the internet ...
You will learn to attract more prospects, improve your conversion, make your time profitable, retain your customers.
My advice is to buy or rent land in Second Life. You must then create an attractive group (which is unifying) and finally animate it. Using this technique, and for a very low cost, your visibility will be greatly increased, both in Second Life, but also in the "real" life through press releases, event organization.
For example, our Roussillon-concept.com company holds the France group with more than 10,500 members! This is the largest Francophone group in Second Life.
You want to know more about the possibilities offered by virtual universes contact Michel Reverte on www.roussillon-concept.com, or simply join his community on Second Life!
7.To become known on the internet, do not hesitate to rely on influential blogs and all sharing tools
Valentin blog www.geekeries.fr specializes in news for webmasters and internet enthusiasts, we deliver his advice to publicize a blog that begins ...
To publicize a new blog has become a challenge nowadays. Indeed the accessibility of the various tools (WordPress, Blogger, Blogspirit) has made that practically anyone can put together a pro or personal blog. The problem is getting out of the crowd, because even by making interesting and relevant articles, you are not sure to be visible among the thousands of tickets that are published every day ...
One of the first things to do is to get acquainted with leading blogs on your theme so that your quality articles are known and recognized ... This can be done in an extremely simple way: leaving comments on the most popular blogs popular.
Of course, we should not force ourselves to comment (and in addition, it must always be relevant), but it is a good way to attract the attention of visitors, even to get an article. Of course, this is not the only solution but it can help to make you know at first.
Indeed, after enriching his blog a few tickets, it is necessary to use the Digg-Likes system and other social bookmarking sites to make a small reputation (good or bad, because like any operation of "buzz" it can be to double-edged if you do not respect a minimum of ethics).
Your success through Digg-likes will depend mainly on the quality of tickets(you have to work on the title of the news), and sometimes the publication frequency. For example, if you post many good quality articles every day, it certainly leads visitors (and newsletter subscribers and RSS feeds), and especially to place as a reference in this theme (and thus become a reference for other bloggers on this theme!).
8. Use social networks to make yourself known
Nicolas JOSEPH Operational Advice to SMEs and PMI of www.adocq.com (strategic support of SMEs) gives us his advice to publicize an event or a website thanks to Buzz Marketing!
Social networks are a growing media, and they are a tool in your Marketing arsenal.
First of all, you have to register on the most frequented social networks (Viadeo, linkedin, facebook, Myspace), with of course the creation of a group, a page ... on your theme. Then we must move to the recruitment of his "friends" and contacts. This is done of course by picking in his address book, but also via the friends of his friends, adding webmasters blogs on your job ...
Then you have to animate your communities (articles, links), possibly via a contest. At the example of ConseilsMarketing.fr organize a contest on "The best Marketing Tips" and relay it to your contacts on social networks Of course present as much as possible this competition with originality and humor, plan lots motivating and interesting, and finally give visibility to the winners on a support that you will promote and who will also benefit from the operation (white paper).
Thanks to this, you will place your company as a reference in a sector, but in addition, you will get a relay from the members of your networks!
9.Create a Wiki, a new string to the arc of a customer relationship.
Emmanuel MIGNOT from TELETECH International, explains how setting up a thematic wiki can help you develop your reputation and your customer relationship.
The blog has become a social phenomenon. Any expert has hers, like most girls who have a personal computer.
There are all kinds of them, but they have one thing in common: they express the ideas and points of view of their author. They allow comments, but these are most often "the second curtain". They can not steal the spotlight from the author who devotes time to staging.
The wiki obeys another logic: its vocation is to allow the construction of a collective work, the result of which will not be the sum of the contributions but a whole obtained by a collaboration which allows the modification of the contribution of the other.
Here, no star, all equal. The most successful example is Wikipedia and its universality. These works, often voluntary between equals, weld communities and feed them.
At a time when marketing departments are exploring the potential and the risks of "2.0" stamped processes, wikis enter the field of possibilities: CtoC experiments are examined, like laboratory experiments: everything can explode, it is necessary to show oneself careful! To give word and power to the consumer is to accept being criticized, not being able to meet his expectations.However, it is only trading between consumers, even if they accompany them with advice, feedback, and criticism.
By approaching the phenomenon of the wiki, we enter an otherwise complex world since it can be a question of offering consumers to build the new rules of the game of a product, or even a market.
For example, if an insurer encourages, proposes, sparks the creation of the insurance wiki, he runs the risk of building a collective demand in which he will struggle to find his place and maintain his legitimacy.
However, are the benefits not greater than the disadvantages? This is what I propose to study through an example, CherClient.wiki, the Customer Relationship wiki.
When I first heard about the wiki from my friend Christophe Ducamp, I must say that I was as skeptical as it was curious. I did not even realize that I knew the phenomenon through Wikipedia!
The idea has made its way and its principle of building a collective work, in which everyone can not only comment on the contribution of the other, but also modify it, completely seduced me: what revolution, do not have afraid of words, only to write publicly, while accepting both to be criticized, but also amended and evaluated !
Secondly, how fascinating it is to see how the combination of volunteer efforts results in an encyclopedia of a level equivalent to the work of the world's leading experts.
Finally, this enthusiasm is complete when one discovers that all this phenomenon proceeds from an intuitive operation, accessible to all.
In summary: simplicity, robustness, synergies, humility, tolerance, volunteering, quality.
I wondered then how to exploit this model in our field of Customer Relationship.
Yes, there is material to constitute a kind of general guide to good practices. The structure of the wiki is used to structure a set of contributions in which the user can search for the examples and methods he needs.
Yes, it is useful to encourage the speaking of professionals for feedback.
Yes, finally it is valuable to allow the conjugation of ideas.
For Teletech International, this experience allowed us to build new relationships and to discover that many professionals shared our desires and ideas in this area. Beyond advertising brochures, they were able to identify our company as carrying innovative ideas for our business.
Afterwards, some could ask the question of our legitimacy to lead this project: as providers, were we at our place in this wiki?
The answer is simple: yes. We had the first idea, envy, energy and we did it. 32,000 professional visitors later, in a few months, the question was not rested. And the reason is the very foundation of the wiki: it is a collective work.
Each document can be and will be modified one day. No document is a truth or a rule. Everyone is free to contribute, unlike the blog.
This is the strength of the wiki. It is necessary to accept, above all, to be challenged and to see expressing other interests than his own. That is what makes it the strength.
Of course, each medal has its flip side: launching a wiki means accepting criticism, not necessarily in a positive or even relevant way. It is also sometimes disappointed with the small number of contributions in relation to the number of consultations. It's finally a lot of work, time and a little money, without seeing a return on direct investment in the short term. But as Pierre de Coubertin said, it is not necessary to succeed to undertake. Nor is it necessary to succeed to be satisfied. Having undertaken also brings us a lot of pleasure every day.
We have evolved the concept since the beginning by adding on the home page, two essential modules today: a web radio first, RadioClient.fml, then a WebTV, CherClient.tv, with very interesting interviews.
We discovered that these audio or visual documents were very consulted, while we favored long formats, sometimes exceeding the hour!
Certainly, all this is still a little artisanal, very perfectible in the form at least. But the bottom is already of great wealth.
TELETECH International has gained one thing: the understanding of the wiki phenomenon, and therefore the right to speak to its customers, knowingly. It's our benefit and we appreciate it.
The contributors could also find their account, through the recognition of their peers. They dared and that deserves respect. Some modesty has made that very few have dared to modify the contents of other contributors. It's starting now and it's a sign that the process is beginning to mature.
In any case, we live a very informative and exciting experience. Let's assume that all good ideas will find refuge!
10.Make yourself known through video and surf the network effect
Nathalie MARESTAING consultant in charge of tourism promotion at PCHIT-ITC Conseil shares her experience in promoting her company through video and social networks.
With the wide diffusion of digital camcorders, the ease of use of editing software, and the rise of video sharing sites, it has become possible to simply make videos and broadcast them to a very large target.
Here is a concrete example of their application, through which I made myself known (and thanks to which I won 1000 €!).
I participated in a video-project business creation contest (youboss.tv). The principle is simple: it is enough to film itself via its camera, its webcam, its telephone (even on a professional exhibition) allin3 minutes maximum. The key to success in this kind of operation is to stand out from the rest, simply asking your professional and personal contacts to visit the site and vote for you to initiate the buzz. The quality of your video will do the rest!
I then used other websites from WebTV and other video streaming platforms. The buzz and the network effect make all the difference. Since then I became known, and I found partners and now animates a section for the information portal "idfmédias" which is also a webTV.