Advertising on the internet is incredibly easy. You can quite literally be up and running in a matter of minutes. There are lots of adverts which can be downloaded from the T+ Extranet, banners, text ads etc. and you can use these anywhere you want as they are pre-approved.
However, there is one fundamental concept that you need to understand before you use the internet to advertise for either customers or distributors - nobody ever buys anything the first time they visit a website. It doesn't matter how good your website is, how compelling your offer is or how good your prose is - they will not buy on the first visit. Think about it, and try to recall your own online experience.
Some years ago, on the recommendation of a friend, I visited Amazon for the first time. I had heard a lot of good things about it from my friends and colleagues and I was intrigued. I was certainly impressed by what I saw, the site was well laid out, information was clear and the prices were good. I didn't buy anything though - not on that visit. Later on I went back to the site and made my first purchase and I am now a regular customer.
So I went to one of the best websites on the planet, I was already interested and I had plenty of first hand recommendations from satisfied users who were personally known to me - but I didn't buy anything. Why is that? Simple - it's perfectly normal behaviour that's why, in fact had I bought anything on that first visit I would have been flying in the face of conventional behaviour - on the internet or in the real world.
It's the equivalent of window shopping, or you could consider it as research if you like. Just be aware that this is the way the vast majority of people surf and view websites - and plan accordingly.
The only way that you're going to make a sale is if the visitor returns, or if you have further contact by some other means. there are a number of ways to do this, two of the best methods are as follows:
- Make the content of the website so interesting and compelling that your visitor will want to return.
- You take the initiative and keep in touch by sending your visitor information by email.
The slight problem with the first method is that you need to have control of the website content - which is not the case for your T+ hosted website. You also need to know that they will return to your website. If they haven't got a link to your site then they might just go to Google and type in "telecom plus" as a search term. The chances that they would find their way back to your site by this method are vanishingly small.
The second method requires that you persuade the customer to give you their email address and their permission to send them emails. I use this method to recruit distributors.
I have a very simple "gateway page" which I advertise and where interested parties enter their name, email address and city. The email address is fed into an autoresponder which automatically sends a number of follow up emails containing preloaded messages to the prospect.
It sounds complex but it's not really. The advantage of this is that, once it's all set up, it's pretty much automatic. All I have to do is drive traffic to the website, answer the questions and queries which come from the prospects and sign them up when they confirm that they want to go ahead.
It's very effective - I have had over 1500 people sign up for my email messages since 01/06/04. I now have a team of over 40 distributors, most of whom have been recruited in this manner.
You can view my gateway page below:
http://utilityteam.co.uk
I think that's enough - but more on internet advertising later.
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