Grrr! Why Aren't I Making SALES?!, Sales Training : iPedia

Selling online can be very difficult, more difficult than in the 3D world because you do not get any personal contact with your customer. People cannot just browse like they do in a store, they cannot offer feedback, and it is hard to build and maintain trust throughout the entire online sales process. What compounds this difficulty is the fact that most online marketers have absolutely no experience in the field of

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Evaluate Your Sales Process There are many aspects that effect your sales process online and it is possible to track the effectiveness at each stage:

Phase 1 is your advertising. The first step is just to get people to your site.

Advertising, generally speaking, is the promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas, usually performed by an identified sponsor. Marketers see advertising as part of an overall promotional strategy. Other components of the promotional mix include publicity, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotion.
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If you can't get people to your site, you must alter your advertising methods or, more likely, your ad copy, there is no way around it. Whether you are using free or paid advertising, a good ad will get clicks (at least some). Remember that no matter how good an ad looks to you, if it doesn't do it's job, it is useless. Keep a log of the ads you place along with where and when; don't use ads that do not produce results once they have been given a fair chance.

A website (or Web site, according to Associated Press guidelines) is a collection of Web pages, typically common to a particular domain name or subdomain on the World Wide Web on the Internet.
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To be sure that WHERE you are advertising is not the problem, it is best to get recommendations from other online marketers for advertising sites and tools that produce results. This will save you the time and frustration of trying them all out for yourself. It will also allow you to stay focused on your offer rather than spending your time searching for ways to promote it.

Writing may refer to two activities: the inscribing of characters on a medium, with the intention of forming words and other constructs that represent language or record information, and the creation of material to be conveyed through written language. (There are some exceptions; for example, the use of a typewriter to record language is generally called typing, rather than writing.) Writing refers to both activities equally, and both activities may often occur simultaneously.
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Marketing, as suggested by the American Marketing Association, is "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders".[1]

Another definition, perhaps simpler and more universal, is this: "Marketing is the ongoing process of moving people closer to making a decision to purchase, use, follow...or conform to someone else's products, services or values. Simply, if it doesn't facilitate a "sale" then it's not marketing.
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Affiliates without control over their web site need to pay special attention to getting traffic. Presumably the offer you are selling includes a

Information as a concept bears a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings. Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation.

Many people speak about the Information Age as the advent of the Knowledge Age [citation needed] or knowledge society, the information society, and information technologies, and even though information science and computer
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If you find that you are driving targeted traffic (not just click exchange hits) to your affiliate site, but not making any sales, you need to reconsider your offer: does it really have such a wide public appeal? Maybe new competition has arisen that has made your offer less of a value? Have you given people enough time to consider your offer and have you followed up? Be objective.

Phase 2 is your web site copy and navigation. Are people coming to your site and looking around, or do they click away immediately?

To find out, it is best to have web sites statistics that include the path visitors take once they get to your site, but you can get an idea about this by studying your web site statistics even if they do not provide this type of information. You know which page(s) you are promoting, are people looking at other pages as well?

If not, you must alter your web site copy, design or navigation. There are several places now where you can have your web site reviewed for free by other internet marketers. This can be very valuable information; learn from it to build a site that makes visitors feel confident enough to buy from you.

Also, be sure to send prospects directly to the page that contains the information you promise in your ad, it will make their visit quick, effective, and memorable. If you advertise a particluar product, send them to that page directly, rather than landing them on your home page and trusting that they will navigate to where you want them to be.

Affiliates can experiment with sending prospects to pages other than the main page (if provided) to see if that makes any difference in their sales ratio.

Phase 3 would be your order process. Are people looking around, going to the order page and then leaving?

Here again, you need comprehensive web site statistics. If you do not have site paths statistics, pay close attention to the number of hits each of your pages receive. If you see that many people go to the order page, but do not buy, you will have to either rewrite your text to clear up misunderstanding, lower your price, display payment options more clearly, or implement some other change that makes the ordering process quicker and easier.

Try to capture email addresses with a contest, free product, report or newsletter so that you can follow up with potential customers.

Of course, affiliates would have no control over the ordering process with a replicated site. I think this is important, so I will say it again: If you find that you are driving targeted traffic (not just click exchange hits) to your affiliate site, but not making any sales, you need to reconsider your offer: does it really have such a wide public appeal? Maybe new competition has arisen that has made your product less of a value? Have you given people enough time to consider your offer and have you followed up? Be objective!

Don't Guess! When you are having trouble generating sales, you need to track all of your activity (and the activities of your visitors) to pinpoint where the trouble lies. Only then will you know where you need to make changes. Without this kind of information, you are just guessing and that could be worse than leaving it alone.

An ezine is a periodic publication distributed by email or posted on a website. CULT OF THE DEAD COW claims to have published the first ezine, starting in 1984, with its ezine still in production more than 20 years later. While this claim is hotly debated, the ezine craze certainly began in the BBS days of the 1980s. Phrack, which opened its doors in 1985, is another surviving ezine of unparalelled technical quality. Unlike CULT OF THE DEAD COW, which publishes articles individually, Phrack published collections of articles in a manner that was more similar to a print magazine.
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In economics, business is the social science of managing people to organize and maintain collective productivity toward accomplishing particular creative and productive goals, usually to generate revenue.

The etymology of "business" refers to the state of being busy, in the context of the individual as well as the community or society. In other words, to be busy is to be doing commercially viable and profitable work.
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Grrr! Why Aren't I Making SALES?!

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