Give Me Quality Over Quantity Every Time

In the early days of developing my home business, I went for the numbers instead of focusing on targeting prospects. It took me a while to appreciate the importance of targeting (quality) instead of just going for the big numbers (quantity).

For online marketing, it helps greatly to get your website in front of people who are actually looking for the product, service, or opportunity that you are offering. This refers to the concept of marketing your sites to your target audience, rather than wasting your time, effort, and money on people who are not already interested in what you have to offer.

Be wary of "massive action" techniques in this era when many ISPs feel their hottest marketing theme is the blocking of incoming emails, which they decide their customers do not want to receive (they are the self appointed "information police").

Many of the sources of cheap, high volume leads supply you with leads that have absolutely no interest in your particular business (or product or service) and furthermore, have been put into the list in such a manner that can get you into trouble with your ISP because you are unwittingly spamming (many of these bulk lead lists are created by robots that crawl the Internet and harvest email addresses) the recipients.

In order to be effective in the promotion your particular proposition, whatever it is, you have to seek out your target market. This is as true online as it is offline. Just because you are able to reach huge numbers of people with your message on the Internet far more cheaply and quickly than you can offline, does this necessarily mean you should?

What's the point of devoting your time and energies to marketing to a massive group of people without first knowing whether they, as a group, have a general interest in what you are offering?

It is much more efficient and effective to first find out where your prospective customers congregate, and then target that congregation, than it is to use a shotgun approach and hope that one of your pellets will somehow find its target (you know... throw enough up against the wall and something is bound to stick). You will find that by selectively targeting your prospects before marketing to them, your conversion ratio (the proportion of your target market that takes positive action and actually purchases your product or service) will be much higher than the results you would otherwise achieve without first taking the time to target your prospects. Once again, quality wins out over quantity.

It seems that a great many webmasters have not stopped to ask themselves the all-important question...What is the purpose of my web site? For some reason, many of them seem to think that the purpose of their web site is to give away freebies. Or it could be to be a "showcase" for their products. Or it could be to create links to all kinds of resources. Or it could be to have fancy flash graphics and build a brand name.

One of the biggest mistakes people new to web design make is going for more "flash" than substance. They bog down their site with a bunch of fancy colored backgrounds, 3-D text, flash presentations, etc. If a visitor to your site is using a 56K connection and has wait to more than 8 seconds for it to load (which can easily happen on sites heavy with graphics), you can expect to lose about 1/3 of your visitors.

If you're a business, the purpose of your web site is to sell a product or service. Your web site should have one main focus. It should not be selling a dozen products, a dozen opportunities, or linking to a bunch of different affiliate programs. Presenting too many options has a tendency to confuse your visitor. When someone visits your site, it should be clearly obvious what one action you want him or her to take.

----------------------------------------------------------------
This article is freely available for reprint provided that the resource box at the end of the article is left intact and the article is published complete and unaltered. If you are using this article on a website or e-book, please make sure that the link in the resource box is live or clickable.
----------------------------------------------------------------

Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and coaches others seeking to start their own home based business.

Visit his website at Legitimate Home Based Business for more details.

---

Joint Venture 101 - The Quickest Way To Build Your eBusiness (PART 1)

This article reveal the same techniques that many Internet marketing... Read More

Free Online Advertising: 10 Dynamic Secrets To Make Your Ad Stand Out And Ignite Sales

No matter what you're marketing or promoting, if your Ad... Read More

How to Increase Traffic When Your Promotion Budget is Tiny

Writing articles for your site and for the use of... Read More

Grassroots Marketing Campaign

Many people, in a rush to spike sales through the... Read More

Increase Traffic to Your Website Free

When I first began attempting to make money on the... Read More

Improve Your Website In 3 Simple Ways

You may already have thought about the following 3 ways... Read More

3 Steps To Increasing Your Web Traffic For Free

You own a website and you want more traffic. More... Read More

Reciprocal Link Exchanges - A Foolproof Technique That Will Never Die

On the Internet, links are very important for websites to... Read More

Increase Traffic With a Good Title

There's such a thing as taking search engine optimization too... Read More

Generating Inbound Links

Content One of the best ways to encourage website owners... Read More

Website Marketing Mistakes Smart People Make

You have invested your time and money into putting up... Read More

Why The One-Pronged Website Promotion Method Doesnt Really Work

Would you attempt to use a cell phone with a... Read More

How To Quickly Make Money With Your Website?

Quickly making money with a website is the dream of... Read More

1 Seldom Discussed Method Of Web Promotion

So you've made the perfect web site (in your eyes... Read More

Searches and Summaries

The Web is constantly growing and changing. The key issue... Read More

What is Froogle?

Keeping in touch with other sites like Amazon.com, Buy.com and... Read More

DMOZ Editors - Does Absolute Power Corrupt Absolutely?

DMOZ editors are supposed to be professionals in the category... Read More

Make Your Web Site Work More So You Can Work Less

Do you know how your web site fits into the... Read More

FFA / Reversed Marketing

Have you ever submitted your ad to an FFA page?... Read More

Website Promotion ? The Power of Writing Articles

I've been operating two small retail Websites for several years... Read More

Increase Your Web Traffic without Breaking the Bank

If you are like most webmasters, your goal is to... Read More

Culture and Website Localization

Culture and Website Localization With the rise... Read More

The ON World of OFFline marketing

Ok, now if you've started reading this article thinking that... Read More

Your Website on My Forehead

People are so focused on promoting their websites on the... Read More

Seecrets on Website Promotion: Results of Open Source Marketing Plan after 2 Months

This author's open-source marketing plan, as announced on June 29,... Read More

How to Advertise on the Internet

Do you want to reach millions of potential customers for... Read More

The High-Impact Viral Marketing Strategies

Viral Marketing is allowing people to giveaway and use your... Read More

Ten Reasons Why People Dont Buy From You

Here's ten simple yet POWERFUL ideas for you to reflect... Read More

Three Ways to Market Your Web Site Effectively

1. Tell people you have a siteThis might seem blindingly... Read More

Time to Tell A Friend

The internet has the capacity, sometimes, to divorce not just... Read More

Sales Marketing: 10 Proven Secrets To Market Your Website Offline

Some Internet marketing experts have claimed that the best way... Read More

Success Is Simple: Five Steps to Online Success

The Internet can be a confusing place to do business.... Read More

11 Awesome Ways To Attract More Orders

1. Create a free ebook directory on a specific topic... Read More