Internet Marketing for Beginners

Robs Web Tips

2010-02-09T05:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.robswebtips.com/

My new link

2009-02-01T03:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g57771-c108585/Gloucester:Virginia:Holly.Hill.Antiques.html

Trip Adviser

2009-01-31T19:02:00.000-08:00

Tripwiser

Tripadvisor

The above links are some of many sites recommending travel to Gloucester Va. It can provide links to your web and may bring more people to you. As a business on a budget – I have been trying to improve my web traffic and hopefully foot traffic as well and am personally doing this. Personally, I feel all businesses should add a link especially if they are tourism related.

A great place to list the place you sell at

2009-01-31T18:46:00.000-08:00

Holly Hill Antiques

Market to people who want to be marketed to

2009-01-27T20:08:00.000-08:00

Market to people who want to be marketed to. All others, although in the majority, is a waste of resources. Tell a story and make these folks want the product.

Unique Selling Position

2009-01-14T18:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.businesstown.com/advertising/basic-usp.asp

Unique Selling Proposition:

The Art of Finding Your Unique Selling Proposition
Positioning is about making your offering different from, and more valuable than, your competitors' offerings--and placing that idea in the minds of a target group of customers. Positioning attracts customers by creating a positive and unique identity for your company and its offerings. Positioning is vital for distinguishing your offering from everybody else's.

In a world where there are more and more products and services every day, your customers are on advertising overload all the time. So they pick something to believe and hold that notion until a message breaks through and persuades them to change.

People can't hold warring ideas in their heads. They can't believe that the Norton Anthology is the best study guide for English literature, then study from a set of Cliffs Notes and believe they're doing the best they can to pass their exams. They can't believe that all paper towels are pretty much alike, buy one that costs more than most, and think that they are wise shoppers. The point is, positioning is your effort to claim a high ground in that overloaded prospect's head and hold it against competition.

There may be very little difference between your product and your competitors'--but if you can't find a way to communicate uniqueness and connect it to a need of your target, you might as well quit fighting your competition and sell out to them. There are many different ways to stake out a position. Just remember, your position reflects your unique selling proposition, and it is what makes your offering more valuable to your customers than what's being offered by your competition.

Perception of your Business
How will your business be perceived as different from your competition in the minds of your targeted customers? To figure this out, you must look for your best customer and then design a position that matches his or her wants and needs to an advantage that only you can offer. Remember, you can't be all things to all people, but you can be the vendor of choice for a group of them.

Positioning Affects Every Aspect of Your Communications--And Your Business

Positioning is the basis for all your communications--your packaging and product design, sales promotions, advertising, and public relations. Everything you do must reinforce that position--otherwise you just undermine your marketing efforts and sow confusion instead of confidence. Positioning is serious business. You must choose the right position, for now and down the road.

Do the work now to develop a clear position for your business vis-à-vis your competitors. You'll ensure that you get the most from your advertising budget. The truth is that with enough money, you can buy success in advertising. Mediocre, unfocused messages from a company without a clear position will generate sales surprisingly well if that company buys enough time or space to pound the message home. But think how much farther that budget could take you if you had a focused message, a unique selling proposition, and a target audience for your offering. Positioning--and the creative approach that grows from it--make the difference.

Developing the Positioning Statement and the Tagline
To begin creating your own sense of positioning for your business, answer the following questions with short, articulate answers that relate your offering to your customers' needs.

1. What does your business do?
2. For whom?
3. What is your biggest benefit to them?
4. Prove your claim. To what do you attribute that benefit?
5. How will your customers perceive this benefit, relative to the competition?

* Source Streetwise Do-It-Yourself Advertising
Never before has it been easier for small business managers to create their own advertising! Get more great advice!

Recent Actions

2009-01-14T16:35:00.000-08:00

Still staying on topic

Continuing with the social networking - I need a picture to post
Will go thru my site to simplify the message www.hollyhill.biz
Need to add a visit Va page to my web
Need to put a what is it video on UTUBE

Increasing Web Traffic - Idea 1

2009-01-13T03:55:00.000-08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090113/od_afp/lifestyleaustraliatourismoffbeat_20090113032028

I volunteer for this position – especially in January.

This article mentioned the importance in thinking out of the box to attract tourism. How about a YouTube video with lots of pictures with pointers to the regional and area websites? All the web site optimization information I have read recently stresses the importance of a feeder video to attract visitors to your website and it doesn’t seem that hard to do. “Remember – you need to be talking to your “customer” before you can sell them something.”

Note 1: Online Social Networking – an important “New” Marketing technique we should all read more about.

Holly Hill Antiques

www.hollyhill.biz

Recent Actions

2008-12-25T09:06:00.000-08:00

I have been busy.

Nearly Complete on conversion of my frontpage web to kompozer://www.hollyhill.biz/
Contracted with Yellowpages.com for a web ad campaign to improve site visitation. There is more to do here but this was a start.
Watch several videos on Web 2.0
And started to add some affiliate banners to my blogs and websites. Below is my first one.

Improve sales - Idea1

2008-12-20T03:53:00.000-08:00

If you have a retail sales business like mine it may be helpful to find out what is selling on EBay. Using Ebay Pulse this is easy. I sell Primitive and luck for me this was a major category. I then looked at the most popular categories under Primitives and I realized I need to make sure I have those items in my actual store and in my online store.

Ongoing work this week to improve my position

2008-12-15T08:29:00.001-08:00

Still a google rank of 3.

OScommerce

This is what I want to get my site too http://online.bearweb.co.za/product_info.php?cPath=21_26&products_id=32
Add more pictures to my OSCommerce site - currently only allows one using ultra pics. Support URL
Want to add the WYSIWYG Editor to OSCommerce so that my text looks better on entry. TinyMCE
I have been watching this guy's videos on setting up OScommerce on UTUBE. Very direct.
My OSommerce Site today not active on 12/15/08 should be by 2009.

Web

Would like to add the look and feel of this free CSS Template to my web.

Link Building

2008-12-14T02:12:00.000-08:00

There are two ways to build traffic to your web. This guy does many videos and he believes that Content and adding links. will build traffic to your website. Last evening I looked at the statistics for my web and guess what. The pages with the most hits were the ones with the content. I must redesign those pages so that I can market the items I have for sale. Attached is a Hay Saw - which has search engine result rank of 1. This is my window to potential customers and I need to do my job better. This is the type of content that will drive traffic to my web.

Marketing Plan

2008-12-13T12:09:00.001-08:00

This is the start of my Plan to market and improve my web.

Simplify my Web http://www.hollyhill.biz/

Use Tools to Plan and Market

Google Web Tools to improve SEO
Google Adwords to select products and set search words and terms
The SEO Book
GraigsList Secrets, Adwords Made Easy, Camtasia 3.0 (Screen capture)
Google Tools Portal

Market My Web

Alexa an internet ranking site - Get their tool bar - I use VISTA and currently not working
Link Building Add more links
Add more Content
Learn how to make video

Submit to seach engins

ONET, DMOZ

Social Net Promotion

Marketing and Buying Tool for Graigslist

2008-12-13T04:46:00.000-08:00

This is a great buying tool for Graigslist. http://www.byebyelist.com/ . I use this tool to buy items to sell and make some money. Times are hard at the moment and any selling tool helps.

dave www.hollyhill.biz

Great Web Designs

2008-12-12T18:21:00.000-08:00

I was really impressed with these designs. These are truely classic webs.

Blog Optimization

2008-12-10T10:26:00.000-08:00

Hints that should help your site be seen. Short, spell correctly, Titles and Tags, etc are all important. Here is a video that may help. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6g_SVk-7ek

Posting a slide Show

2008-12-10T08:32:00.000-08:00

Using the Slide.com site this is my first attempt at a slide show

Several SEO Videos

2008-12-10T06:50:00.000-08:00

I am learning more on SEO and will be making a plan. So I plan to add to this post as I progress.

Good SEO Overview from MSNBC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8v3UnMDC5M .

SEO Overview

2008-12-09T15:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBAJgksyhxo

Good overview with several free tools on doing WEB Site Optimization.

What I Don't Know

2008-12-09T10:21:00.000-08:00

I do not know this subject and I am not an expert. But I am learning and I have found out that people have been doing this for some time. I have heard of a topic - Web 2.0 Marketing - or marketing the social webs. I went to UTube and there is a lot of information on this topic. The link below http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6znKl0fllcw has over 200 videos on this subject and he is not a "Hard sell". I have watched about 5 videos and have enjoyed his presentations.

Become an expert and establish a reputation ideas need to be pursued more.

Dave

Adding a Logo

2008-11-14T07:46:00.000-08:00

This is my new logo created with http://www.logoease.com/LogoEase.aspx . What do you think. I am trying to get a more professional look.

Adding a Slide Show

2008-11-13T18:36:00.001-08:00

For my antiques selling site a slide show like this link http://www.outerbankschristmas.com/gallery.html.

I found the following web site that gives a simpler version of the slideshow and other information as weller.

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/web-development/guides/html/slideshow

Also their are several Java slideshow here that you can try http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex14/

I will try this and let you know how it went.

2008-11-07T03:25:00.000-08:00

I have decided to switch my Ecomerce package to OSCommerce. osCommerce is a powerful open source shopping cart you can install onto your website from the Fantastico Control panel I will begin posting under this topic as my switch progresses.

Tutorials: http://webnet77.com/flash-tutorials/oscmmerce/index.html
Forum: http://forums.oscommerce.com/index.php

Internet Marketing - First Blog

2008-11-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

Business is bad in the retail sector ----- so I thought I would turn to the internet to help me improve my visability and business.