HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS ON THE INTERNET When it’s done right, taking your business to the Net can generate qualified leads from around the country or even around the world every day. Over the Internet you can get information to prospects right away before they lose interest. You can communicate with business associates anywhere in the world without spending a cent on long distance phone charges. You can email your sales presentation in seconds without it costing you anything to print or mail it. You can even set up autoresponders to automatically send your sales material out over the Internet within seconds to those who ask for it. This is not a fad that will come and go. It is a major paradigm shift that is already starting to transform business practices and procedures in the same way as credit cards, fax machines, voice mail, conference calls, satellite dishes, and computers have done in recent years. This is Electronic Commerce - the new marketing system that uses the sophisticated, cutting-edge technology of the Internet. A commercial revolution is taking place, and you can be positioned to take full advantage of its fantastic profit potential! If you desire to take your business to a higher level by contacting more people than you ever thought possible, then you’ll want to take a close look at including electronic commerce in your marketing plans. If you want to be truly successful, you’ll want to eliminate the high costs involved in trial and error and learn exactly how to set up your business on the Net. Imagine conducting business the way Tom does. He is a network marketer selling nutritional products. He used to conduct business the traditional way - spending a lot of time talking to potential customers and distributors about ways to save and prepare for the future. Also he spent a lot of time mailing out brochures, tapes, and videos about his program and products. It took an incredible amount of time to respond to all the requests for information that he was generating through his ads and direct mail campaigns. He couldn’t believe the tremendous amount of money he was spending on advertising, printing, packaging, and postage - all expenses that had to come out of the income from his monthly commission checks. Then one day Tom met someone who explained how he could put his business on autopilot while at the same time expanding his exposure on a global scale. The first thing Tom did was to get Internet access with email capabilities and set up his Home Page on the World Wide Web. His page is like a storefront that contains information about his products and program. It contains links to his other pages which explain these in more detail. Tom has made sure that the electronic public can easily find his web site in alphabetical topical indexes or through keyword searches in directories called Search Engines on the Internet. For instance, someone searching for information on business opportunities or nutritional products would find Tom’s listing in several Search Engines. With a simple click of the mouse on his listing, they are transferred within seconds to his page. Also Tom publicizes the existence of his Home Page by posting its location in a tagline at the end of any contribution he makes to newsgroups and mailing lists on the Internet. He makes a point to read several of these newsgroups every week, and where applicable, participates in discussions that relate to his products or program. Sitting at his computer, he regularly gets involved in discussions on alternative health, nutrition, and MLM. He cannot advertise directly in these discussion groups, but he finds ways to mention his products through the sharing of ideas and information. For instance, in a discussion group for diabetics, he was able to mention how a friend of his was able to better regulate his blood sugar by taking a special nutritional formula for the pancreas. In his tagline at the end, he listed the URL (location on the World Wide Web) of his web site, which gives information about this product, and he gave his email address. Readers who were curious either emailed him directly to ask about the product or logged onto his page and clicked for the autoresponder to send them information. Tom set up his pages with autoresponders with all of his program and product information available for inquirers. Autoresponders are software that automatically send out information when emailed. For instance, by following a link from his Home Page, Suzanne, a potential customer, is taken to a page with details about a product which helps allergies. She is interested and clicks her mouse on the spot indicating that she can ask for more info. Up pops a place for customers to leave their email addresses. Suzanne does so, and the autoresponder automatically emails her a copy of a product brochure which Tom had scanned. Also included was his MLM company’s toll free order number and Tom’s ID number. Suzanne can order the product without Tom ever having to talk to her or mail her anything, and Tom will get the commission. Tom has separate Home Pages for each of his products and for his business opportunity, each with autoresponders ready to send out information within seconds to anyone who asks for it. Without autoresponders, each of Tom’s Home Pages could have been connected to Tom’s own email box, but then he would have to individually answer each inquiry. The service Tom uses for his web site and autoresponders automatically sends him the email addresses of every person who has asked for info. That way he can send them follow-up material. Everyone with any marketing experience knows that many people often will not order products or become involved in a network marketing program with only one contact. Follow-up is the key. With email Tom can inexpensively contact people again and again. Sometimes it takes five or six follow-up email messages before a person decides to participate. Tom could never before afford to follow up this many times when he was working by phone and mail. Now he maintains email mailing lists, types in a follow-up message once, and electronically zaps the same message to several people at once with a few clicks of his mouse. As you can see, Tom’s business is often on autopilot. While he’s at the beach or asleep in the middle of the night, people are accessing his web site and getting information about his products and program. Tom also maintains a FTP site which contains all the sales literature and downline training materials that he produces or scans. His downliners have his FTP address on the Internet and can download any of these materials that they wish to use on their own World Wide Web sites. Also Tom has a link to his FTP site on his main Home Page. His FTP site not only contains text files describing his products and program, but it also contains a catalog of his products with pictures. Anyone accessing his web site can download this to his own computer to read through at his own leisure. Tom also posts a monthly newsletter to his downliners in his FTP site. They download it to their own computers and email Tom news and suggestions for the coming month’s newsletter. Before putting his business on autopilot on the Internet, Tom made sure that his web site location would be in a high traffic area. He chose a location used by many small businesses with links to each other through a main location page. He made sure that his service provider would give him the ability to set up unlimited Home Pages and unlimited autoresponders with no extra charges for adding new ones or changing old ones. Also he chose a provider which would not charge him for the number of times his pages were accessed. These features were important to him because he did not want to be penalized for expanding his business. What Tom is doing is an example of what you could be doing. Now you may be wondering, &quo;Just how can I advertise on the Internet?&quo; That’s where your own web site comes in. The World Wide Web is where you can publish complex multimedia documents about your business. You can display text and graphics and include sound if you want. It may be enough to have just one document (page) as sort of an electronic business card or one page advertisement on the WWW. However, in order to really establish an active commercial site, you need to be able to publish multiple documents and link them together. For instance, your main page can introduce your products and services. On that page could be links to other pages. The reader moves from page to page by clicking her mouse. Each other page could contain specific information about individual products or your business opportunity. On those pages the reader can access autoresponders which will automatically email her more detailed information. When choosing a web site on which to advertise, look for a service where you can have an unlimited number of web pages at no additional cost. Many providers will offer you one Home Page for a low price but do not provide for additional pages or only do so for considerable cost. On average you’ll need at least 10 Home Pages linked together for a commercial site. Be aware that some service providers will charge you every time you change your web page. Look for a provider which won’t do this. You need the flexibility to be able to make changes in web pages just as you make changes in your other advertising. If rewording or adding a graphic is necessary to increase your business, you should be able to change it. In order to advertise effectively on your World Wide Web site, you need autoresponders, email links from your Web site, FTP and a busy location. If a service provider does not offer you all of these, look elsewhere. Let’s take a look at how these tools are used and what you should be looking for. Thomas Heimann, president and founder of Global Entrepreneur’s Network, a global network marketing organization for electronic commerce which provides affordable Internet presence solutions to businesses in 26 countries, describes autoresponders in this way: &quo;Autoresponders (aka mailbots) are programs that will automatically send out a document to anyone who requests it - instantly and via email. The principal is very much like fax-on-demand. You can use autoresponders to dispatch sales literature, catalogs, detailed information, manuals, and the list goes on. Autoresponders work for you 24 hrs/day, 7 days per week, non-stop.&quo; When asked about selecting a Web service offering autoresponders, he specified, &quo;When selecting an autoresponder service, keep the following in mind: - Don’t select an autoresponder service that requires you to put a keyword into the subject line or message body. Many people will simply forget or mistype something and they will never receive your document. Be sure that each autoresponder document has its own unique email address. - Be very wary of services that only provide you with autoresponders for one document and then charge you for additional documents. In order to effectively use autoresponders, you need to be able to use more than just one document. On average you have to figure 5 to 10 documents capability even for a small business. If your service charges per document, the bill either adds up very fast or you are short changing yourself and are not benefitting from the possibilities autoresponders offer. - Another warning sign: Services that charge you for changes to your autoresponders. You need to be able to provide up to date information to your prospects/clients and charges for copychanges add up very quickly.&quo; The address of your web site is important too. You don’t want your website to have a really long address. It is imperative that your address is easy to remember since one misspelling means your prospect will not be able to find your Home Page on the web. If you have registered you domain on the web, the service provider should let you use that as your web page address. Unless you are offering enough useful, unique and valuable content to make your site a high traffic site by giving people not only a reason to visit you but also to return, your site will probably get lost amidst millions of other www sites. That’s why changes to your web pages are necessary. Make them informative and entertaining. Also if you choose a service provider which draws people to its site and has links to your site, it will help generate traffic to your own page. Be very careful about sites that offer only advertising space with little or know informational content. People will not have much reason to visit them. Many providers will charge you a surcharge for traffic or hits over a certain number. Be very careful. You have absolutely no control over how many people will browse your site once you begin registering your site with popular search engines. Traffic can increase rapidly and charges add up quickly. Therefore when choosing a provider, find one which allows unlimited hits to your site. One of the MOST important aspects of setting up your web site is choosing the right server and connection. Unfortunately anyone can decide to start an online mall. Most providers are simply renting hard disk space on their local service provider’s machine and are at that provider’s mercy. All too often a provider goes out of business or drastically increases rates, which causes the entire mall either to disappear or rates to suddenly change after you set up your site and began to promote it. Do not ever go with a presence provider that does not have its own server inhouse! Speed of connectivity is another important factor; you don’t want people to wait forever to have pages download because a slow connection is overburdened. When you decide to put your entire online business into the hands of a presence provider, make sure that backup procedures are in place. The last thing you want to happen is for your entire online venture to suddenly disappear into nowhere if they have a fire or other disaster. They should have a mirror server at a different location for everyone’s protection. If all the provider will do for you is provide you with space for your Home Page, you should look elsewhere. Most people new to advertising on the net are not able to just put up a page. The provider should provide templates, authoring software, or even people trained to help you develop your page. If you have large documents, such as a catalog of products or a training manual for your downline, that you want to make available to people via the Internet in it’s original format, or have software that you would like to distribute freely, you need to have your own FTP site. Your potential customers and downliners can download whatever you have available on your site within minutes.