How to Websites | Best Websites | How to Create The Best Websites For Your Target Audience
Friday, November 20, 2009 at 12:40AM
Websites are the medium people most talk about when they talk about the Internet. Websites come in many forms and have many functions. There are sites that are nothing more than data-storage centers. You go to them to find something. There are websites for shopping. Websites for news. Websites for advice/education/training ( like mine). Websites for auctions. Websites to watch sex. Websites to plan travel. Websites to register your opinion. Classified websites. The list goes on and on. Each kind of website is unique. Yet so much of the advice you read about websites is singular. It makes as much sense to make blanket marketing rules for all websites as it does to apply shopping-center selling strategies to daily newspapers. And websites are only one only one group of Internet Media. In addition to websites, we have video, e-mail, banner ads, insert ads, e-zine advertorials, and much more. Each of these Internet business venues has a unique nature and purpose. But, again, so much professional Internet marketing advice lumps all these things together. That of course is internet marketing suicide . . .
So Here's How to Sort It All Out
Most of the early claims about online marketing were based on the (wishful?) proposition that the Internet was going to change human nature. It didn’t.
Thank God it didn’t. Those of us who have built businesses by understanding human nature are happy to be able to apply the same old principles to the new media. And that gives us a very valuable clue. If you accept the idea that the old rules apply, you can be successful on the Internet by figuring out figuring out which rules apply to what situations.
The secret to doing that is to look for resemblances. What does e-mail resemble?
Direct mail, of course. And if my theory is true, that would make it possible to make good money by sending e-mail solicitations to a list of people with common interests.
What else? Internet insert ads resemble fractional space ads in magazines. And guess what? They work like them too.
Banner ads look like billboards to me. If you know how to make billboards work, you might be able to do wonders with banner ads. (Instead, thousands of companies have spent billions of dollars treating banner ads like I don’t know what – maybe silly business cards – and they haven’t worked.)
Internet classified ads – and advertorials – look like, and work like, classified ads in newspapers. Websites that act as magazines should use the layout and advertising approach that magazines use. The same holds true for websites that resemble department stores. Or websites that are, essentially, daily newspapers.
Figure out what an Internet medium resembles and apply the rules that have always worked on its corollary. Chances are you will be very close to right on.
The trueset reason for most failure in online marketing is the ignorance of the gung-ho internet business owner to direct response marketing strategies & principles that produce massive predictable results.
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