What are the biggest obstacles that you have found stand in your way when trying to market your business on the internet?
Challenges keep many from ever realizing their dreams, but for others working through challenges is THE PATH to living the life they always dreamed of…so doesn’t it make sense to get those obstacles out in the open, work through them so you can get to the other side?
I know when we started out over 10-years ago, some of the obstacles were different – but many remain the same as they did then.
Here are 4 of the most common obstacles – why not leave us a comment with yours?
1. Finding a Niche Market or Product — We help many people with existing businesses or who are just starting out to get a handle on finding their niche markets or figuring out how to create or find a top selling product that will sell online. This is the most common obstacle for one reason…your market and your products ARE your business. So asking these questions is really asking “Who are my customers”, “What can I offer to them that they badly want and will pay for”, “How do I add considerable value to their lives” and “How can I stand out so they know I have what they want?”Â
Pretty heavy questions right?Â
But at least now you know what the REAL questions are – it’s often not about the niche market or what product to sell as much as it is who is my customer, what do they want and how do I give them what they want in a way that is – at least – slightly different than the competition
2. Creating or Finding A Killer Product. After you have identified your target customer and uncovered a desire they have, then the next challenge becomes matching that with a product they will find valuable. By starting off with a good understanding of your customer and their desire you are already ahead of the majority. But we can go further.  What I always like to do is find products that are already selling well and learn why. By looking at directories (that give you sales rank like Amazon, Ebay or Clickbank) you can get a sense for top sellers in your category. Another way is to look at what affiliates are promoting within your space, they tend to be the better selling products. Next, you reverse engineer those products. Who are they targeting? What is the BIG question they are answering? What HOPE do they give to the reader? What approach do they take to providing the information? What ELSE can you think of that would go beyond what they have produced – this is the key to your own successful product
3. Generating Traffic, so you have your market, you have your product or service and you may even have a website or blog…but you are only getting a hundred or so visitors a day (or less) – how can you really ramp that up for success. The answer lies with the right combination of in-demand keywords and content. Should you mess up on either of these, you will fail to see any reasonable traffic or sales. You need to test different keywords to see what keyword searches are most likely to bring buyers to your site AND you need to develop content on mass around those keywords. Developing content with keyword research will lead to wasted time and effort. Researching keywords without a strong content plan leads to unused knowledge.Â
4. Improving Conversions. In general, when someone first comes out with a new sales page for a product or service their conversion is pathetic – often less than .2% meaning that it takes more than 800 people visiting your site before you make a single sale. The way to improve conversions involves:
- Knowing your target customer
- Understanding the keywords they use to find the value you offer with your product
- Studying other successful sites in your niche
- Having a sales funnel that warms up your visitors (opt-in, email marketing, blog, etc…)
- Leverage affiliates to send you traffic that they have pre-sold
- Test different versions of your sales site simultaneously – always be testing – use Google Website Optimizaer as a simple, free split test tool, that will get you started
This covers a good many aspects of internet marketing that people find hard, what can you add to the list?
