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Selling a product usually takes one of two routes
- either seller finds the buyer or buyer finds seller. Here seller
means manufacturer/producer and all its representatives in the distribution
channel like agents, distributors etc. As exporter - your sales
strategy for overseas markets should draw input from both sources.
In previous article, we discussed the first route - how to locate
buyers from various resources including desk research. In this article,
we discuss how to attract buyers towards your product.
The buyer community does not know about you or your products. In
order to help them locate you - your visibility must increase. You
have to make the job of locating you simple and convenient. Some
of the way of achieving that are
- Advertisement
- Promotion (e.g. direct mail)
- Trade Shows
- Web-Site
- Search Engine etc.
Advertisement
Advertisement in print and electronic media
is an excellent way of increasing visibility and brand building
in domestic market. However, most of it is impractical for overseas
markets for obvious reasons. Most small and medium enterprises (SME)
can not afford to look beyond small advertisement in overseas trade
journals or association newsletters
Promotion
Direct mail campaign was perhaps the only affordable
promotion tool in pre-internet days. Though e-mail has taken most
of its sheen today - printed letters still remain a viable promotion
tool in this age of large scale spam and e-mail-based viruses. For
more information on direct mail, specially how to write an effective
sales letter please read Faida Article series on Writing
Effective Sales Letter On-Line Marketing
The Internet is a huge market place where millions
of visitors are surfing through billions of web-pages everyday.
The most effective and in-expensive way of making yourself visible
today is to make best use of Internet. The challenge lies in promoting
your business web site in such a way that potential buyers visit
your web-site, make contact with you and ultimately buy your goods
and services.
A business can use a range of online marketing techniques to promote
and advertise its web site and its products. Let us examine the
tactics typically used to attract visitors to a site
Visirors of Your Web-Site
Contrary to popular belief - web-site promotion
does not start and end with search engines. True, search engines
play extremely important function in making your web-site visible,
but it will be a mistake to overlook other avenues of getting quality
visitors
Let us examine from where site visitors come from and how to maximize
each traffic channel:
- Direct Visitors : Those who type in your domain name
and go directly to your site. The following three key tactics
are regularly used to increase direct visitor traffic: memorable
domain names, offline advertising and promotion, and viral marketing
- Search Engine Visitors : Those who search for your
name, product or service. There are different types of search
engines that have different rules for sorting and displaying
search results. It is important to:
- prepare the Web site coding to optimize it for search engines
- get listed
- learn about paid listing options
- Linked Visitors : Those who link to your site from
another site. Here are ideas for some ways to increase the quantity
of links to your site: free links from business associations,
government, supplier and customer sites, paid links from industry
associations, resource sites, online malls, directories, banner
ads placed strategically where your target audience will see
them, mailing list ads on lists that target a specific interest
group.
- Target e-Mail Visitors : Those who click through to
your site from an e-mail
We shall discuss details of each traffic channel in subsequent issues.
Happy and Productive Surfing
Dr. Amit K Chatterjee
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