Offering your prospects with free content in inbound marketing is good, or bad?

The most common answer would be, “it’s foolish to provide them with free content, as it reduces the chance of sales.”

From the very general point of view, it’s correct. If you give away free content and information that your paid products/services help solve, who’s going to pay money for it, isn’t it?

Thinking like this is the worst mistake you are committing!

This article is going to change your traditional idea about inbound marketing. You will learn how giving away free content to your prospective customers can actually educate the prospects about the products and services you offer and lead to more profit for your business.

Here are some examples of how the free content offers help to educate your prospects:

1.      Building Trust On Your Brand:

Free offers always attract attention of the people. So, the primary advantage of this policy is that it allows people to spend some times with your brand. At the same time they get introduced to your business. If you posses a quality content, this will help to boost trust in and credibility for your brand. By assuring a positive impression, you can educate the potential prospects about your products and services. This will bring good result in the long run. They would possible start thinking of buying your paid services which would be equally useful to them.

2.      Prospect and Customer Evangelism:

When your prospects will find your brand unique and excellent enough for their demand, they will start sharing those. You would find this content evangelism more helpful than ever. Sharing and promoting your content by the customers and the prospects both would work to generates brand awareness twice than earlier.

3.      Increasing Traffic Rate:

It’s obvious! All these forces work in a chain method. Providing free offer makes people interest to you. If they find those helpful, they would start sharing the content and thus increase your traffic in various ways. It will increase the chance of your SEO and boost organic traffic. Again, promoting your content in the social media network would increase your referral traffic. Other offers like using content in paid marketing methods like email promotions, pay-per-click you’ll increase traffic from paid search and email marketing, at the same time.

4.      Educating your Prospects:

If you want to transform your potential leads into loyal customers, you have to educate them first. The more they will know about business, the more they will get involved with you. Thus you can secure a great number of loyal customers. It is great because these groups of leads are going to lead themselves into leads voluntarily.

5.      Customer Satisfaction:

Every business aims at not only making profits, but also serving their customer in a satisfactory way. Free content offers are the best way to do so. People feel free to purchase products and services well acquainted to them. They will get a clear idea about your brand and will happily spend money on them by this policy. Misconception, misunderstanding, and all other unpleasant cases will remain far away from your brand. A fair brand reputation will help you to lead the market. Well informed customers are the strongest catalyst beyond your direct network.

So, what will you say? Is Free Content offering is good business policy or nor?

I am sure, you know the right answer now!

Traditionally, PR people have always built a strong communication with the journalists relevant to pitch stories related to their assignments. Today, a new arena of communication has been added to the PR professionals. It is the bloggers community they have to concentrate on. They try to update the product reviews, guest posts, and other forms of editorial coverage through the communication with this bloggers. No doubt that they are getting benefitted in creating a larger group of audiences by sharing their contents online.

If you are a PR person, this article is for you! Just go through the following discussion. You will get some innovative ideas to take your PR pitches one step ahead:

Introduce the new Social Media Platform:

This is the age of technology. Everything is changing its traditional role. PR needs to change its tactics too. The sole connection with the reporters to secure reports is not enough. Even the print media is employing multimedia producers. The online journalists have to present reports with videos and slide shows apart from the traditional methodology.

What would be the role of the PR professionals?

Try to offer opportunities for reporters to generate “non-traditional” content; don’t keep it limited by offering just a story line. Again, it is not enough to add this innovation if you fail to secure a wide range of audiences. Here are some specific examples of such kind of Social Media Platforms:

Facebook:

Facebook is the most popular social networking platform. It is also true that, in case of personal branding, there are both the examples of successes and failures in Facebook marketing. In order to achieve success you have to be careful.

How to do that?

First, chose your targeted group. If your interest is on a niche subject, then target the already existing group there. Try to figure out the admin of that group. Provide him with your fresh sample of contents related to their field of interest. Winning the heart of that group can assure you bring your PR pitch popular through Likes, Comments, and Shares.

Pinterest:

An excellent and influential site to help the businesses in expanding their branding! It is growing very fast by attracting both personal and industrial brands. Here you can assure a great number of loyal and valuable followers.

How to do that?

Well, select the pinners of the topics relevant to your product. Build in a relationship with those by liking and re-pinning their contents. Sometimes follow their blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts. Then look for an opportunity to share your content with them. Thus it is easier to build a long lasting a loyal relationship by mutual cooperation.

Instagram:

Everybody knows Instagram! It’s the greatest mobile social network. It’s a photo sharing network, basically. It is important for the professionals because of the importance of mobile marketing policy itself. It can help you grow an authentic network to explore.

How to do that?

Here are some ideas:

• Let’s plan for a “photo-a-day” program! Then invite the Instagram photographers relevant to your brand’s interest.
• You can arrange a contest with exciting prizes and invite users with relevant followings to participate and share everywhere.
• Organizing a “iPhoneography” photo shoot for local Instagram users is also a good idea!

YouTube, UStream and others:

The posting of haul videos on YouTube had been a growing trend, during 2007-2010. A haul video which displays items recently purchased, including product details or even the price is a very effective business tool for professional and personal brands. Now it has been easier for individuals to broadcast shows on YouTube and UStream.

How to do that?

You can take advantage of the brand connection of the hosts and producers of your show. But be sure to do it in a logical way. For instance, try to provide the broadcast with a high-level interview or off-scene footage of the news.

Relevancy Must Be Remembered:

So, before you ask someone to pin your image or share content with a Facebook group, do your homework. Relevancy is rewarded.

It is easy to figure out why relevancy is required. If you want to be a successful PR professional, it is your duty to utilize each option of creating a unique pitch. You can reach the target of ensuring greater media coverage and more followers only if you talk about the relevant topic. So, look before you leap. Always ask yourself whether it is your cup of tea, or not. Relevancy attracts the attention of your targeted audience.

What is personal branding?

It is something that makes you unique; unique in your style, unique in your values, and unique in your service. It may be represented by a name, a logo, a symbol, a design, a tag line, or any other feature which differentiates you from your counterparts. I like to explain it as something more than just a name or symbol. The brand itself is a specific identification that makes you distinct from others and helps to build a firm position in the customers’ mind. This is more appropriate in case of small businesses.

Here ends the introductory speeches. Let’s move forward to the helpline segment:

How to create a unique branding in the competitive market:

Quality is the key:

Most of the small business industries aim to sell to a hungry crowd. A business can only survive and reach to its target, if it offers goods or services that are the best in quality. If the quality of your products or services is above average, hopefully leading the top of the chart, people are bound to follow you.

Handle the customers with care:

To maintain a good quality, your approach is very important. Listen, people do not care enough about what you do, rather they notice how you do that. How you conduct your business is your identity. If you are able to build a link between your core values and the way of your business operation, it would create an ever lasting connection with your clients. This is the powerful force of founding brand loyalty. So, in order to win the hearts of the mass, maintain sound quality of your services with a good approach.

Provide authentic information:

Some of the businesses can not run ahead only because of their lack of honesty and dignity. If you design your business with attractive features, but non-genuine in nature, could be a great disaster! You will lose the faith of your clients in the long run. Be authentic to your statements as well as services.

Dare enough to take risks:

No doubt that you are familiar with the phrase; “no risk; no gain”! There are thousands of ways to reach the top of the success. No one knows which one will work for you. If any possible idea incorporates with your business conduct, never hesitate to try that.

Attempt to please everyone is a vein:

Remember, no one can please every one. It goes beyond human nature. So, don’t try in vein. Select your targeted audience, be caring to their demands and you will find them loyal to your brand. Don’t spoil your uniqueness by being misguided by others’ demands who are not your type. A group of potential customers will play the role of your brand ambassador automatically.

On time every time:

In any kind of businesses, regularity and consistency is must to maintain. Once your valuable customers start to depend on you, you have to keep it up. Make sure to meet their expectations always at the same level. Imbalanced customer service is very harmful to your reputation. Be the same and certain with the characteristics which differentiate you from others.

Just remember the above points next time you are going to serve your clients; you will be successful both in creating a unique brand and standing out of the crowd, I promise!

I am happy to introduce you with Lead nurturing, which is a very important formula in the Email marketing policy of your business.

Researchers say that only 25% of your leads are sales-ready. You will be amazed to know that, another 50% of your leads are qualified enough but not ready to buy from you immediately. Lead nurturing does the job of converting your eligible clients into valuable customers. It’s all about building a consistent and meaningful communication with viable prospects regardless of their timing to buy. It’s not exactly following-up every time to find out if a prospect is ready to buy yet. Rather it is about building trusted relationships with those that are a fit for your solution.

How to Start Lead Nurturing?

Your next question should be: how to start this? Well, generally, lead nurturing program includes: a series of letters, emails, voicemails, case studies, success stories, articles, events, white papers, and web events that are meaningful to your potential customers. If you have made your mind to start with this policy, you must include these 6 types of Emails to help your potential customers to join the existing sale-ready group. Those who have already launched this lead nurturing formula, this article is a guide to them! It will help to improve your sale through Email marketing.

6 Lead Nurturing Tips to Help Your Business:

1.      Instructive Emails:

First priority goes to Emails that educate. This can help you to build the initial level of relationship with your customers. You have to do a short research in order to be successful in this step. Keep your eyes open on your viable prospects. Identify their tastes, their field of interests, hobbies, and outlooks. You can get a clue from their social networking websites where they share their activities and interests. Now, build a link of their points of interests with your products and services. Your Emails should provide instructions focusing on those topics. Try to involve them with you gradually and include them on your sales cycle. Never show too much professionalism rather a helpful attitude.

2.      Connection is the vital issue:

Focus on how you can improve relevance and create higher connection rates. The more you are interconnected, the more you are increasing your chance of reaching your target. Now, how to do that? It’s simple! Use lead nurturing Emails to do that. Invite your customers to join your social networking pages like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter etc. Follow each other, get connected, encourage them to be a subscriber of your blog, and communicate everywhere possible!

3.      Send Emails to Help Them:

You know, people always like to receive helps and instructions to perform better in their lives and career. So, send Emails to help them to serve those purposes. As a case study of a particular person is always different from the other, chose different format to communicate with them. Remember, when your lead nurturing email is focused on helping people on their jobs, you’re focused on doing yours. So, be cordial! Try to create a position of trust and dependency on you and your business. This trustworthy relationship is able to convert them into your reliable customers.

4.      Emails with Exclusive Offers:

“Exciting Offers!”, “Exclusively for You!” these are the terms which help to get stuck your clients attention to your Emails. All the above mentioned tools are effective, but sometimes you need to attract your customers with providing offers for them. To do so, you have to be very careful about both your benefit and the customers’ interest. Neither send same offers to all, nor follow random selection process. Study the customers’ mind. Be clever. For instance, don’t immediately offer “Free Trial” to fresh potential customers, rather observe their site behavior, and nurture them with offers of their interests. Thus convert them into your customers.

5.      Make them  Re-Engaged:

Some times it may happen that your sale prospect map is falling down, or you are not getting expected feedbacks from your customers in spite of your best efforts. Then, try to re-engage them. Follow the policy of “Walking in their shoes”. That is, consider the following concerns that are going through a potential customer’s mind before they make a buying decision:

How will this product/service help my company?

We are doing okay, why do we need it?

Is there another company out there that is better?

Will their solution really work? Can they prove it?

Is the company credible?

Can we afford it?

Your Email should provide them with satisfactory answers of these questions. You can also re-engage them by asking them for giving feedbacks and suggestions. Analyze the feedbacks and assure them that you are trying to improve. Sometimes you may need to weed out leads that would not fit for your business any more.

6.      Personal Intimacy Building:

I know, it’s your business, and you must act professional. At the same time, it is also an effective business policy to overcome your professionalism. Personal interactions are more long lasting than business communications only. Automated nurturing Emails do not work for all. There are some sensitive customers, whom you have to handle with little bit personal care. Emails with personal addressing and friendly tone can help you to shorten your sale cycle.

We are here to help you with 5 simple steps to successful Email marketing. If you are a person already familiar with this, we certainly appreciate! Reading this article is going to help you to improve your policy of Email marketing.

If you are still far away from using this magical tool of flourishing your business among a vast size of people all over the world, it’s not too late. Read this article and follow the steps to start it right now!

Let’s start the discussion!

Here are 5 steps you have to follow:

1. Belong to yourself:

First thing you have to do is to make a list of your loyal subscribers. Then you have to concentrate to belong to yourself. This means never appear robotic. Never write too lengthy and boring ones. Attract your subscribers with stylish, engaging texts. Your Emails must be friendly and cordial, but also not too casual. Being warm with customers is admirable, but you should always maintain a professional tone. Hold a balanced personality.

2. Warm up session:

Going straight to business looks odd and puts a bad impression upon the readers. Try to warm up them first. Build cordiality; make them feel free to follow your words. Then gradually come to the business point. Have you heard about the “Rule of 7”? This rule says that, it takes at least 7 meetings or presentations for someone to get acquainted with other person. In case of online Email marketing this rule is very much appropriate. So, warm up your audience, prepare them to listen to you and your business.

3. Bring changes:

Change and variation are the catchiest words of today’s competitive market. It also goes with the Email marketing. Just think about yourself. Isn’t it annoying to get the same message in the same way about the same thing every time? There is no charm being like this. Try to surprise people.

To do so, you can follow this style: In the first Email, put just introduction, second one may consist about some tips, third one should come with some offers, or exciting news, fourth one may include business matters, next one would be about a funny story or so.

4. Maintain regularity:

Email your clients regularly! This is very important. You can take the help of Auto responders. Just create a marketing campaign in advance, time it, and schedule it in a perfect way. Plan the whole thing is such a way that you can keep in touch with all your subscribers in different groups. Never let a week go without sending Email to them. Maintain a regular interval.

Another fact is that, you should take care of the taste of the customers. Divide them in different groups. Some of them may like to be treated by a very formal way, where some other may like more familiar and friendly approach. Send mails according to their demands.

5. Provide exciting offers:

Above are the basic rules of creating a successful Email marketing network. But those are not enough. You need to understand the human psychology. Be a little bit tricky! Some times attract your customers with some exciting offers, tips regarding matters of their field of interests, give some cool stuff away, and promote suggestions about products and services that you personally like. Thus build a more rapport relationship with them.

People remain confused about how should they get started, how can they expand their branding, how can they leverage the relationships with the customers, and questions like this.

We are here now to show you the ultimate ways to succeed in the new world economy, reach your professional goals, and surpass your competition to clarify your unique features.

Step # 1:

Buy your favorite domain name:

At first, you have to buy the domain name you need. You may get hints from various kinds of websites, for instance atoz.com, firstnamelastname.com etc. Your name should match with your branding. Chose a professional name!

Step # 2:

Register all the social media handle:

Social Media is the most powerful tool to direct you to the pave of success. You should take full advantages of this media. Register your social media handle on each of the available sites now. If you are delayed, you may remain deprived. Don’t let other people get it before you!

How to do it? Create a custom URL on LinkedIn. This is done simply from your profile page; as an example, “LinkedIn.com/in/xyz.com” is better branding–and much more professional–than “LinkedIn.com/#/US42_3907564/user/998”.3.

Step # 4:

Create A Custom Facebook Landing Page:

You can do it to attract the first-time visitors of your Facebook page. Follow the below steps to do so:

• Edit your page under “Manage Permissions”
• Set the page as your Default Landing Tab

At the same time the custom URL should include your brand name rather than “Facebook.com/php?id/18753578998”.

Step # 5:

Concentrate on your profile information:

This is also very important. Be careful to present yourself and your brand in the profile or “about me” section. Introduce both of you and the brand in a brief, but innovative way.

Step # 6:

Insert a professional photograph:

Your image is going to give people an idea about yourself. You are the person to represent the brand. In some cases, you play the role of a brand ambassador. So, keep it in mind and get a professional and perfect image.

Step # 7:

Develop you business pitch:

Put a short description of your aims, and objectives, your target, and policies, your business motto, and morale etc. This helps to develop the sense what differentiates you from others. Remember, your personal blog tag line should reflect your vision.

Step # 8:

Promote your business slogan everywhere:

Make sure that the short business pitch is regarded front and center consistently. Try to highlight the personal statement of your brand everywhere possible. This would help to increase the social media reach of your brand.

Step # 9:

Mark Everything You Do with Your Brand:

Always take advantage of any given situation to link between your brand and the project. Whether you participate in a meeting, a seminar, or a business trip, write a report, or public presentation, each time focus on your brand.

Step # 10:

Print a perfect business card:

Business card is going to represent your personal brand in a professional way. It helps to flourish your business community. Chose a perfect design for your business card. You can either choose those from the websites like VistaPrint.com or Smartlevels.com, or get it done from a professional designer.

Step # 11:

Join as many LinkedIn Groups as you can:

LinkedIn groups are excellent perform for professional peoples. Join at least 10 to 15 groups. These may vary from your present occupation to your once alma mater.

Step # 12:

Try to participate in Twitter Chats:

Here is Twitter with there unique application. You are suggested to participate at least 2/3 Twitter chats every week. For instance, #jobhuntchat on Mondays and #HFChat on Fridays.

Step # 13:

Interact with people:

Try to know the people around you are standing among, your peers, and competitors. Visit their blogs, leave comments there, participate in discussions, and share your opinion with them.

Step # 14:

Build strong personal network:

Remember one thing, you can reach a great social media network online, but personal network is more influential. So, try to attend the networking events in your community regularly.

Step # 15:

Be helpful:

This is the quality going to serve you better than you could imagine. Networking is not the last word, the way you maintain it is most important. Focus on creating a friendly and cooperative image for your brand.

Step # 16:

Follow up:

It’s again about drawing a kind impression to your targeted audiences. For example, input a “follow-up plan” that includes an “I am pleased to meet you”; “here’s something you’d find interesting”; “feel free to contact with me” etc format to show your courtesy.

Step # 17:

Involve:

Your brand will win the heart of people only when you can make them realize that they care for them. Make them know how precious they are to you. Remain engaged with them through sharing and caring.

Step # 18:

Get Connected:

The connectors and subscribers could be the best supporter of your brand. Try to grow a trustworthy, reliable, and constant place to the hearts of your clients. Connection is the key to expand your branding.

Step # 19:

Focus and evaluate:

Now, you have to be clever enough to evaluate your branding policy. Among all the present connections, you have to focus on the most influential ones. Handle those relationships with little more care.

Step # 20:

Maintain the connections:

Don’t always rush to build new networks while ignoring the present existing contacts. Maintenance is more important than importing fresh connections. Keep in mind the influential links of your list and keep in touch with those regularly.

What’s your idea about the above paragraph? It will surely make you curious about Mr. X, his blog and his page in Twitter, if you are a person interested in social media marketing. This is a simple example of social media reaching process. I am going to explain this in such an easy way; you could hardly miss to follow.

Before diving in the deep, I just want to mention what does Social Media Reaching means and why should you try to increase this? Social Media Presence is a highly effective lead generation device for your business. The best way of doing this is to generate a following – fans for your Facebook page, followers for your Twitter account and LinkedIn company page, etc.

Now, if you are ready to concentrate, I am starting:

Rule # 1:

Social Presence Optimization: This is the most logical beginning. If you do not let people know about your presence, then what is the outcome of being? So, let the world know your presence and activities. You can do it by adding a clear description of your business, company logo, website URL in the profile of your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social networking accounts. You can also update your professional activities LinkedIn company status updates with appropriate keywords which will help optimizing your presence by search engines.

Rule # 2:

Try to promote your social presence everywhere in the World Wide Web: Social networking websites allow you to do this. For instance, Twitter has a follow button for the visitors. You can tweet about the latest blog entry comes out on your site, your Facebook status can be about an event organized by your company, with photos. Even your E-mail address signature can provide a link of your website. You can also use the print media advertising, or E-mail marketing messages. Just make the proper utilization of the opportunities that the social media sites provide.

Rule # 3:

Quality content is a pre condition: This is the key to increase social media reach. No matter how much you straggle to establish your presence everywhere in the web, all will fall if the quality is dull. Try to impress your visitors with effective and entertaining contents. Avoid excessive focus on products. Don’t use business languages. Rather use a very warm and friendly tone.

Rule # 4:

Show interest on your business counterparts: You should keep your eyes open to the activities of the same people of your business area. Find them, follow them, and share your opinions with them. Gradually build a relationship with them. Sometimes retweet their contents and encourage them to do so. Thus enter to the circle. Follow back some of the followers. You can use tools like Tweet Grader (http://tweet.grader.com), Twitter Search, and Twellow to identify other Twitter users in your industry. You can also anticipate in Tweeter Chats with them.

Rule # 5:

Add Social Sharing Buttons to All Your Content: Always encourage your fans and followers to share your content to their own networks. Make the task easy by adding social sharing buttons like “Tweet this”, “Share this on Facebook”, “Send this to a friend via E-mail” etc. This will enlarge your community. Again, if those people like it, they will share it again. Thus the cycle will remain open ended.

Rule # 6:

Keep Warm Interaction with Fans and Followers: Let your friends and followers feel that they worth for you. Reply their comments, give feedback of their suggestions, and be engaged in discussions with them. Call them by name and highlight the personal relationship among you.

Rule # 7:

Plan for Exciting Offers for the New Fans/Followers:

 Researchers say that most of the people love to participate in contests and get exciting prizes from business pages. You can use it as a policy of increasing the size of your followers and fans. Create different Facebook and Twitter contests to make it a requirement for users to ‘like’ you in order to be eligible. Make it compulsory for them to follow you by following these simple tricks.

Rule # 8:

Create A Custom Facebook Landing Page: You can do it to attract the first-time visitors of your Facebook page. Follow the below steps to do so:

• Edit your page under “Manage Permissions”
• Set the page as your Default Landing Tab”
• Use the tab to encourage the new visitors to “like” you right of the bat.

So, these all are the essential rules to increase your social media presence. You should follow them if you want better results. Be patient to apply them, and you will certainly get positive feedbacks.

You have to remember that the main theme of online marketing is to converting visitors into buyers. All you have to do is virtually, not with your physical influence. That’s why you need to be a little bit tricky, but in a brilliant way! Let’s discuss some vital steps ahead to an “Effective Internet Marketing”.

Step # 1

Chose a perfect design for your website:

This is the first thing a visitor knows about you. If he or she likes your website at a glance, he or she will spend some moments here. This is the high time to convince them into an interested party, finally into a buyer.

Application:

Chose the design of the website according to the type of your products.  Spend enough money for a good design. This is going to represent your brand quality.

Step # 2

Share your story:

You can earn trust and intimacy with the visitors by telling your story. This would help them to grow a feeling of personal interaction. There could be included a short note about each product, or a brief description about you company. When a customer is informed the background history of a business, it seems more reliable to him or her.

Application:

You can add a section “About Us” or “Know Us” etc. Here is your introduction corner. Make best use of it by choosing words carefully to represent you best.

Step # 3:

Add real photos and videos:

This step is also about achieving trust of the buyers. The best way to do it is adding a real photo to your website. This gives your business a humane look. The photos must look friendly, and descent.

Application:

Add photos of your product houses, group photos of staffs, the Officers, and products also. Let the people feel, “Oh! He is the CEO. Such a cool guy!” You can also insert videos to make it more dynamic.

Step # 4:

Add reviews and testimonials:

Be honest to provide testimonials of the customers. Always add good reviews, but real. This is very important factor to increase your sell. People always want to know about other’s opinion before making the decision of buying it finally. Good reviews with personal details would help you great.

Application:

Ask your customer’s to give you feedback in a generous way. Then sort out the best ones. Post them to your website. Some times inspire the customers to give review by offering a lottery or a surprise gift.

Step # 5:

Add “Call to Action” functions:

Now, let me tell you the funny thing about human psychology, some people always remains confused. Even when they like something, still they hesitate about whether to get it or not. Call to Action can help them to direct the way of purchasing.

Application:

Here are some examples of CTA (Call To Action):

• “Click Here”
•  “Buy Now”
•  “Stock Limited”
• “Order Now and Get  a Free Gift”
• “Offer Expires on…….”

These are the key words to overcome their dilemma and to make their decision immediately.

Step # 6

Offer a Guarantee:

People seeks guarantee. They feel free and secured if a product is tagged “Money Back Guarantee”, or “Free Servicing” etc. It gives them a sense of not being cheated. Customers overcome the final hurdle of spending their money on something which is guaranteed by the seller.

Application:

Put clear statements like, “If the customers are not satisfied with the service, they are welcomed to get back the value”. This simple and direct sentence can guarantee you with a number of customers, many times you expected.

Step # 7:

Be Brief and Straight Forward:

Remember, you must follow the above tips, but in a reasonable way. Don’t try to put as much information as you can. Instead put less but effective. Excessive information will just confuse your visitors. Help them to direct the ultimate goal; that is to purchase your product.

Application:

Put easy steps. Guide customers in each step. Be kind and wise. Earn their trust. Ensure them about the price and quality, and finally help them to buy your product.

Now, I am going to share my assessment about “10 Major Weaknesses of a Retail Website”.

1.      The outlook: The most important thing is the first impression. When a person visits a website, the outlook is the thing which decides the continuity or departure of the visitor. If the website is dynamic, well decorated, and perfectly navigated, people stays longer there. Incomplete links, lack of categorization, broken browser link can destroy your reputation. Most of the time I never return to such annoying websites.

2.      Proper introduction of the products: It’s also a very vital point. Your website should contain a clear and complete description of the products. Just imagine about a sales assistant. Your website should be the online sales assistant. The materials used, origin of the good, size, date of manufacture must be included.

3.      Pricing: In case of price issue, customers like me basically seek for transparency and accessibly. I suggest to put a cross mark on the previous price to avoid confusion. You can add a title like, “New Offer”, or “Deal for This Month” etc to attract price conscious customers.

4.      Information about the Stock available: This is the problem I face most of the time. No information about the storage. Please mention if a product is out of stock. You can also remark when it will be available in future. Make your customers hopeful to restore it soon. Set the option of notifying the interested customers when it becomes available again or recommend other identical products remaining in the stock.

5.      Site Functionality: How do you expect to attract customer’s attention if your site lacks proper functioning? The necessary keys should be available. Include list of items, types of products, price range, and product filtration. Otherwise it will be down!

6.      Information about shipping of the products: The cost and time of shipping is a must. In case of international trading cost of shipping should be converted to the destination currency.  You can lose sale lack of this option.

7.      Images: I am a perfectionist. I like to examine each inch of the product I am going to purchase. The retail websites which do not let me see the images of the product in a satisfactory way, I simply avoid those. High quality photography from multiple angles with a zoom option is customer’s desired one.

8.      Video of the products: Inserting video slides can make your website dynamic. You can include video of the products, process of production, and even exciting fashion show presenting your products.

 9.      Discount: Many peoples remain confused about discount matters. Where to enter their discount code, how to apply for discounts online, on which products are the discounts available are the key questions to the customers. Make those clear in your site.

10.    Website speed: I am doing my shopping in online because I am a busy person. If your website takes too longer to appear, what is my benefit? So, low website speed is the factor to crash your appeal.

How to overcome these problems:

1.      Easy access: Your website should be easy to access. Rearrange all the information about products, price, different offers, terms, and policy of purchase etc. Make it clear and complete.

2.      Payment Procedure: Keep enough information available about payment process, policy, shipping costs and display the price in different currencies.

3.      Analyses customer’s Demand: Monitor your clients demand and assess their opinion about your service and try to improve accordingly.

4.      Live Chat: Try to afford a system of online chat in order to assist your customers immediately.

“What’s your secret?” He asked me.

“It’s magic!” I smiled.

He insisted me and I shared my magical tools with him.

“Do you know about SEO?”

“Of course! It’s Search Engine Optimization.” Lenin looked confident.

“Yah! This is the first thing you have to concentrate. You can let the world know about your blog by optimizing it to Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. You should link back your blog anywhere across the web to establish your presence. This can assure you a number of new audiences rapidly. Again, you can do this by dropping links to your website to the social bookmarking sites; StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and others. It will help to increase the visibility of your blog and guide a active reader community towards your site.”

I paused. Lenin wanted to know more.

“Ok. There are some strong factors to help optimizing your blog for search. You must have an account in the social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr etc. Your each new blog link can be your Facebook status, or you can simply tweet about the latest blog to notify your followers. The friends and followers will rush to your blog and you will be able to create an online community.

I should tell you more about the usefulness of online community. Your blog may have contents of specific niche (niche means the very core part of a whole thing, for example, gardening is a greater issue. Roof gardening in summer is a niche). Then you have a targeted audience. This group has interest about an unusual topic which is not available everywhere. Your blog could be their favorite one. They will visit yours regularly.”

We had a Tea break and then discussed the policy of attracting people to a new blog again.

“Friend, one thing just came to mind that you can offer contests for the visitors with exciting prices as I do. This leads different types of people to your blog. Once they like it, they will follow it.”

“That’s brilliant! What else do you do?”

I continued, “You should make a sense of personal interaction with your followers. Let them feel that you care for them. Comment is a great factor here. You get feedback of the readers directly from those comments. So, be kind about their demands and expectations, you would be gainer”.

“I always visit the similar types of blogs of my counterparts. I get new ideas there and try to improve that. I invite them to my one, share my link and idea. This open door policy helped me too much to enlarge the size of my followers. “

Lenin added, “But, what about the quality?”

“This is the most vital point, no doubt! All these policy will run only if your writing possesses a sound quality. Be a perfectionist, be a researcher. Be honest and dedicated to your readers. Check and recheck your content. Publish it only when it seems to be the best of your ability. You can allow a friend to evaluate it before publishing publicly.”

“Is that all, friend?”

“Last but not the least, chose a catchy title for your resourceful writing so that people are attracted to your blog like a metal to a magnet”.

“Thanks, dear!”

Lenin followed my tips and he is now enjoying plenty of followers and admirers of his blog. I feel proud to know my suggestions were effective.