How Selling Automobiles Helped To Increase My Online Traffic

Get Your Copy of My Free Traffic Report (Link Below)

Once upon a time, many years ago my life was the automobile business.   Everything I did between wake and sleep revolved around moving automobiles; sales, management, internet set up and maintenance.  Eighty-hour weeks were not uncommon.  

This is not a tale about what I did; it is my way of sharing my experiences so that it could help you more easily understand how to leverage the internet if you own a site, affiliation or net working opportunity.   The intention is that you will be better able to maximize your success on the internet.    

Bare with me a little here and it will start making sense in a minute.  The comparison begins with compensation.  As an online business owner everything depends on you.  What you do will determine what you are paid.  You are in essence an independent contractor.    

There is an expression in the automobile business; “playing the numbers game”.  Long hours at work become play when you begin to count numbers.  That’s until you start counting the number of hours you are actually working.  Your success is determined by the number of “Ups” or “Ops” you were able to come face to face with to talk, test drive, negotiate and close a deal.  Success is in the numbers.  

Online it’s the number of clicks, views or conversions, most importantly the number of unique visitors.  This is the source of your leads and sales; your income.

An online business, just like an automobile dealer must be perceived as credible, transparent and ready to serve the visitor.   

 There is a reason why salespeople in retail automobile sales wear a suit and a tie or at least a tie.  Image affects credibility; people tend to believe people who took the time to dress up.  But that does not guarantee sales because you are all dressed up.  Same thing happens online.  

The salesperson or web site must have specific details about the product. Product knowledge for automobiles and useful content online are also essential sales conversion elements.   

By now you must be making the connections yourself. 

If not, I think you would agree that an automobile dealership or a web site without visitors will yield the exact same results.  B=Visitors is what keeps them both in business.  Now let’s leave the automobile industry and focus online.  How can you get more traffic to your web site?    

First you must realize that getting traffic is a process and not an event.  

That means that although a surge of traffic brought on by a single adverting campaign may sound attractive it’s only the beginning.  If the website is not set up to make sales, capture names and email addresses or in some way interact with visitors the traffic is futile.  What is window shopping?

On the other hand, if the site is ready to leverage the possibilities results can be entirely different.  It will still need traffic but if you add to it the capability to automatically attract visitors you will have an automatic success.   A web site needs a continuous flow of unique visitors week after week, month after month and year.     

Sustainable traffic is the problem.  What is the solution?

Funny thing is that the best things in life are free.   I may be a coincidence that the best source of traffic is free.  Search engines can provide most of the free targeted traffic.  It is free but you will not build your business only on search engine traffic.  It can be a long complicated process for a beginner. 

Guess what?  There are a number of sources for free traffic all over the internet, some good and others not so good.  Noteworthy targeted traffic generators like Google Adwords, other pay per click tactics will generate traffic but they can become very expensive in the hands of a novice.   Only engage these paid services when you have a better understanding of your options and how to use the traffic generating software that is available.  Remember you just don’t want traffic, you want sustainable traffic.  

Where do you start?

If you have a web site or even if you an affiliate or MLM nothing is more important than you understanding everything you can about internet traffic.  In fact you should do that before you get involved with any other opportunity or program.  You want to peel away the layers of traffic generating tactics and find the ones that work your product or service.  

That’s your first step.  When you can step back and look at the variety of ways of generating traffic, then choose the most appropriate one for your type of product or service is the first step in your preparation.  This is not a step you should skip.  Learn by trial and error which traffic strategy is best for you.  

Someone took the time, did the research and identified the proven, effective and free marketing tools you can use to begin understand how to play the numbers game with your online traffic. 

Begin with a Free Traffic Report.   Go Here

Are You Always Open For Business?

Why Every Offline Business Must Have An Internet Presence

Find purpose, the means will follow. -Gandhi


Traditional business entrepreneurs globally and especially in developing countries like Trinidad and Tobago, still justify and rationalize not having a website.

Many of these businesses were started by successful entrepreneurs who never used the Internet and cannot see any reason to change. To be sure, many are not computer literate. they would readily admit the importance of a computer to their business but the internet, that’s different basket of flowers. The reality is that without a website many of these businesses will not survive, every business need to have a web presence. Fact is that if they are successful without a site, they have the potential of exponentially increasing their success with a well managed website.

With the downturn in the economy many traditional businesses models are being challenged, they are no longer working. Yet these traditional entrepreneurs still resist establishing a web presence. The real problem is that they do not understand the internet and how it could be used to reinvent their business. It’s the old adage about not being able to think outside of the box. Their business models worked for them before and maybe are still working; so why fix it? The simple answer is that the world was changed by an innovative information reservoir, it's so unlike what existed 20 to 30 years ago. The Internet cannot be ignored.

Granted, it can be challenging for some offline businesses to conceive of a model that will work for them online but there is one thing that every business needs and wants; that is 24/7 advertising. The internet affords businesses the ability to present their products and services to anyone at any time of the day or night. For this reason alone every business should have a web presence, even if it’s a brochure site identifying what the business does or sells. It does not have to be an information product that customers can purchase directly on line and download. It can be any product or service.

For example, in the mid eighties I worked for a large automobile dealership in Boston Massachusetts that did not have a web presence. I suggested building a web site and ended up managing one of the largest automobile dealership’s Internet departments in the Boston metropolitan area. This dealership did not need to sell more cars, they were selling over 200 new and used units every month. The biggest question for the dealers was; How can we sell a car online?

The way the automobile business operated at the time, it really took some thinking outside the box but the business developed. Soon the dealership was selling over $250,000 more in gross revenue in a month. Today, every large car dealer in Metropolitan Boston has a website. A dealership websites provided exposure, information about the dealership, the makes, models and the potential deals available. The result was that the dealership developed its own leads and avoided the usually high cost of third party lead providers like Autobytel.

Although we never changed our business model offline we had to develop another, complete with pricing and operational change to accommodate the internet customers. For example, it was not unusual to accept a $100 profit on a vehicle for an internet customer. If that same customer found an ad in the newspaper normal offline prices and operating procedures applied. The rationale was that the internet customer had all the information on the vehicle at their finger tips. They knew the invoice price the dealer paid and they also had a long list of dealers they could purchase the vehicle from. Price in this case was not the selling factor, location i.e. proximity to their home and the importance of after purchase service were the selling points for internet customers.

The challenge for offline business, therefore, is to develop an online business model that works for the business.

What is important to note here is that the website provided leads that purchased vehicles offline, a web site can only provide information like makes, models, people, process and even a map to the dealership. Truly, there is no other advertising medium that matches the ability of the internet to share detailed information to potential customers. As was said before, access to your business information is the primary reason for your business should be online but there is more:

1.New users come to the net every month by the millions some of them are definitely your customers, if you not online, your chances of getting their business is nil.

2.The investment for a business to get online has been gradually been reduced. In some cases its free, web sites or free blog like blogger or wordpress, Even without site build building abilities user can use drag and drop technology to build their own free site like yola.

3.Because the internet is now one big reservoir of information, whatever you put online stay there. For example take a look at one of the first sites I ever published on the net in March 2000, I am not proud of it and don’t use it anymore but the point is that it still exist on the net on today WayBackMachine see here.

A mentor once said to me, “Boy”, (I didn’t mind, because at the time, I was a boy). He said: “Boy, if you want to be good at anything, it takes time.” He went on to say; “for example, it takes about 1000 hours to know anything really well. That is, you would have to put in at least that amount of time to really know the in and out of a skill, topic, idea or discipline". He went on to say that if I really wanted to become an expert I would need to put at least 10,000 hours into it.

I responded with a loud, “OUCH”, but he was right.

Not everyone can jump in and do it, there is a learning curve. If your business is still not on the internet, any marketer would recommend that you give it serious consideration. This is one case of, not if but when. The longer you take to get there, the longer it will take for your content, your business information to establish a real presence on the net. Remember as an independently owned business, you set the rules, you decide what you will like to present to the public and how you will present it to maximize the potential profits to your offline business. You may even have to tweak your offline business model but the bottom line is to generate more business.

Unfortunately, there are web designers and web developer who quote ridiculous prices for building a simple 3-5 page web site. As a rule most expensive web designers are not internet marketers, they know how to build websites not market them. Consequently, many small businesses become disillusioned when their huge investment in a web site quickly finds itself in the internet cemetery. A lack of internet marketing ability is the main reason why most small businesses shy away from establishing a web presence. To be completely honest, I agree with their rationale. Why spend money to build a site when it generates no significant ROI?

If that’s how it works out, like them, I would just stay offline.

The internet has always been a free medium, the spoils though, go to the entrepreneurs who understand how it works. It is an incomprehensible reservoir of information that astounds the imagination. There is so much information that if your business is not online, someone, somewhere with a business just like yours’; is online. Dominating the online market locally or globally, but put this in your pipe and smoke it, if you have a small business and you are not on the internet you are losing money.

Tony Puckerin is an Internet Marketing Consultant that can help you put your offline business on line, He uses time tested offline Guerilla Marketing strategies and tactics to improve your business performance. Find out more about Tony Puckerin

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