How to get the most from your web promotion.
By Paul Easton
Posted Thursday, July 1, 2004
One of the biggest problems on-line is getting the most "bang"
for your buck, and what I mean is the age old question of "What
is the best way to get visitors to my site?"
Large companies, off-line focus on "branding" themselves-
becoming a well known . One of the best examples would be
amazon.com for books.
The biggest exposure for branding is TV because this is the
easiest and quickest way to got into millions of homes. But
times are changing. Here's an example:
I happened to notice a TV ad from a large successful company.
It featured a special offer and directed people to their web
site. Not the exact site but:
(http://www.thesite.com/tv)
The big companies are starting to wake up! The link above is
tracking responses from the advertising and it's something you
can do with your business on-line and off.
Below I'll explain how you can track your advertising... Small
warning here, it's slightly technical but not too hard. :)
What the company has done is created a folder, just like the
ones on your computer with 1 web page in it the actual web page
name would be index.htm or index.html.
When you go to a folder, the page that is automatically seen in
the index page. So... (http://www.thesite.com/tv) is actually:
(http://www.thesite.com/tv/index.htm)
The folder name being "tv"
This page will "redirect" to the special offer or the home page
every time a visitor comes to the page. When it redirects it
also "counts" each visitor. They can also count sales and
calculate exact profit and effectiveness of the advertising
quickly.
This is called "cloaking" a link and is not new. It simply
means the true address of the page is not shown. The way you can
use this in your business is that it can help those that think
they have seen an offer before and also it can be used for
affiliate programs.
You may get a much better response for advertising that has a
link of: (http://yoursite.com/free) than an affiliate link like:
(http://www.thesite247.com/a/signup.cgi?id=123)
The process is actually not that hard.
Ok lets create your special redirect page its called a 'Meta
Refresh" page. There are other ways to do it but this is the
easiest.
By the way, you must have your own website for this to work.
Use Windows NotePad program or any plain text program. Follow
the below steps:
1. Copy the following text:
<#HTML>
<#HEAD>
<#META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh"
content="0;URL=(http://www.thenewsite.com) ">
<#TITLE>redirect
<#META NAME=robots CONTENT="noindex,follow">
<#/HEAD>
<#BODY> #Please wait…
<#/BODY>
<#/HTML>
2. Paste it into NotePad
3. Remove all the # symbols
4. Edit "(http://www.thenewsite.com)" to the site you want it to
go to.
5. Choose "save as" from the save menu of NotePad and save it
as "index.htm" or "index.html"
Now you have a page that will redirect a new page or site, to
check it you should be able to click on the file you have
created and it will open your Internet browser, show "please
wait" and then load the site you have specified.
If you save the file in a folder called "new" and then upload
it to your web site, then you can use:
(http://www.yoursite.com/new) for any promotion.
Now you have a clean link than does not show the destination
web address.
Now we want to take it one step further and know what response
we are getting from the advertising. Tracking is very important
as you need to know what is most effective for your business,
saving both money and time.
There are a 2 different ways you can track the response:
1. An installed script -This is a special program, installed on
your hosting to track both responses and sales.
Example of this type would be:
(http://www.adtrackz.com/)
This full-featured script comes installed for you and has some
excellent features, especially for those who are working with
affiliate programs. It has a nice demo so you can see how it
runs.
2. Third party services -This provide the same process,
normally at a monthly cost with no install required
Example of this type would be:
(Http://www.Adminder.com)
A very known and used tracker with some great tools. Which you
can test drive at no cost
(http://www.Hits2Links.com)
This is a full featured tracker and combined statistics program
which also tracks keywords from search engines, actually sales
from specific words on PPC search engines. And has a super easy
setup program, which can put the links in all your pages in
minutes.
Using the method above you can also track how many visitors on
your site click on different link text, creating better
conversion from your visitors. You can use as many of the
redirects as you need, allowing you to compare real numbers.
The Internet being such a vast space, it's important, actually
crucial to your success, to know which efforts you are using are
bringing the best results.
(This article is available for reprint simply by adding the
below Bio)
About the Author
Paul Easton is the editor of Power Promotion Plus. Subscribe
free to Power Promotion Plus and learn how to increase traffic
on a budget. Sign up now and get your 3 gifts:
1.Free Meta Tag Software
2.Unofficial Pop Up Windows Crash Course and
3.Affiliate Marketing Plan Builder - A step by step guide to a
successful affiliate marketing program.
(http://www.CreateToolbar.com/)
------------------------------------------------------
