The Sales Funnel

Once you have a listing of products and services that you know are of interest to your viewers, you need to set up a sales funnel to market to people coming to your site. Initially, as discussed, you are going to connect and listen to any newcomer's input to determine which group he/she belongs in. If he/she doesn't self-identify, add him/her to a basic group that starts with low-cost/high-value products or services.

Each step of the way, you are going to try to determine (based on his/her actions) if you are marketing to him/her correctly and if you are being successful. The way to do this is to keep track of what he/she is buying and then have a ready rung of promotions to roll out when he/she picks anything. Each promotion then might have three levels, and each level might offer five to ten products initially. You just rotate through the products on a level until he/she bites, then you can promote him/her to another level or continue to offer him/her more products on the same level.

Time Your Sales Promotions

Planning a year ahead of time isn't really that far-fetched. Once Christmas is over for this year, you'll want to think about Christmas for next year. How do you plan on making money with the different concerns that arise from different issues each month? If you understand society, you understand that there are some major trends that happen every so often, like tax season, holidays, and special occasions. Don't just market as if none of that is happening in the background. Instead, seek to time your sales promotions to make use of what might be foremost in everyone's mind when it rolls out. That way, you have a better chance of making a sale, and people will appreciate the fact that you are interested in what is concerning them.

Generating Big Exposure

Each sales promotion should have a planned sales campaign designed to generate the most exposure and income from it. Exposure, in terms of the Internet, is nothing more than the number of eyeballs you get to come and see your offer. It's not as fancy as the word sounds. Luckily, you don't have to send anyone out on a street corner with a sandwich board to generate big interest for your promotions online. You can do it via a carefully crafted web of social interactions and site seeding.

Mining Social Networks

Just like you would first start your offline business by networking with your closest social network of friends and family, you are going to do the same online. The platforms that you are going to use are sites like Facebook.com, Twitter.com, LinkedIn.com, StumbleUpon.com, and Digg.com. All of these social networks have the potential to create massive exposure for your offerings, but before you have that opportunity, you have to build the network online to prepare for the day when you roll out your big sales promotion.

Start by building a profile that talks about who you are and your business interests. Find other people to link to you based on similar interests, as these will be the people most likely to be interested in what you are selling. Don't market to them actively until you have a sales promotion in mind. Otherwise, be satisfied with building up your contacts of friends and followers to prepare for the day when you are going to use these sites to gain exposure for your sales.

Once you do have sufficient contacts, you can use the status updates on these sites to update, quickly and efficiently, people on your latest sales promotions. All the hard work it took to get the profile up and to build the network will ultimately reap mega dividends in terms of powerful marketing in a flash. Always keep it authentic; avoid spamming people or doing anything that can get you kicked off the site, and you will be able to continue to use these platforms as a way to gain exposure, even if you can't solicit people directly.

Use Other Strategies To Gain Exposure Too

Don't stop just with social networking. Go to forums, groups, and blogs to find active audiences that might be interested in your sales promotions. Don't solicit directly; however, you can contribute to ongoing conversations and add a link to your site when it’s relevant to do so. When Internet marketers talk about traffic being the way to riches, they are talking about the millions of connections you make at various sites that are willing to come back and take a peek at your site. Putting out a link to your offerings, however, doesn't guarantee that you've gotten someone to connect with you. It's how you treat that person when he/she interacts with you that will determine whether the person stays and buys or whether he/she walks away.