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2005 |
How to Export - Part 10
Attracting Buyers
through Advertisement and Promotion
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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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