"The Desktop Global Marketer" (tm)

   A free on-line newsletter of Sidereal Designs, Inc.,
   for Internet Entrepreneurs, and those who are
   considering becoming one.
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                 February 2000

In this issue: "IMT Strategies has released an in-depth, 
up to date study of how internet users locate the sites 
they visit. Here's how to profit from it.

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I had already written a different newsletter for this month
when some new information came over the wire that was so
relevant to one of your big concerns as internet
entrepreneurs that I dropped it to report on this.

IMT Strategies (the initials stand for Integrating Marketing
Technologies) http://www.imtstrategies.com, has released an
in-depth, up to date study of how internet users locate the
sites they visit. Users in the survey were asked without
prompting how they found the sites they visited and the
responses were analyzed and grouped by category.

Forty five percent reported that they found them through
search engines.  Is anyone surprised? Yes. I am. Only forty
five percent? The purveyors of standard wisdom would have
you believe it's closer to 100%. Considering the high cost
of getting a remotely visible placement on a search engine
listing, this is big news.

So what about the rest? Banner ads? Nope, they're
1%. Magazines?  Radio ads? Nope, less than five percent
combined. Television and newspaper ads maybe? Nope, less
than 3% combined.

The two biggies, which together account for as much traffic
as search engines, are: random surfing and word of
mouth. "What?", I hear you cry, "How can I make use of
that?" Fear not; this is exactly what I've been telling you
how to do for years. Let's look at what these mean.

First, Random Surfing. That does not mean people who enter
random characters in the browser destination window. It
means people who go to a site, find an interesting-looking
link, and click on it, repeat the process at the next site,
and so on. Do the words "reciprocal linking" ring any bells?
Unless you're a new reader, they should. We've been beating
this drum for years; one of the most effective marketing
tools at your disposal is reciprocal links with related
sites.

Here's how you do it. Step one: go to the search engines and
find all the sites that come up in the first three screens
of all the keywords you'd like to be found under. Make a
list of these sites, visit them, and scratch off any that
are direct competition for you and anything of low quality
you wouldn't want to recommend to someone. Also don't bother
with huge corporations. For all the rest, get the address of
the owner or webmaster.

Step two: email all these people with nice letter saying
that you've visited their site and think it would be useful
to the people who typically visit your site and that you
intend to provide a link to them from your site. Give the
address of your site and invite them to visit and suggest
that they provide a reciprocal link to your site. (It's a
good move to put up a link to them before you write, and
provide the address of that specific page as well.)

In our experience about ninety percent will happily put up a
reciprocal link to you. Even the ones who don't provide you
with good links for your "useful stuff" page which your
visitors will appreciate.

Practice this regularly; new sites appear and disapear from
the top search engine pages all the time. Also be sure to
check all the major search engines for prospects; you'll
find very little overlap between them for the same
keywords. This will not only keep your site in "random
surfing range" of your most important class of prospective
visitors, it will continually update your useful stuff page
with new material, giving visitors a reason to return.

Now what about the other big draw, "Word of mouth"? This
means basically that some other person suggested they visit
your site. That other person might be one of your visitors,
a reviewer, or it might be you.

Rule one: Spread the word. Let no communication go out of
your hands that does not have your URL on it! Letterhead,
business cards, flyers, brochures, handouts, articles,
answering machine messages, email footers, fax cover sheets,
even your license plate if it will fit. These things get
passed around (well, hopefully not your license plate.)
Never be in the position of having to find a paper and
pencil and write down your URL for someone. Never let anyone
ELSE be in that position!

Rule two: Get people to review your site. Submit it to
e-zines, submit it for awards, suggest a site review to the
editor of your trade publications, drop a press release to
the web columnist or tech editor of your local newspaper,
anyone who is desperate for material that goes into a public
space.

Rule three: Publish a free newsletter and invite your
readers to pass helpful issues on to friends. Plaster the
URL all over it.

Rule four: Make it EASY for your visitors to recommend your
site to friends. Make sure every page has a link that pops
up a form where they can enter friends addresses and a
message and have it automatically mail the URL and the
message for them. They're never going to remember to do it
later on their own.

You're doing some of this, right? Why not all of it? Does it
work?  Yes. Some of our most successful clients work
principally with these methods. One of them has promised to
write a guest column for us on her methods, but so far her
customers have been keeping her too busy :)

Best,

Jamie

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"Sidereal" is pronounced sy-DEER-ee-all, and means "of
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Sidereal Designs, Inc. "Making The Web Simple."   http://siderealdesigns.com