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 Internet & Online Business
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Taking advantage of E-Commerce for your Fitness Business
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If you have a product or service, you definitely want to make the purchasing of that product or service as easy as possible. If someone needs to contact you, write a check, or disrupt purchase process in any way; the chances of losing the sale is greater. This concept may not seem applicable to personal training, but in today's market people shop for everything over the web. Once they have decided that they are interested in a product or service, they are often times ready to make a financial transaction. Imagine if a potential clients finds your business on the Internet and calls you for information. After speaking for a few minutes, they may decide to sign up for your services. If you have an e-commerce page on your website - which could even be a simple PayPal link – you could direct them to your site and they could pay right there and then.
Adding a Pay On-line service to your website will also make it much easier and more convenient for your existing clients to pay for sessions as well. As you know, many people already have enough resistance to initiating a workout program and if you can make it easier for them to commit you will be doing them a favor. You could also implement on On-Line Scheduling program onto your website which will allow your clients to register and pay for sessions at the same time.
Once you decide to make your website an e-commerce website, it opens doors to opportunities to sell additional services and products. Even if you are not selling material, you have intellectual property that could be very valuable to your clients. With the advent of new technology, producing CD's and DVD's are easier and cheaper than ever before. You could also consider putting together an educational e-book on any topic to sell to your clients. All of these products (CD's, DVD's, E-Books) could be added to your website and sold through a virtual product component of a shopping cart which would allow your clients to download the item without any effort on your part.
Shopping carts are less expensive and easier to install than ever before. There are plenty of off-the-shelf shopping carts that are loaded with features that can be installed onto your website for a minimal investment. In addition, On-Line payment services such as PayPal can be easily integrated into your website making it easier and cheaper to get started. PayPal doesn't have any set-up fees and is extremely easy to link to a website.
Once you have decided you want to add another revenue stream to your business you can now consider Affiliate Marketing. If you become an affiliate of another company you can be compensated to promote their products simply by directing traffic to their site. They would need to have an established affiliate marketing program but many companies already have such programs in place. Affiliate marketing can be as easy as finding a product/service you really feel positive about and that allows you to sign up as an affiliate partner. When prospects click on your affiliate partner's website from yours and make a purchase, you get credit for that sale. Two sites to find
great affiliate partners are www.clickbank.com and www.commissionjunction.com. You can also search Google for affiliate opportunities – they are abundant!
Having a quality PT website is the first step to opening doors for many opportunities for your business. WebFlexor PT Websites (www.websitesforpt.com) has designed its service with e-commerce in mind by offering self-editable PayPal pages, as well as very affordable full-featured, self-managed shopping cart.
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PPC for Niche Businesses - Like Personal Training
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Did you ever think it would be possible to be in the top position, on the first page in Google or Yahoo, in a single day? It's not only possible, it's do-able and affordable, especially if you are a small niche business (like PT) doing business in a geographically located area.
Ask yourself how many direct competitors you have in your town/community/city and then take 5 -10% of that number, that is approximately how many competitors you will have in the search engines in the sponsored link or Pay-Per-Click area of a search page. If you are not doing it, you may be missing out since many of your competitors may not be doing it either. Yet, over 80% of people are searching for services on the Internet. PPC could be your opportunity to capture a large percentage of your market.
A good friend of mine works for a company and over the past few years they shifted their marketing focus to PPC. Here is what he has to say about it: "PPC allows the marketer to target efforts to very specific customers and market segments. This method is unique in the level of control and targeting over your campaigns while strictly controlling your budget. The results are immediate and feedback is instantaneous, so you can refine your efforts daily instead of after every marketing push. We now dedicate almost our entire marketing budget to PPC with results of over 2000% ROI." Brent Curry, Marketing Manager, Productivity Associates
Getting started is very easy! Setting up an account with Google and Yahoo is simple by going to www.adwords.google.com or www.searchmarketing.yahoo.com and following the setup processes. Each site has tutorials on how to effectively use their systems. You can manage your own accounts, control your spending, target as many keywords as you care to, track results readily, and make adjustments as often as necessary.
Pay-per-click advertising's biggest advantage is the speed in which you can get results. Setting up your website for search engine optimization is really important – but getting listed in the organic section of a search page is close to impossible, especially at the beginning. Pay-per-click advertising on the other hand can be an immensely useful strategy to drive highly targeted traffic your way until your website gets ranked in a decent position in the organic section.
In order to maximize your pay-per-click campaigns, set up a separate "landing" page (web page) for each keyword that you target. This allows you to create content for the page that is highly relevant to that keyword. Google and Yahoo will take this into serious consideration when deciding where you will be placed. WebFlexor PT Websites (www.websitesforpt.com) has implemented an easy-to-use content editing system into their PT website program. This gives the user the control to update all of the content on every web page – including the keywords - in order to set up effective landing pages.
The big advantage of PPC is that you only pay for results, unlike just about every other form of advertising. With PPC you only pay when someone actually clicks onto your ad and if you are contending for non-competitive keywords, it can be extremely cost effective.
Mikel Bruce, WebFlexor PT Websites, 888-282-7818, www.websitesforpt.com
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Being Your Own Web Master for your Fitness Website
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Keeping your PT website content current is one of the most important things that you can do to make it an on-going resource for your clients and to keep it in favor with the search engines. Beyond the schedule, many PT websites have static content that never changes. This doesn't give a visitor much of a reason to return to the site other than to check the schedule. In addition, your business is probably growing, changing and evolving regularly and your website should evolve along with the business this should somehow be reflected in the website.
There are a few reasons that some trainers don't update the site regularly. The main one is that it can be expensive to pay a webmaster to make content changes and updates. An average web designer will charge $50-$75 or more to make any changes to a website, and if changes need to be made on a regular basis, this can get very expensive very fast. In addition to the costs involved, some webmasters are not very responsive so getting updates made regularly can be difficult when one set of changes has not been made when another is ready. Another reason for infrequent updates is that many trainers don't have the time to work on updating their website. This is unfortunate since a website should/could be the most powerful marketing tool for any business. Currently over 80% of the searches for any product or service is done via the Internet and search engines. If a business is not tapping into that potential, they are missing out on the vast majority of potential new clients. Tapping into that potential in a big way involves adding fresh, new and relevant content to a website.
Some trainers do have systems or programs in which they can update the content on their own. These are referred to as Content Management Systems (CMS). A CMS allows the website owner to become their own webmasters which is incredibly convenient and cost effective. Unfortunately, many of the CMS are fairly complicated to use and since most trainers are not technically advanced this can pose problems. WebFlexor PT Websites (www.websitesforpt.com) does have a simple, featured-rich CMS called the Flex-Edit System, which is currently being used by hundreds of PT businesses. This system easily allows them to: update text, add pictures, upload video, update schedule, upload files, add links and manage e-commerce pages. A system like the Flex-Edit system puts the website owner in control of their own website.
Here are some ideas to consider when using a CMS to keep your website updated:
13. Post articles and newsletters regularly on your website in order to give your clients and potential clients an educational resource. This is one of the best ways to continue to drive traffic to your site. These resources can be referenced in your newsletter and if you do create a viable educational resource section on your website, other websites will link to it and will have a huge impact on both driving traffic to your site and improving your search engine ranking.
14. Add fun and interesting sections/pages to your website that get updated regularly. Some ideas could be: FAQ's, tip of the week, etc…
15. If your CMS does give you the ability to upload video, add short video demos educating your clients on different aspects of your business. With the advent and popularity of YouTube many people are very interested in watching short videos.
16. Add a Links page to your website and add regular links to relevant websites in exchange for links back to your website; this will drive traffic back to your website.
17. Add a nice photo gallery to your site and update it regularly with relevant pictures.
18. Link a blog to your website and post articles and newsletters on it as well. This could have a huge impact on your search engine ranking.
The bottom line is that if you have a website and it is not getting updated regularly, it is almost not worth having. It can make a very bad impression if you have old and outdated content on your website.
Mikel Bruce, WebFlexor PT Websites, www.websitesforpt.com, 888.282.7818
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Do Not Underestimate the Power of Business Cards
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Business card printing can be the best marketing tool for large and small companies alike. However, are you using your cards enough to make a difference in profit?
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Legal aspects and implications of e-mail marketing and related spam laws
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Electronic commerce (Ecommerce) is amongst the most important aspects of the internet, which enables people to exchange products and services instantly without any barrier of distance or time. This article throws light on the legal issues and implications of an e-commerce promotion via e-mail marketing and the relevant spam laws.
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