Sphere Marketing Group - Don't Trust Your Instincts

Many new Internet Marketers are told to "trust your instincts" or "follow your heart". following this advice, in many instances, can really jeopardize your company. When you follow your instincts, you will usually start marketing your company as if you were the target consumer. In reality, the Internet is such a vast marketplace that your real target customers probably won't be looking for the same things in the product or service that you are.

What may be appealing to you, may not be so appealing to the majority of the internet population. As an Internet Marketer, it is your job to figure out what your potential customers and clients are looking for.

How do you do that? First thing you want to do is figure out how your competition is position itself in the marketplace. You want to take a note of how they are marketing themselves, the feel of their website, what logos they are using etc.. Then you want to combine the ideas you got from your competitors and then add your own touch. You can put a little bit of your own instinct in it, just don't get to attached too those ideas.

Second thing you want to do is split test everything until you get your desired conversion rate. This includes testing different color schemes, font sizes and texts, different headlines, different content etc. Change one thing and then see what kind of results you get. Then change another and so on... You would be surprised by changing such little things can increase big profits. For example, we once ran a test on a website in our network that was selling weight loss supplements. The only thing we changed on the website was the tagline underneath the logo. The first tag line was a little longer and was more catchy as opposed to relevant to the content of the site and product itself. By changing the tag line to something that was more relevant, we increased conversions by 19%.

When split testing, try things that you wouldn't normally do or you think is far out there. You never know who it could appeal to - it could be your next customer. Everyone has their own taste which means it is impossible to impress everyone. But by split testing, you can find which website layout appeals to the majority of internet users.

By combining these two steps, you should be able get the edge over your competition and hopefully increase sales.