When thinking of book marketing, there are a number of rungs on the marketing ladder. The first involves creating a quality product, in this case a book. You want a book that you’ll be proud to offer for sale, and a book that customers will want to buy.

Once you have a finished product/book, you need to move onto the promotion basics. This rung on the ladder involves establishing a presence – you’ll need to create visibility and a platform. To do this, the first step is to get a website or blog. Next, you will need to join writing groups in your genre, groups in your target market, and other social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook clickfunnels special offer.

After you’ve established a presence, you will need to create an informational funnel leading back to your website. The purpose of this funnel is to bring traffic, inbound links, to your site.

The more traffic to your site the greater your visibility with the search engines. More traffic also means a greater chance of visitors purchasing what you’re offering.

When it comes to an informational funnel, content rules. Here are three strategies to increase traffic to your site.

1. Add Content to Your Blog

Make your presence known by offering information in the form of content on your blog. Content is what will make you an expert in your niche, genre, or area. But, just posting the content to your site will not create the traffic you need. Each time you publish content to your site, you need to let your social networks know about it.

Tweet it and post about it to Facebook and your other social networks. Be sure to always include a clickable url link that goes directly to the article. This is a part of inbound marketing – it leads visitors back to your site through an information funnel.

In addition, using effective keywords in your posts, related to your site’s platform, will help the search engines index your content.

2. Article Marketing

Once you feel comfortable with adding content to your blog, you can now venture out into the article marketing arena to capture a larger audience. While most article directories have guidelines, they are fairly lenient. Follow the guidelines and post an article to one, two, or ten different directories. Most of them don’t require original articles, so you can use articles you’ve posted on your blog.

Usually you will be allowed to include a brief bio in the form of a resource box. Make it short and sweet. Be sure it links back to your website or blog, whichever you want the traffic to go to (if you have more than one site).

Those who click on the link will be creating inbound links to your site which is a feature Google and the other search engines like. In fact, quality inbound links are an important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO).

3. Offer to be a Guest on Other Quality Sites

Another avenue of inbound marketing is offering your articles to other quality blogs or sites; you become a featured writer on the site by providing a guest article. It might be viewed as visiting another neighborhood. The particular site you are featured on has its own set of visitors, thereby broadening your visibility.

Do your research though, before you approach bloggers. Make sure the fit is right by checking prior posts on the site. In addition, when you approach the blog owner to ask about a guest post, let him know that you are familiar with his site.

And, be sure to always make it a win-win situation. Let the blog owner know that you will promote your feature post, and you might mention that you’ll include his site in your newsletter.

Finally, self-edit all your articles before you post them or send them off.

Tip: Using content to draw visitors back to your site is inbound or organic marketing. It is free, and it works by creating an informational funnel leading back to your site. In order for inbound marketing to work effectively, you need to provide valuable content on a regular basis.

A sales funnel is a powerful marketing tool, particularly for online marketers who typically don’t have a chance of having personal contact with their readers and customers as it’s all done online. The sales funnel’s purpose is to put a potential customer through a series of steps designed to lead them through a funnel so that if and when they reach the end, they’ll have little choice but to purchase the offer being marketed to them.

There are a lot of different ways to make a sales funnel. One popular tactic when it comes to internet and affiliate marketing is to base your sales funnel around an autoresponder which is essentially a miniature sales funnel itself clickfunnels price.

Sales Funnel Analysis

Let’s take a look at this sales funnel analysis chart and the various components of the funnel:

Marketing

Marketing is step one. Technically you’re marketing all throughout the funnel, but this is that initial contact where someone finds you online whether that’s through an article on an article directory, your Facebook or other social network page, or on your website itself. This first contact should establish the problem which the reader is having and then convince the reader to click through to your squeeze page or to some place where you can capture their email address. You can convince them by offering a solution to their problem which you established on this page, but the only way they’ll get that solution is to click through to your squeeze page.

Squeeze Page

The squeeze page is step number two. You direct your traffic from that initial contact page from step one to your squeeze page. The squeeze page is where you convey that the solution to the problem established in step 1 is in the autoresponder.

Autoresponder

The autoresponder as I mentioned in opening is like a miniature sales funnel itself; it’s a set of prewritten emails which automatically are sent in linear order to every new subscriber on your list.

The purpose of setting up an autoresponder is threefold, to develop a relationship with your new subscriber so that the person becomes more acquainted with you and your brand, to get them in the habit of expecting emails/content from you in the future, and finally to sell. You can and should set up your autoresponder in the format of delivering a solution to your subscriber over the course of that autoresponder.

The autoresponder can be set up like a training course, offering tips and tricks for overcoming the problem while holding out on the complete and real solution – your product. This way, there is a healthy mix of free value and selling. This barrage of sales pitches for your product will typically work by the 7th email. If it doesn’t then you can go to the optional step four.

Follow Up

If your subscriber still hasn’t purchased your product after your lengthy 7-10 (recommended) autoresponder series, then they likely aren’t going to be persuaded by just another email about it. This is why I recommend that you send them a follow up where you offer your product to them at a special discounted price.

Sale

Hoorah! The sale has been made. Hopefully your product is of high quality so all of that selling will be worth it and you won’t see any refunds. If you’re tracking which email is linked to that purchase, you can place them in your segmented folder of existing customers as it’s valuable to be able to differentiate customers who have made a purchase from you versus subscribers who have not.

Backend

Your backend sales are where you make your serious money. This is a second, typically higher tiered product which you’ll offer to your customers who have purchased your first product because statistically someone who has previously made a purchase from you (existing customers) are much more likely to make a follow up purchase from you in the future.

Ideally you do have a relevant backend product which can piggyback on the success of the first product and offer your customer even greater value, and ideally you can start promoting that to your customer as soon as they purchase that first product (and still have their credit card out). I covered backend sales in full yesterday, so check that out.

There’s your sales funnel analysis; it can exist in a variety of formats, but this is one which is very effective at turning website or social network traffic into customers and pretty much on 100% automation at that.

Ideally you do have a relevant backend product which can piggyback on the success of the first product and offer your customer even greater value, and ideally you can start promoting that to your customer as soon as they purchase that first product (and still have their credit card out). I covered how to make backend sales in full yesterday, so check that out.