Use a press release to announce:

• Formation of a new partnership or division • Corporate citizenship or community involvement • Launch of a new product, service or capability • Company anniversary or milestone • Recent awards, certifications, publications or patents • Sponsorships, grants or educational opportunities

Successful marketers cultivate symbiotic relationships with press. News editors and publishers need content; your business needs exposure. Relevant, well-written press releases are a way to establish yourself as a resource in your industry and to confirm your company as one to watch.

Quality interactions with media generally lead to more quality interactions with media, which leads to quality interactions with potential customers. Learn to harness power of press release and you too can enjoy benefits of permanent press.

Copyright ©2005 by Dennis and Sally Bacchetta. All rights reserved.

Dennis Bacchetta is a Marketing Professional who writes on a variety of topics, including emerging technologies.

Sally Bacchetta is an award-winning sales trainer and freelance writer. She has published articles on a variety of topics, including selling skills, motivation, and pharmaceutical sales.

You too should create specific paths in your website that will take full advantage of your sales and marketing efforts. If you have a particular page in your site that acts as your sales page, be sure to make link to it prominent on your homepage, and every page for that matter. This sales page ought to have a call to action at end of it that points to your shopping cart or sign-up page. Don’t let your site visitors wander your site. Set up navigation in a deliberate way to generate more sales.

A good example of retail stores coaxing more sales out if its customers is all small-ticket items they sell at checkout counter. These impulse items are specifically there to attempt to get a couple of extra dollars out of each customer who is waiting in line. How can this translate into your website? At virtual checkout in your site, add other, less expensive, complimentary items that they can click to add to their cart right there.

Tell your site visitors what you want them to do and where to go. Stepping them through your site way you want them to go will increase and streamline your sales.

6. Don’t Distract your Visitors If you point people to where you want them to go, thereby increasing your sales potential, be sure not to distract them along way. Don’t include annoying animation or Flash unless absolutely necessary. Don’t offer lots of superfluous links on “Buy Now” page, otherwise a significant percentage of people who are about to buy will wander away via extra links.

7. Include Compelling Images People will almost always look at pictures before they read anything. Images that invoke emotion are particularly effective. If you’re selling products then you obviously will benefit if you include pictures of each product. Product images should communicate how they benefit potential customer. If you’re selling flowers, a picture of a bouquet on a table is not as effectual as a woman in a front door beaming from ear to ear as a man in a suit hands her that same bouquet.

8. Offer More Than Just a Sales Pitch If you include free information on your site, interspersed with calls to action you are more likely to build trust and comfort among your potential website visitors. By offering free information related to your product or service you’re showing your visitors that you have their best interest in mind. You can’t just say “We have your best interest in mind”, you have to actually show it, and free, useful information does just that. By allowing people to get used to you by first offering free information, you make it more likely that they’ll buy from you in future.

9. Constantly Build Trust People don’t buy from people or websites they don’t trust. Offering free information is one way to accomplish this. Others ways include offering a good return policy, posting a privacy policy link on every page, and making it extremely easy to contact you.

10. Nurture Existing Website Customers Selling to someone who bought from you in past is easier than selling to someone for first time. Treat existing customers special by offering them discounts or designating certain site sections only for their use. Include a bookmark feature on each page of your site so that visitors can bookmark your site to return again. Update your content regularly to entice return visits. Offer ways for visitors to join a “Buyers Club”, to register on site to get custom content, or to join a frequent buyers program. Once a person is comfortable on your site and familiar with your business, they are more likely to buy from you online.

By stating your website goals and learning who your customers are, by putting yourself in shoes of your site visitors when creating, writing and managing your website, by pointing people in direction you want them to go while on your website, and by building trust, you will see your website sales increase substantially.