I’m sure your first question is, “Why are you writing about the 4 A”s of marketing on a website devoted to online writing and search engine optimization?” The answer is that owning a successful website or blog takes two parts well-written and insightful content, and two parts brilliant marketing. Why marketing?

Well, the first thing you have to realize about having a website is that it’s existence alone isn’t going to generate a crowd plowing down the door, anxious to read your wit and wisdom. The first step in growing any website is getting folks to notice it, and not just any folks, but the folks that you are specifically writing for.

So, how do you know who you’re specifically writing for? This is where the 4 A”s of marketing come in. This was also the title of a very in-depth and detailed e-book written by author and lecturer, Brian Norris.

While Brian isn’t a website marketer or an SEO guru, he is a sales and marketing expert, and ultimately the techniques he describes will work effectively in marketing your website and converting your visitors into cash revenue. In this article I’m going to briefly outline how the principles he describes in his e-book can be used not only to drive tremendous traffic to your site, but also to generate a lot more profit from your website as well.

The 4 A”s of Marketing Applied to Your Website

The first thing you need to know about the 4 A”s of marketing are what each A stands for! The four A’s are as follows:

• Analyze your target audience. Who are they and what are their typical characteristics such as their age, interests, gender, purchasing trends and more.
• Attention of your audience. Once you know who they are and what they like, you’ll have the insight you need to successfully get their attention.
• Accept your product. This is what you need to make your audience do - accept that your ideas, your products, or your services are exactly what the need even though they have many other choices. You need to convince them to accept that yours is the best of the best.
• Action. The moment you convince them that you’re the best, you’d better have some sort of option available that they can act on once you convince them. This may be as simple as purchasing your services or buying your e-book. If you’re simply writing to generate ad revenue, then make sure that those ads are placed within the “hot spots” on your page (more on web page hot-spots in an upcoming post).

By following the simple guide above, you’ll be able to move from gathering your target audience from all disparate areas of the web that they visit, and drawing them into your website where you’ll guide them comfortably through the process until you’ve convinced them with very little effort how and why they need to perform a particular action. That action is what will generate your website revenue.

Analyze

The analysis part is something that I actually stumbled upon during my early freelance writing years. One particular client sold niche marketing analysis reports for a very hefty sum. He contracted me to research and write them for a few hundred dollars, and he turned around and sold them for a few thousand. Pretty good deal for him, and I didn’t care because I needed the money. However, what I gained more than money from the experience was the training on effective ways to perform a niche analysis to identify the demographics of your audience, depending on what niche you’re serving. For example the online gaming industry is actually dominated by white, middle-aged women - and you learn this as you conduct the niche analysis, using the sort of resources I described on my MUO article outlining resources you can use to conduct that research.

One thing I can assure you is that the research looks much more difficult than it is. Once you start using the resources listed in that MUO article and you discover a few studies from Pew Research or government agencies, you’ll discover your niche audience fairly quickly.

Attention

Once you learn more about your target audience, including what they believe, how much they typically earn and what they spend their money on, you’ll be in an excellent position to get their attention. The most important things you should learn about your audience is what websites they typically enjoy the most, what periodicals they read, and where they spend most of their time. For example if you know that your audience is made up of mostly college-age male computer gurus, and that they flock to large multi-user games and like to read computer magazines - then you know where to go to get their attention.

You would find a local LAN party near you and put up fliers, or sponsor the event so that you could advertise your site throughout the event. Or you could invest in an ad or two on a computer website (choose a small one with a decent readership if your budget is small). Through creative marketing, you’ll get your website name in front of the eyes that will appreciate exactly what you have to offer.

Accept

Convincing someone that you’re the best isn’t always easy. According to Brian, at this stage you need to focus on what the outcome that your audience is looking for (you’ll have learned this by now through your niche research).

If you know that middle aged, female online gamers are desperately seeking a free source of online games - then you need to convince them that you’re not only a good source for those games, but that you’re the absolute best resource on the entire Internet and that by sticking with you and taking a specific action, they’ll get the outcome that they desire.

Action

This could be anything - submitting a survey, submitting their email address to you, purchasing a product or anything else. Ultimately the action should be obvious and easy to accomplish, and it should flow directly from your effort to gain your visitor’s acceptance. One click and they get what they desire, or submit their email address in a form and they receive the outcome they want. That’s the secret.

And the real secret to doubling or tripling those profits is by following through and providing those visitors-turned-customers with the quality product or service that you offered. This results in return visitors and repeat profits - the bread and butter of any successful business.