By David Callan


It is a well-known fact amongst many online marketers that promotional articles are the most effective generators of highly targeted traffic to any site. Highly targeted traffic means that a larger percentage of those visitors are converted to paying customers.
This has led some online marketers to try and measure exactly how much cash in terms of paying customers that one promotional article is capable of generating. Actually it depends on a number of factors which are difficult to control in every promotional article an online marketer releases

Sales Generated By A Promotional Article Depends On Its' Quality

The quality of the article is critical in deciding how successful it will be in generating traffic to your site when it is posted at article directories and other sites across the net. Some articles attract so much interest that they end up with tens of thousands of readers. A few dozen curious readers barely read others. Other articles are so popular that they get re-posted in dozens of other high traffic sites across the World Wide Web. Some articles will hardly ever get re-posted.

All these factors greatly influence the readership of an article, which in turn is the main determining factor as to what kind of traffic and ultimately what volume of sales a single article will end up generating for you.

Good Headlines Will Always Generate More Sales

Even more important that the quality of the content is the headline you choose to use for your promotional articles. A poor headline offline has a higher chance of getting read than a poor headline online. The reason is simple. In offline reading the reader will tend to flip through all the pages of the newspaper. So even if the headline does not catch their attention, maybe a picture, a caption or even the first lines of the article will. In sharp contrast, online people will tend to click only at headlines that interest them. The headline will therefore play a major role in determining how many people actually get to the article in the first place. A good quality article has little chance of being read, if it has a poor headline.

The Resource Box

The Resource box at the bottom of the article will usually call the reader to some action. Quite often it will urge them to visit a site for more information. The writing of resource boxes is a very important skill in the use of promotional articles. Some resources boxes will get you plenty of visitors from people who read your article. Others will not. Resource boxes that offer a desirable gift or special offer at the site will tend to get a much higher response. Resource boxes that also promise some information that has been omitted in the article will also tend to drive huge volumes of traffic to a website.

How Targeted Is Your Article?

General articles may be able to get a higher readership, but they are not as effective in generating sales as tightly focused and targeted articles. Articles that narrow the focus will get readers who are more receptive to your products or services ending up at your site and they will tend to buy more. In other words, you will be apt to receive a higher percentage of visitors being converted to customers.

The More Articles You Release the Better

It is virtually impossible to ensure that all your articles meet the necessary standards to generate maximum sales for your site. This is why it is important to release a large number of articles on a regular basis. Some of your articles are bound to be winners, while others will not quite work out. Still when traffic generated from all of them is put together, it will mean that your site will receive huge volumes of traffic and huge volumes of sales as well.

Still it is important, as far as possible to measure the individual contribution each article makes to your sales figures at your site. If you are able to do this, it means that you can put all your efforts into generating articles similar to the ones that have worked best for your site in the past.

This is a very significant measurement to take, as you will quickly discover that not every high traffic-generating article is also a high sales-generating article. What you will need to focus on more will be the articles that generate the most sales.

Conclusion

Every serious marketing program usually benefits tremendously from accurate testing. Articles promotion or the use of articles online for marketing purposes is no exception.