Internet Marketing Articles

Still it seems many marketers are unwilling to engage with social media services while desiring the benefits the media represents. If you want to successfully leverage Digg, StumbleUpon, FaceBook, or any of the other popular social media websites then you should be a member of the site and actually be an active user of the service. There is always some opportunity lost when a marketer has to spend time learning, using, and getting involved in the communities that they want to market too, but the return on that time investment often pays off exponentially when it comes time to market to the community. To really excel at social media marketing, social media networking is almost mandatory. As a final aside I wanted to point out that getting involved in social media communities or any online community for that matter should be done with the intention to benefit that community as well as yourself. More often than not the job of marketing tends to blind marketers to the fact that having healthy communities is important for having future successful marketing campaigns so being responsible in the way your interact, support, and market within your communities should always be in the back of your mind. read more

[Tags]marketing, media, social, market, communities, marketer, internet marketing[/Tags]

Today’s marketplace is crowded with smart and talented business owners. If you want to hook your business on to the fast track, your first step would be to increase the exposure of your business to the market. Let’s just agree that without exposure, your market wouldn’t even notice that you’re there among the other smart and talented business owners. So how is it possible to get yourself spotted? The answer is -

Be Remarkable!

Have you wonder how can you become remarkable?

Be A Sore Thumb

Sticking out like a sore thumb is one of the ways, just take a leaf out of William Hung’s book. He is definitely one hell of a sore thumb and everyone was scouring the Net just to find more video clips of him, be it spoofs or interviews. He was not expecting any fame from the American Idol but it did gather him the most popularity votes among the other misfits. I would say that his fame is fueled by his remarkability because most people have the habit of sharing the latest interesting news with their friends. His remarkability travelled by words of mouth and the media decided to feature him to boost their own rating. In the end, the man had enough exposure to shoot him to fame. He had received marriage proposals from strangers around the world, he was cast in a Hong Kong movie and he had his own music video with gorgeous babes dancing around him.

You would want that for your business, don’t you? Note: I am talking about the exposure.

So how can you add a touch of ‘remarkability’ to your business and be 100% sure that everyone will glance at your business at least once?

Here’s how one guy became remarkable in his own way:

The One Million Dollar Man

I can still remember a particular Monday night when my partners and I attended a networking session for online marketeers. The entire social event was a frenzy session of exchanging business cards with as many people as we can say ‘Hi’ to, but one man distinguished himself among the rest by handing out black-white copies of US$1,000,000. He went around giving out ‘cash’ freely and extending his well-wishes to everyone. You can expect everybody to welcome his ‘gifts’ with open arms. Best of all, they are cheaper than conventional business cards and yet they are more remarkable. In fact, they are so remarkable that I even see people willingly introduce their friends to him!

When you are remarkable, words about you will naturally spread and your amount of exposure becomes viral. The Million Dollar man has so much attention that he stood out among the rest of us, just like a sore thumb. People just had to see what was the buzz around him.

Another way of generating remarkability is to boost your presence in your market. In other words, your name should be synonymous with your targeted market.

Get A Bigger Slice Of The Mindshare Pie

In the past, businesses built this presence by buying advertisements spaces on the magazines, newspaper, billboards, etc. These media were deeply rooted in the daily life of consumers for they were the popular places where consumers look for solutions, education and entertainments. So, when they were facing some problems, they would turn to the advertising companies as they were the most prominent then - remember that the companies had been advertised in the major media. The media had helped companies to capture a large mindshare of their targeted market. The companies brand had become remarkable in the eyes of their market.

However, the mindshare landscape has started to change. More and more people are searching for their solutions, entertainment, alternative income, education and even groceries from the Internet. But our focus should be on the social networks such as Facebook which has over 66 millions of active users and online forums, or anywhere else where people seek for answers everyday. Instead of the companies using the media to spread their names, they used existing social network to do the same! Netizens who find the companies’ products to be interesting and remarkable will be very likely to spread the words to their friends. Likewise, their friends will introduce the same products to their own networks of friends.

This is also known as web 2.0 marketing, where buzzworthy news are spread like wildfire among groups of friends with similar interest. Every business owner would want this kind of viral exposure, it lends remarkability to their businesses.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 actually refers to the current trend of the Internet. It basically means the proliferation of user-generated contents, compared to contents from authoritative sources such as universities. The use of web 2.0 marketing is a very cost effective way to generate the remarkability for your business.

For example, when a company wants to sell high-end cameras, they can easily find their targeted market in online photography forums and social networking groups. They just need to create a buzz in those particular areas and will start seeing potential customers discussing about it in the forum. These potentials will multiply when the discussion is carried on into other forums too. In other words, instead of paying a huge cost to get your products in front of TV viewers, you can spend a tiny fraction of the same cost to create a buzz in web 2.0 and see how the exposure for your products grows!

The Internet has already become an integral part of modern life and it has garnered an even larger mindshare than conventional media. If you are serious about growing your business, there is no doubt that you should start to consider building your business presence on the Internet and be nothing less than ‘Remarkable’ in your targeted market.

In fact, these companies and organization have already done it and had seen great feedback:

Ogilvy & Mather - Used Facebook to promote the Motorola Q mobile phone last December. They said ‘much more money’ would be needed to achieve the same level of consumer awareness and interest using traditional media.

Mediaedge:cia - Used MSN Spaces to promote Canon digital SLR cameras. They said ‘The campaign exceeded expectations with over 3,030,000 comments in just two months’.

Paramount Pictures - Used Facebook and MySpace to promote the monster film, Cloverfield.

The buzz that these promotions had seen is a testimony to how low-cost advertising using Web 2.0 can deliver huge exposure to your targeted market and boost your online presence. You can start learning the ropes immediately by googling ‘Viral Marketing’ and ‘Social bookmarking’.

If you own a business and really want to distinguish yourself from everyone else, you have to be remarkable in your very own way. You can either stick out like a really sore thumb that attract attentions everyway you go - which is a good thing for business - or you can start building your online presence with web 2.0 and attract global attention right in your home sweet home. Which is a better way to gain exposure? You choose.

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When preparing to begin a pay per click marketing campaign, it really helps to go into the situation with an idea of what the numbers look like. By “the numbers”, I mean what kind of return on your investment you can expect assuming different bid levels and different conversion rates. It’s really all just conjecture because you don’t know what your click-through rate will be, what your bids will have to be to generate adequate traffic, or what your conversion rate will be. But you don’t want to go into the situation blind. So the following technique is a way for you to at least apply some logic to the situation, rather than just guessing.

ROAS (”Return on Ad Spend”) is defined as the total dollars generated by the advertising divided by the cost of the advertising. The following discussion and data illustrate an ROAS-based approach to setting a baseline bid level for your campaign. Every ad group and possibly every keyword will have its own bid once you actually set the ad groups up. But this type of analysis will give you an idea of what your average click price needs to be in order to generate a positive return on investment, assuming various conversion rates.

Below are two examples of the kind of analysis we often do when beginning a new campaign to give the client and ourselves an idea of what he might expect his return on ad spend to be. It also helps us establish a benchmark average bid.

The first thing you’re going to need is some data to plug into your spreadsheet. So log into your Google, Yahoo!, or MSN account and create a new campaign or ad group. When you get to the keywords section, add a large group of keywords related to your industry. You are not going to actually use this campaign; you just want to get an idea of how much traffic there is for the keywords and how much you might have to pay for clicks. Going through the process of setting up a campaign lets you generate some data to work with.

The data for the examples below was generated in the Yahoo! Search Marketing interface. Yahoo! is convenient for this kind of analysis because of its sliding scale bid tool that gives immediate feedback about expected traffic and costs at different bid levels by just moving the slider around. We used a single broad set of related keywords to generate the necessary data. In reality, your keywords will be divided up into logical groupings, or ad groups, but for analytical purposes a single ad group was sufficient.

For our first analysis, we are going to assume a bid level of $.75, which Yahoo! estimated would result in 21,993 monthly clicks at a cost per click of $.50. For illustration purposes (and to make the math easier), we assume average revenue per sale of $100.

We know that our total cost is going to be $10,997 (21,993 clicks X $.50), so we can use this information to estimate what our total sales, and thus return on ad spend, will be at different conversion rates:

Bid: $.75
Est. Monthly Clicks: 21,993
Avg. Cost per Click: $.50
Total Cost: $10,997
Avg. Revenue per Sale: $100.00

Performance per Conversion Rate

Conversion Rate: 0.25%
Estimated Sales: 55
Revenue: $5,498.25
Return on Ad Spend: 50%

Conversion Rate: 0.50%
Estimated Sales: 110
Revenue: $10,996.50
Return on Ad Spend: 100%

Conversion Rate: 1.0%
Estimated Sales: 219.9
Revenue: $21,993.00
Return on Ad Spend: 200%

Conversion Rate: 2.0%
Estimated Sales: 439.9
Revenue: $43,986.00
Return on Ad Spend: 400%

Conversion Rate: 3.0%
Estimated Sales: 659.8
Revenue: $65,979.00
Return on Ad Spend: 600%

As you can see, if we convert at 0.25% (1 in every 400), we are going to generate a return on ad spend of 50%, meaning we are bringing in fifty cents for every dollar we spend. That is not very good. We probably need to convert at a rate between 1% and 2% to show a reasonable return on our investment.

Now we might want to see what the numbers look like if we lower our bid. If we bring our bid down to $.50, Yahoo! estimates our estimated monthly clicks to be 14,948 at a cost per click of $.38. So now the return on ad spend analysis looks like this:

Bid: $.50
Est. Monthly Clicks: 14,948
Avg. Cost per Click: $.38
Total Cost: $5,680
Avg. Revenue per Sale: $100.00

Performance per Conversion Rate

Conversion Rate: 0.25%
Estimated Sales: 37.4
Revenue: $3,737.00
Return on Ad Spend: 66%

Conversion Rate: 0.50%
Estimated Sales: 74.7
Revenue: $7,474.00
Return on Ad Spend: 132%

Conversion Rate: 1.0%
Estimated Sales: 149.5
Revenue: $14,948.00
Return on Ad Spend: 263%

Conversion Rate: 2.0%
Estimated Sales: 299.0
Revenue: $29,896.00
Return on Ad Spend: 526%

Conversion Rate: 3.0%
Estimated Sales: 448.4
Revenue: $44,844.00
Return on Ad Spend: 789%

We can generate a higher return on ad spend at the lower bid. However, we will generate less total revenue, and may convert at a lower rate. In addition, we have found that the accuracy of Yahoo!’s estimated traffic lessens as bids decline. But if you are on a very limited budget in an industry with plenty of keyword inventory, as in our example, then you can probably get away with bidding low and still generating a lot of clicks.

You could take the analysis a step further and look at it in terms of profit, rather than revenue. For instance, if the above estimated revenue per sale of $100 translated into $50 profit per sale, you could estimate your return on investment at different conversion rates by dividing the return on ad spend in half. If you substitute profit per sale for revenue per sale in the above analyses, then you will generate your ROI rather than ROAS.

One caveat about setting your initial bid this way: due to the quality scores that both Yahoo! and Google apply to keywords and ads, it may be necessary to begin the campaign at a considerably higher bid than your research indicates in order to generate a higher click-through ratio, which plays a part in determining the quality score. Once the ads are generating clicks, you can back off the bids more in-line with your desired ROI.

Another caveat is that oftentimes a search engine’s estimated traffic at different bid levels is not very accurate. It’s hard to fault the search engines for this, when there are so many variables that can affect how much traffic a campaign will generate. So your actual performance and required bids will probably vary quite a bit from what the chart shows. But the above described method for setting an initial bid at least gives you a logical starting point. Once the campaign is running, you can make adjustments as necessary.

The question of how much to bid may also be determined by your budget for the campaign. At higher bids, you are going to burn through your budget quicker. If there is so much keyword inventory related to your business that you are able to use up your entire budget almost regardless of what you bid, then it might make sense to bid lower…if ROAS is your main consideration.

If there is a branding component to your online marketing, then you may want to bid higher for higher positioning on the page. Another consideration is that not all sales are made immediately. If you position yourself as the leader in your category (high on the page), you generate more immediate traffic and more potential future business from prospects who visit your page but don’t immediately do business with you. This branding component is not reflected in the kind of analysis we displayed above.

An analysis like this can easily be prepared using a spreadsheet, and we highly advise you to do something similar to get a feel for your own numbers.

Jerry Work is president of Work Media, LLC, a Nashville-based company that specializes in search engine optimization and pay per click management.

While your homepage will give visitors the basics and general idea of your website, what if visitors want to know exactly what information is present, and where it can be found? A sitemap is the solution to this conundrum. Like a table of contents, a sitemap may be quickly scanned to see what information the site contains.

Undoubtedly, your next question is: What’s a sitemap? Simply put, a sitemap shows the structure of your site; e.g. how the pages of your site link together. If there are a very large number of pages on your site, it may end up being a challenge to create, and confusing to visitors. This can be helped somewhat by listing links the way the site maintainer would see them, as a sort of “tree” - this is called a hierarchical view.

Sitemaps are not just for humans anymore, however. Search engines bots, aka spiders, search through sitemaps compiling links in their search for certain keywords. Having a well organized sitemap in place can help you show up in more searches.

Benefits of a Sitemap

You may be thinking that this business of creating a sitemap sounds like a lot of work. While it can be so, there are a lot of benefits to having a sitemap, for instance:

1. A sitemap can be used as a tool for planning web design.

Even if your site is very small, having only a few pages, it’s a good idea to have the structure of your website plotted out this way. This will be a big help when adding pages in the future, as you will already be able to see where they will go. Your site will not become a tangled mess pages without their relation to one another difficult to decipher.

2. No page will be left unvisited.

The search engine spiders will visit each page of your website if you have the foresight to create a sitemap. Your pages will be included in search engines databases, increasing your page rankings, meaning more visitors for your site in the long run.

3. Visitors will have an easier time to navigate your site.

One factor why visitors stay on a site is ease of navigation. A sitemap gives your visitors an idea of what the contents of your site are. They can also easily find those pages they’d like to see within your site. Without a sitemap, your visitors may not stay on your pages, returning to search engines to search for information that may right there on your site.

4. A sitemap can encourage more traffic.

As your website grows, you must update your sitemap to keep pace with that expansion. This way, visitors can see that content is being added, which encourages them to become repeat visitors. This is doubly important if your site sells products or offers a service. Potential customers will know right away about your newest products or services by examining your sitemap.

5. There is potential advertising value when using a sitemap.

With a sitemap, potential advertisers have an easier time evaluating targeted ad placement on your site. This, of course means extra income for you.

The benefits of sitemaps are well worth the time and effort of creating them. Not only do they aid you in designing your website, they make navigation more easy for visitors, help your website get higher search engine rankings, increase traffic, and help you get more income from advertisements.

Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of Be Successful News, a site that provides information and articles on how to succeed in your own home or small business.

Blogging is an extremely popular way to build your business. But can blogging actually make you money? The answer is an emphatic YES!

There are countless ways to make money through your blog from placing advertisements, promoting affiliate products and even getting paid for blogging for other people. Here are some of the ways you too can make money from simply blogging.

First off, one of the most popular ways to make money from your blog is by showing advertisements. You can do this with various advertising programs but by far the most popular is Google’s AdSense program. With a few simple steps, you can be displaying advertisements straight from Google on your blog. The benefit for you? Whenever someone clicks on one of those ads, you get paid.

Another way that blogging can make you money is through affiliate programs. If you find a product or service that you particularly like and want to recommend to your website visitors, all you need to do is sign up to become an affiliate of the product or service you like so well. Once you sign up as an affiliate, you will be given a special and unique link that you can then place on your blog. If one of your site visitors clicks on this link and subsequently makes a purchase, then you get paid a percentage of the overall cost of the product. Some companies will even pay you when someone fills out a form.

The difference between the two we’ve just discussed is that one is completely passive, meaning you don’t have to lift an additional finger in order to get paid while the other one requires that you actively add these links for your affiliate products to your blog.

You can also choose both of these methods as well. Regardless of which direction you choose to take, you will still be required to add posts to your blog on a regular basis. In order to earn money you need traffic and you won’t receive any traffic if you’re not posting regularly.

Yet another way that blogging can make you money is by doing it for other people. Maybe you don’t want to go through the process of setting up a blog, adding advertisements to it, posting affiliate products or even keeping it up to date. Another option you have that’s often overlooked is that you get hired to blog for someone else.

You can simply become a member of RentaCoder or eLance where you offer your services as a “blog writer”. There are many companies who need to keep their blogs up to date but simply don’t have the time or the resources to do so. By offering up your services, you will get paid for posting to blogs and the blog owner will then benefit from getting content placed on their blogs which otherwise would not have happened.

Just be sure when you’re offering up your services that you are truthful and actually are knowledgeable in the subject matter you will be writing about.

So there you have it, at least three ways blogging can make you money. This is by no means an exhaustive list but will get you started in the right direction. Remember, you can set up a blog for absolutely no cost whatsoever and almost instantly be earning an income from it. So the answer to the question we posed earlier about “does blogging make you money?”, is an absolute “yes”. But as with all things in business, it does take time and effort along with continuous action.

Kristine Wirth runs www.ConnectingWAHMs.com, a website dedicated to helping work at home Moms and Dads run successful businesses in Network Marketing, Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing with free tips, advice and more.

Ok, you have probably been Internet marketing for awhile, at least long enough to have heard about article marketing and list building techniques. These are two separate things, by the way.

When used together, list building and article marketing are the dynamic duo! Together these methods combine themselves to intermesh and create a monster of a traffic generator that is unstoppable.

Many a time has a Internet marketer experimented with these two separate elements, creating a monster that fed back to them too many hits, making them too much money. Alas, what is to be done? Article marketing and list building is like cheese on pizza, it was just meant to be!

As a model, let us just say that you do not have a market right now. You are a pet owner with 4 cats and 5 dogs because you really love cats and dogs. You created a newsletter to email to a few other pet loving friends you met in your pet forum.

As it turns out, you are a natural writer! All of your forum pals love your newsletter about pet tips, etc. So, for a couple of months, you create a new edition to your newsletter every week, then send it to your friends. It has occurred to you that maybe you could make some money with this “newsletter thing”. The problem is, how will you market this?

You have been ordering a few things for your pets at an online pet supply store. While shopping this store one day, you notice a link to become an affiliate and market their products for them. They will even pay you a commission of 25% of everything you can sell. You join and create your very own affiliate website to promote the company’s products.

The next day, some article marketing friends of yours lets you in on article marketing secrets. You begin to write articles about pets and submit them to article directories with a link to your pet supply website at the bottom of every article.

Amazingly, readers are beginning to read your pet related articles and visiting your site, but hardly anyone is buying anything. What will you do to increase sales?

Suddenly, a big light goes off in your head about your newsletter. The next day you are article marketing and leaving a link with a message at the bottom of your articles. “To subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, “The Cat and Dog Show”, please click on my link below!”

Suddenly, you are getting more subscribers to your newsletter than a dog has fleas! In fact, you are getting so many subscribers now that you have to contact an autoresponder service to outsource the emailings on a regular time table. You are now leaving resource information back-linked in your newsletters to your site, too.

You have suddenly become knowledgeable, trustworthy and the expert. All of these pet lovers are a part of a list of subscribers to your newsletter with more subscribers coming in every day! These people are visiting and bookmarking your site, buying everything under the sun from you. You have become the cat’s meow.

Shawn Montgomery is article marketing expert who writes for an excellent informational website on article marketing at www.articlemarketingreview.wordpress.com