Internet Marketing Articles

Many newbies have “shy” away from their legitimate work at home business online because they say there’s no or little traffic frequenting their sites. There is still a misconception that traffic will automatically come rushing in after a website is created and published to the web. Please understand that an online business is the same as any other businesses. For it to work, you must promote it. You must treat it like a real business, because that’s what it is. In this article I am touching on one of the most effective and free traffic driving tactics, forum marketing.

Forum marketing has been around since the beginning of internet marketing and has been and still is one of the most effective ways to promote your legitimate online business. There are however, rules that you must adhere to in order to see a good respond. For one, when you first register with a new forum, make sure you always read through and understand its rules and regulations. Every forum will have their respective rules and regulations. Most of which are similar but don’t take that for granted. Read them all.

For example, most online business forums will have a thread or a discussion topic where you can promote your own products or services. Some forums will only allow you to do so after you have made 3 postings in other threads where else some forums do not have this clause. There are also some forums that do not allow you to include a signature in your first few postings and many more. I’m sure you understand the idea here is to always read the rules and regulations.

Forums marketing is a great way to network with other online home business owners to strike a joint venture with. Whether it’s cross promotions or link exchanges they are all possible. It is also a great way to promote yourself as an expert in your niche market and to promote your legitimate online business by adding a signature that is linked back to your website. Always remember though to post quality comments. A simple one line yes or no answers will not do. Elaborate on your opinion and raise your views if you can, but don’t ever get into a dispute. You can get banned from the forum. Now we don’t want that to happen right.

Where can I find forums on my niche to participate in? Simple, just google; forum+yournichemarket.
I just googled; forum+online business. The returned results were 284 million online business forums that are available. You have no excuse not to join forums now.

The disadvantage of forum marketing however, is that it takes time to grow and to take effect. If you are looking to drive massive traffic tomorrow by doing forum marketing today, you will be disappointed. Nevertheless, its worth the while because once the traffic momentum gets going you will be thrilled. To achieve this you must do forum postings religiously, for when the it starts to fruit, they are plentiful and the sweetest. This is when you will experience the lucrative returns in your legitimate work at home business online.

Steven Fu, a full time internet marketer runs a website that recommends top legitimate work at home businesses online. Discover the easy way to start a legitimate online business by downloading your FREE “Plug-in Passive Income Toolkit” at; www.PluginPassiveIncome.com

“Sell the sizzle not the steak” is an adage common among sales people and marketers. It was coined by Elmer Wheeler in his book “Tested Sentences that Sell”. Creating the next best sizzle has then become an obsession amongst marketers. You find a campaign commended for the heads it turns, but the question rarely answered satisfactorily is, how many turned heads could be developed into interest and a consequent sale?

Online, you cannot hide behind a great attention grabber that does not convert to sales. This is because your marketing and sales efforts, unlike offline, are completely trackable.

Previously, we saw that prospecting is the initiation of a marketing and sales campaign. Effective prospecting demands you get the attention of individuals most fitting to your perfect customer profile. The quality of prospects taken through a sales process will determine your conversion rate. By getting so involved in creating the next best sizzle, marketers may forget they need to sell the sizzle to hungry beef lovers and end up selling the sizzle to a vegetarian straight out of lunch. Prospecting is not only about grabbing peoples attentions, it about grabbing the attention of possible customers.

One big advantage marketers have online is that prospects tend to clearly demarcate themselves. Infact surfers look for you. Surfers use particular sets or phrases of words to look for whatever they want to find online. These phrases are called keywords. Internet marketing, whether in the form of Pay per Click (PPC) advertisements, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Email Marketing, is built on keywords.

For example, in PPC ads, use of the specific keyword in the headline tends to get better click through rates than use of smart wordings. Similarly, SEO depends on a collection of highly related keywords commonly referred to as niche markets. Often the tighter the keywords are related, the easier you can optimize the website to rank well with the search engines. On the other hand, email marketing which depends on a list of contacts depends on the topic the list was collected on. Each email list gravitates towards particular topics and consequently particular keywords.

There is a mind common among marketers that hold to the premise that marketing involves reaching as many people as possible. Such a mentality is suicidal online. The more specific you are about who you are targeting, the more you attract targeted traffic or qualified prospects. Surfers are searching for you using keywords. By basing your prospecting on keywords, you position yourself to be found.

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Imagine two shops that receives 100 customer each every day. Of these hundred customers 40 always find and buy what they need in each of these two shop. Of these 40 that buy 30 come from across the road where fewer people live. Imagine that one of these shops decides to relocate across the road to the smaller population to be nearer to her customers and serve them better. Obviously because of fewer people she attracts less customers to her shop. However because of the closer relationships the customers can now request for what they want stocked. As a result not only do all the customers to her shop buy, they buy more often. This is the power of niche-marketing.

Remember ‘Differentiate or Die’, a noble concept peddled not so long ago for survival of corporations? Online it is ‘Niche or Die’. This is becoming increasingly critical for the small internet businesses.

Niche marketing is a simple concept that involves targeting very specific keywords and optimizing your website and internet marketing for those specific terms. This practice can help a business, even one in a very competitive online category, to gain an advantage in the search listings.

You probably have heard that the internet has leveled the playing field for businesses small or large; those with huge budgets and those with shoe string budgets. As much as this is true, you will quickly discover that no sooner than you have rolled out a Pay per Click campaign, that your moneyed competitors are willing to bid 10 times more than you can even afford. a strategy called loss leader. As an online business person you are ill-equipped to market to the high traffic keywords (read huge markets) both monetarily and capacity wise. Unless you like the feeling of your head cramped in a vice, you are better of targeting more low-traffic yet closely related keywords. Though the internet does give you access to these huge markets theoretically, you will be quickly overwhelmed trying to satisfy it.

As a small business, trying to fight for the same market as itunes or amazon is often suicidal. However you could provide exclusively East-African Music and compete very effectively with itunes or sell specifically motvational books and compete effectively with amazon. These smaller markets provide niches which as a small internet business you can not only satisfy but easily over-deliver. Niche markets may provide less traffic but when well structure they give you more business.

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What is your web strategy? Does your site need to generate sales leads? If so, how is it working? Do you know the basic metrics for traffic and conversion? How about more advanced metrics such as conversion by entry page or conversion by search term? How many clicks to conversion? How many bounces off of your “contact us” method without hitting submit? Did you know that all of these metrics can be measured, alternative methods can be tested and you can improve both traffic and conversion?

Start with a Traffic Based Design

Anyone familiar with The Net Impact knows our approach to building web navigation and thus generating traffic to a site is called Traffic Based Design. The very simple principle behind this strategy is the identification of different web audiences that may be interested in your company and then to create a web plan that will lead each segment to the proper page on your website based upon their search. What they search for is what they want. So, why not quickly give them what they want?

In a non-lead generating example: posting job openings for your firm on your website is an inexpensive and effective way to generate resumes. If a viewer is looking for a position with your firm, you want to make the application process easy. Provide a page devoted to employment opportunities and make it visible and obvious for navigation. It also might be helpful to allow them to easily print the job description, upload a resume and fill out a contact us form related to the job. Why not even post a phone number and hours to call for inquires or add the popular “e-mail to a friend” option, especially since the “friend” could be the individual’s personal email address if he or she is searching from a computer at their work. Makes sense right? This would be a simple approach, post your jobs, let searchers find them and then make it easy for them to apply. The information should be obvious and the path for engagement clear.

Making it easy

If making it easy for the job applicant is the best approach, then shouldn’t making it easy be the general rule for the business prospect as well?

Well, let’s put this plan into action. Say I operate a manufacturing company. What kinds of business needs would I want to satisfy through my website? Here are a few that you might consider:

* Employment opportunities and hiring as we discussed above.
* Upcoming events and trade shows we will attend.
* Company information, press releases and news of interest.
* Product and services, especially new product or service, information.
* White papers and technical information that will help me establish industry authority.
* Case studies or examples of how my product or service solved a problem.
* Location and contact information.
* Client or distribution partner account and service information
* Employee Intranet for private communication.
* Privacy policy… and oh yeah…
* A way for prospects to contact us.

All of these are valid uses for your website. Do you notice though how the application of these pages and tools will have unique appeals to different audiences? Your HR communication through an employee Intranet can certainly be enhanced through web-based time keeping, insurance information and company wide information distribution. But this is not where prospective clients will want to go. Your current client or distribution partner account and service information is a great use for a site, if these viewers are already customers. Finding new employees with on-site employment opportunities also is a great use. But none of these help you generate new leads from new customers.

What pages of your website will generate the most leads?

Highly defined and very specific pages devoted to your products and services (think search terms) that also provide the right amount of technical information, case studies (testimonials) and a very clear cut call to action will undoubtedly bring you the most leads. Notice I did not say your “home page”.

The more competitive the search engine marketing world becomes, the more important it is to build individual landing pages that are specific to your individual products and services. Your home page alone cannot compete with your competition’s pages built for product or service specific searches. Your home page is for those customers that already know you, it is built to establish industry authority and display your “Trophy Case” of awards, successful projects and credentials. As far as new search engine driven traffic is concerned, your home page should be built for only the very broadest of searches on keywords that are important. Your other landing pages, built for specific areas of your business, will bring you more raw searches from longer tail search terms and thus, better leads.

What lead generation elements need to be on a page?

Standards are going to vary from business to business, but think about it this way. One function your website should serve is as your worldwide 24-7 411. When you dial 411 what do you want? A long message? An ad? No, you want a phone number! You need an address! You are looking for the quickest and easiest way to contact the people you are searching for! That’s why you dialed 411; you want information you don’t have.

When prospective customers come to your site, how quickly can they get in touch with you? Is your 800 number at the top right of the page or in another position that is clearly visible? It should be if you want them to call you. Is your address easy to find? It should be if you want them to visit you. Are your calls to action obvious and working whether they be “contact us”, “click to call” or “quick quote”. They should be if you want them to contact you. Again, making it easy works.

Five “must” guidelines to generate leads from your website:

1. In order to maximize leads, you need to know who you want to bring to the site.
2. You must know how to bring those specific viewers to the site.
* A great on-site approach includes the right content, keywords, titles, description and other content efforts.
* It also means information of value, events, tools and industry calendars..literally something of value to the viewer.
* For off-site efforts that means press releases, PPC, posts to industry blogs and even traditional advertising as examples.
3. Once you bring them to your site, you must provide them with defined paths that lead to conversion (click submit) with as few additional clicks as possible and, very importantly, no dead ends.
4. You must also provide them with very clear and user-friendly calls to action. What makes a prospect click?
5. You must measure results (web analytics), test new approaches and continuously refine your calls to action. Constant refinement means constant improvement.

Simple enough to understand right? But the devil, as always, is in the details. Through good advance planning, analysis of your web analytics and a commitment to refine your approach, you can turn your website into a marketing machine!

Steve Thomas is President of The Net Impact, a Web Design Firm and writes regularly on SEO, Web Development and Internet marketing related topics. He can be contacted at steve.thomas@thenetimpact.com.

MySpace is a popular social networking website offering an interactive, user submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for people worldwide. MySpace has been one of the most wildly successful sites in recent years, amassing over 120 million profiles while transforming social networking online.

It has created a central community comprised of people across the globe. It is one of the most visited sites in the world and it’s introducing a huge number of people to content syndication through news feeds and it allows millions of people around the world to publish on the web for the first time.

MySpace is also used by people to display their talents and it’s about keeping in touch with friends and making new friends. It’s all about interactivity and the ability of people to participate actively in your MySpace community.

It is an amazing community building tool and is starting to become an amazing marketing tool by giving internet marketers the power to drive large numbers of potential clients to a Website. MySpace allows users to customize their user profile pages by entering HTML, no Java script, into such areas as “About Me,” “I’d Like to Meet,” and “Interests.”

It has a Groups feature which allows a group of users to share a common page and message board. MySpaceTV is now in beta mode, and will probably be launched as a separate site in either 2008 or early 2009. The MySpace Polls is a feature that was brought back in 2008 to enable users to post polls on their profile and share them with other users.

MySpace is the world’s largest Social Networking website and maintains a dominant position as a media site, primarily aimed at youth, giving them the opportunity to express their feelings on a variety of topics.

Facebook, on the other hand, has the largest number of registered users among college-focused networking sites, according to Wikipedia. Facebook’s culture, appearance and principles have become the envy of the social networking business. It has moved in exactly the opposite direction, from MySpace, going for a more sophisticated and increasingly older audience.

Social media online is extending our real world networks so that we can carry on conversations internationally as well as locally. Facebook is a tool to keep in touch with friends and family around the globe and is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom.

Facebook is often compared to MySpace but there is one significant difference between the two sites and this is the visual appearance. Facebook is cleanly designed and has a sophisticated, upscale sense about it.

Facebook is a private company and doesn’t disclose sales figures but the Financial Times reported it made 150 million dollars worth of sales last year. Facebook is already supporting several languages and they successfully launched their Spanish speaking version recently.

Statistically speaking as of January, 2008, according to TechRadar, Facebook has more than 60 million active users worldwide compared with MySpace’s over 120 million. On average 300,000 new registrant’s sign up to MySpace everyday versus Facebook’s 250,000. For Facebook the fastest growing demographic are those 25 years old and older while 85% of MySpace users are of voting age 18 or older.

No matter how you slice it, these are two very successful and very influential players in the Social Media online arena today and should be for a very long time to come. And there is no telling how big a resource they can become for Internet Marketers worldwide.

Bob Withers is a professional sales and marketing person with over twenty years in the field. He has also turned his sights on network marketing to apply his trade. If you want to get in touch with Bob or learn more about sales and marketing please visit:
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Every now and then, I make a round of various online marketing related discussion boards and I am amazed at how much of the questions are about generating traffic to a website. Obviously, there are the classical ways of attracting visitors to a website such as pay per click advertising, but how can you attract visitors to your website for free? Well let me give you a couple of ways that you can do just that.

One of the best ways to get more traffic to your website for free is by submitting articles to relevant article directories. Articles are one of the best ways to promote a website because it implies that the person who visited your website actually read some of your material and was interested in reading more of it. Articles are also a great way to build back links to your site and improve its rating with search engines. Another great thing about articles is that they can be used by other webmaster in their ezines and/or sites and depending on the sites or ezines popularity, a single article can bring thousands of visitors to your site.

Another free way of getting more traffic to your website without spending money is by signing up for a social site account or with any other social networking site and start looking for people who would be potentially interested in your website. But you have to be careful not to sound too spammy in your interactions; members tend to despise people who go on social networking sites for commercial reasons only, so try to build meaningful relationships with members of various groups related to your niche before pitching anything to them.

Free classified ads services can be useful to promote your site, but make sure you list it in the right category. Subscribe to various discussion boards related to your niche and put a link to your site in your signature. If you provide meaningful comments on the board, I can guarantee that a lot of people will visit your site to see what more you have to say.

Great content is what usually drives visitors to a website, but what would you say if I told you that you can get your visitors to add content to your site for you? You can do that by adding a discussion board to your site or even an article directory. If you have a blog, write controversial posts to stir up conversation and encourage your visitors to add comments, and free content, to your website at the same time.

I could go on and on on how you can attract more visitors to your website, but if I was to give you only one piece of advice, it would be to sign up to a good internet marketing forum, they are populated by tons of experts who will be more than happy to show you even more ways to get more traffic to your website.

If you are finding a way to do faster internet marketing. Please visit my site at http://www.fasterinternetmarketing.com/ to get various tips and e-courses there.