Category: Blogging

Depending on who you talk to, Internet Marketing or Online Marketing can cover a whole variety of things.

Internet Marketing can just consist of a website selling your own products and services, or possibly placing banner ads on other peoples’ websites. Your website can also promote other peoples’ products and services for a commission of any sales generated (i.e. Affiliate Marketing).

Beware though, there are many companies on the web telling you that you can make a fortune overnight, trying to sell you some form of “Get Rich Quick Program”. Many of us have investigated these schemes to our cost and have lost money. If it seems to good to be true it probably is!!

Today, Internet Marketing/Online Marketing has evolved into a multi-faceted animal that any business can use to increase sales. Even if your business is done partly or completely offline, the decision to use Internet Marketing as part of your company’s overall marketing plan is up to you. But, as a general rule, Internet Marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of every company’s marketing stratergy. For some businesses, it is the only form of marketing being practised.

Internet Marketing Objectives

Internet Marketing means using the Internet to do one or more of the following:

· Sell your own or anothers’ products/services using the Internet

· Promote your Company’s Branding i.e. get your name known

· Carry out research on your existing or potential customers requirements, needs and their demographics

What you will need to succeed

The Correct Mindset

The correct mindset and focus is a large part of the ability for anyone to succeed.

It can be all too easy to get swamped by the vast amount of information on Internet Marketing that can all too easily lead to a loss of focus .

Domain Name

Before you build your website you will need a “Domain Name” for the site.
This is the name that people will use to find your internet marketing site online and should be relevent to the content of the site or to promote your branding.

Website

This may consist of text, audio, images and/or video used to inform existing and potential customers of the features and benefits of your company’s products and/or services. The website should include the ability to capture leads from potential customers. Websites are the Internet Marketing equivalent of brochures or mail order catalogues and they are a great way of establish your branding.

Website Hosting

Once your internet marketing website is completed you will need to have it hosted, ie uploaded to a hosting account, so that it can become live on the Web.

Traffic

Any business will fail if it cannot draw people to its offline or online shop.

In the internet marketing world visitors to a website are known as ‘Traffic’. The job of the website is to convert this Traffic into Buyers.

As a web programmer for nearly 5 years, I know the feeling of achieving a program with flawless coding. Countless debugs and backtracking would eventually give me the results that I need. In Internet marketing, the same philosophy and concept can be applied. In order to achieve the perfect Internet marketing campaign, one must know how to debug and backtrack through the details of their campaign; being able to find out what works and what doesn’t will be able to help create a more efficient campaign.

The Planning Phase

It’s hard to think like a PHP programmer when you need to have the mind of a marketer if you want to pull off a successful social media strategy or Internet marketing campaign. The truth is that programmers are better at detecting errors and anomalies, so it’s important to have at least these two qualities to plan an effective Internet marketing campaign.

Here’s how your planning phase should go:

Your audience: Programmers often think about their audience, and this helps simplify the features that they need to include in the website or software. The same concept can be applied in Internet marketing. When you think about your audience, you will be able to know what you need to include in your campaign. For example, if your aim is audience from Facebook, your strategy should fit and incorporate everything related to garnering Facebook traffic.

Your tools: Programmers have different tools to help them with programming, like debugging tools and compilers. For Internet marketing, you need to have the right tools to work with. For example, if you are thinking about creating article syndication, you need to work with an automated article submitter or linking software. This will make the campaign run smoother and more effectively.

Your analysis: Once the campaign starts running, you should always pay close attention to what’s going on. Programmers still keep an eye out on their programs for bugs and potential errors, even if they did create a flawless syntax. When creating an Internet marketing campaign, you should leave room for errors and improvement. Errors may occur at any time, and sometimes unexpectedly. For example, the tool that you’re using might accidentally shut down and ruin your campaign. When you know the error, you can think of ways to debug them or think of a contingency plan that will prevent data losses.

Planning an Internet marketing campaign is like programming, in concept and in process. You need to pay attention to certain details if you want it to be flawless and successful.

Article marketing is a fantastic way to promote your business. So what is article marketing? Article marketing is the implementation of promoting a product, service or website by writing high-quality articles and distributing them all over the internet. It’s not as simple as you might think, but writing good quality articles combined with the potent formula of AIDA – Attention, Interest, Desire and Action, you will be well on your way to creating content-rich articles for your online distribution.

What are the steps to article marketing?

There are several different ways of writing your copy depending on whether you are promoting a product or service and the type of industry category it falls into. The steps will be similar for all, so in this instance let’s keep it generic to any industry.

Step 1

You begin by researching and writing your article about a topic related to the website or product/service that you plan on marketing through this method of promotion. Avoid topics you know little about and instead, expand and articulate on topics you have good knowledge about. Remember the formula AIDA.

Step 2

The reason for article marketing is so that you can drive relevant traffic back to your website or a product page. You would do this by adding related links that point to a page on your website.

Step 3

Proofing your copy is important. There is nothing worse than reading a badly written article which is promoting you and your website! Why not let one of your colleagues proof it for you before you begin distribution.

Step 4

Once ready, you distribute and submit your article to various online article portals or databases.

What are the benefits of article marketing?

Free for all – It doesn’t cost you anything for this method of marketing. You can submit your articles to article databases for free, but what you do need is time. Spend some time writing your articles as they are promoting your brand.

SEO Keywords – Using the right keywords within your article will make all the difference in terms of what the article database does with that article. Many article submission sites rank highly in search engines which can be very beneficial to your article as it may get more visibility than your actual website.

Back Links – Most article databases will allow you to add some kind of link as part of the submission. You can add the links into the main content and/or into the area where you input the author details. If the readers find benefit from what they are reading then they are likely to click on the link in order to get more information.

Search Engine Indexing – Most SEO marketing companies will offer article distribution as one of their complete SEO services. Why? Well, one of the quickest ways to get traffic to your website is by building strong back-links to your site. Article submission is typically this. High page ranked article databases are great for search engine indexing as they deploy their bots (crawlers) to all popular sites in order to browse and index their new content. In return, this will also give your page rank more credibility and thus, push it higher up the search engines.

Brand Awareness – Similar to a blog, if good quality articles are submitted to an article database, you start to develop a following through readers searching for information. They are also likely to share the article amongst their social circle. So your branding is enhanced through consistent article upload.

What are the pitfalls of article marketing?

Perseverance and Stamina – Almost like an Olympic athlete, you need to persevere, have the stamina and the will-power to deliver great quality articles on a continuous basis. There is no point in producing one great article and then not returning for a few months. You need to deliver consistently. Do you have what it takes to build a fantastic database of articles that will get your readers talking and sharing, and clicking through to your website?

Time Strenuous – For even the expert writers, producing high-quality articles take a lot of time. Much time is spent researching, articulating and writing which can take over a few hours of your day. Now imagine writing at least 4 to 6 articles a month on a constant basis. Don’t forget, distribution can also take some time.

Differentiation – It’s easy to duplicate or write similar content without actually realizing. You have spent so much time and effort producing your content that after a few months you may unintentionally end up writing about topics which you have written about previously. It’s not all bad, but it’s better to differentiate and create unique content as it’s more likely to get indexed by search engines and offer something different to the reader.

Spreading yourself too thin – Article marketing takes time and we’ve established that. Keep an eye on the rest of your marketing initiatives as falling behind can have negative effects. Strike a balance and only bite into what you can cope with.