Becoming An Internet Marketer

TOP 9 WAYS TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS

Marketing, plain and simple, is everything you do to make your business more well-known. It is the process of sharing your love for your business products and services with others. As a process, there are a number of tools business owners can use to share their message with prospects and customers. It’s important to remember with any marketing tool must be tracked and tested each new tool and tweaked for optimal results.

The goal of marketing is to share your message with targeted prospects and hopefully make a profit. Even if a campaign only returns marginal return on investment it is considered successful and repeating the campaign is advised.

There are 2 main things to remember about marketing your business:

1. If everyone is in your target market, no on is in your target market. In order to make your customer feel special, you have to focus in on a specific niche.  For example, this website is for mothers who want to work at home.  Others could benefite from the information, but by concentrating on moms they feel more welcomed

2.  Don’t tell your potential customer how good your business is.  Tell them all the benefits your product or service will give them.  One old example of this idea is told this way:  Don’t tell your customer how good your grass seed is, tell them how green their grass will be.  

That being said, lets take a look at some of the most effective marketing tools and what businesses can do with them to achieve greater awareness and profits.

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most dynamic tools a business owner can use to expand their business. Affiliate marketing is very effective marketing tool, because it allows you to base advertising on a pay-per-performance model rather than paying for an advertisement and waiting to see if it is effective.

Like many marketing tools, affiliate marketing incorporates several winning marketing strategies including viral marketing, direct response, and word of mouth marketing to achieve results.
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing include:

* Increased sales. Affiliate programs increase sales by increasing not only the number of motivated sales staff you have representing your product or service, it also simply increases your reach and awareness which results on more purchases and ultimately more profits.

* Better Branding. Affiliate marketing helps to increase your brand. Brand marketing is a substantial part of an overall marketing strategy. Brand marketing and branding is improved through affiliate marketing by utilizing affiliates to communicate your brand’s strengths and benefits. Brand identity requires mass exposure that is provided by enabling your affiliates to represent your company to their prospects.

* Optimized return on investment ROI. Affiliate marketing is also a substantial way to get the most return on investment for advertising expenses. For example, if it costs you $100 to create an ad, alone you may see $200 in profits from that single ad. However if you have 10 affiliates utilizing the same ad with the same results your profits are now $2,000. That’s a much larger return on investment.

2. Blogging, Forums, and Chat Rooms and Social Media Marketing

As competition amongst ecommerce businesses continues to increase, many business owners are capitalizing on creating a community within their business. General Motors for example has a very popular blog where Chairman Bob Lutz, and CEO Rick Wagner post on their love for cars and trucks, among other things. It has large following because it involves the customers and car aficionados to participate in the corporate culture. Forums and chat rooms accomplish the same goal ñ they let prospects and customers participate. Blogs have the added value of RSS, which basically enables readers to have new blog posts emailed to them as theyíre posted. This keeps your customer community involved in your business, creates recognition and awareness and thus increases profits.

Additionally, content posted on a blog increases your search engine ranking and provides valuable content for people searching online for information just like yours.

What blogging, chat rooms and forums can do for your business.

1. Providing social media on your website is a great way to build up strong relationships and brand loyalty with your customers. They make your customers feel that they really are interacting with you personally.

2. Social media tools help you to keep your finger on the pulse of your business, and to get feedback from your customers on suggestions you make or products you are promoting.

3. They are the perfect medium to showcase the talent and expertise within your business. When prospects find them useful and informative they are more likely to trust you and make a purchasing decision.

Adding a social media tool to your website can be a fairly straight forward process. There are a few free blog hosts including Blogger and WordPress. As well there are chat room and forum software which can integrate into your already existing website.

3. Newsletter and Database Marketing

Database marketing is essentially sending marketing messages to your subscriber or opt-in list. Newsletters happen to be one of the most common database marketing tools however sending a regular newsletter isnít required to take advantage of the benefits of database marketing.

Newsletters work so well because they provide a good percentage of information rather than simply receiving a sales promotion, recipients also gain knowledge or insight. The common ratio is 80% content and 20% promotion.

Newsletters build credibility by providing potential customers with valuable information on a timely and consistent basis, but theyíre also an integral part of your marketing campaign. While your website offers valuable information about your company, your products, and your services, your e-newsletter can delve deeper into your buyer’s concerns, interests, desires, and needs.

Your customer might go to your website to find out what products you offer, however your newsletter can show how a specific product can benefit a certain area of your customerís life. Additionally, like social media marketing tools, regular communication, in this case e-mail contact, makes your members feel involved

Tips for effective newsletters

* Don’t rely too much on graphics; many of your members’ e-mails will have graphics disabled on html e-mail by default. Make sure you use Alt tags if you do have graphics so your readers will know what the pictures should be.

* Look at your newsletter in the preview panel of Outlook to get an idea what it will look like to your members.

* Make sure you include links directly to your site, preferably to different areas of the site in the relevant sections of the newsletter.

4. Advertising

Advertising is the practice of buying space or time to communicate with potential customers. The intent of advertising is to create awareness, improve branding, and to motivate a purchase.

Advertising, both online and offline, isn’t a stand alone entity and is instead a part of an overall marketing strategy.

Advertising CAN…

Advertising can get your message in front of your target market and your message can create “mind space” in the head of your target market. Advertising can create awareness. It can create a brand or an image and it can give you as a business the opportunity to reach your prospect. While some advertisements are forever embedded in our memories such as Life Cereal and Mikey, AFLAC duck antics, the majority of them are quickly forgotten. Clever advertisements do not always equal sales.

Advertising CANNOT

Many forms of advertising cannot produce measurable results. A radio advertisement, a flyer, a television ad, or even a placement in the back of a magazine are extremely difficult to track. However tracking can be significantly improved if a business places a phone number or a call to action. Otherwise basic non-trackable advertising is a stab in the dark.

The only way to test the effectiveness of an ad is to include a call to action and while this can be integrated into any form of advertising you’ve likely heard radio ads that tell you to “Call Now” the easiest forms of trackable advertising occur online.

Google AdWords is a primary example of advertising that can be measured. Banner ads are another easily tracked medium.

5. Article marketing

Every single business owner can benefit from article marketing. It doesnít matter if you provide a service, sell a product, market information or are involved in direct sales or affiliate marketing. Article marketing is a fantastic tool to build your business.

Article Marketing enables businesses the opportunity to:

*Increase awareness and exposure. Advertising and marketing rule of thumb says it takes 3 to 7 exposures for brand recognition. That means if someone sees something related to your business, an article, your logo, an online ad, a few times, then you’ll be part of their conscious. Think about how many McDonald’s commercials you saw as a child. Whether you like the place or not, it’s likely the first thing you think of when someone says fast food. Article marketing helps you reach your customers and potential customers several times.

*Drive traffic to your website. Each article you write will have a bio box. Your bio will include a link to your website. If you include a little teaser at the end of your article then your reader’s will click through to your website to learn more about your business and what you have to offer. Additionally some article directories allow text links within the body of the article. This practice has proven to be extremely effective in driving traffic to a website.

*Earn new customers. Whether your business is brand new or youíve been in business for decades, you will gain new customers from article marketing.

*It is free. 99% of the article directories are free. A few offer upgrade services that offer a few features you may be interested in. Even if you choose to pay for these features your ROI is going to be very high.

Article marketing is a win-win opportunity. You win by increasing your exposure with a free marketing tool and your customers win because they benefit from your knowledge. To get started, write a few articles, or modify content from reports or books you’ve written.

Need help learning how to write articles and distribute them online?
The founder of HomeWorkingMom.com has developed a system called the Article-A-Day Easy System. It features an ebook, Write An Article-A-Day The Easy Way. If you would like more information, go to:
WriteAnArticleADay.com.

6. Social Networking

Social networking, marketing yourself on other social networking sites like LinkedIn, Warrior Forum, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, is a significant way to not only increase exposure and awareness for your company it is also a tremendous way to build valuable business and customer relationships. Social networking can help you create:

* Powerful business partnerships

* Customer relationships

* Added value and benefit to the community

* Improved credibility and expert status

* Improve Brand awareness

* Increased reach and exposure

Social networking is a very powerful tool and it can result in tremendous profits however if approached with the sole purpose of generating profits, efforts may fall short. To make the most of your social networking time, join groups specific to your industry.

Only join one or two in the beginning. Social networking requires active involvement on your part and if youíve overextended yourself then results will be diminished.

Weekly visits to a membership site or networking site are a minimum requirement. Many networkers schedule social networking into their calendar. For example, on Wednesday nights they schedule two hours to visit their forums and social networking sites they belong to.

When evaluating membership sites, forums and networking sites it is important to make sure a personalized signature is part of joining. Your signature is the one resource fellow members have to find you online. Most sites do not allow blatant self promotion so that means a signature is essential.

If you’ve decided to leap into the world of social networking there are a few basic strategies to follow.

*Increase your linkability. The sites that get the most press are the sites that provide the most interesting content. Content doesnít have to be written, online it can be audio or video files too. The more incoming links you have the faster the word will spread about your page, website, and business.

* Make tagging easy. People search for content in search engines like they search for content on social networking sites. Tagging makes it easier for them to find and identify you.

* Add content. In order for your social networking page or site to be interesting and attract attention there must be an abundance of valuable content. The content needs to provide a benefit to readers and be entertaining. Capture the interest of your social networking community and word will spread like wildfire.

It is the speed and raw numbers that attract so many business owners to social networking sites, however simply putting up a site and throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks isnít going to work. Like any marketing campaign, it takes time, a strategy and research to find the right site and approach for your business and your target market. Social networking can be a very successful form of word of mouth marketing, if approached correctly.

7. Audio, Video and Podcast Marketing

As competition online increases, it becomes more and more important to reach prospects and customers personally. That means not only mixing up your marketing mix but also letting your prospects and customers get to know you personally. In the world of small business your personality is one of your strongest marketing assets. People base buying decisions on a number of things, one of them is likeability. If they like you, theyíll be motivated to buy from you. Audio and video enable business owners to communicate with their prospects more personally.

Audio, video marketing increases your reach and online visibility. You will expand your target market because different people prefer different mediums. Some customers like to read company information, others prefer videos or live communication and still others like to download your information and listen to it when they have time. Like newsletters delivered via database marketing, podcasts can be subscribed to, downloaded automatically, and listened to when the time is right.

Audio and video marketing improve your sales and conversion rates.
Audio blog posts, video messages and podcasts are yet another way to reach your customers, and the one-on-one communication provides the kind of personal touch that customers crave. People are more likely to buy from someone that they feel they have communicated with directly, and podcasts enable you to do just that.

Podcasts provide a consistent line of communication with subscribed listeners. It has been proven that regular communication with your customers improves both your overall relationship with them, as well as their buying frequency. A regularly distributed podcast can strengthen your relationship with your buyers and help to build a community of your customers.

Audio and video content provides beneficial and value added content which increases customer loyalty.

Podcasts allow you to distribute industry news and trends, which sets you apart from your competition and established you as a respected leader in your niche or industry. One of the best ways to get repeat purchases and loyal customers is to become an expert in your industry. Once you are established as the place to go for quality information, services, or products, your profits will grow.

There are many tools to help business owners get started with audio and video marketing as well as podcasting. YouTube, for example is a quick and easy way to post a video on your blog and audio messages can be recorded for free using the open source software Audacity. Camtasia is a great tool for creating screen recordings for how to videos and tutorials. Most software programs also provide the steps and coding necessary to post audio or video and podcasting.

8. Sweepstakes, contests, and giveaways.

Sometimes the best way to generate a buzz is to give people something to get really excited about. That being said, who doesnít like to win something? A contest or giveaway doesn’t have to be something directly related to your business either.

To get started, consider if you want to go it alone or if you want to find a partner. Next, decide what youíre going to give away. Last step, communicating the giveaway to the world. Any number of the marketing tools already discussed can be used to promote the contest or sweepstakes additionally be sure to generate a press release to announce the contest and a release to announce the winner.

9. Joint Venture partnerships.

Joint ventures can be an excellent marketing tool because when you partner with a relevant business you can double your exposure and Joint venture partnerships create better customer relationships. Offering your customers a new opportunity, new product, or new service with a reputable partner gives you instant credibility not only as a respected business owner, but one that has their customers in mind and takes the time and effort to find and present quality opportunities to them.

Cross promotions can help build your subscriber list. In number 9 we mentioned partnering with a relevant business to create a contest or giveaway. This type of cross promotion drives traffic to your website and if you both promote the contest to your lists then your exposure is doubled. Another type of cross promotion is to exchange lists, exchange advertising space in a newsletter or directly on the company website or to exchange links.

When it comes to online joint venture partnerships, there really isnít a downside. You get the opportunity to make your customer’s happy, you build your list, you increase your product base, and you make money. It’s all good!

Marketing is the oxygen that keeps your business breathing and alive. While there are a number of marketing tools, not all of them are right for every business. Choose a tool based on your customers and prospects needs rather than your needs.

For example, if you’re catering to a young market then social networking and podcasting may be right at the top of your list, however if youíre marketing to an older demographic then newsletters may be the desired mode of communication.

The best and most effective way to implement any new marketing tool into your current marketing strategy is to cross promote them. For example if you are already have a newsletter and are considering podcasting, announce the podcast in your newsletter.

Highlight podcast topics, tell them how to listen, and then when you podcast, mention your newsletter and how people can get on your email list.

Effective marketing is a process, it is a comprehensive strategy that communicates your passion for your business, and the benefits of buying your products or services, on a regular basis. Evaluate your strategy regularly and take the time to incorporate a few new marketing tools occasionally to keep things fresh.

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