Archive for the ‘Online Marketing’ Category

Local Email Marketing – Ins And Outs

Posted by Michael D Price On October - 23 - 2010

You will often hear people singing the praises of the internet when it comes to marketing a business. They will talk about the power to reach millions of people from all over the world by using email marketing. With the simple push of a mouse button they can have instant, and free, contact with thousands or millions of potential customers. While this is a great aspect of using the internet for your business building, what happens if you just want to target your local area? How does local email marketing work?

The same concept can work just as well for you even if you have a more localized focus. Email marketing is quite simple to use and even if you’ve never sent an email before you can easily learn a few basics and put this technique to work for you.

Of course, the first thing you will need is a list of customers, or potential customers, names and email addresses to send the emails to. There are a few methods you can use to start building a ‘subscriber’ list.

If you have a website you should incorporate an ‘opt-in’ box on your website. When they sign up to receive your emails they are opting-in to your list, which means they are giving you permission to contact them and protects you from spam complaints. The process can easily be automated by the use of an inexpensive autoresponder service.

Another way you can build your subscriber list is to ask the customers who come into your store to sign up for your email messages. One factor will be common to both scenarios: in order to get them to sign up to receive your emails you have to offer them a reason why. Don’t forget that your customers will be asking ‘What’s in it for me?” That’s why it’s important to let them know that they will benefit by signing up to your list.

Once they’ve opted- in to your list you can send them coupons, early bird sale information, etc. This will create more customer loyalty and make them feel like they’re special and appreciated. Let your customers know what perks they’ll get and that will encourage them to sign up to your email list.

Once you’ve got some people on your list, if you want to send out a group of emails you can either send them yourself manually (all you have to do is put all the email addresses into a group and they will all receive the same message) or you can use a professional service to handle your email marketing, it’s all up to you.

The most important thing to remember is that local email marketing is a very powerful and cost effective way to increase the number of customers you have as well as improve customer loyalty with your existing customers. Don’t overlook this extremely effective method to help you grow your business. In todays competitive business environment you need every advantage you can get.

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Internet Marketing Links – The Good The Bad And The Ugly

Posted by Michael D Price On October - 22 - 2010

If you have been on the internet a while, researching either how to make money online or how to promote your business online, then you have probable heard of internet marketing links and their value. Links increase the value of your site in the eyes of the search engines and also help to drive traffic. However, not all links are created equal and some have more effect than others.

Internet marketing links affect the page rank of your site and different types of links have different effects. For example, inbound links from other sites increase the relevancy of your site in the eyes of the search engines, while internal links allow search engine crawlers to find other pages of your site.

The greatest value to your own website lies in inbound links and there are several ways you can get these internet marketing links.

1. Request links. This is one of the most straight forward ways to get a link but it can also be one of the most difficult. Essentially, you have to contact other website owners requesting a link back to your site. Remember, though, that the relevance of the site linking to yours is important. The higher the relevance in terms of similarity in topic, the more value the link has. The less relevant the website is to your niche the lower the power of the link, but it is still more valuable than not having any links at all.

2. Writing articles. This is probably the most popular method of gaining internet marketing links and involves writing content on the same or similar topics to what your site is about. This is then posted to article directories and relevant websites in the form of guest posts. This is a valuable strategy because not only does it provide links but can also drive traffic if the content is useful and people want to discover more about that website.

3. Press releases are a great way to gain exposure, both for linking purposes as well driving traffic. The advantage to press releases is that they have a good chance of getting picked up by various publications, both online and offline, which increases exposure exponentially. And its all free.

4. PPC and paid links. Another method of obtaining links is via pay per click advertising campaigns or paid links. Pay per click campaigns usually involve bidding for a certain keyword with the major search engines and paying only when someone clicks on your link to access your site. Paid links can also come from other websites and blogs.

5. Affiliate programs are another great way to increase page rank through internet marketing links, as well as a great source of traffic and sales. Essentially, an affiliate program means that, for a percentage of a sale, people will promote your product or website on their own sites. This is an excellent way to increase your sales and exposure.

These are a few of the methods that you can use to obtain good, relevant internet marketing links that will help increase your page rank and thus your position in the search engines.

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Internet Marketing Terms – How To Stay On Top Of Them

Posted by Michael D Price On October - 21 - 2010

You need to know all the internet marketing terms possible if you want to become a success online. While it is getting easier for many people to learn and understand what these terms mean, if you are planning on making your income online, you need to make sure you are learning these terms from reliable sources.

Start with the Basics

In order to ease yourself into the world of marketing terms, try to start with the basics. Learn about terms such as SEO or PPC. These are some of the simpler concepts that you can wrap your head around when it comes to internet marketing. You also need to know plenty about things like affiliate marketing and social media since many people use these to make money online.

One reason why you want to start simple with internet marketing terms is so you dont get overwhelmed. Some of the terms out there require a lot of technical knowledge to understand, and if you jump straight to these, you may throw your hands up in defeat before long.

But if you start with some of the simple stuff, youll gain a lot of knowledge in a fairly short period of time. This will leave you feeling more confident and ready to move on to more in-depth terms.

Find Many Sources

Be sure that you are learning internet marketing terms from reliable sources. Books on the subject are generally good, as well as periodicals that offer information about online marketing. There are many good websites out there that you can learn from as well, but you need to keep in mind that there are a lot of poor ones as well.

Cross reference everything you learn. If you can only find the information in one place, it may not be trustworthy. Like anything else, doing a lot of research and collecting at least a small group of reliable sources is a great idea.

Constantly Look for New Internet Marketing Terms

As you probably know, the internet is a constantly changing place. New programs and methods are being thought up all the time. So you need to always keep your eyes and ears open for new terms. Keeping up with internet marketing periodicals, blogs, and other information sources is a good way to do this.

Also, if you know anyone in the internet marketing world, try to keep in touch with them. Use their knowledge to bolster your own whenever you can. If they already do a lot with internet marketing, they will most likely have access to new information before other people. This can give you a huge advantage, whether you are just starting out or you are already somewhat experienced.

By learning about and understanding as many internet marketing terms as possible, you make it more likely that you will understand any online marketing information you come across. You need to be ahead of the curve by knowing terms before you come across them, not just looking them up afterward. This is the best way to be ready for new information when it comes available and to sound like a professional in this industry.

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Business To Business Email Marketing

Posted by Michael D Price On October - 20 - 2010

Email marketing is an extremely efficient and effective method of increasing your sales and your customer base, but as with so many other marketing tools, if you don’t know what you’re doing it can actually cause more harm than good. Don’t ever forget that you are marketing to other companies and not individuals so your messages need to be tailored to your actual audience. When your company is trying to establish a business to business email marketing strategy, there are significant differences in your approach then if you were working on a business to consumer campaign.

Here are a few of the major points you need to consider in order to create a more effective and profitable email marketing campaign:

1. Keep it simple. If you were to meet with a prospect in person you would make sure that your pitch were straight to the point. When sending B2B emails you want to achieve the same no nonsense tone. Their time is valuable and you want to prove to them that you appreciate that fact by getting right down to business in your email, just as you would if you were talking to them in person.

2. Don’t forget the “WIIFM” (what’s in it for me) approach to your email messages. Make sure that you clearly articulate what advantages your company can provide to their company and why it just makes sense for them to do business with you. You have to structure your email message in such as way as to set yourself apart from the competition.

3. Don’t be afraid to ask them for their business. If you don’t have a clear call to action such as ‘click here now’, for example, they may not do anything. It’s one of the most common mistakes marketers make, they don’t ask the prospect to actually take action, they fail to ask for the sale. Don’t make this mistake.

4. To optimize the effectiveness of your email campaign make sure you take the time to learn more about your prospects business and what you can do to help them. This information can prove extremely helpful when you are composing your email message. By being able to add specific points to your email that would only apply to their particular business you are letting them know that you’ve taken the time to learn about their company and their needs which will help you build trust with them.

5. Remember, this is a business that has their own marketing campaigns and they are familiar with all the tricks. Don’t try too hard to ‘sell’ them. Keep your message short and on point and then follow up with a firm and clear call to action.

6. Track your results. You want to keep track of open rates as well as an increase in sales and/ or customers. It’s important for you to know which campaigns work and which ones didn’t. This information will allow you to tweak the ones that work and reuse them and start from scratch on some of the less effective campaigns.

Email marketing can be a huge benefit to any business building strategy. Take the time to research your market before you implement your business to business email marketing plan. This added step will allow you to make more money and increase your customer base for a very small investment.

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Best Blog Software Can Make You Or Break You

Posted by Michael D Price On October - 19 - 2010

If you are interested in starting your own blog one of the most important decisions you’ll make is choosing the best blog software. You have several choices, many of them are free, but before you choose just the right type of software you have to decide what you are going to use your blog for. That really will make a big difference in choosing the right software for your needs.

For example, if you are just blogging about your life and you have no real interest in making money from your blog, than virtually any free software will do, such as WordPress or Blogger. At this stage the most important thing for you to consider is the ease of use. You can use each type of blog for a while just to see which one you feel the most comfortable with.

If, on the other hand, you are using your blog to make money either as an affiliate marketer or with the use of Adsense, you will need to be a little more careful. The actual software can still be the same, for instance many internet marketers prefer the WordPress platforms. The difference is that you won’t want a free WordPress site. Instead you will want to buy your own domain name, so you own it, and have your blog hosted on another site such as Hostgator.com or HostMonster.com. That way your blog is your own personal piece of online real estate, you own it and you can control what you put on your site and what you do with it.

Going with the free version for a business blog is a very risky proposition Any of the free blogging sites have their own terms of service (TOS), which are always changing, if they find your blog to not be compliant with their TOS, the can delete your blog. Now think of what that would mean if you were making money with a particular blog and you’ve spent time building up traffic to that blog and one day it was just gone! Yikes.

Another thing to take into consideration when looking for the best software are the types of plugins available. Plugins are small software programs that you can literally ‘plugin’ to your blog by just a few clicks of the mouse, anyone can use them, and there are probably ten’s of thousands of them available for every imaginable need, and most are free. If this concept seems weird to you, just think of them like apps for a smart phone, it’s a similar concept. Some types of blogs will have a lot more plugins than others, so this could help you make up your mind which is best for you.

It’s always nice to have options, and when it comes to finding the best blog software you have quite a few. Just keep your overall goals in mind when trying to decide which is best for you. For the most part, if you are just a ‘personal blogger’ and not really in it to make money, the free versions are just fine for you and your needs.

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