According to the ‘Small Business Technology Poll’ done by AT&T, wireless technologies are becoming more and more crucial to survival for today’s small businesses. This poll indicated that almost 2 out of every 3 business owners feel that they couldn’t even survive without these technologies. This is a 25% increase from the same poll done 3 years ago. continue reading…
Despite being relatively new to the marketing scene, mobile marketing is making its mark as a method with extreme potential. Since mobile marketing is not well known as of yet, it is important to find all the facts about this strategy. Here are a few things that you should look at before getting started: continue reading…
Quick! Answer this question: What do you think of when you hear the term “relationship marketing”? If the only things that came to mind were your local business networking group, local chamber of commerce, or service club, you might not be aware of new strategies in 21st century relationship marketing. There is nothing wrong with any of these organizations, but if your relationship marketing efforts begin and end with them, you are not only operating under the old rules of relationship marketing, you are stuck in the 20th century. 21st century relationship marketing makes active use of Web 2.0. continue reading…
Business planning for a new online business can be tricky. Often, the businesses struggle along, unsuccessfully, for a period of time–so it’s important in the beginning to keep the operation lean. However, while Internet businesses often start off slow, they can (thankfully) explode with revenues and profits, which means that suddenly the web-based entrepreneur has all sorts of good problems and puzzles to solve. Read more…
Mobile marketing is marketing directly to consumers through SMS messaging, leveraging the growing number of mobile phone owners and users. Mobile (or text) marketing is predicted to be the next major global technology phenomenon, and to a certain extent it is already used across Europe and Asia by businesses of all sizes to deliver targeted marketing messages on a wholesale scale.
The US is surprisingly far behind when it comes to utilizing available mobile technologies. While the Internet is very much the domain of US business, in mobile communications the US seems to lag some way behind the rest of the world. There are 36 countries in the world that have over 100% per-capita usage of mobile phones, including many otherwise poor and indebted nations. The US, for whatever reason, isn’t one of these countries. continue reading…
A potential customer has just opened up your web site. They see a fancy introduction that grabs their attention. The little video sparks a laugh, and they stay on your site to find out more about your business. After getting through all the fancy animations, he or she is greeted with a beautifully-crafted home page with killer copy that keeps them reading all the way to the end. After the novelty of the menu animations and the gorgeous background wears off, your customer sits – thinking. He or she has no idea what to do next. Your site needs a very clear call to action.
If you visualize a given situation in a positive light, you’re likely going to see the possibilities rather than the failures. These possibilities might end up being the driving force that will keep you focused and moving towards your ultimate goal. Once you stop working with a particular goal in mind, you might as well look for something else to do. continue reading…
It is of great importance that your visitor “see” the bargain within your offer. There are ways to enhance this perception. People often observe sales pages with a “what is in this for me” mindset. Your offer needs to clearly show them what is in it for them.
When someone does form their first impression about your site, would you not want it to be a good one? When we present our product or service to visitors, it is vital that they see the value within as important as their desire to improve themselves.
One of the most frustrating aspects to business is when you have all the marketing tools your business needs, perhaps even some your business does not need and yet you still see no results. You may even be spending time and effort marketing your business and yet conversion ratios and traffic remain constant or even drop. The reasons why marketing plans fail are numerous however; one of the primary reasons is that it was not the right marketing plan.
So without further ado, let’s get down to the 4Ps on marketing theory and how you can integrate them within your business.
A website without traffic is like a city without people. It is wasted, as the sole purpose for it being created was for others to use it. Therefore, you need to spend as least as much time building access routes to your website, just like roads are built to a city, as you spend on the design of it, and the content for it.
You probably already know about the general methods of getting people to visit your website, so only a brief mention will be given to them here. Essentially, all traffic come from one of these three sources…
List building is one of the most profitable online ventures that you can ever get into. And if you are already making good money through your website, adding list building and an email marketing management solution into your arsenal might give a good boost to your income earning potential.
This is because a list is a very personal and direct way of communicating with your potential customers. You are conversing with people straight through their email inbox. For a short period of time, you likely have their undivided attention as they are reading whatever it is you have to say or offer them. With a good email marketing management software program, you can introduce each email with the name of the recipient. This personal level of communication is not possible with your more ‘traditional’ forms of advertising.
Creating a good website is not an end of the task. Rather, it is just a beginning. All efforts should be taken to make a website attractive and user friendly. Supposing that all strategies are adapted to drive maximum traffic to the website, will that be sufficient to maintain traffic and visitors regularly?
A visitor may land up on the website or a web page after clicking some or the other link from the hubs, blogs, articles and other networking sites. But will that ensure that he stays navigating on the site for some time? Will a visitor like to come back to your site again and again?
1. There are over 400 million active Facebook users and over 50% of the users login everyday. This means there is a huge, global audience to market your company to.
2. Facebook is a great place to distribute information about your company including events, photographs, videos, articles, blog posts as well as your business hours and contact information.
3. Social networking sites like Facebook allow you to connect with your customers on a personal level.
In the online marketing world content is still king. Marketers need to have teasing and effective content on their web sites, in their email newsletters and on social media to attract customers and brand followers. Valuable and relevant content is what makes people subscribe to your newsletter, click a link and become customers.
However, creating content can be tough, whether you’re a writer by trade or not. After all, there are literally billions of pages online, many well written, some trying to convert readers to buyers, and some successfully using the web as a business portal.
The value of a mailing list is not in its word of mouth power. It is not in the indirect sales power, either. The value of a mailing list rests on its ability to convert readers into buyers, subscribers into clients, and interested parties into long-term customers.
If your mailing list is failing to do this, you are missing out on the potential for greater long-term sustainability for your business.
Many online businesses and internet marketers have already realized the importance of article writing and distribution in recent years. Especially with the recent increase in the number of people and businesses competing for online attention, article marketing has become even more prevalent for those looking to increase their brand exposure online.
Though most would rather not pay huge amounts for promotions and advertising for their online marketing business, there are often circumstances when they have to pay in order to get their desired result. In these cases, it’s smart to choose a solution that is geared solely to driving targeted traffic to their website. The object is to recover the money spent on advertising by turning some of these new visitors into customers.
Is your business website gathering cyber dust? Do you wonder why you even bothered creating a website in the first place? If you answered yes to either question, then you may want to consider utilizing the services of an internet marketing consultant.
An internet marketing consultant can help you brush the digital cobwebs off of your business website. It’s worthwhile to get help from someone who understands internet marketing, and knows how to help you build a strong online presence. Why? Because if your website isn’t helping you build your business, you’re wasting a golden opportunity.
Online search engines have replaced phone books for 54% of Americans searching for local businesses. As a result, it is now more important than ever for businesses to ensure that they have a high-quality online presence. If not, they may never truly realize the power and potential of the Internet to deliver qualified, low-cost sales leads.
It’s widely accepted that businesses that market online have the ability to both reduce their overall marketing costs while also reaching more targeted prospects in order to add to their bottom line. The Internet is no-longer up-and-coming: it’s here and now, and if you’re not leveraging it to its full potential for your business, you are significantly reducing the effectiveness of your marketing. If you’re currently using direct mail or display advertising as a part of your overall strategy, the Internet can help slash these costs and can even improve response rates from within the local community.
Even with sky high postage costs, a properly executed direct mail campaign still provides a solid ROI. What? You’ve bought into the myth that direct mail is dead?
You’re not alone. And while people are entitled to their own opinions about direct mail, they’re not entitled to their own facts. Here are the facts: According to an annual study from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), spending on direct mail marketing is expected to increase by more than $1 billion in 2010. Yes, that’s billion with a “B”. Hmmmm…it would appear that rumors of direct mail’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
It’s not an easy task to be successful at online marketing. One slip and you can practically watch your leads and sales roll down a hill and end up with some other company.
Here are 10 key tips and suggestions to keep in mind as you make your way along online marketing routes.
1. Grow thick skin.
Encourage your staff or consultants to tell you the plain truth instead of going out of their way not to offend or upset you.
If your website design has serious issues, own up to them so the rest of your campaign can really pay off. In other words, if you invest in getting more traffic and visitors give up on your website, then you’ve failed.
These days there are any number of software programs out there to assist businesses, both for general administration tasks as well as a special types of marketing business software. These are quickly becoming a standard for the day-to-day conduct of business and can help create an efficient system for the smooth function of various business tasks.
Marketing business software is aimed to ensure that your website is promoted and visible to a large section of web surfers so that you can attract traffic and thereby improve profitability. This software, among other things, helps to keep your website updated with new content. It cannot function on its own in this area, because this is a creative field which requires daily contribution from your side or your staff. What it does is to help you to take your content or writings about your product or services to a wider clientele, through email subscription lists, RSS feeds, and more.
Starting competitive advantages in the business is vital both in online and offline aspects. If you are a business organization, you need to distinguish your organization from the competition, especially if your business is not on commodity products. You can easily distinguish these advantages on the internet because of the already established fundamentals of the business.
For some companies, they get their edge from targeted advertising from high-traffic websites. For others, it is through social media marketing.
If you’ve delayed learning about the myriads of ways you can earn money in the online marketing field, now’s the time to jump in. While the economy may be soft, this gives companies more of an incentive to focus more on this type of advertising. The traditional avenues of advertising like television, newspapers, and magazines are struggling with fewer viewers, subscribers, and buyers. However, free sources of entertainment and media like the Internet and radio are bound to gain in audience during the recession. So, while companies are advertising more in this media, there is also a greater opportunity to make money in advertising online.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a “safe harbor” from strict liability for copyright infringement to online service providers that satisfy its requirements.
A June, 2010 ruling by a U.S. District Court in New York in favor of YouTube established an important precedent for blog sites for avoiding strict liability for copyright infringement by blog posters.
RSS (real simple syndication) feeds provide online business owners, bloggers, and marketers the opportunity to connect with members of their target market in an ‘ongoing fashion’. While it is still essential for a website to feature valuable content which interests others to be successful, RSS has the ability for a site owner or blogger to send out notification of new content or promotions to interested subscribers. Thus, allowing them to stay in contact with previous visitors like never before.
Visitors who find a site or blog useful and entertaining could easily subscribe to the RSS feed and receive notification and have and easy access to any future site updates. This adds to an advantage of being able to keep in touch with past visitors, and in this way, would increase repeat business for a site. There are a couple other reasons why businesses are now embracing the use of RSS feeds:
If you want to get your website noticed, the easiest way is to get to the top of popular search engines. While all search engines have different formulas, they all have one thing in common: links. All of these engines base you higher the more high quality sites link to you. That’s why it’s important to get quality back links to your site. In addition, links not only bring in search engines rankings, people occasionally follow them too!
Here are a few easy ways to get links to your website:
If you’ve been around the marketing community for any length of time, you’ve likely heard the ‘experts’ mention ‘pushing the freeline’. This basically means providing high quality products and services to qualified prospects for free in a bid to convert them into customers later down the line. While this tactic is quite common in Internet marketing, it’s not used so often outside of this very narrow market. However, pushing the freeline has tremendous advantages in almost any industry and should be leveraged to a far greater degree to increase customer loyalty and warm up prospects for an eventual sale.
The theory suggests that by luring prospects through your store or website with ongoing free goods and services, you’ll eventually catch those that might not have bought from you the first time around as prospects. Eventually you will have the opportunity to build a long-term relationship with these individuals based on the strength of the real value you have provided them for free.
