The Future Of Internet Marketing

If you use the internet to promote products or services, whether you act as a sales rep or affiliate or whether you are trying to sell your own products or promote your own business, you will always succeed if you attract customers. That's obvious right?

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to predict the future? Wouldn't it be nice to know where we all need to be heading in order to make our marketing efforts a success long into the future?

Well it may not be possible to predict the future, but we can certainly determine what current internet marketing methods are likely to be over-shadowed and even evaluate a new trend in internet marketing that could be casting this very shadow over traditional techniques for years to come.

Up until now, the methods used to create a heavy influx of targeted customers are vast but many are likely to become defunct or at the very least, costly and less effective than in recent years. This is due to increasing competition and lower than ever entry points into the realm of online publishing. Anyone can create a fully functional website these days, and with plagiarism on the increase it means cutting above the pack is going to require something other than the mass fed methodical approaches by preceeding marketing experts.

Here's some of those typical methods (at their top level) used to gain targeted customers via the internet -

1. PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising

Great for getting targeted visitors in front of your product.

Downside: It costs money - and if you want to make a lot of money it will cost you a lot of money. Simple as that. Plus, it will cost you even more money if your sales page or website poorly converts visitors into buyers. People use the internet predominantly for information, so to get them to pull out their credit cards is going to require them to shift their attitude and reasons for being on your website.

If they are looking to buy products (which indeed a lot of web users do) you will still need to spend many hours/days/weeks of testing down to the most acute detail. This is essential in order to discover how to convert more people in order to make sales. To cover your (increasingly expensive) advertising costs, conversions need to be maintained and closely monitored. This of course can be become a full time job in itself. In fact, I have spoken to online marketers who have admitted addiction to this service.

Ask anyone who uses PPC advertising and if they answer honestly, like I do, they would say that they check their stats multiple times per day. Heck, I used to check my stats every hour. I've actually seen job vacancies advertised in my local paper for PPC project managers for various companies - suggesting to us all that this can become more than just a 'side channel' of your online marketing efforts.

2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

If you know how to optimize a website then that's great. You should be able to reach a lot of potential customers for free with this method.

Downside: If you don't know how to effectively optimize your web pages then you will ultimately require the assistance of expensive SEO professionals. It costs a lot of money. It may be worth it, but it may be a huge risk if you eventually find out that your web page doesn't convert visitors into buyers too well. The other major disadvantage of relying on search engines to generate a flow of buying customers is that search engines change the way they operate on a regular basis.

This means that you could potentially pay hundreds, if not thousands of pounds in search engine optimisation to discover you need to reinvest to pay professionals to re-evaluate your website inline with the search engine's algorithm/policies etc. Further more, there are thousands of competitors discovering and using crafty techniques/software all the time to outsmart your web position and push you down the rankings until you are no longer visible. Ouch.

3. Reciprocal Links

This involves requesting reciprocal links from other websites to boost your page credibility and ranking to help you climb the search engines and attract more traffic.

Downside: If you request a reciprocal link, it means you need to provide a link back to the other website from your website. This means before long, you will have a page full of links pointing to other websites. This not only looks bad, but can be confusing to your visitors. Plus, in order to keep Google and other popular search engines on your side, you need to always ensure the links pointing away from your website are highly relevant/useful to your visitors.

This takes a lot of time.

It also means that websites try and avoid displaying lots of links out from their own website by tucking them away in a page on their domain. This ultimately means that your link to your website will never be seen and therefore never be clicked on- resulting in no traffic generated from that particular website. Search Engines are cracking down heavily on reciprocal linking and you may even get punished for such 'grey' activity depending on how you approach this particular technique.

4. Writing Articles

This is a great technique that does definitely work. Writing a high quality article can provide credibility and links to your website quite easily.

Downside: It's not easy writing articles, at least good quality ones anyway. It takes time, even if you know exactly what to say. Plus, just writing one quality article will not always produce substantial amounts of traffic (despite what the "experts" say).

You will probably see an increase in traffic which is great but you will soon discover that you will need to be writing anywhere up to 500 articles in order to see any substantial increase in sales or just traffic. You can believe the "experts" or you can try it for yourself and see what I mean. The other option here is to pay someone else to write articles for you, but the average going rate for a semi-professional article is around $5. So if you wanted to hit that 500 mark you will be forking out $2500 just for some "extra internet exposure". It can get very expensive very quickly.

5. Blogging

This is one step up from articles. Blogging has many advantages over writing articles due to the social networking aspect and various technical assets a blog can yield. Bottom line is search engines love blogs and you may find it a lot easier to get indexed by a search engine with a blog over static pages which contain out of date or "stale" information.

Blogs are also useful for visitor interaction where comments can be made on the back of an initial post by the author - this helps to "alert" the search engines by kind of saying "Hey, I'm a blog, I am active, fresh content and I am what makes your pants wet"

Downside: Writing a blog can (and often does) become a full time commitment. You can't simply slap up a new blog entry once a week telling people that you just had a curry and it made your arse sting the next morning. After discussing blogging with many full time bloggers (who earn a full time living from blogging alone) I have painfully discovered that you will need to blog quality, unique and highly useful and relevant content at least once per day. I'm not kidding, it's VERY hard work to make it a success and it will also take you months at the minimum to build up a trusted and reliable base of blog readers. I'm not trying to put you off this, but you need to realise the reality here.

The other disadvantage of blogging is that by its very nature, blogging is not suited to commercial use. What do I mean by that? I mean that blogging is a medium created for social interaction. The blogging community therefore, are probably the least responsive to a disguised sales pitch - blog readers want interaction and free entertainment as a whole. It's about understanding the psychology of various internet users and who to market to and where, and when.

6. Press releases

Ok, this is a good method. A well written, informative, well timed and relevant press release can really boost your business online and offline.

Downside: It can be hard to conceive a relevant, timely, topical press release containing fresh and unique news. You're a business owner, not a journalist. It's a profession in its own right. There are ways to learn how to make use of this strategy, but it will take time, creativity and a strong awareness of your local community or even the global community which is not only fresh and captivating but also a perfectly relevant tie in to your business. Remember, a good press release isn't simply a case of telling a journalist that you've just released new website or range of black socks reminding you which day of the week it is on them.

7. Offline methods

Putting stickers on your vehicle, creating posters, flyers, mugs, t-shirts, pens, labels, sticky notes etc. Downside: Although this may grab the attention of maybe a few people on an irregular basis, this will not provide you with a method to drum up substantial sales by any means. Try it, do it, but don't rely on it to allow you a lifetime of profit inducing, repetitive sales.

There are more methods, but to be honest I am just painting a picture here of the more commonly used, current methods and where they can become hard work and can even become totally flawed. Don't misunderstand me here, I am not suggesting for one minute that the techniques mentioned above are worthless or ineffective. Just realise that they do have flaws and there are elements of each technique to be aware of before you throw money (or worse still time) at them.

The future of online advertising/marketing for any business is to embrace and involve the true essence of the internet. What is this essence?

The internet was created as a means of sharing information and networking with others. You can't just throw money at the internet and expect to become a millionaire. The internet has evolved over the years by one way and one way only. What is it?

It is by creating networks. There is no one central hub by which someone can pay to access all the people they need to simply by paying money or learning how to make these valuable contacts. In order to succeed online, you need to understand the essence of the internet which is that it survives and expands on the notion that people "talk" to or "network" with others. The more people network, the more the word spreads about anyone or anything. This means that you need to network yourself if you wish to reach maximum sales potential and retire young with your looks still intact!

So the best way to network is to be able to reach people on a wide scale, this is done by two methods and two methods alone. One is creating business partnerships - this is being done all the time by the wealthy entrepreneurs and business owners online AND offline.

It is the very essence of growing your business. The possibilities are endless when you enlist the help of someone else who is already established in their field, or has the experience, credibility or know-how to spread the word about your business.

The other, which is even more effective and fast becoming the best way to reach a wide audience who will give you money, is through viral marketing. This may or may not be a familiar term. Viral marketing is a concept that is used to create information/media/messages that spread from one person to the next rapidly because of their unique appeal. It is a technique that separates the millionaires from the broke strugglers online. If you don't adopt a viral marketing strategy sooner or later, your competitors will .. and will outrun you as a result.

The sooner you learn how to create an effective viral campaign, the sooner you can enjoy the worldwide exposure of your business for years to come. Without doubt, viral marketing is the most cost effective way to reach potential customers of your products or service with very minimal advertising/marketing costs. Viral marketing is becoming a real 'buzz word' online these days and this is surely a result of the expanding technologies and community portals that are being developed and released into the main internet arena. For example - You Tube, MySpace, Technorati, Furl, Digg, FaceBook.

Although some of these examples have been around for years, only more recently are they being utilized as a powerful platform for effective viral marketing strategies online.

Literally set it up once and let it go wild throughout the global community. Viral marketing is the way to go, don't let your competitors teach you that lesson before you jump on board this immense marketing technique.

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posted by Nawaki's @ 10:34, ,


The Benefits Of Using Exclusive Private Label Rights

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posted by Nawaki's @ 11:48, ,


Affiliate Marketer 101

The fun and simple way of making a living on the Internet is through affiliate marketing. No need for payment processors, inventory or selling hassles. Even though it is a popular business to start with, there are still some points to be considered for you to make the maximum amount of money. Here are some of them:

* Your own website: Do not rely on your sponsor's mirror site. You need to stand out among the others to do well. When you have your own website, it will allow you to collect email addresses by means of a free newsletter and build your business as well as your sponsor's. Website promotion is much more cost effective than direct marketing. You can pre sell and warm your visitors to the sale before they click through to your sponsor's sales page, with a lot of interesting content.

An auto responder is a must for effective email marketing and setting up informative mailers to get the click through. You should be careful to choose this wisely as it is a very useful tool for your business. You will also use it to send out your newsletter and manage your lists.

* Driving targeted traffic to your website: This is one of the keys to succeeding in affiliate marketing. One of the several ways is article distribution. You can either have articles written or write them yourself.

If you want a free website providing lots of resources, visit www.moreniche.com. MoreNiche offers a guide about best hosting and web designing help for your business and free weekly content that can serve as reference for your articles in your site promotion.

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posted by Nawaki's @ 21:15, ,