Marketing Your Business
Friday, August 14, 2009
The way we do business is changing rapidly. From VOIP, video conferencing, email support, telephone answering services, and the almighty internet. As a business owner we are faced with hundreds of decisions our parents and grandparents never had to contend with.
Some of you keep hearing from other business associates that internet marketing is the greatest method of increasing business and building a foundation for customer support. The only problem is, you've just learned how to send emails to people! Never mind learning about SEO, web design strategies, content analysis, pay per click, ROI, etc! Do you hire an SEO company or do you learn yourself?
Investing time into your company is what we business owners do best but, in many cases, when it comes to learning new methods we quickly open our wallets to anyone out there who seems like the right person to help with your situation. This is the worst possible decision you can make.
Diving into the internet marketing community with your wallet open will result in a disaster if you aren't properly trained on how to spend your money wisely. The key is not to hire an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company to take your money and promote your business behind your back. Try finding someone who offers you their "training services" in order to train yourself or someone within your organization to learn more about what is required online, how much effort it entails, and what pitfalls to avoid.
As a business owner, if you blindly search online and pick a company, you have no idea what you could be getting yourself into. There are no secrets to promoting your business online, only a lot of hard work. That being said, anyone with a computer can easily learn how to get their company high search engine rankings. Search engines don't look to see whether or not you're running a scam. No, they are concentrated on delivering relevant results for your search terms.
Old Fashioned Marketing Tactics:
In the old days (and still practiced today), business owners would devise their own marketing plan through print media, business cards, postcards, flyers, brochures, newspapers, magazines, TV ads, and radio ads. By doing this, the company could track their results by trial and error and really find out what truly works for their industry.
Old fashioned marketing is a simple trial and error process. So is the internet. Unfortunately, all too many business owners don't have a clue how to start their own internet marketing process and they fail to even put their foot in the water. Instead, many business owners simply hire anyone they can find that seems reputable and then turn a blind eye and say; "Here's my budget, you are the professional, you tell me what to do". This is simply preposterous. You've worked so hard to get to where you are now by learning and adapting and as soon as it comes to marketing your business online, you simply shut down.
I hope that this article has awoken some of you. Don't be afraid to dive into the internet's vast realm of marketing potential. So what if you fail the first time around. When we started out, we had no idea what we were doing, 3 years later our website ranks higher than many other internet marketing companies world wide.
The ULTIMATE secret to internet marketing is simple...
A concept I call "T.I.M.E."
T - Try and try again
I - Internet changes all the time
M - Marketing opportunities are around every corner
E - Eventually you too can succeed
Think of it this way (Illustration only)
Here is a timeline of your internet marketing campaign:
Start date - Research only: June 7th, 2005
Hired a website designer - August 31st, 2005
Website Complete - October 15th, 2005
Website launch - October 20th, 2005
Started an internet marketing campaign - November 1st, 2005
Started a Pay Per Click campaign - November 10th, 2005
Made a sale - November 15th, 2005
Increased our website’s link popularity - January 1st, 2006
Website gets hit by the Google Sandbox Effect - January 20th, 2006
Increased our Pay Per Click campaign - February 5th, 2006
Made some changes to the website - February 21st, 2006
Increase the website’s link popularity - February 28th, 2006
Got listed in the Yahoo directory - March 3rd, 2006
So here you are 10 months out of the gate and your website may still be "locked in the Google sandbox" ( Search for "Google Sandbox" in Google for an explanation). Your link popularity is just starting to grow a little bit. Hopefully you haven't tried to link to everyone you can find and are actually linking to companies that are directly related to your business. Your PPC campaign is doing good. People are finally starting to come through Yahoo & MSN search results. You can sometimes find your company in the 200th spot within search results in Google and you are now wondering why this is taking so long.
Welcome to the world of marketing your company on the internet!!!
This timeline representation from above is just something to show you how "T.I.M.E." is the key of success on the internet and all we are required to do is keep plugging away and keep learning more every chance we get.
For most people who simply open up their wallets, they would have learned nothing in those 10 months and for everyone else starting an internet marketing campaign, those who didn't simply just open their wallets, their websites are probably 10 times further than yours!
In Conclusion:
Learn more about how to increase your marketing campaign on the internet. If you have to, hire someone in-house who can learn for you and give you updates on everything. If you truly need to hire an SEO company make sure it's for the right reasons like "starting and finishing a marketing campaign with you learning in the process", or "enhancing a campaign that is already in place", or "to revise your website’s conversion rate" or "create a impactful key word optimization campaign", etc. Take your time and use "T.I.M.E." to increase your business slowly but effectively on the internet.
I hope you've enjoyed this article!
Labels: Marketing
posted by - ReSh - @ 4:08 AM,
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22 Practical Ways to Promote Your Product/Service
This article describes methods you need to set up a LIFETIME MONTHLY INCOME! with your own .ws website, integrated marketing system, business cards, promotional movie, one of the top recruiting groups with active sponsors who will help you build your business, dedicated forum to share ideas and successes and an ingenious marketing system that works! 1. You should build trust which is the foundation of selling.
2. Maintain your focus - do not waste time, energy or money trying to promote multiple programs.
3. Use business cards with web address and contact information.
4. Do not act as a PhD in your program - let the website, promotion movie or info call do the talking.
5. When contacting prospects, less is better - do not overwhelm your prospects.
6. Ask questions of your prospects - the power is with the questionner, not the information giver.
7. Look at business opportunity ads in your local newspapers/ magazines and ring up the advertiser offering your product/program.
8. Use the "invite" system on your program's website to invite friends, family and business colleagues to join your program.
9. Make an initial personal contact with your
prospect by phone - it will pay off in the end.
10. Write articles about your product/service and submit to ezines and article directories.
11. Start your own blog on the topic of your product or service. Get a free blog plus hosting with Google.
12. Clean and rationalize your mailing list(s).
13. Review your online marketing strategies.
14. Research your target market more thoroughly.
15. Expand your offline marketing activity.
16. Reorient your marketing text to the season's themes.
17. Increase your participation in forums and conference calls.
18. Distribute your business cards/brochures while you are away in another location.
19. Implement or refine your ad tracking.
20. Explore ways to achieve leverage amongst your online programs.
21. Investigate potential joint ventures.
22. Catch up on those eBooks you have been meaning to read.
Labels: Marketing
posted by - ReSh - @ 4:06 AM,
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Making Money from Websites - Common Pitfalls of Beginners and How to Avoid Them
Making money online is really easy to do because the entire world is becoming Internet savvy with a preference for shopping online. Because of this fact, you need to make sure you are doing your best to meet the needs of individuals online and increasing the internet traffic coming to your website.-Free Web Sites
Free web sites can cause major problems for you if you're actually trying to make money with your website. Many people make the mistake of choosing a free web site host to save money, however most of these hosting accounts post advertising on your site, are not reliable, enforce certain restrictions on the size of photos and graphics, and provide limited space. Because of this, it is more difficult for you to design your web pages effectively and also more difficult to reach customers because your website gives the impression that you are not serious about your business.
-Poor Design and Organization
Another pitfall many beginners fall into when it comes to trying to make money from websites is that they do not consider how the design and organization of their website will affect their visitors. If your website is not designed properly and organized accordingly, making it easy for web surfers to find exactly what the want quickly and efficiently, then you will lose traffic and ultimately revenue from lost sales.
-URL
Another situation that many newbies run into when creating a website in order to make money is that they create difficult to spell and remember URL addresses. Unfortunately these website addresses are often times extremely long as well, making it even more difficult to get it right. If you want to make money via a website, make sure you create an easy to remember website URL that is short, sweet, and to the point.
-Website Optimization
Another problem individuals experience when trying to make money with their websites is that they fail to optimize their websites for the search engines and as a result, they do not receive high rankings and miss out on lots of free, targeted traffic because of it. If you want to make money with your website, then you should make sure you optimize your site for the search engines. Different search engines look for different things, so do some research to find out what you need to include on your website for the different search engines and make them happy!
Labels: Marketing
posted by - ReSh - @ 3:56 AM,
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