May 5, 2007

Secrets Of Successful Online Marketing

The online marketing world is fundamentally different than brick-and-mortar business marketing. However, like all businesses, successful people follow one set of rules, and those who fail follow another. Entrepreneurs who do not follow solid business and marketing plans seriously impair their business growth. The business world is full of secrets that are not secrets at all, they are truths that have been proven to build wealth. Online marketing requires seven building blocks. The first step is to build a website. This is not the focus of the marketing campaign, but it should be viewed as the center of a spider web. People should move toward the center of the spider web, where they make a purchase. This is where most companies fail. People rarely make a purchase the first time to a website. That is whey the website should direct them to a network, which is created to draw them back to the place where they are asked to make a purchase. The network includes a blog that offers free content that other webmasters can post on their websites. This should also promote a newsletter that is for your loyal members and consumers. The purpose of the blog and newsletters is to build a mailing list. These comprise the core of the marketing campaign. The second part of the marketing campaign is designed to bring readers into the network. This includes a forum, lenses, and free content articles. A forum is one of the most valuable tools in an internet marketing campaign. It is the only place where a website can receive testimonials without them appearing like they were purchased from a ghostwriter or PR company. A forum also builds an online learning tool that can be used to sell, educate, and build customer loyalty. It is the most powerful – and overlooked – tool in the Internet marketer's toolbox. Targeting an audience who needs your product may reduce hits, but it increases the number of sales, and in turn the Return On Investment(ROI). Pay Per Click has long been the mainstay of any Internet Marketing campaign, but it can be a waste of money. Some PPC programs let online businesses target specific websites, or even post their ad at the top of searches. These ones will dramatically in crease the website's ROI. A cheaper way to increase your website's exposure, and attract your targeted audience, is to use free content articles. Each one of these can be written to pre-sell the consumer, and encourage them to follow the article from the website, to your businesses' network. Lenses are the newest tools in the search engine arsenal. Myspace.com now sends more traffic to websites than MSN. Other popular lenses are www.hubpages.com and www.squidoo.com. These sites are all designed to act as secondary websites. Each lens is positioned on the outside edge of the spider's web, and draws visitors into the center website where they are encouraged to purchase the product. Combining these tools, and updating content weekly, is the formula that has created unmeasured wealth for thousands of Internet businesses. Good luck on your endeavor.

How To Get Visitors To ‘Stick’ Around Your Website

There are many things to think about when maintaining an online home business, If you have a website or blog no doubt at some point you will be involved with keyword research and search engine optimization. These things are important for good search engine rankings. But there is something else you should consider when optimizing your website or blog, and that is its Stickiness. Imagine you have spent days researching your keywords, you've optimized your site to please the search engines, you've got a good marketing campaign going and your visitors are increasing in numbers daily. You have good tracking software and you diligently analyze your stats. Everything is going to plan except for one thing. No sales, sign-ups or what ever it is you require your visitors to do, they are not doing. What's the problem?It could be the 'hardly ever spoken about' matter of Stickiness. Many marketers often overlook this when giving advice to newbies. You could have a million visitors a day but if your site is not sticky your visitors will not perform the required actions .So what is Stickiness? It is the ability to get your visitors to STICK around your site. Thrill them, dazzle them, beguile them, but do not bore them. Your site must contain something that your visitors want, something that will keep them their long enough to consider taking action i.e . signing-up, purchasing, clicking on your adsense ads, something. Content Is King. It always has been and it always will be. If your site does not offer good quality content, your visitors will leave just as quickly as they arrived. Your site must teach, help or enlighten your visitor. If perchance your content is already good, but your visit lengths are still short consider some of these options .1. Surveys. Place a survey on your site for your visitors to complete .2. Competitions. Hold a simple competition and offer a worthwhile prize .3. Games. Put a game of some sort on your site .4. Discussions. People love to have their say .5. Photos. These could be personal or scenic .6. Newsletter. Offer your readers information they cannot refuse .7. Articles. High quality content will not be overlooked .Another idea worth considering is conducting a treasure hunt. The ideas is to search through the site to find an icon hidden some where within the pages, this is an excellent way to get people to search your entire site. Websites like LabPixies offer a range of cool gadgets that you can put on your site such as the LabPixies clock, video poker game, radio, to-do list and many more. Do some surfing it is easy to find many interesting little things that can help to keep your visitors around a little longer. Also keep in mind your audience. Be sure that your marketing efforts are geared towards the correct market and that you do not put an entertainment feature on your site that may offend.