How To Build A List for Our Online Marketing

While you can certainly make money on the Internet without having a list, you’re probably missing out on a lot of opportunities.

There are benefits to having a list…

• You don’t have to start over and find new people to sell to. You already have a ready-made group of people who have decided that they want to hear what you have to say and have probably already bought from you.
• Typically, if you’ve built a targetted list and treated your subscribers well by sharing valuable information (as opposed to continually promoting to them), the bigger your list, the more money you can make.
• If you are an affiliate marketer, having a responsive list can help you to become a Super Affiliate, which not only equates to more income – it also means that you may have a chance to win cool prizes in affiliate contests. Being a Super Affiliate also means that you can becoming sought after for large launches.

List building however, requires bringing traffice to your website. Here are some ways to get traffic and build your list.

1. Give them something for free. This is the obvious way however, make your free item something other than the usual pdf ebook.

Consider creating a podcast (mp3) with an expert, or even yourself sharing some great tips about your niche. You can also have someone interview you and record the interview to give away. Another idea is to create a video demonstrating a ‘secret technique’ or discussing some of your strategies in a visual way? If your software developer, why not give away some software in exchange for their email address?

2. Post on your blog regularly – using your chosen keywords. Try this – write a blog post (with good content and keywords) every day for 2 weeks and check your traffic stats – you should have more traffic! Do You?

3. Giveaway events are another way to build your list – make sure you create an opt-in page so that you can get the email address.

It’s important to make sure your offer is something that stands out in the sea of all the other Giveaway offers.

4. Build a Squidoo lens or Hub Page and point people to your site. Squidoo lens and Hub Pages are fun to put together, and relatively quickly to make. Take advantage of it and generate some traffic to your site.

5. Write articles and submit them to directories like Ezine Articles. Be sure to use your chosen keywords to the article and create an author resource box that will encourage people to click through to your site. Create articles that have great content and are informative – the content doesn’t have to be your best writing, but it should still be good.

6. What forums exist in your niche? Join a forum (or 2 or 3) and set up your signature to graciously promote what you do. The way (and when) you set up your signature block completely depends on the forum – make sure you read the Terms of Service first. When creating your signature, remember to ‘sell a benefit’ and get readers curious enough to click through.

7. Ad Swaps are certainly an excellent way to grow your list fast and effectively. Find another business in your niche that has a similar size list (or similar response) and send each others offers of a free item to your own list. The key is, to plan your swaps with offers that will appeal to your niche and not to do it too often, as you will ‘desensitize’ your list.

8. Twitter is another great resource to help you generate traffic to your site. A well written, 140 character tweet can entice people to want to know more and click through. For more information on how to use Twitter to drive traffic to your site, pick up your free Twitter Blog Magic report.

9. Pay Per Click advertising can be an effective way of traffic generation. A well designed AdWords campaign will be seen on a number of others people sites – and increase your reach incredibly. Spend some time developing your AdWords campaign to make sure you pay the ‘right’ price for the advertising.

10. If you like to write and you have something valuable to say, guest blogging is a good way to go. Blogging on your own blog means you have your readers, blogging on other people’s blogs (preferably higher traffic blogs) means you have their readers too, and these people will see your name AND your link.

Building traffic to your site, and list building, requires work from you – it doesn’t happen overnight and whilst you can outsource a lot of the work, understanding the basics will definitely help you. Building your list will most certainly help you create a sustainable, and profitable business.

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Marketing Article Making Tips

Article Marketing is an excellent way to generate traffic to your website. However, there are a few tips to consider when creating your article – let’s have a look at how a reader see’s an article and what encourages that person to click on the link to the article writer’s website? Let’s have a look at the process…

1. The reader sees an article title that interests them

2. They open the article and start reading it

3. They read all the way to the end

4. The reader then clicks on the link in the resource box because they want to know more and…

Arrive at your site, likes it, and opts in to your list and/or buys your product.

Simple! So here are some tips to help you create great Articles:

The Title is everything.

If the title doesn’t catch a readers attention, they definitely won’t read the article. In fact, they probably won’t even see your

article in the list of articles they’ve seen… Your title needs to offer them something – What’s in it for them? How can it solve their problem?

Your title should evoke curiosity. “The Number One Mistake New Parents Make” would certainly gain the attention of new and first time parents, “How To Double Your Sales In 6 Weeks” will gain the attention of a business owner seeking to grow their business.

Words that are considered to be curiosity triggers are words like “Top 10 Tips”, “Secrets To…”, and “How I…”

Your title must contain your keyword phrases, not only for Search Engine Optimization, but also so that the people who would be interested in reading your article can find you.

The first paragraph is also very important.

The first paragraph needs to grab the reader’s attention so they will continue reading. When writing the first paragraph, you should identify with your reader by explaining the problems your article will be discussing. It is also important to write in a way that connects with your Target Audience.

Consider the length of the article.

There is a lot of discussion about the length of an article. Many readers will not read long articles however, the articles have to be informative and contact enought information to encourage the reader to want to learn more. On average, a 400 word article seems to work – it gains readers and will also allow for your article to be ‘syndicated’ on other sites.

Be informative, but incomplete.

First of all, you need to give valuable information in your article to encourage people to keep reading however, you don’t have to give it all. For example, your article can include 3 of your top 7 tips and the other 4 can be found on your website or in the product on your website.

Link to the correct page.

When you create your author resource box, make sure you have the right page linked. There is nothing more frustrating than clicking on the a link in someone’s bio box and being sent to a ‘page not found’ page, or worse – to a page that has nothing to do with the subject of the article.

If you’re linking to a specific topic on your blog – make sure you link to the article on your blog, not just the front part of your blog.

Make your bio box work for you.

Your author resource box, or bio, can be the conclusion of your article. Bring your article to a graceful close in the body, but use your bio area to invite the reader to learn more, get a free report or a free gift by visiting your site. Of course, use your keywords for the article as your anchor text (that’s the text that is clickable) for better Search Engine Optimization.

From experience, Article marketing is an effective tool to bring visitors to your site and help make you sales, but only if implemented correctly. Take these tips and use them to grow your article marketing efforts.

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Be Success in Your Online Products Marketing

Reaching the point in your business’s development where you have a ready to market product is a wonderful feeling.  Chances are that your journey began with a Eureka, moment which led to tons of research and planning and then finally you have a product.

But guess what? You’ve reached a milestone moment, but you’ve still got a ways to go.  Just to put it into perspective just look at how much time companies spend on developing products and then compare that to how much time they spend marketing those products.

The work you must do to bring just one product to the market online is almost identical to the work that you must do to market your entire business online.

In short bringing a product to market, online, will require you to create an online marketing plan around the product that you intend to sale.  This plan should be founded upon 1) what you know about your audience, 2) what you know about your audience and 3) your product’s USP.  Those three items should serve to guide your decisions on items such as the type of website to create and the type of online promotional tactics to engage in.  So let us begin with the bedrock of your product’s online marketing plan-research.

1 – Do Your Research

Doing your research consists of learning your audience, your competition, and your industry.  You can learn your audience by analyzing your own website and website’s with similar audiences on Quantcast, you can review your website’s internal search data, and take note of the conversations that you have with members of your audience.  You are looking for clues that tell you 1) who your audience is, 2) what their needs and wants 3) when they buy, 4) how they decide on what and where to purchase 5) where does your audience spend their time at online, 6) what is their level of comfort with their current situation and etc.

This information will come in handy when you want to do things such as decide which social media platforms to utilize or when you want to determine the type of voice to use in your messaging.

To understand who your competition is I’d suggest beginning with a list of both long and short tail keywords that your audience uses to land on your website (you can find this with Google Analytics) and then searching for these terms on Alexa and Keyword Spy. The sites that show up in when you search for these keywords are likely to be your most likely sources of online competition.  Often this list will include retailers, manufacturers, content portals and affiliate sites and that is fine.

Once you know who you’re competing against you can find out what their doing by using tools such as Hubspot’s Website Grader, you can analyze their search engine strategy using tools such as Spyfu, you can look at their blog and you can observe their social media profiles to see what their saying and to see whose speaking for them.

Staying abreast of the latest happenings in your industry is a matter of attending industry functions, reading industry journals, blogs and websites.  Understanding what’s happening in your industry can be helpful because without it-how would you know whether your expectations are realistic or not?

2 – Set SMART Goals

The first thing that you should know when it comes to setting goals for your products is that you need goals that are SMART-specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timetabled.

Next you should know that there are two types of goals that you should concern yourself with when it comes to marketing your products online-business goals and marketing goals. These goals will provide you with the benchmarks that you need to assess the success or failure of your online marketing efforts.

Armed with the information that you have on the market for your product you will be in a position to set your business goals. Your business goals should address items such as sales, revenue, costs, and profitability. Since the type and degree of online marketing tactics will be influenced by your budget you will want to also take your financial position into consideration when putting your business goals together.

Your marketing goals should be designed so that your product sales will allow you to meet your company’s business goals. They should include metrics such as monthly website visits, page views, ad impressions, clicks, click trough rate, conversion rate, cost per conversion, average transaction value, and etc.

3 – Develop Your Elevator Pitch

An elevator pitch, which is also sometimes referred to as a unique selling point (USP), is a tool that you use to etch your brand’s unique qualities into the mind of your audience.  In short its what separates you from your competition and it is what let’s your audience know how your product will solve their problems. Your elevator pitch makes up the thrust of your product’s messaging strategy.  You elevator pitch should be incorporated into your website, landing pages, and promotion tactics.

4 – Finding an Online Home

Now that you’re about to begin marketing your product(s) online you will want to determine which type of website is the most suitable to help accomplish your goals.  The basic options that you have are:

• Squeeze Page.  This type of site consists of a single page, usually with no navigation that begins with copy and leads into the crescendo-a product sales offer.  It works best when you have one product and want the consumer to take one action-which is either a purchase and/or to make a request for information.
• Micro Site.  A micro site is a miniature website that is typically built around one product; they often include several different types of commercial online content such as online videos, white papers, and etc.  This type of website works well when selling expensive or complicated products.
• Website.  This can be an ecommerce site, a blog, or a more standard website.  This format works well when you have multiple products to sell.  Often times marketers who utilize a complete website to market their products have several different landing pages-one for each product or family of products.

So you should determine which type of platform to use based upon the number and complexity of products that you will be selling.

5 – Online Promotion Plan

There are tons of online promotion tactics that you can use to market your products.  However, you will not be able to use all of them.  The online marketing tools that you should include in your promotion plan will be based upon your goals, your audience’s online habits and preferences, as well as your company’s financial and time constraints.   The most commonly used tools are:

• Organic SEO.   Organic SEO is used to impact your website’s position within the search engine results for relevant keywords.  Pros: This strategy drives targeted traffic to your site and has long-term benefits that often outlive your efforts.  Surfers place more trust in the natural results than they do in paid results.  Cons:  It takes time for the benefits of organic SEO to materialize.  It can be extremely expensive.
• Paid Search Engine Marketing or SEM. SEM is used to drive targeted potential buyers to your site via sponsored search engine results-think “Google AdWords”.  Pros: This strategy can provide near immediate results.  It also allows advertisers highly detailed analytics.  Performance based pay structure-you pay only for clicks.  Cons:  Many a firm has lost their shirt doing PPC marketing.  Campaigns can get expensive really quick and if you aren’t conducting testing you could easily get in over your head.
• Affiliate Marketing.  Affiliate marketing is where you pay affiliates a commission on the sales that they help to generate for you online.  Pros: Highly cost effective way to bring targeted buyers to your site.  In addition to bringing you sales affiliates also give you back-links to your site.  Cons: Your sales are dependent upon the strength of your affiliates.  Although relative to SEO and PPC overall affiliate marketing costs are low the set up costs can be expensive.
• Online PR.  Online PR speaks to the methods that you use to influence the perception of your online audience to your product(s) or brand.  This includes social media as well as the management of your online newsroom and press releases.  Pros: Relatively inexpensive to utilize.  Since online pr often results in people sharing information with each other about your products, this tool is very similar to a traditional referral-you stand to get warm leads.  Cons: You have little control of your message as much of online pr as the consumer primarily controls or drives social media.  You also have less control over the type of traffic that your website will receive from your online pr efforts-meaning you could get a high percentage of window shoppers from this type of marketing.
• Email Marketing.  Email marketing is a form of marketing where the marketer uses emails as the communication medium to reach the consumer-directly.  Pros:  This can be used to complement PPC marketing and it can greatly enhance the experience of your current customers.  Relative to the other tools email marketing offers a very high ROI.  Cons: You can easily alienate customers if you aren’t careful.  If you break the CAN-SPAM Act you could be fined up to 16,000 USD for a single violation.
• Blogging.  You can use a business blog to communicate with your audience while building your web presence.  Pros: Very affordable.  Easy way to establish your brand online.  Cons:  Can be highly time consuming.  May take a long time to generate sales of your products.

Again, you may find that some of these online promotional strategies are more practical for your firm than others.  The key is that you will want to have a plan that details which tools you will use to market your products so that your company will not be flying blind.

So we’ve just covered five steps that you will need to go through in order to sell your products online.  Of course the rest is up to you.  Go get em’.

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