Successful Internet Marketing

Dear WAHS Leslie,

I have been trying to make money at home with affiliate

programs and business ops without success. Each thing I join

I'm told to market my website and follow all the

instructions for classified ads, search engine listings, and

other recommendations. But nothing seems to work. I have

read about Google Ad Words and Oveture but I don't have

extra money to spend on that. Is there a way to make money

on the internet without spending $100's? Sarah in NC

Hi Sarah,

Good for you to recognize that marketing is the key to your

success. So many people begin their work-at-home ventures

without a thought to the importance of marketing. It takes

more than an ad and a flyer. In fact, since marketing is so

important, you should have a detailed marketing plan that

includes marketing activities to do everyday.

It is possible to market your business without spending too

much money but you should begin to set aside some of your

profit to use towards marketing as your business grows.

The first step to marketing is to become a student of

internet marketing. Techniques that worked 3 years

ago...heck even last year, don't work now. This is

particularly true on the Internet. Look at the prevalence of

pop-up blockers. Pop-ups were once touted the absolute best

way to build your customer list. Today, no one sees those

pop-ups. To keep abreast of the best marketing strategies, I

recommend reading Seth Godin's books (you can download

Unleashing the Ideavirus

http://www.sethgodin.com/ideavirus/downloads/IdeavirusReadandShare.pdf

free. Requires Adobe Reader) and subscribe to his Blog

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ He pioneered the idea of

permission marketing which is the idea of promoting your

products or services to people who ask for the information.

Next you need to determine who your target market is. Even

if your product is something the whole world could use, you

will do much better to target a specific market and gear

your marketing message to them. Pick a market you'd like to

develop and then determine the following: 1) What

specifically do they want or need that your product or

service can give them; 2) Where can this target market be

found? (What websites do they visit? What ezines do they

read? What groups do they participate in?) 3) What are their

hot buttons? (What concerns or excites them such that they

take action?). This information will help you design your

marketing plan and will be the focus of your advertising message.

Remember, people are looking for information or assistance

when searching the web. Your marketing should focus on the

benefits of your product or service to your customer in

providing the assistance they are looking for.

Develop a marketing plan. To many people fail to plan their

business. They erroneously think a few posts and a few ads

will lead to success. But even if a person is letting

Oveture drive traffic, he spends a great deal of time

studying and evaluating how the campaign is going day to

day. The idea of 100% autopilot business on the internet

is not accurate.

There are many great low-cost and free marketing techniques

but they can only work as well as the person who uses them.

Offering free reports, e-courses and ebooks through an

autoresponder has been very successful in one of my

businesses. These free resources offer something my visitors

want at no cost. It allows them to test my expertise and see

that I'm knowledgeable in the topic. But it wouldn't work if

my freebies were not helpful. Further, they wouldn't work

if I gave them away without asking something in return. In

this case, visitors can only get my freebies by submitting

their email (a legitimate one) to me. This allows me to

continue to send them great free info as well as to promote

my products or services. Whatever techniques you decide to

use, you need to be sure they are used correctly to their

maximum benefit.

The best free ways to advertise include writing articles,

using autoresponders (there are many free services for this)

to deliver freebies, and participating in discussion groups.

These efforts can take some time to work. I don't recommend

placing free classified ads even through a service or

software. I have found these just generate spam type mail

back to me.

Low cost ways of marketing include ads in ezines or on

websites. Again, make sure these ads are placed in front of

your target market and that your ad message really speaks to

them. I usually advertise my freebie and not my main product

or service. This increases my response rate tremendously as

1) people like freebies and 2) most other ads are just

ads..."come buy my stuff".

Depending on your product or service, Google Ad Words and

Oveture can be affordable, but to make the most of this

method, you need to choose your keywords carefully,

develop a great ad (again target specific), and monitor how

the campaign is going so you can make changes to improve it

if needed.

There are other great ideas and more developing all the

time. For example, Blogs and RSS systems are currently

growing in popularity for online marketers. That is why

always studying the internet and marketing is important so

you can be in the cutting edge of great new marketing

trends.

Marketing is not something that usually works right away.

Like many things in life, it takes time to develop and

consistency of practice to grow. Developing a plan and

implementing that plan in a way that has you doing some sort

of promotion everyday is the best way to generate customers

now as well as over the long run. This article is free for republishing
Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_1728_3.html