"Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money but you cannot get more time." - Jim Rohn.
Earning an income on the internet is a process that in broad terms involves three stages:
1. Getting your product (acquisition)
2. Developing your product presentation
3. Promoting the product
In this article, "product" means any tangible product, digital products (ebooks and software) and services such as membership sites, web design and development, hosting, "print on demand" for ebooks, fulfillment for orders and so on.
By necessity you will spend time in each of these stages. Each stage will involve a learning phase and an action phase. It's important to identify clearly what stage of development you are currently working on and to focus on completing that stage.
1. Getting your product (acquisition).
Choose between your own product and an affiliate product.
This will involve identifying a demand using for example surveys or the popularity of search terms.
Key Point: Once you have your product you can stop spending time looking at other product possibilities for the time being.
2. Developing your product presentation.
Once you have chosen your product you will need to develop a presentation.
This will include your website primarily and can also include autoresponder sequences and a newsletter.
Key Points: Once your website and presentation process is completed you can move on to the promotion. You can always improve the presentation but once your presentation is "presentable" you should move on to promotion. Don't get caught up trying to make things perfect. Good, yes; perfect, no. The reality is things can always be changes. It does not matter if you have the best product in your niche and the best presentation if nobody knows about it. Give your presentation your best shot and then start promoting.
3. Promoting the product.
No matter now good your product and presentation are, you must get your presentation in front of your intended audience or nothing happens.
"We have to become better at promoting what we do than doing what we do."
This is where it is also important to be clear about what stage you are in. Remember, time is limited, so if you have already chosen your product and developed your presentation it is not productive to keep looking for products or spending a great deal of time "tweaking" your presentation.
Time can always be spent tweaking sales copy, images, layout, web presentation, upgrading or trying new software, investigating new product opportunities (before the current one is complete), improving design skills, keeping up with the changing web "standards"... The list can seem endless.
Key Point: Time is better spent developing a clear promotional strategy and putting it into action. Only when you are seeing results from your promotional activities should you consider altering your presentation (such as modifying headlines and sales copy) to assess how that affects conversion of prospects to customers.
Here are some examples:
- Write two newsletters each month - Run a solo ad each week - Purchase 500 double-optin subscribers each month - Conduct a Pay Per Click campaign with $x budget each week/month - Make three new blog entries each week - Create ten new web pages each week
Here are a few tips to keep you on track:
1. Name your project
You may name your project as a final name of the product or you may just give it a code name that means something to you.
2. Understand what part of the three step process you are in: Acquisition, presentation or promotion.
Here is a simple question to ask yourself to check if you are on track with your time budget, "What is this activity designed to do?" or perhaps, "What is the outcome of this activity?"
This will help you to identify if you are spending time in the wrong area at the wrong time.
3. Set up check lists to make sure everything is covered. Focus on completion.
4. Promotion: Clearly define your action steps.
5. Track the results or your promotional campaign in terms of traffic, click through rates, subscribers and purchasers. Include costs of conducting your campaign and compare that to your sales to determine your return on investment. It is only by tracking the results of the promotion that you will know how to effectively change the presentation for further testing.
A spreadsheet is an invaluable tool as a template for specifying your promotional campaign and also for tracking results, costs and return on investment. Adding in columns for each day of the week allows you to allocate your time so that all your promotions are covered in a time effective manner. This becomes your business gauge by which you assess the effectiveness of your promotional campaign.
Understanding the three stages of the business process and the stage you are in, using checklists and tracking your results using business gauges are the proven ways to maximize your time, your effectiveness and your profits.
About The Author:
Not long ago, Ryan Ginster didn't know ANYTHING about Internet marketing... However, within just 2 weeks, he launched his own website AND learned how to profit from an opt-in list, pull in sales with ezines, make money with Google Adwords and setup his own BLOG! Here's how: http://www.PlugInProfitSite.com/main-10193 http://www.ginsterprofits.com
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Monday, September 8, 2008
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Internet Marketing: Paid Search Branding and Tools
http://blog4rbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/09/is-your-business-podcasting.html
Friday, September 5, 2008
Marketing Your Business On The Internet
How can a business that is already successful in reaching their local market extend their marketing reach online? The good news is that the traditional offline marketing that has always worked so well will still work at least as effectively to promote your online presence. The other side of the coin is that to promote your business online, the old traditions need some updating to keep up with online marketing best practices.
Any business should already have a marketing plan and objectives from their offline initiatives, so let's jump straight into the technology aspects of online marketing. I generally look at the following things first, because they can be done at very low or no initial cost, and also because subsequent specialist marketing won't be as successful without these things in place. Of course there is a huge amount more to online marketing, the extent of which could easily be justified as a full-time university course. This is the pre-school notes, to help get your site to a starting point on a low budget if you can't quite afford to be calling in the big guns to market your site for you professionally just yet.
1. Site optimization
This is always the place to start, because the effectiveness of everything which follows is often dependent on this being done up front. When I say this, I include great content and intuitive navigation as the basis for everything. Only once your site has been optimized for intelligent visitors should you tweak it for search engines, but never at the expense of the former.
Search engines look at things like keyword density and how specifically a page matches a specific search term. Of course this is extremely over simplistic, but nevertheless a worthwhile starting point. By identifying 10-20 key terms you would like search engines to pick up on, and creating specialised pages with relevant information which utilises those terms in the right way, you will start getting much better results once your site has been indexed.
You will find that it is best to use specialised keyword phrases, for example "precision-engineered bolts" is likely to get better placement than a generic term like "engineering parts". You should also work to create a single page for every key phrase you want picked up on, and include the key phrase in the title, meta tags and use all the words in the body of the page at a high density relative to other words. You should also preferably include the key phrase in the page title, as well as the URL of the page, for example, "http://www.mysite.com/precision_engineered_bolts/". Each page should use a different title, specifically based on the key phrase utilised in that page's content.
Your site should really be developed using XHTML and CSS these days, table-based design has numerous technical problems associated with it, and it results in a lower keyword density than the current standards.
Ideally you should use a content management system which incorporates and facilitates all of the above quickly and effortlessly, such as that provided standard with RealmSurfer sites. This will allow you to manage your own content optimization, with a bit of trial-and-error.
2. Linking and indexing
The next step is to get search engines to start to notice and index your site. Google, for example, won't even look at your site until it has been linked to by at least one other indexed site. Paid inclusion (paying the search engines to index your site on a priority schedule) can be appropriate at this phase if you need to urgently accelerate this process, however it is not always necessary.
Especially useful at this stage can be participating in forums serving your primary target market. This has the dual benefit of creating awareness of your business within communities you would like to reach, and at the same time can help create incoming links to your site, something that search engines pay particular attention to. Ensure that your site details are included as a link in the footer of your posts.
Never use a forum to spam members or submit unsolicited advertising posts -- that just has the opposite effect of destroying your business' credibility. Some forums have a separate advertising section in which it may be appropriate to professionally post information about your services and products. Always make sure that your presence represents a valuable contribution to the community. Stay on topic and be professional, helpful and constructive.
Search engines take many factors into consideration when ranking a site. New sites, for example, don't initially fare well, however you will find they will allocate some credibility weighting to you the longer your site is up and running. The biggest factor though, external to the site itself, is the number of inbound (preferably non-reciprocal) links from other sites, and the context and wording of the referring link, as well as the ranking of the referring page, and referring site. The popularity of those sites plays a big role, as well as how high up in the site's own hierarchy the link is. By way of example, a link from www.news.com.au counts for much more than a link from a very deeply embedded page like www.somesitesomewhere.com/subdirectory/theattic/someoldforgottenpage .
3. Implement online marketing partnerships with high-profile online businesses
This is where you can really benefit if implemented successfully. When I was previously running the e-commerce business unit for a large company, rather than pay high-traffic websites to advertise on their sites, which can be very much untargeted, we offered them a percentage of sales. In other words, we provided them with the banners to promote the service, and implemented simple tracking of where our visitors were coming from, and then paid a percentage of the total revenue to the referrer. This resulted in very low marketing costs to us, and the referring sites started placing more and more emphasis on their side to ensure that we got top placement whenever they were low on paid inventory.
Another effective medium-term strategy is to provide content of value to sites which serve your target market. They benefit from your topical content, you benefit from the exposure and links.
4. Dabble in paid keyword advertising
Only at this point should you actually be starting to pay for online advertising. These forms of advertising, however, allow you to specifically target certain people, which means you get a much better return on investment than simply advertising to everyone. This can take some trial and error to find what works best, but the amount you pay should be less than the amount of business you generate, and should normally include full measurement and reports on a reasonably regular basis, preferably online.
For this purpose, I often suggest starting with Google. They are by far the most popular search engine globally, they have a very good reputation, provide reporting online, and are probably the most likely to produce results initially. Yahoo and MSN also have excellent paid link systems, and they keep getting better all the time. The latest offerings from all three are now also starting to allow targeting to specific demographics, a trend that is likely to become the preferred way to target online audiences once the capabilities for this type of targeting matures.
5. Involve an internet marketing specialist
At this point, you should be starting to see some results, and be in a good position to ask some intelligent questions. Preferably deal only with a business that has a good reputation (ask for client contact details so you can find out how effective they are), and has preferably has been around for at least a few years. They should also provide very detailed reports (ask for examples of these up front), and be able to explain in detail how they go about promoting your site, on which sites they do so, the number of views and clickthroughs per site per day, and how effective each promotion was relative to the next. They should also meet with you at least once a month to review successes and failures and involve you in the decision-making process of where next to promote your business. At least monthly, you should be in a position to evaluate your cost per sale for various promotions, and to change your focus accordingly.
Especially be wary of businesses who claim unrealistically quick results, or base their business mainly only on search engine submission, or use deceptive practices to try and "trick" search engines into ranking you higher. These usually at best produce no value, and can in some cases lead to your site being removed or ranked very low by search engines.
Any business should already have a marketing plan and objectives from their offline initiatives, so let's jump straight into the technology aspects of online marketing. I generally look at the following things first, because they can be done at very low or no initial cost, and also because subsequent specialist marketing won't be as successful without these things in place. Of course there is a huge amount more to online marketing, the extent of which could easily be justified as a full-time university course. This is the pre-school notes, to help get your site to a starting point on a low budget if you can't quite afford to be calling in the big guns to market your site for you professionally just yet.
1. Site optimization
This is always the place to start, because the effectiveness of everything which follows is often dependent on this being done up front. When I say this, I include great content and intuitive navigation as the basis for everything. Only once your site has been optimized for intelligent visitors should you tweak it for search engines, but never at the expense of the former.
Search engines look at things like keyword density and how specifically a page matches a specific search term. Of course this is extremely over simplistic, but nevertheless a worthwhile starting point. By identifying 10-20 key terms you would like search engines to pick up on, and creating specialised pages with relevant information which utilises those terms in the right way, you will start getting much better results once your site has been indexed.
You will find that it is best to use specialised keyword phrases, for example "precision-engineered bolts" is likely to get better placement than a generic term like "engineering parts". You should also work to create a single page for every key phrase you want picked up on, and include the key phrase in the title, meta tags and use all the words in the body of the page at a high density relative to other words. You should also preferably include the key phrase in the page title, as well as the URL of the page, for example, "http://www.mysite.com/precision_engineered_bolts/". Each page should use a different title, specifically based on the key phrase utilised in that page's content.
Your site should really be developed using XHTML and CSS these days, table-based design has numerous technical problems associated with it, and it results in a lower keyword density than the current standards.
Ideally you should use a content management system which incorporates and facilitates all of the above quickly and effortlessly, such as that provided standard with RealmSurfer sites. This will allow you to manage your own content optimization, with a bit of trial-and-error.
2. Linking and indexing
The next step is to get search engines to start to notice and index your site. Google, for example, won't even look at your site until it has been linked to by at least one other indexed site. Paid inclusion (paying the search engines to index your site on a priority schedule) can be appropriate at this phase if you need to urgently accelerate this process, however it is not always necessary.
Especially useful at this stage can be participating in forums serving your primary target market. This has the dual benefit of creating awareness of your business within communities you would like to reach, and at the same time can help create incoming links to your site, something that search engines pay particular attention to. Ensure that your site details are included as a link in the footer of your posts.
Never use a forum to spam members or submit unsolicited advertising posts -- that just has the opposite effect of destroying your business' credibility. Some forums have a separate advertising section in which it may be appropriate to professionally post information about your services and products. Always make sure that your presence represents a valuable contribution to the community. Stay on topic and be professional, helpful and constructive.
Search engines take many factors into consideration when ranking a site. New sites, for example, don't initially fare well, however you will find they will allocate some credibility weighting to you the longer your site is up and running. The biggest factor though, external to the site itself, is the number of inbound (preferably non-reciprocal) links from other sites, and the context and wording of the referring link, as well as the ranking of the referring page, and referring site. The popularity of those sites plays a big role, as well as how high up in the site's own hierarchy the link is. By way of example, a link from www.news.com.au counts for much more than a link from a very deeply embedded page like www.somesitesomewhere.com/subdirectory/theattic/someoldforgottenpage .
3. Implement online marketing partnerships with high-profile online businesses
This is where you can really benefit if implemented successfully. When I was previously running the e-commerce business unit for a large company, rather than pay high-traffic websites to advertise on their sites, which can be very much untargeted, we offered them a percentage of sales. In other words, we provided them with the banners to promote the service, and implemented simple tracking of where our visitors were coming from, and then paid a percentage of the total revenue to the referrer. This resulted in very low marketing costs to us, and the referring sites started placing more and more emphasis on their side to ensure that we got top placement whenever they were low on paid inventory.
Another effective medium-term strategy is to provide content of value to sites which serve your target market. They benefit from your topical content, you benefit from the exposure and links.
4. Dabble in paid keyword advertising
Only at this point should you actually be starting to pay for online advertising. These forms of advertising, however, allow you to specifically target certain people, which means you get a much better return on investment than simply advertising to everyone. This can take some trial and error to find what works best, but the amount you pay should be less than the amount of business you generate, and should normally include full measurement and reports on a reasonably regular basis, preferably online.
For this purpose, I often suggest starting with Google. They are by far the most popular search engine globally, they have a very good reputation, provide reporting online, and are probably the most likely to produce results initially. Yahoo and MSN also have excellent paid link systems, and they keep getting better all the time. The latest offerings from all three are now also starting to allow targeting to specific demographics, a trend that is likely to become the preferred way to target online audiences once the capabilities for this type of targeting matures.
5. Involve an internet marketing specialist
At this point, you should be starting to see some results, and be in a good position to ask some intelligent questions. Preferably deal only with a business that has a good reputation (ask for client contact details so you can find out how effective they are), and has preferably has been around for at least a few years. They should also provide very detailed reports (ask for examples of these up front), and be able to explain in detail how they go about promoting your site, on which sites they do so, the number of views and clickthroughs per site per day, and how effective each promotion was relative to the next. They should also meet with you at least once a month to review successes and failures and involve you in the decision-making process of where next to promote your business. At least monthly, you should be in a position to evaluate your cost per sale for various promotions, and to change your focus accordingly.
Especially be wary of businesses who claim unrealistically quick results, or base their business mainly only on search engine submission, or use deceptive practices to try and "trick" search engines into ranking you higher. These usually at best produce no value, and can in some cases lead to your site being removed or ranked very low by search engines.
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