Online Marketing

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Having been involved in some of the most profitable online marketing campaigns, I can safely say that if you can master the art of online marketing it can be one of the most cost effective and lucrative methods of marketing around.

That said, the very thought of marketing your services online can be a little daunting to a lot of business people but in my experience this is down to their lack of knowledge. It's easy for me because I live, breathe and sleep marketing so I know all of the methods, techniques and strategies to guarantee your online marketing success but for you that may be a little different.

There are many forms of online marketing. Let me share some of them with you and give you some tips!

HOW TO GET YOUR WEBSITE TO THE TOP OF THE SEARCH ENGINES

There are two ways to get to the top of the search engines. The first and easiest way are through Pay Per Click programmes and the second, most difficult way is through Search Engine Optimisation.

Let's start off by telling you about the online marketing technique that has made both my clients and myself absolute fortunes...

PAY PER CLICK ADVERTISING

When you perform a keyword search on Google you come out with some results similar to the graphic above. The search results on the left are the natural search engine rankings where Google has ranked your site based upon complicated formulas. The results on the right of the page are through Google's Pay Per Click advertising programme called "Google Adwords"

Once you have signed up to a programme like Adwords, Google will place your site on the right hand-side for your selected keyword search terms but you only pay when someone clicks to go to your website.

Where you are ranked depends on how much you bid but the beauty of pay per click is in the name itself - You only pay when someone visits your site.

For my money this is an awesome programme but be careful because if you do not do it right, it can cost you big time!

Pay per click programmes:

Google Adwords

https://adwords.google.com/select/

Yahoo Search

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/index.php

MIVA pay per click

http://www.miva.com

Here are some tips:

- Do your homework! Make sure you investigate your keywords thoroughly

- Make sure you target your markets and demographics

- Ensure you write your ads to maximise their impact

- Manage your bids

- Test different ads and see which ones perform the best

- Stick to a budget and what you can afford

- Always optimise what you do

- Seek professional help to get it all right

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO)

Once sure fire way of getting more visitors to your website are through the free search engines but it is a very difficult task. Type the product or service that you offer into google, yahoo and co and where do you show up?

Chances are that you don't show up at all!

All of the search engines use complicated algorithims and formulas to rate your site and then they rank your site based upon a number of factors that include but are not limited to:

- Density of your keywords on your pages

- The number of other sites that link to you

- Your headings

- The relevancy of the sites that link to you

- The amount of content that you have on your site

- Meta-tags

- Descriptions

- Directory listings

- Words in bold

- Words in links

- Words in URL

- HTML validation

- Link structure

There are hundreds of other factors!

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of working on your site to get high rankings in the free search engines and is split into:

1. On-page factors

2. Off page factors

On-page factors are the things that you can do to your site to let the search engines know what your site is about and why it is important. Off page factors include link building.

Here are some tips:

- Try pay per click first!

- Target the keywords you want high rankings for and make a plan

- Don't over-optimize your pages and load them with your keywords - they always find out!

- Concentrate on getting high quality links from other related sites

- Learn as much as you can about the process

- Don't blow the housekeeping on it!

EMAIL MARKETING

When I talk about email marketing I do not mean just sending people an unsolicitated email about your products and services.

The most effective email campaigns are where you capture the visitors email address on your site and then market to them over time to build up a relationship.

I have worked with clients where I have built their whole proposition around this and they have made huge profits.

Get this right and you'll be making long term profitable relationships where your clients will come back to you again and again.

USE AN AUTO-RESPONDER TO CAPTURE AND MANAGE YOUR EMAIL LIST

When you have got a website it is very important to capture the email address and contact details of your visitors.

You will want to do this automatically – so why do I see so many people capture them and then follow up with a manual system that takes hours out of your schedule each week!

Once you have captured your prospect’s information you want to stay in front of that client as much as possible. With your website marketing you can completely automate this process by using an autoresponder.

If you are not familiar with autoresponders, what they do is automatically send out a series of pre-programmed emails over a period of time. Someone can ask for information, a free report, a newsletter, an ecourse or whatever and literally have it seconds later.

It amazes me on how many people just "don't get it" when it comes to following up with potential customers.

Did you know that it can take up to 7 times contacting someone before they purchase a product - it's true! But again, there are a growing number of people out there that are trying to make sales without doing something as simple as setting their marketing on auto-pilot.

MAKE YOUR WEBSITE SELL

Getting traffic is all well and good but does your website look the part?

It's pointless getting 1,000 hits per week if no-one buys!

You need to take a long hard look at your website. Here's what I look for:

- Does the site look clean and uncluttered?

- Would you buy something from it?

- Is your site centred around your visitors needs and not your own? It should.

- Do you have a "call to action" on every page?

- Are you capturing your visitors email address?

- What is the purpose of your site? To sell off the page? To generate leads? Get emails?

- Is it easy to navigate through?

- Can I get what I want within 2 clicks?

Those are just for starters. There are lots more techniques that I use to convert traffic to sales and that is what you want at the end of the day!

VIRAL MARKETING

The name sounds a little sinister but in reality this can create a huge interest for your product.

Have you ever received a funny videoclip or joke from your mates through email?

You know the ones, they have passed on and on and on and then you pass it on to your friends!

Well, that is an example of viral marketing.

In your case it's about designing something unique that creates a buzz within the online community and then let everyone do the marketing for you - your message/product therefore spreads like a virus!

One of the greatest examples of Viral Marketing ever:

HOTMAIL spreads like wildfire!

The story of how Hotmail grew so fast is a great example of viral marketing in action.

Here's how they did it...

When they first started out they needed to grow market share very quickly but this would be very costly if they had to advertise etc

Instead they came up with an ingenuous yet very obvious way of growing their client base.

Want to know what they did?

In-fact it was this technique that saw their traffic skyrocket and eventually lead to Microsoft buying the company as a result of their growth!

If only we'd have had that idea!

All they did was to add a simple footer to each outgoing email that anyone sent:

"To get your FREE email account goto www.hotmail.com"

That's all it took!

As more and more people received emails from existing Hotmail account holders so the word spread about their free email service and the rest, as they say, is history.

In summary:

Think about what you could do to generate a buzz within the online community.

Here are some examples:

- A free product

- A report

- A funny media clip with your company details on

- An online game

- An online training tool

The opportunities are endless!

ARTICLES

One of the websites that I promote generates over 1000 visitors per week from articles alone!

With this, I work out with the client a couple of really added value articles that they could write about their industry or products and services (Without any over-promotion) and then I get them

exposure by adding the articles to various online article resources that I know.

The beauty of writing articles is that they are not an advert. You are giving value and if the reader is impressed they will click on your website link at the bottom of the article and pay you a visit!

Here are some tips:

- Focus on creating quality articles rather than quantity

- Do not use them to plug your services

- Use articles to position yourself as an industry expert

- Place your articles on industry related article directories

FORUMS AND DISCUSSION GROUPS

With the creation of discussion groups almost every industry now has a forum.

If you are a regular participant in your related forum you can really build an awareness that will result in more clicks to your site and more customers!

Forums are great because you can talk about the factors affecting your industry and the current goings on within it. It's also a great place to network and build contacts too.

Here are some tips:

- Only use forums that are related to your industry, products and services.
- Don't overly promote your services, instead provide information that will be of use to the people who may read your messages.

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