NetBusinessBlogWork from Home and Run an Online Business / Over 400+ Articles

What is the most powerful and effective marketing strategy?

Undoubtedly, it is word of mouth marketing or publicity - the sweet little WoM. But it is not so small either. By November 2007, it has grown into a 981 million dollar industry. And experts believe that we are yet to see a bigger boom.

WoM had always been in the corner - a lot of bellow the line advertising actually tried to cash on this WoM factor. Research and surveys show that, around 80% people actually trust recommendations from friends and family members. Undoubtedly, this is a huge percentage. And the best thing about WoM factor is that - it does not have any recurring investment and spreads faster than anything (even virus).

And undoubtedly, the WoM marketers do not beat around the bush. They try to figure out the power center of a community or a group. For example, think about your college group and think about the most influential person in your group. (Mr. Geek may be very influential in latest technology but Ms. Shop may prove herself more influential in case of cheap shopping.)

Now, if Steve Jobs, needed to market iPhone in your group, he would simply convince Mr. Geek and convinced Mr. Geek, to keep his peer position would eventually pass the information to you in a more convincing way.

In this process, Steve has actually saved a lot of Dollars in advertising cost that he would have spent to inform and convince each member in your group.

Just a note: an advertisement (TV, Print, Radio or Online) does not actually sell a product. It informs the target audience about the latest arrivals (Inform and Convince - the result of Steve’s interaction with Mr. Geek).

Now, who is Steve Jobs?

If you take a look around the blogosphere, there are different classes of bloggers. Think about Om Malik, Danny Sullivan, Seth Godin - do you find any association between these people with the job role of Steve? Can we call each of them Mr. Steve?

However, every community is actually a group of different micro communities and each micro community has its very own Steve Jobs.

You are a Steve Jobs - I am a Steve Jobs and we are very important part of the WoM matrix with individual shares in that 981+ million dollar industry.  Let’s explore our capabilities to claim the money.

Whenever, someone talks about web 2.0, the very next term they use is ‘social media marketing’. And it is so fashionable in these days that everyone just jumps into it. And most commonly people think that “social media marketing” means simply adding up as many bookmarking buttons as you can along with adding up as many people as you can in your social network friend list.

To the most they take the pain to send a common message to everyone like “you have a very interesting and informative blog. Please visit my blog/site too; thanks”. I have received this message a lot of times just like you in mybloglog or blogcatalog.

And if you talk about Twitter (undoubtedly a very powerful networking site) you would get lots of followers even if you do not update your account at all.

I talked to one of the self declared social media marketer and he said, “at least you get a chance to be visited by a fellow blogger who may like your content and …”! Does it really make sense?

Mindless promotion is simply mindless promotion - no excuse is enough to support your cause behind such mindless and senseless promotion (or should I say spamming!).

First thing first - ask yourself, if your business or your client’s business is ready for social media marketing or not!

The very next and most obvious question is “which are the parameters to decide if a website is ‘social network ready’ or not”!

This is undoubtedly a very complex situation. Here are some simple questions that may help you to understand some parts of it:

1. Who are you?
2. Do you provide a platform for interaction?
3. Do you have something interesting for people to talk about?
4. Is your target market roaming in a specific social network?

These four questions, to the most, may show you the tip of the iceberg only - you must delve deep into it to find an answer.

Things to remember:

1. You are dealing with real people and it is always safe to put your best feet forward. These people have their voice and ground to talk about you - so, be careful. You are lucky, if they just ignore you.
2. Do not jump into social media marketing unless you are ready for it.
3. No product is for everyone - find out your niche and their den and then be one of them before you start promoting your product.

Webmasters often (or always?) say that I need more visitors - how to get that?

Bloggers often (or always?) say that I need more visitors - how to get that?

Say for example, in one fine day I offer you 500% extra visitors - what would you do with them? What would be your net result? Are you sure that you would be able to retain them for a long time? And more importantly, does more traffic mean more business (unless AdSense is the only source of your income)! Do you really have any plan about how you can earn from this huge rush?

Lets talk about Fred - the new (or old!) you tube superhero. His video has already got 3,464,006 views, 27,144 ratings and 26,789 comments. And Fred is not a one show wonder. Almost all his videos have become super hits - at least in respect to visits, votes and comments.

But does it really fulfill any goal for Fred? Perhaps, it does - He has already grown into a really BIG mini star. But is YouTube is smart enough to cash in on Fred? And it is not that Fred has done great for a single video - he is doing great in all the videos with around 250,000 subscribers to his channel (a lot of TV channels have less amount of regular subscribers).

May be the geeks have their own views on this issue, but it does point out a few things very clearly -

1.    You can gain a lot from word of mouth publicity.

2.    Quality content (in any form) is important to keep the subscriber’s base growing.

3.    _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ (fill in the blanks…. if you wish)
But there is another point - Do you really think that Fred would have done great if he did not publish his video on YouTube (platform)? Do you really think that he would have received similar response if he had published his videos in his own website in a distinct corner of the internet?

But now, as Fred has become a mini celebrity, perhaps it is time for him to start his own channel - the time is ready for him to get into business.

Is there anyone ready to sign him up for a real venture?

While working with different clients, the primary obstacle we face is that the client is too confident about the greatness of his content and do not want to change it at any cost. The second scenario is even worst; the client does not have enough time or resources and asks a freelance content writer to write the content for $2/page around some keywords.

In both the cases, the website stumbles on the ground even before the race actually started. Only if someone had given enough importance to the content they are publishing, they would have saved a lot of money and time while promoting the website in the market.

Why should you always think about Google - after all, Google won’t buy your product - if your content cannot please your target visitors, you reach nowhere. And ultimately, Google will stop sending visitors to your website. And at this point, you loose business, time and effort you have invested to rank top and more importantly you loose energy.  But if you can win your visitors, search engines will be happy to send them to your site.

And, right after developing the website, people start moving around for links and more links and more links. They start knocking every possible contact us page to get some quality one way link. But they forget to develop the content or quality of their pages.

Why would someone like to link to you for free, if you do not have any quality? A great design, to the most, may fetch you a best design award but it won’t improve your ranking for targeted keywords.

If you are running a business (irrespective of size and market segment) and starting a website to host or promote your business that means, you are well aware of the domain you are dealing. If this is true, participate in the development process and try to help the visitors - search engines will follow you.

And just answer a simple question - what would you have done if there had been no Google or Yahoo to guide the visitors to a website! What would have been your business development model in such a situation?

No matter how indifferent you are, you will sooner or later notice which of your links are “link juice” and which ones aren’t. It is interesting to note though that even PR0 websites can pass as link juice; the Page Rank does not seem to be significant factor in determining which links will pass as link juice and drive traffic to your website. Of course, getting links from higher PR websites do have its advantages as well. You should take note though that these sites have a lot more going for them than their PR.

On the other hand, there are certain sites that will not pass the link juice test. But why is that? Although it is not as common as you believe, one of the things these sites have in common is that they have a lot of links to irrelevant and adult websites. Take note though that these links are different from paid links. You will not immediately lose link juice even if you have paid links on your site unless a significant portion of these outbound links are to penalized sites. So the point is, you should not completely ignore PR0 websites because it can provide potential advantages to your website as well.

Building links is one of the most difficult tasks a web owner has to do for his marketing endeavor. This is because unless he has enough financial resources to reward those who will link to him, he is almost entirely dependent on the goodwill of others. Other factors that make it hard for a web owner include:

Reputation – it is important for a company to have a good or well-known reputation in their niche in order to attract the best links. Usually, “free” links are given to the best companies and it is hard for a company to achieve the top spot in the reputation game.

Limited opportunities – niche companies have a limited number of targets. And when you take away competitor websites and dead sites, this number further shrinks down.

Unwilling web owners – any web owner who knows something about search engines is aware that links is important. For this reason, they are hesitant to link to other websites. The attitude of “Why should I give him a link?” is widely prevalent everywhere in the web. It is important for you to provide accurate and up-to-date information that

Static websites – a lot of websites are static “brochures” that don’t link to anything new. Also, these static websites don’t usually link to other pages except when it’s from a links page.

If you are just starting to grow your online business or blog, getting a link from a popular blog can help you a lot. This is especially true if the blog you are linked to targets the same niche as you. But the question is how can you get these popular bloggers to link to you? Below are some suggestions:

·         Find Their Angle. Reading popular blogs regularly will give you an idea of what the stuff the blogger is interested in. You can create several blog posts that targets the same angle; the rewards can be big if he decides to link to your page even for just a single blog post.

·         Establish E-mail contact. Remember that it is not a good idea to immediately ask the blogger to check out your site and link to you. You should use the social approach in the first few contacts before you ask him to check out your site.

·         Comments. Everyone knows just how effective commenting on blogs can be. But their true value may be its networking potential. Comments will get the attention of the blogger and he will click on the website you specify if he gets curious enough.

·         Establish personal contact. With the amount of pitches popular bloggers receive on a daily basis, your mail may get lost in the clutter. It would be a good idea to get a personal introduction to them if you have a friend who knows him; using social media is another alternative.

·         Link to them. If you have a relatively popular blog yourself, send these bloggers some traffic. This will let them know that you are really supportive of their blog and they will keep your blog in mind in the future.

Internet users know that their personal information is important so they won’t give their email address away unless you give them a compelling reason to do so. This poses a challenge for marketers who want to build their opt-in mailing list. It is a good thing then that there are many strategies you can use to entice users into revealing their email address to you. Basically, you just need to offer special benefits to your subscribers, relate to their needs, and provide information that will encourage them to return to your site.

Most internet marketers think of newsletters as their incentive but this strategy won’t work for all business. For example, if yours is a company that sells furniture, sending out information about chairs and tables every week just won’t work. There are other ways to build-in your opt-in mailing list aside from offering newsletters. Among these include:

1. A free course – if you are an expert in your chosen field, use this to your benefit. You need to understand what your audience is looking for when they visited your site. The free course can come in the form of text, audio, or videos depending on the course material you choose.

2. Downloadable articles – if your site has a lot of informative content, offer downloadable articles as the specific benefit for your subscribers. They will be able to view the entire content if they register to your site.

3. Free e-book – this concept is related to downloadable articles because both are offering instant information in exchange for the visitor’s email address. Free e-books take this one step further though because it offers major value to the subscribers.

4. Contest or games – contest is an effective way to get subscribers. Be sure that the prize you are offering are relevant to the visitor’s needs and wants though. For example, if you are targeting the youth market, you may want to use MP3 players as the prize provided that the business can afford it.

5. Members-only forum – members-only forum can draw a lot of people in niche markets. In fact, some people even pay to become members of popular forums. This can be an effective way to get a lot of subscribers but the forum also need to have “advisers” who are well-established in their respective fields.

In 2007, it is estimated that there are 143 million websites currently in existence; this means that there are untold millions of web pages over the internet. Now, the good news is only a small percentage of the 143 million websites have active owners that actively promote them. However, letting your site rise above this clutter is a challenge every web owner face.

If you want people to find your site from the millions of websites out there, you should use strategies that will promote your website, your products, and your services to get traffic. But remember that there is no use in reinventing the wheel so you might want to try of the primary methods of site promotion that is already proven to be effective.

Search engine optimization (SEO) – a website will rank higher in search engines with the careful choice of keywords in your title, meta tags, text, and incoming links from social bookmarks, directories, and related websites.

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) – this is the paid search on search engines. Your text links will appear at the right corner of the search results when a searcher look for information on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You will only need to pay when a searcher actually clicks on your ad. The downside to this is it can be quite expensive depending on the keywords you choose.

Affiliate programs –your affiliates will promote your site and they will get paid when a searcher click though or purchases a product from you. Affiliate programs can be quite effective but it is difficult to find a large number of motivated affiliates who will actively promote your site.

Advertising in newsletters – your ads can appear on existing newsletters that are already being sent to your target market. This is a moderately effective approach to get people to visit your site.

E-mail campaign – your e-mails can be sent to subscribers of an ezine list or even a rented list. With a well-written copy, a good landing page, and the right list, this kind of promotion can be highly effective but costly.

Online communities – you can expand your network in online communities by becoming an active member. Try to participate in forums, blogs, and other discussions; put your site using your “signature”.

Viral marketing campaigns – make people want to share your site to their friends and acquaintance by creating something so unique and compelling that they cannot help but to pass it on.

Joint ventures – basically, it involves a cooperation among websites wherein other people will carry your marketing message and you will carry theirs in return. This can also involve sales commission and other forms of incentive. With the right joint venture partners, this can be beneficial to everyone.

The wrong question to ask is “Which is the best promotional strategy?” This is because there is no right answer to that question. Various marketers have found success using several of these techniques without touching on the others while others. It also does not follow that a strategy that worked incredibly well for one person will do the same for another. So it is up to you to find out which strategy is the best for you. 

Most people don’t think about public relations as a way to promote their online business. But the fact remains that public relations is an essential part of any business online or offline. Why should someone worry about building their reputation in a medium aside from the internet? Two reasons: Exposure and Credibility.

Exposure. People also listen to radio, read magazines, and read newspapers. To be able to reach your target market thoroughly, it is important for an internet marketer to think of innovate ways to reach them; this will also improve traffic to your website.

Credibility. Establishing a trustworthy reputation is definitely a challenge for any online business. This is because people are more critical of what they see on the internet. Web visitors will not instantly trust your site even after seeing it. When visitors read about your business on the newspaper or magazine, they will categorize your site above that of the competitor; this is because any business can publish any kind of content on the internet but not all businesses can be mentioned in a magazine.

I know of a website that used to sponsor concerts and other heavily-promoted events; the fee they pay for these sponsorships probably don’t costs as much as what other website owners pay for search engine optimization and other online promotion techniques. Yet, this particular site (which I have no permission to mention) enjoys a lot of everyday traffic as well as advertising revenue from various big-name companies.