Internet Marketing Tools

As your studies will reveal, there are some basic internet marketing tools that will become essential components in the efforts of any successful Internet marketing plan. Laying this solid foundation means you do not necessarily have to reinvent the wheel with each new endeavor, although you should forever be prepared to tweak things a bit to fit the needs of the product or service that you want to market.

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In order to do a great job with your marketing plans, here are some things to put in place.

First, you need to get a web site. Period. No discussions or prevarication allowed. The simple fact of the matter is that people trust entities that they perceive as being “real” businesses. Your marketing empire might be created from a spare bedroom or the garage, but if you have a real web site that people can visit, bookmark, and share with their friends and family, you will have the look and feel of an established business.

Independent writers are an excellent example of this sort of thing. While some well paying markets are always looking for new writers, they tend to gravitate toward writers that have a web site, complete with writing samples, contact information, and content that indicates that a true business is working there, not just a spare-time activity or a hobby.

Internet marketing is the same thing. Sure, you can post ads all over the place, but if there is nothing that builds up confidence in the permanency of your business, all those efforts will yield little or no return.

These days web sites are relatively inexpensive which is good news, and many vendors will even have online tools that will help you create a nice looking site. They supply the outlines, color schemes, and the basic layout. You supply the content and the images and graphics. It is possible to have your web site up and running over a weekend, making it possible to you to use this as a basic part of your internet marketing plan.

Your domain name is one of the first issues to address in creating a web site. One of the most common mistakes people make is try to be cute or quirky with the name. Bury quirky and cute , unless you can combine those qualities with a domain name that is short and easy to remember. Keep in mind that the longer your domain name happens to be, the harder it will be for people to remember it.

Sure, they can always bookmark your domain name in their Favorites, but what good does that do when they are casually talking with a friend about your site? Whether we like to admit it or not, the golden time for word of mouth to occur is during that personal encounter. If the domain name can be rattled off with ease, chances are much better that a new prospect will be directed to your site.

The simple fact is that many people may promise to send a link to someone later, but it gets lost in the shuffle of day-to-day life. Make things easier for you and for people interested in your site. Employ the old Toastmasters counsel of KISS (keep it simple stupid). Life will be better for everyone involved.

A great deal of consideration should be given to the structure of your domain name. Are there ways to incorporate keywords in the domain name that will be easy to remember? For example, if you plan on creating a web site that is devoted to the marketing of your own line of greeting cards, try to work in “greeting” or “cards” into the domain name. Keep in mind that the name of your company may or may not be the best choice for the domain name.

While we all like to see our names pop up when we look about the Internet, your focus is on the products you have to market, not on the wonderful name you have chosen for your business. If it seems that creating an easy to remember domain name that calls attention to your services and products will mean forgoing the use of your company name in the URL, then go ahead and bite the bullet. Keep in mind on the actual web site you can put your company name in all sorts of places.

Two things will be helped to be accomplished. First, the types of products you are marketing will be associated with the URL by visitors. This is always a plus, as it makes it much easier for the consumer to remember and pass on your information to other people.

Second, it helps to make it much easier for your target audience to find your web site during engine searches. The more pointed and focused your domain name happens to be, this particular marketing tool will be more effective in your pursuit for success.

Making the best use of your title tag on the front page of your web site is another important aspect. One fatal mistake that is often made is using this space to do a welcome message for the site.

While it may fit in nicely with greeting people as they come into your home, it is altogether unnecessary on your web site. The presumption is that anyone who visits the site is welcome, so there is no need to waste space stating the obvious.

Instead, use that space as a means of spelling out in common terms what you have to offer. Keep in mind that we live in a society where people want split second gratification. That means you probably only have five to ten seconds to compel your visitor to stick around and read a little more.

Use that title tag to entice people to your site, and you will probably find that you show up higher on many search engines, as well as make better use of the space on your web pages.

While it is always nice when customers come to you, the fact is you will starve if you take the attitude that your wonderful web site is going to have people lining up to order whatever you are marketing. If the right people don’t know your web site exists, it will take forever and a day for you to build up a steady clientele. Among the tools that will help you be a success is finding out where to market to your potential customer base.

Over the years, a number of resources have been made available to Internet marketers for use in marketing campaigns. One of the most common is the email list. Approach this type of resource with a great deal of caution. These ready to use lists are in fact far to often not qualified.

A qualified email list will only include email addresses that have opted to be a part of the listing, and want to receive emails that have to do with particular services and products.

Far too often, lists are sold that include nothing more than a bunch of email addresses that were harvested off the World Wide Web. Using an unqualified list results in the creation of what is known as spam, or unsolicited emails. Unqualified contact lists are never used by a responsible internet marketer.

An unqualified list can hurt you in two ways. First, to acquire that list you will have to pay for it. If you purchase a list of ten thousand email addresses, and all but a 100 of them come back as undeliverable, you have effectively wasted resources that could have been used to better advantage.

An even more severe consequence of utilization of an unqualified email list is that your emails actually do get through to consumers, who get bent out of shape because they did not want the email in the first place. In a short time, you may find your URL or company name showing up on consumer driven spam reporting web sites, which will provide the type of publicity that you do not want to get.

Make sure the list is qualified if you use email as part of your internet marketing strategy. Nonetheless, don’t expect grand results. Within three seconds of your purchase that same qualified email list that you just purchased was probably sold to five other people.

Direct email campaigns can be pricey, and the promise of return is going to be small. Approach this tool with caution, and with an eye to whether or not it will truly help your business.

Of course, over time with proper goal setting you will be building a list of your own email subscribers who want to receive product notices, special offers, and other sorts of marketing information. Adding the ability to opt-in to an email listing that is maintained by you alone is a great way to build up a list that you can rely on.

Make sure people understand that you will not share or sell the list to any 3rd party, and that they have the option of always opting out of the mailing list if they change their minds. This type of courtesy will enhance your reputation as a professional, while also providing you with a targeted direct email audience that wants to see your marketing.

Other online resources are available to market your services and products. Research and find business associations, message boards, online yellow pages, want ads at chamber of commerce web sites, and other locations that will welcome the presence of your contact information and an ad about your business.

Many of these are free, although some may have a minor fee. In some cases, you may be able to find a web site that has to do with an industry type that would benefit from your service or product and a permanent ad on the site can be arranged.

One helpful tool is to get a firm idea of the type of customer that would be interested in what you are marketing. For years, the traditional internet marketer has relied on a tool that is known as profiling. Essentially, you want to create an image of your typical customer, including all sorts of details about their lives, likes and dislikes.

For example, would your product be more attractive to single people or people who are married or in a committed relationship? Does your product appeal more to people who are just starting out, perhaps in their twenties?

Maybe your product has more of an appeal to people who are in the middle years of life, or to people who are retired. Will people living in metropolitan areas tend to gravitate toward your offering, or will it have more appeal for people who live in rural areas?

Asking yourself these important questions about what type of people are most likely to be interested in your product, and why they would be interested, will in a couple of ways help you.

First, you can seek out marketing methods that focus on effectively reaching people who fit the profile you developed. This means you will spend more time getting your product and contact information in front of people who are highly likely to take the time to learn about what you have to offer.

Second, this profile can form the basis for your marketing content. Why waste time talking about the big city when your services are geared toward people who live in a small town? Profiling helps to give your campaign focus, because it opens you up to the possibility of talking points that will grab the attention of the right people.

There is one thing that you should remember about internet marketing online. What worked very well a few years ago has become commonplace and somewhat stale in some instances. Simply put, there are electronic advertising methods that are not all that effective anymore.

Some of these methods may still be effective depending on the customer you are trying to reach. The key thing to remember about online marketing is to not lock yourself into one particular method to the exclusion of all other methods. Investigate your options carefully and always have at least three or four internet marketing strategies taking place at the same time.

If you can’t identify at least 3 of these methods that will allow you to reach your target audience, something is wrong. Either you are being too narrow with your basic client profile, or you need to do some more research on available marketing options.

As a last tool in your arsenal, make yourself available. Businesses are not built on the basis of snappy advertising and your web site alone. Sometimes, people will want to talk with you about what you have to offer. This means you should always make sure you have contact information readily available to prospects and customers.

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Rather than one of those free ones a branded email sends a clear message of being a professional and makes you accessible. Including a phone number if possible is also a good approach. However, make sure it is a business line, and not your home phone. Prospective clients are not likely to appreciate your three year old picking up the line. Put in a second phone line and make sure it is always answered with the name of your business.

As a third option, set up a message board as part of your web presence. People can interact with you in that style as well, plus it allows happy customers to share what they liked about your company, your service, and the products they purchased. Being responsive and accessible to queries by customers and prospects will do a lot to enhance your professional status with the general public.

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Internet Marketing Strategy

More then likely you will have to spend some time searching the different services and products that you can profitably market, unless you already have a fantastic idea to work with. To be able to achieve this Goal Setting choice, you will need to carryout some investigating into what is already available in the way of an Internet marketing strategy or campaign, and where in that great big business picture, you might be able to slide in and fill a niche someplace.

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I have provided a few tips on where to locate selective information on niche markets that might be suitable for you, also how to locate a position to establish your Internet marketing strategy.

If you are starting fresh and looking for your first idea for an effective marketing campaign, the first place to begin is with yourself.

What do you like? What types of products are important in maintaining your standard of living? What types of services of goods would make life a lot easier for you, if you had access to them? How much are you willing to pay for these goods or services?

Spending some time searching your own wants and needs may yield some interesting concepts for niches that you can investigate online, and see just how much attention is given to those sorts of products.

Another method is to simply sit down with a piece of paper and make a list of ten subjects that come to mind without going into any really deep thought process. The list will probably be somewhat random, although thinking of one subject may immediately draw your mind to a related subject.

Don’t fight the flow or spend any time second-guessing the subjects that come to mind. Write them down and don’t waste time thinking they are silly or inappropriate. There will be plenty of time to evaluate the subjects later on.

As a third source of inspiration, go out with friends, but take along a small note-book. As different subjects up in conversation and catch your ear, make a quick note. A one or two word phrase should do the trick nicely. The idea here is to get some ideas for markets to explore, based on what types of issues come to mind among people you know.

While none of these methods are particularly scientific, they can yield some interesting topics to research. Don’t reject any of the ideas out of hand, until you spend some time online and see where the subjects lead you.

Concepts that may seem completely off the wall or worth absolutely nothing may turn out to be gold mines. If research indicates that the subject is a dead end, then at least you have eliminated one possibility and saved yourself the trouble of pursuing that option at a future date. On the other hand, you may be surprised with what you find.

Using these lists of words or subjects that you have compiled, take to the Internet and start doing some digging around. The first thing you want to ascertain is how much interest there is associated with that particular word or phrase. One of the easiest ways to get a handle on this sort of thing is to use word tracking search engines online. There are several well-known ones that are very easy to use.

All you basically do is type in your word or phrase and let the program search the entire web for results. What will happen is that the system will return a list that contains not only incidences of the word or phrase that you entered, but also expanded phrases that include that same word or phrase. You also get an idea of how many sites around the Internet contain text with that word.

This can be a great way to qualify the subjects and see if there is a large amount of interest in a given subject and related topics or information. A lot of hits means that you may want to look further into that subject as a possible foundation for a marketing campaign that is related to that word or phrase.

For example, if one of the subjects that came up on your lists happened to be “dog,” and you find that the word returns close to a million hits on its own, and then you may have found a broad subject to explore. Looking down the list, you may find that “dog house” and “dog training” returned a sizable number of hits, as did “dog treats.” With just a little digging, you have uncovered three potential services or products to market.

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Moving one step further, you can explore each of these marketing subjects a little deeper by clicking on the word or phrase and canvassing the actual returns. Here, you may begin to see a pattern among the hits that bubble to the surface of the search engines.

This can help you to further refine your idea of what to market. For example, if you notice there are a lot of these that have to do with making a particular product at home, you may begin to think in terms of marketing home assembly kits related to that subject. Perhaps the home assembly requires the use of certain tools.

You may be able to set up a marketing campaign to sell those tools at a competitive price. Perhaps you happen to have some expertise with building those sorts of home projects. Put your knowledge to work, create some easy to follow plans, and market them to do it yourself types.

Keep in mind that if you see a phrase with relatively few hits, that does not automatically eliminate it from the running. For example, if you notice that the return for “dog houses online” only yielded two hundred hits, take a moment and look at the actual title tags. You may find that people are looking to buy kits for doghouses online, and that becomes the focus of your new marketing campaign.

One important thing to keep in mind is that you need to try this technique on multiple word tracking programs, since the search criteria used by each system may be a little different. For example, some programs will return an average number of hits per day, while others will focus on the average hits per month. Also, the Internet is an ever growing monster. If you are not quite sure about the potential of a marketing idea, but do not feel comfortable abandoning it completely, stick it back for future reference. A year or two down the road, the results may be very different.

One thing to avoid is trying to repeat the same old tired process that is already being used by hundreds of thousands of other Internet entrepreneurs. Just as with brick and mortar businesses, competition can be fierce on the Internet. What you want is to look for a market that still has some potential to grow, so you are not constantly engaged in exchanging a limited bank of customers with a thousand other marketers.

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Choosing to zero in on topics that appear to have some widespread interest on the Internet, but don’t seem to have much in the way of marketing sites that actually address those topics specifically is a very good bet when it comes to establishing yourself in a niche market.

The fact is that free resources on the Internet can often yield the same ideas, and sometimes approaches that are just as good, if not better. Of course, there are all sorts of E-books and software programs that are supposedly geared toward finding profitable niche markets. While some of them do contain a few good ideas.

Goal Setting

Chances are you will find plenty of information for free that will keep you busy for quite some time, and will likely provide you with at least a half dozen solid leads on potential niche markets to launch your marketing efforts. Before you spend any money on any type of products or internet marketing tools, check around various web sites for free ideas on finding niche markets, as well as visiting the free word tracking web sites.

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Email Deliverability

Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.

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Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for email deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses

When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.

List Maintenance

Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

Message Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.

Content

Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

Website URL:

Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.

Words/phrases:

Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.

Images:

Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

Attachments:

With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.

Reputation

Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:
* http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
* http://www.bondedsender.com
* http://www.habeas.com

Relationships & Whitelisting

Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.

Article by Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)

AWeber one of the best email marketing software companies.

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