Internet marketing is a huge business opportunity. The ways to make money, the number of things to sell and the number of people to deal with are almost without limit. The problem with the size and number of things to sell is that it’s easy to become unfocused and try to make money with too many things at the same time. You must stay focused and operate in a small area or soon you can be overwhelmed with all the different directions you’ll be going and your business will likely go upside down. This is where strategic internet marketing can come to the rescue.
Trying to come up with a solid internet marketing plan is probably the hardest thing about making money online. There are a lot of thing you need to think about, such as building a website, how the website will be developed, how it will marketed plus many other things. The website is just a small part of your overall business plan. You still have to think about what the market is doing, how you can fit into the market, how to work with your customers, who and where are your potential buyers, how you are going to attract visitors and literally dozens of other considerations. All of these things will be a part of your internet marketing strategy. With so many things to think about what should your priority be?
Now is when you need to start putting a strategic internet marketing plan into motion. The strategy is to figure out your potential market and where your business is going to come from. You must study your potential buyers and determine what they want to buy. You will need to study your competition to see where you will fit into the business that already established. How will you attract your customers and what you’ll need to do to make them repeat buyers?. Its a fairly well known fact that if you don’t have a well thought out internet marketing strategy you are setting yourself up for failure.
Why is strategic internet marketing important? Because it helps you outline your business goals distinctly and enables you to make your objectives clear. Although you need a solid plan it needs to be flexible enough to be able to change it if there is a drastic change in the market or your circumstances.
In order to start your internet marketing strategy there are a number of points you need to think about. Here are 6 of what are probably the most important ones. These will help you outline your plan and help you keep you internet marketing business on the right path to success.
1. You need to start by figuring out what your target market is. There are a number of questions you need to find the answers to. These include: what type of people are going to supply most of your income, where will these people come from, how much extra money will they have to spend, what will be their age group, etc. The answers to these questions will help you decide who you customers will be.
2. Strategic internet marketing doesn’t stop with just figuring out who your customers are. You must also define who your competitors will be and what their weakness and strengths are in the marketplace. Once you know these things you can plan a strategy to set your business apart from them. Give your potential customers a choice of you or your competition. Make sure you look better than your competitor in some way or it won’t be good for you.
3. For your internet business to succeed your target buyer must be willing to shop online. Although shopping online is very safe there are still people who are afraid to make purchase on the internet. You will need to reassure your customers that their transaction will be without problems and that it will be very secure. Make sure you have enough payment options so that they will have a choice that will help convince them to shop with you.
4. Even though you will have already started your business before you can determine the marketability of your product, you study sellers offering the same or a similar product. If your product is known to most people but no one is selling it there is probably a reason. By going to chat rooms and forums you can get a pretty good idea of where you product stands. Do enough research to make sure you have something that will sell.
5. Your internet marketing strategy must have the ability to turn your customers into repeat buyers. Make sure you can spin off your product or create improvements to you original product to get them to buy again. A list of 100 buyers is probably worth more than a list of 1,000 people who have shown interest in your product but haven’t purchased it.
6. You will need to have a money back guarantee. Most people won’t purchase in today’s market without one. Even though it’s true that you can’t please everyone be ready to give an unhappy customer their money back immediately. You should try to offer them something free just for trying your product. Most of them will appreciate it and may even become a customer later on. If nothing else it may create a positive instead of a negative to your business.
Strategic internet marketing is like hunting with a guide who knows the area and the game you’re hunting like the back of his hand. Without the guide you may get lost or if you don’t you will probably never see any game because you’re looking in the wrong place.
One thing you have to keep in mind is that your customers won’t come looking for you. This is the reason you need to be looking for them with a strategic internet marketing plan as your guide.
Marketing strategy for Social Media Optimization (SMO).
In the recent past Search Engine Optimization involved SEO 1.0 and link building- which spawned an industry of its own as people offered to get you links to your web site for a fee and so hopefully your site would be top of the page in Google for certain keyword.
What they failed to mention is they were unable to control Google! So there were no Guarantees and the web sites position could be lost to your competition 10 minutes later!
Google is now recognising public preferences for sites others have found interesting and informative!so the era of Social Media Optimization (SMO) is born and with it SEO 2.0.
SEO 1.0 Linking was important.
SEO 2.0 Others are connecting with you – your community and audience which google now looks at as important and ranks your site accordingly. (Put simply are others sharing the content, voting for the site or linking to the content/post.)
So here they are again your 5 Step Marketing Strategy for Social Media Optimization (SMO) you may have heard it all before in YourNetBiz training with LetITPay Team training.
1. Build your central hub – Your Blog or website.-It needs to be active and not a static site preferably.
2. Discover potential Communities and Networks or Forums – This is often referred to as Social Media planned involvement also known as blueprinting (In the past your PR strategy).
3. Study these communities – Learn all about what makes it Tick – As yourself the Question can you offer them solutions or content that will be seen as interesting?
4. Strategies how you will deliver you unique content or solution to the community This is very important step in the process.
5. The audience will be engaged by you if you have followed each step effectively and the result will be your fan club. Like all buildings if constructed on a solid foundation you will have the option of building a skyscraper or Mansion that will last for years.(Mashable.com – Social Media expert is a good example with his fan club and followers).
This will not happen over night so maybe decide if you want to go down this route first before starting. Congratulations if you do decide to take this option and recommend you put it into your daily schedule to prepare the content (note prepare not post). SMO – Social Media Optimisation is key to your success!
Lastly be sure your home page provides a reason for them to do business with you that after all is the reason for getting involved with Social Media it is to Market your products.
To Your success with SMO.
Vanda-Lynn
If you would like to know more about the LetITPay Training click here
The major factor for success on the Internet is link popularity. If you have good link popularity it can increase traffic to your web site by bringing high ranking on search engines. It is quite difficult task for a new site to build link popularity which has just born here we will discuss what strategy a new site should adopt to boost link popularity. First of all let’s understand the meaning of link, link popularity and link exchange.
What is Link and Link Popularity?
The link (hyperlink, or Web link) is a connection from one web resource to another. Internet begins with the hyperlink and a person go from one page to another page by clicking link. Links are the buttons and underlined text on web pages that take you to other pages on click.
What is Link Popularity?
Link Popularity means how much you are known on the internet which can be measured how many sites or web pages linked to you. Link popularity is a measure of both the quantity and quality of sites that link to your site. Link Popularity is the number of quality hyperlinks pointed to your website.
What is Link Exchange?
In Link Exchange basically, we exchange links – you add my link to your website and I will add your link to mine. It is a barter system give link and in return get link .By exchanging links, with theme based sites or authority sites you can increase your websites link popularity and which will results into increase of your website search engine rankings.
What are new site link exchange problems?
For new sites it is quite difficult to get linked with other sites. Even the google takes the site for indexing if it has got few inbound links from other websites. Google says “The best way to ensure Google finds your site is for your page to be linked from lots of pages on other sites…”
In one of the reason for site not listed Google has explained: “If we have not picked up your site and it has been several months, then it is likely that our spiders are not able to find your site. If you increase the links pointing to the page, Google will likely find your site in the future. “
It is clear that your site will not be listed on Google quickly. Search Engines usually takes news sites very fast if you are linked by other popular related web sites. New site will also not get reciprocal link from other sites because of non popularity or 0 PR (Google Page Rank).
Link building strategy for new site owners
Now what strategy should new sites adopt to get started on the Web? Here are the few one, which will work.
1. Get Listed on Free Top Web directory Try to get listed on open directory project DMOZ ( www.dmoz.org.) and also submit your site to Yahoo! by visiting http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/. Be sure to follow their guidelines for listing. The important free directories in addition to dmoz are:
http://www.dmoz.orghttp://dir.yahoo.com
2. Get Links for Your Associates Try to get link from your associated or friends web sites. If you are in business you can get link from your dealers or business associates. It will also help you in getting theme bases links. In initial stage you can take link from your friends and relative web pages or site although they may not be theme based but at least search engine like Google will find your link and index you.
3. Free Site Submission Tools There are lot free site submit tool are available on the Internet. Use them to get listing as for the new site owner it is difficult to find the important search engines. Be careful and do not submit many time to same search engines as they may consider repetive submission it Spam. Further try to keep away from FFA pages as they are treated as ‘link farms” by search engines and listing is penalized.
4. Join Discussion Forum The Discussion form is another media to get inbound links. Join the Message Board which is related to the theme of your site and if you are expert in your field you can reply the many threads. Be sure to include your URL in your signature and also anchor text to be linked with URL should be your site Keyword. If the message board allows it, you can even include a short promotional blurb about your site at the end of your posts. Even if you do not post try to add your url in profile and it is also an inbound link and is important if from your theme based Forum. Try to add your details i.e city, country name, interest and occupation in profile as it will make your theme based pages where all contents are related to you.
5. Email based discussion Email based discussion lists, which are archived on the web in static HTML pages can also be used to boost the link popularity of your site in a similar manner. In this case, the signature file that you use with your email program should contain the URL for your web site.
6. Reciprocal links request low page rank sites The New site faces difficulty in exchanging link with high Page Rank Sites. It is better to start exchanging link with sites which are related to your topic or theme of your site even they may have low Page Rank. You will see that there page rank will increase with the time and you will gain.
7. Link Popularity through Awards Try to join the award sites. There are many sites which open contest or award of good site design or good content site you can apply for it. If you get a chance to which your brief site content will be published on Award site, which will increase your link popularity.
8. Major Industry Associations There are many industrial association sites which publish free listing of there sites. Just find the association site relating to your products or theme of site and get listed.
9. Signing of Testimonial Lot of website ask to write testimonial and also add your URL. Just study the site and write brief genuine testimonials about the website. If you will be able to write good, genuine testimonial you are sure to get listed there with your comment. Do not sign guest books with vague comment just to get link.
10. Discount Offer You can offer a discount or concession on your good, products and services to anyone who put a small banner or text link back to your site.
11. Affiliate program Set up an affiliate program, which is an excellent way to boost link popularity. Your affiliate members will put there affiliate code on there sites which will contain your URL and your will get theme based inbound link.
12. Free Netcard Try to make free netcard available on the Internet and your complete detail to make your full information page and inbound link is also important as it is your business card on net.
It is always said better beginning is half done. So if new site adopt the above method to increase link popularity they are sure to build good page rank in the beginning and latter on all higher page rank web sites will be ready to exchange link with you and will result into building of solid link popularity for your site. You should not expect results (Increase in search engine ranking) so fast. Wait for at least 3 month till search engines index you all full site pages.
