Internet marketing advantages are numerous, with the possibilities endless. If you are looking to provide your existing business with an online presence, or just create a new income for yourself then internet marketing is the way forward. In this day and age I would go so far as to say that if you are in business but do not have an online presence then you are not really in business. The world is changing rapidly; we have to change with it.
One of the prime internet marketing advantages is that you now have access to a worldwide audience. If you are involved with say a network marketing business, you now have the opportunity to connect with people who may be looking for the products that you offer or seeking a business opportunity like the one your company is offering. If you were running a stand at a local market specialising in rare coins and collectibles, think how many people you can now gain exposer too with what you have to offer just by being online, rather than the people who happen to just wander past your stall that morning. Something that has to rank highly on the list of internet marketing advantages is the cost associated with using it as a medium of promotion compared to other offline methods. In fact you could run your whole marketing campaign without paying a single penny for it. It would cost you nothing to set up a YouTube channel, Facebook page and a Twitter page all promoting your message to the masses and directing them to your website. Article writing is another tried and tested method of online marketing. If you know something about your subject that is associated with your business (I am assuming you do), share it with the world and generate interested prospects in what you have to say to your business. Other internet marketing advantages are the broad range of mediums in which you can use to promote your product or service. If you are not comfortable writing articles, don’t do it or maybe outsource it. Maybe you are better in front of a video camera and prefer to get your message out that way. If you are a more social person, go to the social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook and interact with people, get them interested in what you do, this will generate great results. In www.javatravel.net opinion however one of the biggest internet marketing advantages is that you can actually target the exact person you want into your business. There is no need to take a scatter gun approach which is often associated with traditional offline marketing. Let’s say you are selling golf clubs a free method to target the exact person you are looking for (golfers) would be to go into an online forum and interact with people. Don’t just spam your business message, genuinely help people and offer value. They will come to know like and trust you and then consider purchasing from you. By creating the relationship, you have removed ninety nine per cent of the barriers to purchasing. You may also wish to create a paid campaign, where with the major search engines you may create an advert relevant to what someone in your market may be typing into the search engine. Your advert will appear right next to the organic results for the search term. This method is commonly known as pay per click (PPC), and is highly targeted. Many people also cite the flexibility of running a campaign as one of the main internet marketing advantages. There is no need to commit to a series of adverts over say a six week period, you can stop and start as soon as you want, you can produce content and upload it whenever you want, allowing you to constantly monitor and time your campaigns.
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Facebook implemented yet another set of changes to its social networking platform, causing uproar among many users and teaching new lessons to Internet marketers. In particular, the News Feed, where Facebook users are allowed to view updates from people in their network, received a major overhaul, which can potentially affect your Facebook marketing strategy.
Facebook marketing changes every Internet marketer must knowNew News Feed: Facebook no longer displays all the updates from people in your network. Instead, it uses an algorithm to select which updates goes into every user's Top Stories, which is the first thing a user sees when he or she logs on to Facebook. Factors such as the relationship between a user and the author, the number of comments and Likes, will determine an update's relevance or inclusion in Top Stories. An update can later qualify as one of the Top Stories when it obtains more Likes or comments. Smart Lists: Moreover, users are now provided with tools to exercise greater control over what they see in their News Feed. "Smart Lists" allows a user to create lists according to "Close Friends", "Acquaintances" and "Restricted." When this list is populated, only updates of people under "Close Friends" will appear on the user's News Feed. This can be potentially harmful to marketers whose connections are more likely professional than "close". Subscribe option: Users can now choose to subscribe to all, most or only the important updates of certain users. This will compel Internet marketers to create highly relevant and useful content, and keep self-promoting activities to a minimum, in order to earn the subscription of users. Removal of automatic feeds: Pages (formerly Fan Pages) previously enjoyed automatic publication of posts and articles appearing in external websites and blogs. This was made possible through the Notes option which synchronized web and Facebook pages without performing any additional action on the Facebook wall. Starting September 30th, Pages will no longer automatically publish news stories from integrated websites and blogs. Page owners will now have to post new stories on their Page walls in order to notify fans and users of new web articles or content. Facebook Marketing Changes MeanThe recent Facebook marketing changes reinforce how the Internet is in a constant flux, where Internet marketers constantly need to educate themselves to stay on top of their game or keep afloat. Increasing relevance and social engagement are important steps in coping with Facebook's changes, as is the need for incorporating a call to action where your Facebook users are enticed to subscribe to your website or blog. Over the last 6 months, we have designed, produced and delivered a variety of innovative and stunning marketing videos for our business clients to assist them in boosting their sales of products and services.
Video for Marketing is the fastest growing online advertising format. The pace of growth for online video is expected to continue to rise and to reach around 40% for 2010. Video marketing has been gaining popularity in all aspects of marketing; almost all of the successful marketers online are using video in some form or another. So why are agencies moving so hard and fast to online video marketing? Well, why do ad agencies and Marketers keep doing anything? Because it's working very well! Video Marketing is now used in many different ways and the possibilities are continuing to grow for any type of business. Whatever you are selling, be it a consumer product, dream holidays, a car or even professional services, videos are being used to market all of these products. As online consumers we are used to expecting to see something visual as an aid to the buying process. The concept of using videos in any type of marketing has become a necessity in order to sell goods or service. Video Marketing is getting more popular as more and more new product launches and "how to guides" come out using video as their primary mode of selling and promoting new products and services. Video marketing can be used to build anticipation by showing a new video each day for two or even three weeks prior to a new product being introduced. Marketing Videos have now become an integral part of the new digital economy and digital marketing online. The viral impact of video marketing can have a phenomenal effect in creating new customers. Basically, if you are not using some form of video marketing in your marketing strategies and plans you are leaving money on the table. With YouTube, Google Video, Viddler, Vimeo and all the other video submission sites, the possibilities of reaching out to your prospects and customers are endless. Millions of visitors are accessing these sites every day and these marketing video have produced the "Video Marketing Age". A recent report from www.toyota-makassar.com has outlined that 80% of all net users worldwide watch video online. First, let us understand the importance of having a unique landing page from the perspective of internet marketing. Many SMBs do not have a proper landing page because they do not know what landing pages can do to their business. They are also painfully unaware of the fact that landing pages can be made uniquely with different visitors in mind.
How Important are Landing Pages? Apart from boosting conversions, delivering a direct message and presenting a useful facet of the business to prospective customers, a landing page can be the shortest path to leading the viewer to the conversion page (read: call to action). A landing page is the mouthpiece for the business to address each unique set of visitors with a message that resonates with their needs. The successful businesses out there are doing it with several landing pages, one each for a different group of visitors. Having different sets also make it easy for internet marketing professionals to track down the efficacy of a promotion against the rest and reward the better performing ones and while pulling out of ones that are not doing their bit. Business communication is an important aspect of internet marketing and landing pages help you achieve just that. So, let us see how small businesses can design better landing pages and improve their conversion quickly. Getting Rid of Redundant Copy If your website conveys the message with just a few words, images and videos, why do you need the extra copy? Remember that a new visitor lingers on for about 30 seconds before he is gone. Use this time to give him something better than throw word storms at him. Take a look at the SEOMoz website, the website is an example in simplicity. Just above the fold the website has nothing but a blue section with an impression of a MacBook Pro and two tiny little arrows beside it, clicking on which transforms the screen inside the laptop. The design is simple, hence noticing important things becomes easier. It does not get in the way of the viewer and what is particular about the page is its hard-to-miss call to action button. Making Things EasierWe will look at this from two different angles. You can make things easier for you or you can make your simplify your visitor's burden. Once again, we will take the example of SEOMoz. Their Sign Up page is not the simplest of all, but it is built with a purpose. The form allows SEOMoz to gather important data (credit card details, billing addresses etc), which I think dissuades viewers from signup for anything at all. On the other hand, Raven Tools, which sells tools for internet marketing and social media have a much better and visitor friendly sign up page. Raven does not want your details, so unlike SEOMoz, they have more users signing up for their free trials. Calling to Action At the end of the day, the purpose of any landing page or the purpose of an internet marketing agency is to call viewers into taking some action. Some like to provide all the useful information and then present the action gateway at the end, others prefer to take care of CTA at the very beginning. Besides being a matter of personal choice, call to actions can be placed either at the top or the bottom, the difference is not much or very slight. What's more important from the internet marketing perspective is making the CTA effective. Instead of pasting it all over the place, I would suggest putting it at the bottom of a succinct text leading the viewers into clicking on it. Internet Marketing in the digital world is expanding at a neck break speed and to keep up with it, you need to be on your feet, test out new models and trust old methods that are known to work. Companies are becoming increasingly dependent on technology. But, the agencies they depended upon have now become obsolete. Hence, these companies are turning to Digital Marketing Agencies to get their business up and running again. Traditional marketing has almost gone out the window and could soon get extinct. Let us for instance consider hoardings. It is firstly very expensive and there is no way of quantifying the Return on this particular investment. There is no way of perfectly knowing the number of views, how many people like or dislike it.
On the other hand, Digital Marketing will give you very quantifiable results. What are the various digital solutions that can be offered to us? How do they compute these results? Websites: Incase your firm still does not have a website, a digital agency could help you from scratch. They will build, design, create content, manage and update your site regularly. As they are professionals it greatly helps in enhancing user experience and thus getting business. How can you get business from your 'site'? Well, a survey suggests that most number of people first look you up on the web and only then take the next step of buying from your site directly (if such an option is available) or visiting your store or office. Mobile Marketing: Nowadays there are millions of people browsing the internet on the go via. mobile phones. If your site is not compatible with mobiles you are missing out on a major market share. Your site should not only be compatible with a desktop computer but also with tablets and mobiles. Even in mobiles, your site should be well- suited for phones of various size and operating systems. Search Engine Optimization: As stated above, people look for your site online. How do they go about this? They do it via. Search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing. There are millions of sites on the net. What if your site is on the say 27th page of Google's search results? Is that going to get you any visitors? Jasa SEO tweaks your site in such a way so as to bring it to the top three positions of the search results. This will highly increase your traffic. Google provides an analytics tool to track no. of visitors to you site, the time at which they came, geographical region, from which source did they reach our site etc. None of these are possible in traditional forms of marketing. Social Networks: This kind of digital marketing solution is used mainly to build brand awareness, its recognition and thus brand equity. Most of your users today are very active on social networks. It is where you can connect or in better terms converse with your customers. Again, traditionally this is not possible. Your customer service betters manifold thus getting your brand a better name and thus, more customers. It is very easy to measure the people interested in your brand with provisions of the "like" button, +1 etc. These features vary from one network to another. Pay per Click: There are also paid ads available on the internet. You have to pay on the basis of the number of clicks you got. Also there is a Pay per impression. Here, the hosting website or search engine displays your ad thousand times for a particular price. Still, this is comparatively cheaper than traditional marketing. An agency provides every necessary digital marketing solution that a business may need. You could be catering to other businesses (B2B) or directly to customers (B2C). A digital agency does everything from scratch for you, thus giving your company higher returns. I fell into the Internet Marketing "Black Hole" trying to build my business(s) online. After a year spending thousands of dollars on courses, seminars, affiliate marketing, and partnerships, I now realize that online marketing success requires knowledge of digital marketing strategies, a passion and purpose for your business... and, a keen understanding of the prominent internet marketing "Guru" agendas so you don't get sucked into any financial loss.
There are dozens of internet marketing "Gurus" hawking their courses, seminars, and get rich quick schemes. I found that many of these people lack integrity or dance on the gray area of business ethics. Most of these Gurus know that over 90% of the people that buy their promotions will not have any respectable success. They actually cannot reveal what it takes to succeed in this medium in any course. This is a science that requires expert knowledge in a variety of technology skills. 75% maybe 90% of Internet Marketing courses today are not worth the money. Internet marketing Gurus sell courses, new techniques on how to market/sell on the internet. Rarely do you see them sell anything other than these type of products and they come out with something new every quarter it seems. They sell "product launches" as an unknown "secret," as the next new thing... And then, a few months later, they sell another "new" secret to help you with your online marketing business. They'll hook you into buying one course or business opportunity after another if you are not careful. They also hawk each others launches to make a profit (they share lists... ). It is sometimes embarrassing, but I fell into this black hole. Internet marketing is no more than a tool today for helping with my business. AND, my business is my passion. I have returned to traditional business, yes "brick and mortar" and a valid service that I market online. Today, I use what I have learned in the last couple of years getting through the Black Hole to help market my business(s) online. This is how you should approach this subject: learn what you need to know in order to hire others that have years of experience in skill sets you do not possess. Don't have a budget? Learn enough to get started knowing it will take you time, and then build on your failures and successes. Don't quit. My suggestion for anyone that reads this post is: be true to yourself. Ensure that what you do is what you love and learn how to market online only as a medium for getting traffic to your business and providing preeminent service to your customers or clients. Make sure that every person that buys from you receives value. When you are focused on marketing your passion, the courses that you need for success become clear. You will not buy anything from the internet marketing Gurus again. You will buy from reputable institutions, consultants and also learn how and where to outsource. When you are aligned in mind, body, and spirit with your passions, the world opens. You will not have the huge desire for riches. And, in an almost miraculous way, the abundance that you may desire comes effortlessly to you in equal proportion to the value you provide. |
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