Home
Products
Search
Site Map
Related Links
Privacy Policy
RSS Feed
|
Home
Products
Search
Site Map
Related Links
Privacy Policy
RSS Feed |
|
| |
Marketing Strategy
With the plethora of websites online and hundreds added each day, how are you going to separate your website from the others? When I began my first online venture I was so excited to have my website up and running and I remember thinking "wow, the toughest part is behind me", referring to finally getting the aesthetics and functionality of the website just how I wanted them. I thought that marketing the website would be the easy part. Boy was I wrong. My site was up and running and was designed very professionally. I had no doubt that visitors would be confident in my ability to deliver top notch services. The only problem was that I had very few visitors. I made a couple of ignorant marketing mistakes early on that cost me. One mistake was simply not planning. I had no plan in place on how I would go about marketing the website and reaching my target market. I really had not even truly defined my target market. Sure, I thought about it a lot, but I had not written down who my target market consisted of. I find that actually writing down your goals in business and life is key to your reaching them. By writing down what you wish to accomplish you can have your plan there in front of you and it makes it easy to analyze and ask yourself if you are taking the correct steps to achieve your goals. How on earth could I have expected to successfully market the website if I had not defined my niche market and written out my course of action on how to position my business within this group? So what sort of things should you think about when planning your marketing strategy? Here's a basic list to get you on the right track. Basic Steps to Planning Your Marketing Strategy 1. Decide whether you are going to sell products, services or both. 2. Test the waters to ensure that there is a legitimate demand for your product and/or service. Do this by simply talking to friends and family and ask them if they would find your offerings useful. Also, make up a short questionnaire and have people fill them out. On the questionnaire include questions pertaining to the problem that you are solving with your products/services. This will give you insight into the number of people that are experiencing this problem as well. Also on this questionnaire include questions such as "What magazines/newspapers do you read?" "What type of websites do you most often view?" What we are now doing is ensuring that there is indeed a market for our products/services and at the same time gathering valuable information on how to place our products in front of them and others like them, once we bring our products/services to the market. Use your imagination and ask other insightful questions that will give you additional information into their lifestyle, shopping habits, and tastes/preferences. Now we have proof that there is a demand for our products/services and the information on how to target this market. 3. Get your website up and running and optimize it for the search engines before submitting it. Please see my article for more on this topic. 4. Take the information you gathered in step two and decide how you will place your products/services in front of your niche market. An additional mistake was submitting my site to the search engines before it was fully optimized. It is much easier to achieve a great ranking if you optimize your site first and then submit it rather than submitting your site and then trying to pull it up to a higher ranking. So how can you optimize your website for a better ranking in the search engines? This is a topic in and of itself and entire books have been written on this subject. Below are four basic steps to get you on the right track. These four steps were taken from Obtaining a #1 Ranking in the Search Engines by Ryan Allis. I highly recommend this book and it can be found at http://www.search-engines-guide.com/. Four Basic Steps of Page Optimization 1. Select the keywords you want to focus on. 2. Create an optimized page for each of your targeted keywords by having ample page copy, focusing on keyword prominence, and using related page names, proper meta-tags, proper title tags, proper alt-tags, heading tags, and text links. 3. Avoid dynamic database-driven content, JavaScript, keyword spamming, and multiple use of content. 4. Make sure there are lots of web sites linking to yours. So before you embark on your e-business journey be sure to develop a marketing plan. This plan must be flexible as it will change as your business grows, but it is critical to the success of your business to identify how you will position your products/services to your target market; and remember - optimize your website BEFORE submitting it to the search engines. About The Author Brandon Milford is the President of Pimil.com, a web solutions company based in Georgia, and the Marketing Director for Email Marketing Software Center, a website devoted to providing knowledge and product recommendations on permission based email marketing.
Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem says seven companies have settled with the state for making prerecorded telemarketing calls. Company lost its funding. Outsourced. Caught in a merger. Downsized. Fired. It seems like every day I learn of another person who is on the job market. Direct marketers must work together to head off regulatory restrictions, developing cohesive solutions to advertising ethics and direct mail-delivery issues. An Arizona fundraising company used ex-felons to solicit donations on behalf of Iowa narcotics officers and families of missing children, then misled donors to believe the money would go to the organizations, a ... Transcontinental Inc. today announced the appointment of Brian Reid as President of its Printing Sector, effective immediately. Today's marketers want to stay competitive in an uncertain economy, but direct mail can be expensive. Direct mail doesn't have to be a shot in the dark. There are number of steps that direct mailers can take to make their marketing efforts easier and more effective. Nearly three of every four Americans register their phones with the national "Do Not Call Registry." But the concept comes with many loop holes and exemptions. TORRANCE, Calif. - PC Mall, Inc. today announced that it is scheduled to participate in the following upcoming investor conference: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 Speakers: You can access the webcast by visiting PC ... Shares of Valassis Communications Inc. fell to a record low Monday, as the Livonia-based direct marketing firm cut 100 jobs and reduced its profit forecast after posting a third-quarter loss of $5.2 million ... I am not joining the Do Not Mail campaign, and neither should you. First, we had the opt-in and opt-out clauses in our e-mails, then we needed a double approval to get our e-mail messages past all of the ... Telemarketers who make unwanted phone calls to Mississippi residents or fail to pay a $1,000 annual fee for the state's no-call list could soon find themselves on the other end of an unpleasant conversation ... Vodacom, SilverstoneCIS and Multimedia Solutions scooped the Inkosi Award for the AdMe Optin Mobile Marketing Platform campaign at the Direct Marketing Association Assegai Awards last night, Thursday, 6 ... TELEMARKETING calls, bad drivers and poor customer service are our most irritating bugbears, 4400 people have confirmed. The presidential election is over a ' finally! a ' and we can all breathe a sigh of relief after two years of fundraising, debates, attack ads, Saturday Night Live skits and a ' oh yes a ' issues. The Oxford OPP is warning the public to be wary of telemarketing calls involving replacement windows for their homes. Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Direct Marketing Market Place 2009" directory to their offering. |
RELATED ARTICLES The REAL Secret to Building A High-Profit Internet Business My wife laughs every time she sees me doing it.At least once or twice every week, I'll be at my desk (or at the dining room table) with my Franklin Covey planner open and a stack of laminated checklists in hand. Magic Of Direct Response Website For a web site to make the most money it must be a direct response web site. That does not mean that sites with contents do not make money. The e-Marketing Plan - Brief Overview and Working Scheme I. Summary of a marketing planThe marketing planning (concretized in the marketing plan) is an essential organizational activity, considering the hostile and complex competitive business environment. Surfing, Searching, & Networking 101 Everyone knows the internet can be very useful for finding information or learning something new. In all honesty, the internet should be your #1 resource for finding any remote information. Defining the Relations Between Blogs, E-zines, RSS, and E-mail Although RSS and blogs are slowly reaching mainstream, they are still missuderstood by most marketers in relation to eachother and in relation to their relatives, e-zines and e-mail. How do these four really relate and what does this mean for your internet marketing strategy?The most common missconception is comparing blogs and e-mail, with many bloggers actually touting blogs as a replacement for e-mail. E Is for Everything? Just this week, a member of my audience asked me the following:"Why would a local company, with a large investment in trained, professional sales people need a Web site?"Great question! And you might be thinking the same. . Viral Marketing! Are You Missing Out? Many of you are reading this article because you would like to further promote your Internet business and are looking for new ways in which to do this. You have read lots of articles covering various Internet Marketing techniques and are still looking for the "Holy Grail" strategy that will take your website to a higher level. What Does Success Look Like? While we are well into the 21st century too many are still thinking about their business as they did in the 1990's.The face of business has changed and the Internet is a BIG part of that change. The Power Of Viral Marketing You certainly know by now that the term "viral marketing" is not just another dot-com cliché. Quite the contrary, it describes the incredible, unmatched power of the Web to promote your business by marrying email to the traditional concept of "word-of-mouth. 5 Things Every Internet Marketer Must Learn From Mail Order To Increase Their Profits Now! Understanding that the Internet is another vehicle for direct response marketing can potentially make you rich!It's true. Not many people actually 'get it'. Alexa Toolbar - The Ultimate Internet Tool There are numerous tools available on the Internet to assist online businesses. A valuable tool that you should use is the Alexa Toolbar. Words That Sell - Internet Marketing Choosing your words will be the ultimate make or break you in the Internet Marketing industry and there are some words that will stand out like an Eskimo taking a walk through the desert looking for his igloo.These are the types of words you want use to grab your visitors initial attention. Getting noticed on the Internet - Digital Marketing for Small Business The Internet has grown from a small network of academics needing a way to trade research into a world-spanning, ubiquitous marketplace and repository for nearly every possible kind of information and knowledge. How does a small business avoid being washed away in the constant tide of buying, selling and marketers hawking every conceivable item (and some difficult to conceive. How To Build a Successful Online Reputation After running an online business (web site design) for a number of years I built a reputation online that helps me to gain and retain a continuous flow of customers. I had no online reputation when beginning my business, but was able to build it up step by step over the last few years. How Can You Can Go From Zero To Hero Overnight? Viral Marketing! Everyone has heard about viral marketing but what is it and how long will it survive?Viral Marketing is the creation of a message that is self-perpetuating and hence distributed exponentially after its release. The Internet is full of many classic examples, the most famous one being that of the free email company - Hotmail. What Is Drop Shipping? The Perfect Solution Drop shipping one of the greatest business innovations since products. Seriously, don't laugh! I'm not joking! With what other service can you use another company's products, their warehouse, their shipping department, and have them provide you with all the information you need? Do you see what I mean now?Every entrepreneur who is looking for the most efficient way to sell products over the internet should be very enthusiastic about drop shipping. 10 Ways To Make Your Sales Soaring 1. Maximize the effectiveness of your banner ads. 10 Deadly Joint Venture Profit Killing Mistakes 1. Not sending out another mailingSending another mailing (to the subscribers who haven't bought) will often bring 50% or so of the previous response. New Product Launch Checklist Launching a new product or service is an exciting time and it is possible to overlook something in the rush to get that product or service to market. I developed the following checklist to make certain that I didn't make the same mistake twice. Successful Marketing Using Websites and Why So Many Businesses Get It Wrong Many great website concepts are developed, launched.. Click here to return to the Internet
Marketing Information home page.
|
||||||
| Home | Products | Search | Related Links | Site Map | Privacy Policy | RSS Feed |
| DirectMailCash.com has Internet Marketing Information. Copyright © 2006 by S. Nelson All rights reserved. Email webmaster at: admin@directmailcash.com |
