Pieces of the Internet Marketing Puzzle – Pt. 2

Online Press Releases – There are general and industry specific news sites which will publish your news releases but you’ll have to find them. Some offer paid for publishing which you should consider.

Article Marketing – there are a number of magazine publishing sites where you can publish your articles to your account and they’ll eventually gain some rank in the search engines – enough to bring you some new customers.  You’ll reach a larger audience than you would if you just posted the articles at your own website.

Blog Marketing – you can create a blog where you talk about your business and products along with some personal information so visitors get to know you better and trust you – essential for sales. By leaving comments on others’ blogs you can build your reputation over time with the visitors at that blog and gradually you’ll gain some readers at your blog and site as a result. You might offer to write a guest article on another popular blog for free with links back to your site. There are many ways to use blogs for spreading the word about your business and website. We’ve only just touched on a few here.

Contests & Giveaways – giving away something of value for free or holding a contest and requiring registration to your newsletter to gain entry is something most companies overlook but it’s a fantastic technique to increase email list subscribers and visitors to your blog. A multi-part contest where you give away a piece of the puzzle every few days can lead to great page-views and visitors that keep coming back.

Twitter – Twitter is a chat application that people across the world use. Oprah even featured it on her show, joined, and had 1 million followers in a very short time. If you increase your twitter follower count you can do effective marketing by sending tweets every now and again about your products, services, special sales, bonuses, deals, etc. It has yet to be seen if Twitter will be long-term marketing resource, but if early indications are worth anything we’ll see it last for a long time at least among a certain segment of the population.

There are many other tools you can use to market your new business on the internet. Start finding out about them and learn something about each. If you want to increase your knowledge about web 2.0 and social media type internet marketing resources join our newsletter here so you’ll be notified of special offers we have on online training courses. We’ll even offer some free ebusiness courses to newsletter subscribers. Join now >

Pieces of the Internet Marketing Puzzle – Pt. 1

This article covers some of the major forms of internet marketing that you’ll need to get started on with your new business.
Components of Internet Marketing to Implement for Your New Business:

Website – articles, photographs, audio, video, and other multimedia (flash, interactive polls, forms) all interacting to give visitors (future customers) your company message. Your website is like an extensive business card. Create your website to answer as many questions about your business as you can think of. Use your website as a means to spread your contact information from every page. Give multiple ways for visitors to contact you including phone, fax, email, and easy to send form (form to email).

Use professional graphics designers to craft you a brand and focus on increasing brand awareness through your website, brochures, business cards, advertisements, product packaging, etc.

Search Engine Marketing – SEM. Using the search engines to market your business website is very smart – and, there are a couple ways to go about it. You can choose to focus on organic search engine results like we do here StartUSABusiness.com. We put a lot of energy into creating incorporation content that is at the top of the world’s information on the subject. We’ve spent hundreds of hours tweaking pages to be what Google considers “quality content” in a process known widely as “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO). SEM is a difficult game to play, but, it’s worth trying on your own. Soon we’ll have some online training for you to get up to speed and try some on your own. Join our email newsletter so you are notified of free and paid ebusiness training courses as we release them.

Search engines can also be bought. You can use Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns through the Golge Adwords tool to buy placement on Google’s top search results page. It will cost you nothing to show your ad there – but, if someone clicks on your ad you’ll pay 5 cents and up for each valid click.

Pay for Inclusion (PFI) is a term that refers to buying your way into a directory so you can get customers for your business that way. These are online directories like Yahoo Directory and are similar to paper yellow pages in your city.

Email Marketing – permission based email marketing (see Aweber.com) is an exceptional way to target potential buyers (and past customers) of your business products with your product message. Email works best when the source is trusted and the emails received are requested – opted into. Be careful about how you implement your email marketing campaign, if you go with Aweber.com you should be fine – they have the standard in the industry.

Banner Advertising – graphics ads on websites that you either pay for or swap space for with another company. Banner ads still work – just ask Google Adsense and Adwords users. Banners typically have less than a 2% click through rate but they do bring new visitors which is what you need for your new business. Facebook is a new marketplace where you can target to age, and gender demographics quite accurately. The ads are cheap at Facebook at the present because they’re still working out the bugs. Give it a try if you need to test something. Some companies are having good success with Facebook ads.

Make sure to see Part 2 of “Pieces of the Internet Marketing Puzzle”

Video Marketing Your Business Website

One of the best ways to market your business in 2009 and in the coming years beyond – at least 5 years into the future, will be online video.

Why Video?