Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’
Internet Marketing Is A Necessary Component Of Your Advertising Budget
The importance of internet marketing is growing exponentially. Surveys of all kinds show a major shift in traditional marketing budgets to dollars being spent online to market all types of products and services.
Internet marketing is the use of the Internet to advertise and sell products and services. Within the definition of Internet Marketing you will find mention of pay per click advertising, banner ads, e-mail marketing, search engine marketing (including search engine optimization), blog marketing, and article marketing. Each of these subject areas is important to consider prior to planning your internet marketing strategy. If you reside in the state of Florida we recommend that you contact your local Orlando SEO company, that provides all of these services.
There are many advantages to having a fully executable internet marketing strategy. These benefits include measurability, flexibility, and affordability. Internet marketing strategies can provide a means by which you can reduce your customer acquisition expernses. With internet marketing you are able to quickly track the viability of each marketing campaign and quickly make adjustments.
As the Internet has expanded, so have the opportunities for marketing online. We will take a quick look at the various types of internet marketing and their associated benefits.
Pay per click search engine advertising. Sites like Google offer pay-per-click advertising for anyone interested in getting their message in front of the right segment or prospective buyer. This technique will give you targeted customers who are searching for a term that you have specified. Marketers using pay-per-click advertising only pay a fee, based on the competitiveness of a keyword or ad title, when a link is clicked on. Your local Orlando internet marketing agency is an expert of pay per click advertising.
Banner advertisements. Once the king of Internet marketing, online banner ads have evolved to include animated and flash banners, but the premise remains largely the same. Marketers purchase a specified number of impressions to run on a single site or network of sites and are generally not guaranteed a specific number of clicks.
Email Marketing. Email marketing is typically used on customers who have previously agreed to receive email messages from you, this remains a highly effective marketing method. However, be aware of CAN-SPAM requirements and contact preferences of those you plan to reach.
Search Engine Marketing. If you want search engines to display your site for a particular search term, then search engine optimization is necessary. No Internet marketing plan is complete without ensuring that your site is submitted and included on major directories like Google, Yahoo!, and DMOZ. The time and investment spent of search engine marketing can yield large benefits.
Marketing on blogs. Getting your web site, products, or services mentioned on related blogs can quickly increase traffic to your site and sales if you can make appropriate posts on related blogs. It is critical that you make relevant comments on blogs that are relevant to your product or service.
Article directory marketing. One of the most important aspects of Internet Marketing, is to improve the link popularity to your site and improve the awareness of your product or service offering. This is accomplished by publishing valuable relevant content that contains links back to your site.
In is best to consider an integrated approach that uses several of these techniques in tandem. Be certain that you have identified specific goals and have a specific budget allocation for your internet marketing strategy. Lastly, be sure to pick up a book, conduct some research, or work with professionals to enhance your Internet marketing know how.
What All Can You Expect From a Web Marketing Expert?
Web marketing refers to the marketing of the products and services on the World Wide Web by making use of the internet resources like websites. Web marketing Australia companies provide the different marketing services to the individuals and businesses. They seek to turn around the prospects of the businesses by conducting the search engine optimization (SEO), paid advertisement placements in the different networks (called pay per click or PPC), affiliate marketing (by being associated with the other sites and business through the ads and link exchange programs), email marketing (using the promotional flyers and brochures), social media marketing and other means.
With so many activities to do, you might think that the web marketing expert would be taking a quite a hefty charge for these services. If all these services would be necessary, then only the large companies would have used these methods. But, this is not the case. These methods are used by the small organizations and even by the individuals. The web marketing Australia experts seek to do the following:
- Find the right marketing mix for your business needs
- Find the strategies which are most effective as per your business cycle and remove the redundant activities which are more wasteful of resources
- Advice you on the time frame of achieving the targets
- Some might even be offering the money pay-back guarantees against not achieving the results.
- Increase the traffic on the site and also improver the conversion rates.
- Diagnose the website for the extent of SEO-friendliness of the site and advice suitable changes
- Develop the emailing lists for the customers and launch mass or targeted advertising campaign. This is done once the web marketing expert has become fully acquainted with the nature of client’s business.
- Advise on which sites are offering beneficial affiliate marketing programs.
- Provide the metrics of the performance through verifiable reporting mechanisms.
- Identify what the competitors are up to. What are the different strategies being used by them to gain more business from the internet? The Web marketing expert prepares your response to these competitors’ overtures and makes sure that you stay ahead of him.
Web marketing expert never fails to update on the newer concepts, internet resources and marketing methods that keep coming up time and again. The web marketing is an evolving field and the new methods of doing the promotions keep coming up. If the expert is not aware of the current trends, then the demand of his services would decline.
The web marketing Australiacompanies might be adopting the efficient methods but these shall not be illegal or as perceived to be unethical or wrong in the context of internet marketing. Using the wrong means can lead to punitive action from the search engines or other internet resources as also from the authorities, for violation of copyright provisions. These measures can seriously affect your business adversely by leading to the banning of the website. Web marketing experts know what all to do or not to do.
Online Affiliate Marketing
Online Affiliate Marketing is a revenue sharing venture between a website owner and an online merchant. The website owner will place advertisements on his websites to either help sell the merchant’s products or to send potential customers to the merchant’s website, all in exchange for a share of the profits.
Affiliate Marketing Program
An affiliate marketing program is sometimes called an affiliate program, but also may be referred to as a pay-for-performance program or an associate program. An affiliate program is a marketing tool for the e-business that operates it, called merchant or advertiser and a source of revenue for the e-business that participates in it, called an affiliate or associate or publisher.
There are three ways to earn money through affiliate marketing:
1) Pay per Click or Cost-per-click affiliate programs: Every time a potential customer leaves the affiliate website by “clicking” on the link leading to the merchant’s website, a certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate’s account. This amount can be pennies or dollars depending on the product and amount of the commission.
2) Pay per Lead or Cost-per-lead affiliate programs: The merchant pays the affiliate a set fee for each visitor who clicks through and takes and action at the merchant’s site, such as completing an online survey, registering at the site, or opting-in to receive e-mail.
3) Pay per Sale or Cost-per-sale affiliate programs: Every time a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate’s website, a percentage, or commission, is deposited into the affiliate’s account.
The Amazon Story
The world’s biggest bookstore has one of the most successful examples of an affiliate program (called their associate program). Amazon now has well over 1 million affiliates! That is over 1 million websites actively promoting their products every single second of every single day. Amazon generates over 40% of its revenue through its affiliates program. That is over $3 billion in revenue every single year! As another (somewhat humble by comparison) example, Zeald generates over 50% of its revenue using its own unique affiliates program. Admittedly, not quite billions of dollars but that is definitely millions of dollars of revenue every single year.
Thousands of diverse e-businesses operate affiliate programs: E.g. barnes & noble, dell, rackspace managed hosting etc.
Affiliate Programs as a Marketing Tool
The two major Advantages to merchant
1. Tie marketing effort directly to a lead or sales.
2. The merchant pays only for results.
The two major Advantages to affiliate
1. Additional source of revenue for affiliate who also sells products/services
2. Primary source of revenue for affiliate who offers entertainment or information
Two Approaches to Operating a Successful Affiliate Marketing
1. Acquire a huge and affiliate membership. e.g. The Amazon associates programs have over 1 million members as diverse as:
- RVPart – Sells parts for recreational vehicles and motor homes.
– Dilbert – Site for view cartoons, play games, send electronic greeting cards etc
– Books for Managers – Site for business reviews and lists of the currant top-selling business-related books provided by Business week, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and other publications.
– HaperCollins – Its site to promote its authors and their books. However, like many book publishers. HaperCollins sells its books through bookstores and not directly to the public.
2. Acquire a smaller number of highly effective affiliates that have a high volume of website traffic and offer web page content, products and services that are directly related to the merchant’s products and services.
Affiliate Programs as a Revenue Source
Participating in an affiliate program and then getting the most out of your participation involves:
- Selecting the appropriate merchant and affiliate program for your e-business
– Understand the terms of the affiliate agreement
– Add custom links to merchant’s site from affiliate Web pages
– Build traffic at affiliate site to increase click-troughs to merchant site.
Top 10 Tips for Choosing the Affiliate Program That Is Right for You
1. You have to identify a product or service for which there is a need. The product should be such that you would love and enjoy promoting it. You could start by searching for “Affiliate Programs” in the Search Engines.
2. The product or service should be relevant to your website.
3. It is always wise to join an affiliate program that is long standing, safe and secure and has a good reputation in the Internet world. This can be easily verified from the Better Business Bureau or other similar organizations. Visits to Forums and Discussion Groups will also provide you with a lot of useful information.
4. Most affiliate program providers provide a commission of 5% to 50%. The commission you earn for the sale of a product is your main income. So while choosing an affiliate program you should study the commission paid out and decide on a program that pays at least 35% for you to run your business successfully.
5. There should be a proper tracking system in place to record all the clicks and sales made through the text links and banners placed on your website, e-mails and other advertisements.
6. One important factor that is often overlooked is the “hits per sale ratio”. This indicates the number of hits that have to be made to a Text Link or Banner to generate a sale. This will give you an idea as to how much traffic is needed before a sale is made.
7. How often are commissions paid? This is another important matter that should be considered. Most reputed organizations pay their affiliates monthly or when they accumulate a minimum commission of $50 to $ 100 or as indicated by you. You should avoid any program that requires too many sales to reach the minimum amount.
8. Affiliate Programs are generally single tier or two tiers. A single tier program pays you for whatever business you have generated. On the other hand a two tier program pays you for the business you have generated and also a commission for the sales generated by a sub- affiliate, you have sponsored. A two tier program is always advantageous.
9. Long standing reputed organizations provide a whole range of tools and resources such as Banners, Text Links, Brochures, Websites and training for their affiliates. When choosing look out for such organizations because they certainly make life much easier and helps you grow your home based business.
10. Finally, you must read and understand the agreement before you join as an affiliate even if it happens to be the best organization in the world.
Understanding the Affiliate Agreement
The affiliate agreement created by the merchant and agreed by the affiliate, defines all aspects of the affiliate program and typically includes:
- Types of Web sites merchant will accept into the affiliate program
– Types of links allowed and guidelines regarding their use.
– Schedule and payments terms of fees and commissions
– Terms of usage of merchant logo, name and web content
– Technical specification that your web site must meet, if any
– Restrictions on types of content that may appear on affiliate sites
– Requirements for compliance with all government laws, ordinances, rules, and regulations.
Affiliate Tracking Systems
- Allow merchant to control how it credits click-throughs
– Monitor window of time in which affiliate can get credit for a click-through
– Record and store affiliate information
– Provide commission/fee reports
Affiliate management networks
An affiliate management network is a third-party entity that recruits affiliates, manages the registration process, tracks and properly credits all of the fee and commissions and arranges for payment. In return for these services, the affiliate management network collects from the merchant a percentage of each referral transaction’s fee or commission-perhaps as much 30 percent.
Well-established affiliate management networks: Example: Commission Junction, LinkShare [2]
Affiliate tracking technologies
To achieve this we develop a strategic online relationship with advertisers to improve the creation, management, and analysis of online marketing and sales activities. These activities are supported by a scalable and reliable tracking technology. Keeping track of the click-throughs and properly crediting the affiliates is a complex programming task. Companies such as BeFree and ClickTrade sell software that automatically monitors and credits all followed links resulting in a sale. Note that ClickTrade was acquired by Microsoft and is now co-branded as part of Microsoft bCentral.
Some tracking technologies are following:
- Custom links containing affiliate information or affiliate and merchant information
– Tracking cookies
– Third-party tracking software
– Application service provider tracking service
– Sub Domain tracking
– Database record matching.
Affiliate Marketing Risks and Challenges
Affiliate marketing is not without certain risks and challenges primarily form unethical affiliates and the negative perceptions online consumers have about tracking technologies.
Unethical Affiliates
- Cookie stuffing – Multiple cookies placed on visitor’s hard drive during a single visitor affiliate site.
– Spyware – General term used to describe software that has been installed on a personal computer without the owner’s permission, its unknowingly download and install spyware when you download games, screensavers, freeware utilities and so forth.
– Parasiteware – Redirects affiliate links and Replaces content of existing tracking cookies
– Spammers – Merchant is responsible if affiliates use spam to promote sites
– Negative perception of tracking cookies – Many consumers install and use blocking software which includes Block tracking cookies and Delete tracking cookies.
Why Affiliate Marketing Is Profitable for E-Business
If you have been considering an affiliate marketing venture, there are some very good reasons why you should go with this method of generating recurring revenue. Here are some of the ways that affiliate marketing can be a lucrative means of creating income that will be stable and allow you to grow exposure over time.
– One of the first advantages of affiliate marketing for the new entrepreneur is that the startup cost is very low. Most companies that offer affiliate marketing programs do not require any type of monetary investment on the part of the affiliate.
– The second expenses are limited to what you have to pay to connect with the Internet, the software you may need to load on your computer, and a web site where the ads associated with the affiliate marketing program can be placed. With web site hosting such an inexpensive service these days, setting up your own web site for the affiliate ads will be a breeze.
– Another reason that affiliate marketing is such a moneymaker is the fact that there are so many different types of ways to set up the program. You can go with the pay per click option, which works out great when it comes to promoting special offers. Ads that lead to product review sites often are a way to allow product users to go through your portal and leave comments on the items they purchase.
First Thing’s First-Avoid These Silly Affiliate Marketing Mistakes!
While affiliate marketing is a great way to earn a living, the fact is that many people become discouraged and drop out of programs. In many instances, the failure to be successful with affiliate marketing has to do with making a few simple mistakes. Here are some examples of those mistakes and why they should be avoided.
– A low-quality website with no original content and tossing in some affiliate links. While it is certainly true that you need to have a web site up and running in order to participate in an affiliate program, there is also the need to apply some effort to getting the word out about your site. Otherwise, the chances of people visiting your web site and clicking on one of the links are pretty slim.
– Another mistake many affiliate partners make is not choosing products that have some relevance to the content of your web site.
– Keeping your site content and the ads more or less relevant to one another will make it easier to generate revenue, and not fail as an affiliate marketer. Now, this may seem intuitive – but many make this mistake in subtle ways (i.e. they mismatch their customers with products).
– One final mistake that many affiliate marketers make is not sprucing up their web sites from time to time. Keeping the content fresh is one way of building and keeping a loyal reading audience because keeping the same old look and the same old text with nothing new to entice people back is a sure way to limit your chances at being a successful affiliate marketer. The fact is that you do have to proactively promote your site, keep the content fresh, and make sure the ads have some connection to the subject matter of your site.
What You Need Before Getting Started and Affiliated Marketing
While there is not a lot of expense in starting up as an affiliate marketer, there are a few things that you need to do if you really want to make money marketing other people’s products.
Here are some basic tips to help you line up all your things to do before you ever sign up for that first affiliate program.
- One of the basic needs for any successful affiliate program is to have a web site of your own. While it is possible to purchase ad space on sites and to advertise through Google Adwords, this is short term strategy setting up a basic web site that has a particular focus will make all the difference in the world to the success of your program. Keep in mind that your web site does not have to be complicated with a lot of flash media, animation or other fancy bells and whistles.
– In fact, if you plan on focusing your attention on affiliate marketing strategies that target the home consumer, you are better off with a basic site that will load quickly on a dial up connection. After all, dial-up is still extremely popular in a number of locations.
– Online payments are a great way to easily receive your affiliate payments and keep track of your earnings. From this angel, you may want to look into opening an account with one of the more popular online services that send and receive funds. i.g PayPal
– Another important aspect is determining just what your contact information will be, regarding communication with your affiliate program. This would include an email Address and physical mailing address. The email address should be one you have set aside specifically for your marketing business.
How to Pick the Best Product with the Best Payout and Great Demand
- One of the first things to think in terms of when it comes to affiliate marketing is determining where your talents and expertise happen to reside. One of the keys to picking the best products for your particular situation have to do with what you know and how much you know about it. As an example, a person that has worked in telecommunications for a number of years will probably know a great deal about telephony, related services, and technology that are used within that industry.
– Another aspect about setting up with the right products to promote has to do with where you see a niche to fill in. Finding a population or business sector that appears to be largely ignored in the marketing process can provide the inspiration you need to create a successful affiliate marketing program.
– Do not allow yourself to get discouraged simply because everything is not crystal clear as you begin this part of the process. Practicing some patience and giving yourself time to find the right products to promote as part of the program will only serve to make you more dedicated to the success of the program
In the end, you will find the products that will lead to a very successful affiliate marketing scheme and provide you with not only a handsome revenue stream, but also a lot of personal satisfaction.
Recommended Top Affiliate Networks on the Internet
When you decide to enter the world of affiliate marketing, there are a number of markets that are worthy of consideration. Here are three programs that have captured the attention of a lot of people, simply because of their stability and reliability.
1. Perhaps the best known of the three programs is Click Bank: clickbank. There a number of reasons why people find ClickBank such an attractive option when it comes to affiliate programs. One aspect is that the revenue generated by any purchase made through the ad portal is credited to your account within two minutes of the completion of the transaction. Because Click Bank provides such a comprehensive tracking program.
2. pavdotcom is also an excellent choice as an affiliate network. Just as with ClickBank, PayDotCom provides an easy to use affiliate interface that allows you to view your numbers in real time. You can easily track such data as the number of clicks on the ads and the amount of commissions you have made by directing visitors over to the marketplace through the portal on your web site. One of the advantages of PayDotCom is that this program will interface with your PayPal account, which means that vendors can send your monthly commission directly to your PayPal account. It is important to note that not all vendors will use PayPal as a payment method, so you may still receive payments by check as well.
3. shareasale is a third option that is rapidly gaining recognition among affiliate marketers. As a program that is designed to match up to the content of your existing web site, Share sale is free to join as an affiliate.
Rising to the Super Affiliate Level – What Constitutes a Super Affiliate?
A super affiliate is a marketing affiliate that has created a network that provides a high volume of traffic to affiliate products and a high percentage of completed sales from that traffic. The super affiliate is not one who reaches this level once, or even once in a great while.
- Creativity is an hallmark of a super affiliate. The ability to present the same old information is new ways will keep people interested. Super affiliates know how to look at products from a variety of different angles, determine a series of ways to present the product, and then go out and find an audience to match up with each one of those ways. For the super affiliate, there is always one more way to draw attention to a product, and find a larger audience than ever before.
– Another characteristic of a super affiliate is the desire and ability to master technology. This does not necessarily involve becoming an expert in information technology. But it does involve learning enough about existing technology to make good use of avenues already open on the Internet to promote products.
– Making the most of your status as a super affiliate means enjoying the opportunities that come to you through word of mouth; additionally, it means taking matters into your own hands and promoting your status in such a way that you increase your visibility.
The Super Affiliate Marketing Tactics Exposed!
So what is it that allows a super affiliate to make hundreds or even thousands of sales when you struggle to make 5 sales of the same product? Why is that super affiliates rake in the cash while you struggle to get by? Think about this carefully: you are both selling the exact same product. The only possible difference is the tactics you use to market it. Below, we have included a couple tactics that we should use to sell more like super affiliates. Try to incorporate them into your strategy.
Tactic #1: Play the Long Game
Whenever some new launch is coming up, they will throw together a promotional website; and try to direct traffic to it using pay per click search engine advertisements or solo ads. But there is a major flaw with this approach: almost without exception, people will purchase a “big launch” product from an Internet marketer they already know this is why you have to play the long game, rather than focusing on each individual launch, prepare an approach that will work consistently for years to make more sales.
Tactic #2: Steal from Super Affiliates Whenever Possible
Many super affiliates are also big name Internet marketers. They have public personas that we can follow quite easily. We can find their user ld’s, blogs, mailing lists and their web site’s. Through this approach we can learn from each of them.
Tactic #3: Ignore Talk; Look for Revealed Preference
Talk is just that: talk. Many Internet marketers will talk about all sorts of different methods you can use to make money. They will tell you to advertise using Google Adwords or to build a list or to create viral reports. While some of this information may be useful and legitimate, we should ignore what they say and watch what they do. This is called “revealed preference.
Tactic #4: Make Friends with the Seller
Believe it or not, the seller wants you to be successful, too. So contact him ahead of time, make friends with him; and see if he has any particular advice for you on selling the product. Keep in mind that he talks to a lot of affiliates on a regular basis (especially around big launches) and has the best understanding of the tactics they actually use.
Become a Supreme Affiliate Marketing: Additional Supreme Affiliate Marketing Tips
If you want to make a six figure income – and possibly a seven figure income – then you have to do something that is truly different than what you are doing now. The big question is “how can I do this”? Here’s following suggestion:
Tip #1: Start Acting Like a Business Owner
If you want to be a successful affiliate product marketer, you have to find people who can augment your weakness (and, trust me, no matter how smart you are, you have plenty of weaknesses). Additionally, affiliate marketers do not work in isolation. Most of them are friends with the marketers they sell products for; and this gives them far more leverage and information than you have access to. So start thinking of yourself as a business owner, rather than a completely self-sufficient Internet marketer.
Tip #2: Concentrate on Regular Sales
Regular sales are easier to quantify and predict; and, for this reason, it is far easier to continually ramp up small, regular sales until you are making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars each year. So don’t worry if you’re the top affiliate for some major new product launch. Instead, focus on regular sales and regular increases in sales.
Tip #3: Do What They Do – Not What They Say
Observe the channels of marketer through which he promotes his product. Watch carefully to determine what methods he’s using to make sales, so you can replicate his successes, rather than chasing after dreams he’s written about.
Conclusion
We may conclude that choosing an Affiliate Program that is right for you might be time consuming but a worth while process. Going through the above whole process will also be a learning curve for new entrepreneurs who are serious about starting a successful home based business. So there is an opportunity for business students and young entrepreneur to develop a simple website with limited budget that can be arranged easily through their own personal savings. This website can be developed with only $100 to $200 (Approximately). You can increase your business growth through adopting the approach where you can affiliate your business with different websites having relevancy with your business and internet heavy traffic as well.
Finally there’s no single path to affiliate marketing riches – and that’s a good thing. Instead, there are many pathways through which you can make your millions. So scout carefully, look for functional methods you can use, and implement them in your own efforts. You may be surprised with the results. But whatever you do – don’t continue to use strategies that haven’t worked in the past. Always think like super affiliates because they use a range of tactics and adopt different ways in order to consistently outperform other affiliates.
For more on Online Affiliated Marketing Click Here
But one thing you should always play the long game and build lists, create forums, and secure a captive audience in advance of product releases.
Viral Marketing Ideas – So Exactly What Is Viral Marketing.
What is Viral Marketing?
Today’s question is “What is Viral Marketing”. You hear this term a lot of times and it sounds good. But what really exactly is it? I have spent some time researching it and I decided to use some viral marketing. Guess where??? Right here on this very blog. I’ve got some really cool data that I want to share & it’s coming from the blog. Now I’m going to share with you 3 things about viral marketing that I think you can apply that will work. I will talk about how they work & how I implemented them.
The third one actually I have not yet implemented yet, but I will be soon, so I will give you a sneak peak on how you will be using it. First of all viral marketing is basically any kind of marketing. You know one thing that I don’t like is when people talk about traffic generation techniques; they will list viral marketing as a separate thing. It’s the same. Viral marketing sits above. You do anything, and it turns viral. Social marketing, article marketing, video marketing, even your paid marketing, press release marketing, brand marketing. All of these can go viral.
Viral is just what happens with your marketing after you release it. So the point of viral marketing is for you to create something and then it gets spread throughout the world. This is exactly how MSN’s Hotmail became what they are. They became what Hotmail was and then got acquired by Microsoft. Just because every email that went out had a little footer saying “Sign up now for your own free email account”. That’s viral. Watch YouTube. YouTube went viral. Look at some of the top videos at YouTube. How many videos have you sent to your friends because you thought that they were funny? That is you participating in viral marketing. How many times have you Tweeted, or FaceBooked something that is funny or a link to something. That is you taking part in viral marketing.
So what we want to do in viral marketing is flip it. How can we device a way that will make other people want to tell other people about it? Basically word of mouth marketing. So the 3 that I discussed below are viral videos. There is nothing new to say there. It’s video marketing at its best. You are watching something that I hope will go viral in sometime. I am going to share with you proof and evidence in a second that what I have been doing HAS gone viral.
Second is incentivized social media. This is a great thing. By the way, let me take a quick break. There are a lot of viral ideas and I ripped actually 3 of these away from a report that my friends put together. Click the link that is there somewhere around this video. You will have to share your name and email to get it. It’s not mine it’s his, but I wanted to give him a shot out. It’s a great report, read it if you want to know more about viral marketing.
So again the second one is incentivized social media. You want an example, look on the right side of the blog, or if you are watching this video somewhere else go to AnikSingal. Come and you will see that when I say ‘win pads’ and ‘win that’ go and read that page. This is what incentivized social media is. I want you to tweet about me, I want you to FaceBook me and in exchange I bribe you with something. That’s incentivized social media, see it for yourself. Go to Twitter and type @aniksingal and you will see that there are hundreds of people that have done this and that has helped me make this blog viral.
The third one is what you call Stats Based Press Releases. This is one of my favorite ones. I haven’t done this from quite sometime, but I want to start doing this again. It’s the easiest way to go viral to media.
It’s one thing to go viral to consumers and to people. But it’s a whole another ball game to go viral to media. And I did it. I did this once and the whole thing was absolutely mind blowing. So here it is in black and white. AnikSingal.com launched not so long ago, 134,234 visits since launch. Whooping 271,957 page views. That’s around 300,000 page views in 3 weeks. I accept that I have a list that I market to. 72% of them new visitors. My list isn’t that big. My posts have been going viral.
Scroll down my blog and you will see how many times things are being tweeted. You will see how many times it was tagged “like” on FaceBook. You will see that I am using FaceBook plug-in for comments. That means this is how many times it’s being spread on FaceBook. Right now FaceBook is already referring 1% of my traffic.
Now I know that doesn’t sound like a lot. But I just started. It’s already got me a size-able traffic, free traffic. I have no idea where it’s coming from. The rest of it is direct type in traffic. This means my links being forwarded by people to each other. A total of 55% of my traffic is coming from that. That only means that the rest of coming from people clicking theirs emails as they do have an email database. 55% is just being forwarded around. My most popular post got a little over 14000 views. Trust me I wont be able to get that many clicks even if I mailed my own database. This is viral.
Second top video, 11600 views. Now it’s very obvious that I have been doing viral video marketing. And I have been trying my hand at incentivized social media. And I have done some of the other viral marketing; tips that are in the report of you need to know. The third system you are going to see me use very soon is Stats Based Press Releases. And what are those, I will explain them right below this video. So to sum it up, viral marketing is very cool. But it is not its own traffic generation technique. It’s something that you can use in any of your other marketing methods.
Benefits of Marketing Automation 2.0
Marketing Automation 2.0 is the next generation solution for marketing automation, providing B2B enterprises and marketers with a platform that is intuitive and responsive to the dynamic needs of commercial organizations.
Marketing Automation 2.0 solution, powered by its intelligence and analytics, ensures that organizations acquire qualified leads in their sales funnel, generate effective, customized, lead management programs, and achieve shorter sales cycles and increased ROI. It is the only platform which provides end-to-end integration, from designing the lead generation campaign to making a live connection with the prospect.
1.Increased Sales and Marketing Synergy
Sales and marketing disconnect is detrimental to the success of any organization. It not only reduces the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns run by the company, but also reduces the efficiency of its sales teams in pursuing and closing deals. Existing marketing automation solutions fail to bridge this gap because they still see the two departments passing the baton once their respective role is completed in the overall lead management process. A next-generation, Marketing Automation 2.0 solution with its process integration and Web 2.0 enabled platform makes lead management a collaborative process, ensuring real-time communication between the marketing and sales departments. Both teams gain from each other’s insights and experiences: Sales feedback helps marketing optimize its marketing campaigns, which in turn results in better focused lead generation campaigns. In addition, the common lead view helps them to take action on decisions immediately, eliminating lead-lag, and resulting in higher conversion rates.
2. Better Lead Qualification and Organizational Productivity
Lead scoring takes on a whole new meaning with Marketing Automation 2.0. Leads are not scored based on the number of items visitors download from the site, or the number of click-throughs. Leads are scored based on the online visitor’s browsing behavior and inferred intent. Scoring also includes taking into account the Individual and the enterprise’s behavior in the case of multiple people from the same company visiting the website. These intelligent insights, coupled with a common view of the identified leads for the sales and marketing teams, ensure that only the good leads which have the potential of being converted to prospects as well as closed deals stay in the system. This not only ensures a highly qualified lead lineup but also helps the organization to optimize its resources to the maximum.
3. Targeted Campaigns with Impact
Independent research has discovered that sales people need to have a conversation with the prospect within 20 minutes of the prospect visiting the website, after which the chances of successfully engaging the prospect fall dramatically. This underscores the need for communicating quickly andeffectively with a lead. The analytics provided by a Marketing Automation 2.0 platform are focused and intent driven. Intelligence gathered gives a deep insight into the visitors buying process, including the stage of the decision-making process. This data enables the marketing team to create customized lead nurturing campaigns which are based on real prospect needs, rather than guess-work. Since the lead nurturing campaigns are intent-driven, they help ensure that the prospect is receiving only relevant content and emails, increasing the likelihood that emails will be read, rather than discarded. And greater lead intelligence makes it easier for the sales teams to create customized pitches. Focused lead nurturing campaigns, and tailor-made pitches result in shorter sales cycles and improved sales and marketing productivity.
4. Data Mining and Success Feedback
Companies have success stories and it pays benefits to learn from those successes so that they can be replicated. A Marketing Automation 2.0 platform captures significantly more online visitor and prospect data than was previously attainable. For example, online activity capture and behavior analysis uncovers not only where the visitor browsed, but for how long, and in what sequence throught the website. Multiple visitors from the same company can be similarly tracked, and their behavior aggregated into a separate analysis. Such capabilities enable companies to determine what works, and what doesn’t work with their online marketing component. Now marketing and sales teams can analyze their success stories, look for patterns, and based on this intelligence, create a more predictive model which can be used for managing similar leads in the future. What you did right the last time around can now become an automated benchmark for planning your activities across the lead management process every time you find a prospect that fits the model. This becomes an extremely powerful tool for the organization.
5. Quantifiable Marketing Success
Every organization strives to maximize the return on its investments, and no more so than in today’s challenging economic environment. Marketing, like sales, is under pressure to quantify results from expenditures on online campaigns, PR and AR activities, advertising, and other marketing “investments”.
A Marketing Automation 2.0 solution not only helps ensures a higher return on investment when it comes to the money spent on the solution itself but it also helps measure the value received from other marketing investments by a company. All types of marketing activities, including PR/AR, advertising, and social media participation can now be measured with a Marketing Automation 2.0 solution. If the focus of an organization’s marketing activities is lead generation, a Marketing Automation 2.0 solution can clearly inform and provide the company with a rich set of data, including which marketing campaigns and channels brought in the maximum number of leads, and which channels did not yield good results. These insights help a company measure its marketing spends against the leads generated. It also helps a company to re-focus its efforts on campaigns and channels that yield them the best results.
6. Ease of Use
Being a SaaS-based solution, the next-generation, Marketing Automation 2.0 platform does not require a dedicated IT component in order to be deployed. Companies can largely reduce or completely eliminate the cost associated with IT support, which represents a major cost savings for most enterprises, especially those without dedicated IT resources.
Marketing Automation 2.0 solution merges smoothly with Web 2.0 tools to collaborate with prospects and customers on product development, service enhancement and promotion. Finally, Marketing Automation 2.0 solves the big problem of the marketing and sales divide, providing one unified platform and data set for different internal departments and outside partners, including sales, marketing, company management, channel partners, customers, and other key stakeholders.
Mobile Marketing or Social Media Marketing – Which Goes Better With Email Marketing?
Some email marketers see the rise of social media marketing and mobile communications as a threat to the dominance of email marketing. Not so! Each channel can integrate with your email marketing program to expand its reach and ROI.
But, which channel should you choose? You could opt to spread your messages via social media marketing- Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks. Or, should you first add mobile marketing and optimize your email messages for viewing on mobile devices?
The answer, as it is with so many aspects of marketing, is “It depends.” There’s no single solution that meets all market needs. Each one can help you build your brand, acquire and retain more customers and deepen engagement.
In the end, base your decision on the type of people you market to, (customers, subscribers, users or prospects) and what you hope to accomplish with your campaigns.
Knowing and understanding your target audience – who they are, their wants and needs, where they hang out (virtually speaking) – is your first step when creating an effective marketing initiative.
Adding Mobile to Email Marketing
Integrating mobile marketing with email marketing means your subscribers will likely see your messages faster, whether they access their inboxes from a mobile browser or respond to a well-crafted text message.
Your mobile messages can also tout the benefits of your email marketing program and help you build a bigger mailing list.
Mobile marketing is also more heavily regulated and requires opt-in, which takes care of the permission angle that’s less strict in email, at least for U.S. marketers. And consumers are becoming more receptive to it. A 2009 Juniper Research report predicted mobile coupon redemption could reach $6 billion by 2014. Redemption rates also can be higher than those for either paper or email coupons.
An example: Suppose you market to a younger and female consumer audience: teenagers and young adults who rely on texting on a continuous basis.
With this group, integrating an email marketing campaign with a strong short-code messaging system (SMS) makes sense. These consumers aren’t always near a desktop or laptop computer to read and send email, but their phones are always in their pockets.
One campaign sought to build the company brand on mobile devices, targeting it to younger office workers. Mobile users who entered a sweepstakes saw a screen that invited them to opt in for offers and newsletters by texting “yes” to a custom short-code number that spelled out part of the company name.
For more detailed information about integrating mobile and email marketing, read our new guide: SMS + Email Marketing How-to Guide.
Adding Social Media to Email Marketing
Social media marketing can extend the reach, authority and shelf life of your email marketing program. When your subscribers post your email messages to their social networks, they broaden your exposure to new viewers and indirectly endorse your message. Your messages also live longer as they spread through your subscribers’ networks.
An example: When your market skews toward professionals in a tight market vertical who coalesce around a social networking community, using social media to extend your reach to prospects makes sense.
Customers and prospects in this market niche are likely to be on their computers more often than their phones. These professionals, who often are experts or aspiring to advance in their fields, use social networking to get and give advice, share experiences and connect with their peers in highly focused groups such as LinkedIn or trade-specific forums.
Here, you can consider a strategy that calls for your company to participate in online groups, contributing valuable information rather than self-seeking promotion. (Recommended On Demand Webcast: Enhance Your Email With Social Media Marketing)
The Best Solution: “Tri-Messaging” (Email + Mobile + Social Media)
Email marketing as a channel has tremendous flexibility. That’s one of its great virtues and one of the reasons it continues to reign over all other marketing channels for ROI ($43.62 returned per dollar spent in 2009 according to the Direct Marketing Association).
However, the digital messaging world has changed in the last few years. You can miss out on lucrative opportunities if you limit your marketing program to email marketing alone, or complement it with just one channel.
Many of your email-using customers access their social networks on their mobile phones, so they’re already tri-messaging. You need to remain ahead of the game to provide the best user experience.
With tri-messaging, you can tap into the lucrative synergy that happens when you create a core email marketing program with social and mobile components.
Tri-messaging in Action: Airline Marketing
Email Marketing: An airline sends, via its regular email newsletter, an offer for a vacation package to Hawaii. The newsletter also includes prominent links inviting subscribers to become fans on its Facebook fan page and to follow the company on Twitter.
Social Media Marketing: Its Facebook fan page posts the vacation package offer, tourist information and photos of Hawaii. The Twitter account posts the offer, links to additional information and uses a hashtag and keyword (#HawaiiGetaway, for example) to extend the offer’s reach.
Mobile Marketing: The airline sends an SMS alert to subscribers letting them know the package offer is either almost sold out or has only 24 hours left.
Managing the Costs of Social Media and Mobile Marketing Integration
Both social media and mobile marketing cost time (and, in some cases, money) to set up, maintain and monitor.
- Social media marketing: You can join networks such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter without cost. Your major expense comes in the human resource it takes to set up your presence, joining and continuing conversations with participants, and monitoring your effectiveness with analytics programs that track your company’s reputation in the social sphere.
Solution: Ensure a specific employee has the responsibility to manage your efforts. If your marketing department is stretched to its limits now, “outsource” the work to an employee “fan” who is passionate about your company and its products and is already active in social media. Eventually your efforts will become significant and rewarding enough that you will want to formalize more dedicated ownership.
Third-party applications for Twitter and content-sharing services such as ShareThis offer free tools to help you track comments. Other monitoring applications can be integrated with your Web analytics to track effectiveness. (Recommended On Demand Webcast: Social Media Marketing: CPR for Email Marketers in a Challenging Economy)
- Mobile marketing: As with email marketing, building a mobile marketing program takes dedication and perseverance.
Although mobile users are receptive to relevant marketing offers, they’ll be just as likely to revolt against high message volume or irrelevant messages.
Also, mobile messages require even more attention to rendering. Repurposing an image-laden email message can backfire if the images don’t render or if the reader has to work too hard to find your offer or value proposition.
Solution: Offer a mobile opt in on your registration page along with email subscriptions. Use the lowest common denominator for mobile marketing: SMS (text) messaging, to ensure that any device can receive the message properly. Promote your mobile program to your current subscriber or customer base via regular newsletters, special mailings and mentions in transactional email messages. (Recommended On Demand Webcast: Using Mobile for Email Campaigns: A Primer)
By taking a tri-messaging approach, marketers can gain the maximum synergies from their online marketing efforts.
Email Marketing, Social Media & Mobile Marketing Integration
The online marketing space has evolved, and social media and mobile marketing channels present the opportunity for more personal engagement to exist between people and brands. Marketers need to think beyond a batch-and-blast email marketing mentality to a well choreographed and integrated approach that is in sync with target audiences.
Social media and mobile marketing channels combined with email marketing can help fuel this shift, enhance engagement, grow customer opt-in lists, and maximize audience touch points.
Yet, as noted by Forrester’s David Daniels, “not enough email marketers are integrating proven channels, such as social into their email marketing campaigns.” Likewise, Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang recently discussed on his blog why he believes that email marketers can no longer avoid integrating social tools.
Email Marketing Should No Longer Stand Alone
At Lyris, we define the active dialogue via email, social and mobile marketing channels as “tri-messaging.” In other words, tri-messaging encompasses marketing messages that are written, packaged, orchestrated and unleashed for email, social and mobile marketing channels. It is a methodical approach to change the way in which people interact with your company, thus creating opportunities to capture mindshare and engage in interactive conversation. The concept of merging email marketing with social and/or mobile channels may seem challenging – but is well worth the effort and will help you stand out from competitors.
Sergio Balegno, senior analyst at MarketingSherpa, advocates a multi-channel approach and recently posited in the 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide that, “an overwhelming 97 percent of marketers agree that social media will complement other marketing tactics, such as email marketing, rather than displacing them. It’s truly a symbiotic relationship – email marketing is still, and should be, targeted, but social media marketing provides an opportunity for marketers to extend reach. Add in mobile marketing, and you have a marketing campaign that is greater than the sum of its parts.”
Lyris Customers Reap the Benefits of Tri-Messaging
Alliance for the Arts joined us on our ad:tech New York video by David Spark to discuss how tri-messaging is enabling them to better nurture relationships with their customers.
Tri-messaging: Alliance for the Arts and Lyris at adtech NY 2009
Lyris clients, such as Matches (a leading fashion provider) and Eldorado Resort and Casino, have also proven how the power of integrating email marketing with mobile and social media marketing channels will increase the success of marketing efforts and create a more engaging customer experience. By orchestrating campaigns across channels and leveraging Lyris HQ’s embedded Web analytics, Matches has enjoyed a significant improvement in customer data and is benefitting from actionable insights into campaign effectiveness and the variance of online and in-store purchases. This flow of information has enabled the company to improve the quality and frequency of its online communications with customers. Similarly, by integrating email with other channels, particularly mobile, Eldorado Hotel and Casino has more than doubled its mobile opt-in list and increased revenue through improved prospect conversion.
As with other marketing and business initiatives, before integrating email marketing campaigns with social and mobile marketing channels it’s best to start with some measurable goals and clear objectives. In this regard, there are four goal-oriented topics to consider: 1) brand building; 2) customer acquisition; 3) customer retention; and 4) product launch. Once you decide where you want to focus in terms of specific achievements, it’s easier to determine your strategy, choose social networking channels, orchestrate content development, select tools, organize staff, etc. Using the Forrester Social Technographics Ladder will help you understand how your target audience (as defined by gender, age, and geography) uses social media.
To discover more about how your company can maximize its marketing campaigns by applying a tri-messaging strategy, follow us on Twitter twitter.com/Lyris and take advantage of these additional resources:
- Tri-Messaging: Maximizing the Impact of Messages and Community Touchpoints through Email, Social and Mobile Experiences
- Enhancing Email with Social Media: Q&A with Lyris and You?
- Top 3 mistakes to avoid when integrating email and social media
- Social Media Marketing On-Demand Webcast
- Integrated Marketing Communications Has Evolved
- Conversations at the Core
Marketing Your Business Online
Business marketing presently is no longer limited to newsletter printing and also other old marketing tools. With the Internet, you can efficiently market your business online. Business blogging is among the most cost-effective online marketing methods.
Business blogs are different from personal blogs. They focus on the marketing of your merchandise and services, not your own personal life. What they could be similar in is the kind of casualness in language and tone that connects more with people today. The demonstration of knowledge in business blogs is as engaging as in personal blogs.
Business blogs are devoted to the ideas of general marketing, business improvement and two-way communication in between business proprietors and their consumers. Your relationship to your customers makes way for the development of your marketing technique and eventually your sales. Blogs highlight comment boxes where your online visitors can pass on their issues and questions and expect an answer by you.
There are many other areas in marketing where business blogging can be particularly useful. With business blogging it is possible to enhance your internal communications. Your company members can be better informed of company developments by going through your company blog.
Your blog may also enhance your brand’s online presence as it functions as the central component of your search engine marketing. It is able to bring in prospects and develop new business opportunities by being a research entry to new markets, products and niches. With the business blog, you can identify your products and also services from those of competitors.
At only a little cost and a small part of your time, you can increase your online marketing strategy. Blogs can improve your company’s value and public image by showcasing relevant facts of your company background as well as your services and products.
It can also position you being an expert. You can share your knowledge and opinions on your products and services as well as the fields where your company revolves in. The details you present create considerable effect in consumers to create purchases and also to repeatedly go to your blog to seek guidance upon your field of expertise.
Blogs produce a mutual relationship between both you and your consumers. It’s the type of partnership based on mutual trust by actively changing and discussing information. Answering your consumers demands help bolster your relationship with all your market and create favourable responses.
The very best responses you will get from your online visitors are when they purchase your products and hire your services and when they help you advertise your services and products by linking your site to theirs and also by posting links in your blog in other sites.
It is possible to further your blog promotion via your blog’s built-in distribution stations just like RSS feeds and pings. Trackbacks, comments, social bookmarking along with other blog-specific marketing chances may also promote your business. They can increase your online visibility by generating numerous tracks around the Web resulting in your site. These tracks are also detected by search engine spiders which locate your blog among similar ones in the blogosphere. Your constant identification by search engine spiders will lead to the upsurge of your rank in online searches. With business blogging, you can remain on top of your game, construct profitable niches and conquer markets.
Marketing vs. Advertising
When most people think of marketing the first thing that pops into their head is an advertisement. This leads many people to believe that marketing and advertising are actually the same things. They aren’t.
Here is the definition of marketing according to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary:
Marketing is “the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service.”
And here is the definition of advertising:
Advertising is “the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcement.”
So you can see that by definition, marketing is much broader than advertising. Advertising is actually a part of marketing. But it’s not the only part of marketing.
Sure advertising is a major part of marketing, but it isn’t even the majority of marketing. The two terms are not interchangeable. And marketing is much larger than advertising. Therefore, in order to be successful with your marketing efforts, you have to concentrate on much more than just advertising.
What is Marketing?
The next logical question to ask is: What is marketing?
You just read the definition of marketing above. And from that definition you can see that marketing is pretty much everything. This is a fact that you need to always remember.
Marketing is everything!
It’s everything you think it is and it’s everything that you never thought was part of marketing.
Again, everything you do is part of your marketing efforts. Sure, marketing is the mailing you do once a year and marketing might be calling past customers to see if they need your services again. And marketing is putting flyers around the neighborhood and giving away Frisbees with your business name on them. Marketing is all of the direct efforts you make to promote your business.
But marketing is so much more than this too.
Marketing is also the way your present yourself, how you present your product or service, how you deal with customers and potential customers, its your expertise, your goodwill, your ability to more than satisfy your clients. It’s the quality of your product, or the quality of your service. Its how you deal with people you have contact with, and how people you don’t have contact with perceive you.
All these things that marketing is, makes it very easy, or very hard, depending on how you look at it. If you accept that marketing is everything, then its easier. If you are constantly trying to determine what part of your activities are marketing, so you can put your marketing hat on, then it gets more difficult.
Just accept that virtually everything you do sends a marketing message.
Online Marketing Degree – New Provocations And Competitive Job Possibilities
After finishing an academic program, students are able to earn an accredited web based marketing degree. Nowadays, each economic procedure is very much associated to minimum one marketing strategy. It actually starts the business process, as any efficient management method pays a close attention to a marketing research. In other words, marketing studies supply the relevant information on business target, on production standards. This section has diversified and embodies subdomains like research advertising, campaign, statistics and consumer behavior.
If you are willing to initiate your career in marketing, an academic instruction amplifies the opportunities on the labor market. You can have the occasion to perform for an important company that needs your specialized assistance in their field. In other words, each form of organization is based on marketing research and constantly develops due to marketing procedures. We are able to say that such type of complex method marks its starting point with research studies, improve the methodology and set the production standards according to marketing principles. The last stage is designed by advertising, campaign and distribution.
With the intention to meet the requirements for a profession in marketing, you need to fulfill the conditions employers have set and the online marketing degree is the official recognition you need for this. An academic instruction ends with either with an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s degree. Accredited employees represent the suitable source that approve the advantages of an online marketing degree that increased their job posibilities. Should you target a marketing career perfection or wish to change your activity domain, verify the below list with the advantages of an accredited online marketing degree.
- challenging profession possibilities in a fast-growing industry
Competitive marketing programs set any business on an ascending path.To really find out how the entire business process works and how marketing enhances the values in terms of profit, you need to concentrate initially on theoretical studies. After understanding the fundamental marketing concepts, you can then specialize in one of the various marketing departments. As soon as you graduate, you could practice what you have learned.
- gain time and spend less on your academic education
The substitute that is considered to be the most suitable replacement of the standard academical program is online marketing degree. It significantly reduces education charges and helps more students to enroll in academic programs. Important advantages are education cost reduction and an increasing number of students eager to opt for academic programs. In addition, academic institutions and employers have encouraged the ongoing request for online marketing degree formats. Online marketing degree has raised many matters. Unprofessionalism is one of the most important. But all accusations have vanished rapidly because online graduates now are able to prove their performance.
- competitive academic offer
University studies have been designed by students’ interest in online marketing degree formats and the request for expert employees. This has expanded the marketing academical offer. Now you are able to attain your online marketing degree from any accredited business college or university, you are offered numerous such programs.
Should you be interested by a career in marketing, the major steps are: check all the education opportunities, verify the most recent university and college programs and choose the appropriate marketing courses that will provide you the accredited online marketing degree.
- competitive academic offer
University studies have been designed by students’ interest in online marketing degree formats and the request for expert employees. This has expanded the marketing academical offer. Now you are able to attain your online marketing degree from any accredited business college or university, you are offered numerous such programs.
Should you be interested by a career in marketing, the major steps are: check all the education opportunities, verify the most recent university and college programs and choose the appropriate marketing courses that will provide you the accredited online marketing degree.