Marketing strategies for your business

There are alot of marketing strategies out there today, but to be successful, you have to know which ones best suite your needs and niche and how to implement them successful.

You have many choices, but you have to decide which ones you want to implement. A plan that has worked well for me and other digital marketers is to start with two, maybe 3 marketing strategies. Get very familiar with those, and make sure they are working for you. Don't let anything or anyone sidetrack you. Stick to your guns. Once you have those mastered, move on to the next 2 or 3, but don't abandon the original 2 or 3.

Some of these marketing strategies that I will like to mention are:

o Social Media - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yuwie, Friendfeed, Squidoo, etc

o Articles - Ezine, Articlebase, BetterNetworker, etc

o Press Releases - FreepressRelease.com, 24-7pressrelease.com, PRWeb.com

o Videos - You Tube, Traffic Geyser, Camtasia, etc

o Blogging - WordPress, Blogger, Digg, etc

o Forums - Warrior Forum, Google and Yahoo forums, etc

o Email - Viral Host, AWeber, List Bandit, List Joe, Viral URL, etc





There is a myth floating around out there that I want to address right now, and that is this: There is a common misconception by many people nowadays that the internet is too competitive, and that a starter cannot possibly hope to succeed running against the big dogs, or the more seasoned internet marketers.

Nothing could be further from the truth! There are many ways of making money online and so many opportunities and niches to take advantage of. And the bottom line is this: there are constantly new people coming online, and new people looking for business opportunities. The key is to find something you are interested in, have a passion about, and begin to market in that niche.

This is not about niche marketing, and at this juncture I'm not going into how to find your niche and finding the right keywords to market your niche or product. There are plenty of articles and blogs out there about that.

You can find plenty of articles and blogs about all the different marketing strategies, but what I'm going to focus on here is email marketing. Email marketing is a key part of any marketing plan, but where that falls in priority for you is totally dependent on what your marketing strategies might be.

I'm going to assume that you already have your list [if you don't contact me, and I will help you with that, or point you in the right direction]. Email marketing lists are important, but maintaining them and keeping them up to date is even more important.

In email marketing, your reputation is important, more so online than offline. Both are important, but most of us reading this are trying to build a home based business through an online presence. We build and develop our online reputation through social media engagements, blog posts, press releases, articles, forums, videos and etc. Our reputation actually is created by our readers, and if we continue to supply them with valuable content, our reputation grows.

When it comes to building our reputation in social media, it is important to not bombard your friends and followers with just links to your site. Several times throughout the day is okay, but provide valuable content, such as positive quotes, links to videos that can help build their business, etc. A whole article could be written just on this subject, and many have been written.

Our online reputation is what makes our email deliverable! That's right; our reputation is what helps get our emails opened. If our reputation has become tarnished because of some negative posting on a forum or a negative blog, it will definitely affect email deliverability. If people on our list view us negatively, they tend to blacklist us, and now the email goes into the spam box instead of the inbox. That will have a direct impact on your bottom line.





Here are 7 tips that will help get your emails delivered.

Tip#1: Manage and Maintain Your Online (and Overall) Reputation

a) Can't say enough about this - it is completely within your control!

Tip#2: Get Opt-In Permission

a) You have to provide options to your subscribers to allow them to change their subscriber preferences. Subscribers have to have the option somewhere in your email to opt-out if they so choose and it should be plainly visible.

Tip#3: Recipients Expect Frequent and Valuable Content

a) I get some emails on a daily basis, and one even sends between four and six per day. However, I always read them, because invariably they provide good and valuable content. Actually, two or three times a week is sufficient, and there is even some thought out there that once a week is enough. It really depends on your list and your product.

b) The bottom line - whatever your frequency, it has to contain relevant and valuable content. If not, they will opt-out or drop it into the spam folder!

Tip#4: Use a Recognizable "From" Address

a) I've received email from online marketers where it was kind of obscure as to where the email was coming from. There are plenty of email providers out there (see list above) so there is no excuse to not have a recognizable "from" address.

b) Make sure your subscribers have a way to reach you. If your "from" address in your email is not a reachable address, provide one somewhere in your email. I prefer to provide mine in the signature of my email.

Tip#5: Design the Header of Your Email to Deliver Your Message

a) This is the first thing they see when they open their mailbox! If you know anything about copywriting, you know that the header is the most important item to getting your email opened and read. This can be the difference between a successful or unsuccessful email campaigns.

b) Let's say you aren't good at writing headlines - there are plenty of sources out there where you can find someone that is. Go to elance.com, post what you want done and you'll find someone that can do it for you. Just be sure to check them out thoroughly and get some good verifiable references. For as little as $200 you can get someone to write you a great email campaign with a great header.

Tip#6: Spam - Who Defines It

a) Does it really matter who defines spam? Absolutely!! What comes to mind when you think of spam? Most times the response I get is "It's sending unsolicited emails." Really, is that it???!!! If that's what comes to mind, then you definitely need to familiarize yourself with what spam really is!! It can mean the difference between getting your email opened (delivered) or not.

b) CAN-SPAM laws were created and enforced by the FTC [Federal Trade Commission]. What is CAN-SPAM? The acronym CAN-SPAM derives from the bill's full name: Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003.

c) ISP (Internet Service Providers), as well as the FTC have a large part in determining what is or is not spam. ISPs do not rely on CAN-SPAM to define spam. Their contention is that spam is first and foremost defined and determined by the user. If, for example, a user determines the email is spam by putting it in their spam folder, or in their blocked senders list, or just simply not opening it, then the ISPs consider it spam - whether or not it adheres to each and every rule of CAN-SPAM.

d) Stay current on the CAN-SPAM rules and make sure that every email campaign complies and adheres to those rules. Be sure that your email recipients can opt-out easily. Remind your email recipients of the email address they should use to request information or if they have any questions.

Tip#7: Relevance and Continuity

a) When the potential client and/or email recipient clicks on your PPC ad or a link that you provided in your email, it is imperative that what you had in your email and/or ad is where the link goes to. For example, if you are advertising something about weight loss, make sure that when they get to your site, you are actually promoting weight loss, and not something irrelevant - like, let's say skiing!! Remember....it's your reputation. If it doesn't connect or is irrelevant, it could make the customer want to consider future ads irrelevant and they will avoid clicking on them.

b) When that happens too often, search engine algorithms will then label your ads as irrelevant, suppressing the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and PPC conversions. SEM is only relevant if you have a website

The last thing I want to cover (and certainly not the least) is search engine marketing. Search engine marketing can and does have a great impact on your online reputation, i.e., your email deliverability. What is search engine marketing? Glad you asked!! Search engine marketing is the performance of marketing or advertising your web site through search engines, like Google, Yahoo or Bing. Search engine marketing (SEM) may consist of one or more of the following components:

· Pay Per Click (PPC) - On the right side of the page you will see little boxes or ads, and those are what are considered PPC [Pay Per Click]. Every time you click on those, the advertiser pays Google, Yahoo or Bing (the amount depends what search engine you are using). You bid the amount you are willing to pay per click. The more you bid, the more likely your ad will appear higher in the search engine results. Google Adwords has implemented an additional aspect. Your ads will rank based on the relevancy or importance that Google places on your site, which is very difficult to manipulate.

· Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Google, Yahoo and Bing [formerly MSN] crawl through content of your article, blog, website, etc., and look for valuable and relevant content. SEO is what gets you in the top 10 positions on the left side of the page when it is opened up. It is referred to as generic listings.

· Pay For Inclusion (PFI) - What is PFI?It is a search engine marketing technique that involves paying for a Web site listing in a Web directory, for example Yahoo Directory [not same as Yahoo Search] or Verizon's SuperPages. The bottom line is you are paying to be included in a Web directory. In addition to search engines, like Google, Yahoo and Bing, various other directories also exist on the web. These directories can either be general in nature or can be related to a specific topic. You can get free listings in some online directories, like DMOZ. However most directories now charge for a listing. Yahoo describes its directory as: Subject-based directory listing websites in a wide range of topics, from arts, entertainment, and society and culture, to science, education, and health.

So is Search Engine Marketing Important?

It really depends on whether you decide to make search engine marketing a part of your marketing and advertising strategy. If you don't have a Web site or ever plan to have one for your business, you certainly wouldn't need search engine marketing. But in today's business climate, it's hard to imagine anyone not wanting or having a website, as nearly all business are expected to have a website and most do.

Search engine marketing is used as a means to get traffic to your website. This again can be done through your emails with links to your website, or through SEO, PPC, or PFI. This then should ideally lead to getting new customers and adding to your home business revenues.

When compared to other means of advertising and marketing, search engine marketing can be very cost effective. For instance, you could implement some SEO techniques on your own. Organic search rankings are free, so if you can move yourself up in the rankings, your traffic should increase, which, in turn, should increase your home business revenues.

In the same way, PPC can be very cost effective. Since you can set limits on how much you'll pay per click and how much you'll pay per day. By doing that, it's fairly easy to keep your costs in line. As previously mentioned, some Web directories like DMOZ allow free listings, while others can cost as little as $25 - $30 per year.

In closing, it is vital to your success to keep your lists up-to-date so that you can optimize your response rates, your conversions, and your overall email campaign performance. With all the spammers and fraudulent email senders out there, it has created a lot of mistrust. So I can't stress enough how important it is to consistently update your email list, review your list often to establish which email recipients haven't opened or clicked through for the last six months. Make them another compelling offer, and if they still don't open them, you might want to try one more time, but then take them off your list.

To your success in getting your email opened!

Social Bookmarking Strategies That Pull Traffic

Social bookmarking is one of the great ways to get your websites ranking high and for acquiring direct traffic. Search engines know that the social bookmarking sites are a direct indicator of what people are actual interested in. Sure, they know marketers use it, but they realise that the majority of content that is social bookmarked many times is real content that internet users are finding useful and interesting.

You can harness this advantage and use social bookmarking to get your sites ranking well for their keywords.


First thing, you need to create an account on some social bookmarking sites. Rather than social bookmark each site manually, look at software such as OnlyWire which semi-automates the process. This will make your life a lot easier.

Once you set up your account, look for some Internet marketing colleagues, friends or family who would be happy to create an account themselves with OnlyWire.

Then you simply trade bookmarks. They bookmark your sites, you bookmark theirs.

Most marketers only have their sites bookmarked once, and very occasionally more than once. The search engines are probably very aware of this and so pay more attention to sites that have multiple bookmarks on a single site.

This simple technique can easily get you multiple bookmarks and will give your sites a much needed boost in the search engines.

Alternatively, you can outsource the bookmarking and hire people to do it for you. This will very quickly add up if you are creating a lot of sites. You can find people on forums such as Digitalpoint who will do it very cheaply for you, but it is still going to add up.

You can apply the same technique to sites such as Stumbleupon and Digg, both of which can potentially get you massive amounts of traffic. These sites expect more newsworthy and interesting articles. With a well written article you can expect thousands of visitors in a day, quite literally.

Setting up multiple social bookmarking accounts yourself and bookmarking your sites is possible. However, these sites are smart and will realise what you are doing unless you hide behind proxies. This can be done, but often the hassle isn't worth it, particularly when it is easy to network with other marketers.

Networking with other marketers and trading bookmarks also has a side effect of building your network of contacts. These could potentially turn into joint venture partners, product partners or more in the future.

Social bookmarking is an excellent way for you to get traffic both from the search engines and from the social bookmarking sites. Do it well and you can benefit from great search engine rankings and massive traffic.

Don't forget to join OnlyWire

. It's a very useful tool that will help you.

Dominating Video Marketing

Video marketing is the next big thing online. It is underused by many marketers and fantastically profitable for those that do use it.

Many marketers don't use video marketing simply because they don't know how to get started on it. It isn't actually that difficult and you will find it remarkably easy when you do use it.

Videos can very easily go viral and you will find yourself getting a lot of traffic from them. Plus, the search engines love video because it is very popular at the moment. You can often see a selection of videos in the top five ranking for any search term in Google.




Creating the videos doesn't have to be difficult. You can create a live action video using your mobile phone or digital camera, or if you live in the dark ages, a webcam.

Using a tool such as Camtastia or Camstudio you can capture the screen and demonstrate some software or a website. These are very effective videos because people can see what they are buying or what they need to do.




Promotional videos can be created by Windows Movie Maker, which is installed on most Windows XP and above computers or on a website such as Jing or Animoto. These websites create some fantastic videos which you can use as adverts.

Your video needs to be concise, to the point and entertaining. You want your viewers to see your video and be captured and want to know more.

Before you start submitting your video, you need to know which keywords to use as tags. This means doing some keyword research. The Google External Keyword Tool will tell you everything you need to know, or you can use your own favorite tool.

You could manually submit your video to various video directories, but this takes a lot of time. You could outsource it, which will get expensive, or you could use a tool to do it. Alternatively, you can use the TubeMogul website, which is free to use.





This allows you to submit your video articles to a handful of video directories automatically. Once you have produced some videos and are established on their site you can increase the number of video directories.

Once the videos are approved (and some sites will turn them down) you can then sit back and watch your videos spread all over the Internet. They will be picked up by websites and other directories that feed off these main sites, giving you more of an audience.

Set up a Google Alert for your video name and you will be surprised to see how far a single video will get you. So long as you have put your URL in the description and in the video itself, then you will get a good amount of traffic from this.

Video marketing is emerging as a very powerful and effective method of getting traffic. It is still underused and one that you can start to use to further boost your sites in the search engines.

HOW TO TRACK YOUR TRAFFIC USING WEB ANALYTIC

We all love traffic coming to our website. The more the merrier in most cases. However, as a marketer, that isn't the case. Marketers want targeted traffic and they want to know where it is coming from. Not knowing where your traffic is coming from means you don't know which traffic generation methods are working. The majority of marketers make no effort to track their traffic and are grateful for any visitors to their website.

If you are paying for advertising and not tracking your traffic you are throwing money away! You have to know which adverts are working and which are not. This way you can do more advertising that is earning you money and less of that which isn't.

Tracking your traffic doesn't need to be complex and can be done very easily. You can invest in scripts and services that will track your website traffic for you. These vary from the cheap to the expensive, the good and to the brilliant.

You don't need to have a script or service to track your traffic, but it can often make it much easier for you.

A simple traffic tracking method is to use Google Analytics. This is a free to sign up service that many marketers are using. The good thing about it is that it offers in depth stats and can track almost anything. The downside of it that it offers in depth stats and can track almost anything!

The complexity of it is a good and a bad thing because you can find out so much about your website that it will initially confuse you. However, once you have spent some time analyzing the results it will prove very useful.

Firstly you have to add the code to your website. This code is unique for each of your websites and needs to be inserted at the bottom of each page in your website just before the closing body tag.

Once it is reporting data, you need to drive a decent amount of visitors to your site to get some good results.

Analytics will report on all activity on your website and even go as far to overlay where people are clicking to help you understand the activity on your website. You can link your analytics account with your Adsense and Adwords accounts to further help you understand how well they are working for you.

One of the biggest benefits of Analytics is that it can provide goal tracking to track sales and sign ups to lists. It can be a bit tricky to get working behind scripts and membership sites, but is worth using.

The big appeal to most marketers is the fact that it has a lot of features, more than many scripts and is completely free. Of course, Google get to understand exactly what happens on your website, but that is a small trade off for such in depth analytics.

Using Google Analytics will give you a good understanding of where your traffic is coming from and what it is doing on your site. Through this you can improve your conversion rate, and in turn, your profits.

HOW TO GET MASSIVE BACKLINKS USING RSS FEED

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a method of taking content and syndicating it out to multiple sites. It was primarily aimed at newsfeeds and providing content from news sites to other sites.

Like many other technologies, it has been hi-jacked by Internet Marketers who have found this is an excellent way to get backlinks. It allows you to syndicate your content to hundreds of other websites at a click of a button, which in turn will boost your site in the search engine rankings.

In order to use RSS syndication, you have to have an RSS feed from your website. The easiest way to do this is to use Wordpress when creating your website. There are ways of making RSS feeds from normal HTML websites, but it is not always as simple as you may think. Quite often it involves a manual process and manual submission of files. However, there are a few websites that will automatically convert HTML to RSS for you.

Once you have an RSS feed you need to find some places to submit it.

There are two types of site you want to find.

Firstly you are looking for RSS directories. A quick Google will bring up plenty of directories you can use. There is software available you can buy which will automate the submission for you.

Once you have found your directories you want to submit your RSS feeds to them. Manually it isn't the fastest process, but it can be outsourced. You need to have your keywords, a title and sometimes a description prepared, but that won't take long.

It is often worth using different descriptions, titles and keywords to ensure each submission is unique. What level of difference this actually makes no one is quite sure, but it does appear to help.

If you are manually submitting RSS feeds then you must keep track of which sites you have submitted where. The reason being you don't want to submit the same site more than once. Plus, you are likely to want to submit other sites in the future.

The second type of site is the RSS Aggregator. This is a site which takes a number of RSS feeds and combines them into a single feed or webpage. This single feed can be submitted to RSS directories, further increasing your backlinks.

The RSS aggregator can be useful to mix up your RSS feeds on a topic with feeds from news sites on the same topic. This will provide a higher level of authority and provide more bulk to the content.

When using RSS feeds, you need to also remember that many Web 2.0 sites such as Squidoo and many article directories have RSS feeds for the pages you create. These can also be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators in order to further increase links and boost rankings.

Your RSS feed submissions will be updated every time you update your webpage. Therefore, if you are regularly adding new content, you can find it syndicated out to many websites very quickly, gaining you backlinks to your site.

RSS feeds are a great way to get additional backlinks and to help your sites rank well for their keywords. Use them, enjoy them and see the links flooding in.

HOW TO USE WEB 2.0 FOR TRAFFIC GENERATION

HARNESSING WEB 2.O TECHNOLOGY FOR TRAFFIC GENERATION

Web 2.0 technologies are taking the Internet by storm. They have captured the hearts and minds not only of Internet Marketers, but of their target markets too. More and more people are using Web 2.0 sites to either connect to their friends and family or to create their own hobby or fan sites. These technologies can be extremely important in your traffic generation strategies because it allows you a method of direct contact with your target market. Done well, web 2.0 technologies can provide you with thousands of visitors plus a valuable boost in the search engine rankings. There are hundreds of Web 2.0 sites, with more cropping up every day in more focused niches. These are the sites that are of particular interest to the Internet Marketer as you have a tightly focused niche of people who would be interested in your product or services. Of course, you can't just walk into a Web 2.0 site and start promoting your product. Doing this will get yourself shot down in metaphorical flames. Marketers who do this quickly find themselves hounded out of the market. When you use a web 2.0 site you have to use it like you would a list. You have to establish yourself in the niche as an expert, someone to listen to and who knows what they are talking about. Sometimes this means being yourself, other times you may have a pseudonym. Whatever the case, you need to spend some time understanding the group and the market so that you can appeal to them in the best way. Be helpful, provide valuable information and you will soon be viewed as an expert. Once you have established yourself as an authority figure you can easily promote your products and services as people will link your expertise with them. It allows you not only to promote your products, but to promote products as an affiliate. One word of caution is to not spread yourself too thin. Working on a social networking site to establish yourself as an authority can take a lot of your time and if you try to work on too many, you find yourself unable to do enough on any of the sites. Pick just a couple to focus your attention on, one niche site and one general site. Other web 2.0 sites allow you to create your own websites. Some of these frown on overt commercialism, whereas others are pretty much a free for all. This type of site is best used to push your product or information site up the search engine rankings. You create sites on web 2.0 properties using unique content based around your keywords. You then create active links through to your own website. You do some simple promotion of these properties (pinging, social bookmarking, etc) to give them some link juice, and then they will work to boost your website in the search engine rankings. Whilst this doesn't give you direct traffic, it will give you a leg up the organic search engine rankings. This will help to further increase your traffic. Plus, the additional benefit is each of these Web 2.0 properties will rank in their own right and get traffic, some of which will be passed on to your main site. Web 2.0 sites are an incredible method of getting traffic. If you use them properly and spend the time on them, they can help you get thousands of additional visitors for free!

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