Successful Internet Marketing

Dear WAHS Leslie,
I have been trying to make money at home with affiliate
programs and business ops without success. Each thing I join
I'm told to market my website and follow all the
instructions for classified ads, search engine listings, and
other recommendations. But nothing seems to work. I have
read about Google Ad Words and Oveture but I don't have
extra money to spend on that. Is there a way to make money
on the internet without spending $100's? Sarah in NC

Hi Sarah,
Good for you to recognize that marketing is the key to your
success. So many people begin their work-at-home ventures
without a thought to the importance of marketing. It takes
more than an ad and a flyer. In fact, since marketing is so
important, you should have a detailed marketing plan that
includes marketing activities to do everyday.

It is possible to market your business without spending too
much money but you should begin to set aside some of your
profit to use towards marketing as your business grows.

The first step to marketing is to become a student of
internet marketing. Techniques that worked 3 years
ago...heck even last year, don't work now. This is
particularly true on the Internet. Look at the prevalence of
pop-up blockers. Pop-ups were once touted the absolute best
way to build your customer list. Today, no one sees those
pop-ups. To keep abreast of the best marketing strategies, I
recommend reading Seth Godin's books (you can download
Unleashing the Ideavirus
http://www.sethgodin.com/ideavirus/downloads/IdeavirusReadandShare.pdf
free. Requires Adobe Reader) and subscribe to his Blog
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ He pioneered the idea of
permission marketing which is the idea of promoting your
products or services to people who ask for the information.

Next you need to determine who your target market is. Even
if your product is something the whole world could use, you
will do much better to target a specific market and gear
your marketing message to them. Pick a market you'd like to
develop and then determine the following: 1) What
specifically do they want or need that your product or
service can give them; 2) Where can this target market be
found? (What websites do they visit? What ezines do they
read? What groups do they participate in?) 3) What are their
hot buttons? (What concerns or excites them such that they
take action?). This information will help you design your
marketing plan and will be the focus of your advertising message.
Remember, people are looking for information or assistance
when searching the web. Your marketing should focus on the
benefits of your product or service to your customer in
providing the assistance they are looking for.

Develop a marketing plan. To many people fail to plan their
business. They erroneously think a few posts and a few ads
will lead to success. But even if a person is letting
Oveture drive traffic, he spends a great deal of time
studying and evaluating how the campaign is going day to
day. The idea of 100% autopilot business on the internet
is not accurate.

There are many great low-cost and free marketing techniques
but they can only work as well as the person who uses them.
Offering free reports, e-courses and ebooks through an
autoresponder has been very successful in one of my
businesses. These free resources offer something my visitors
want at no cost. It allows them to test my expertise and see
that I'm knowledgeable in the topic. But it wouldn't work if
my freebies were not helpful. Further, they wouldn't work
if I gave them away without asking something in return. In
this case, visitors can only get my freebies by submitting
their email (a legitimate one) to me. This allows me to
continue to send them great free info as well as to promote
my products or services. Whatever techniques you decide to
use, you need to be sure they are used correctly to their
maximum benefit.

The best free ways to advertise include writing articles,
using autoresponders (there are many free services for this)
to deliver freebies, and participating in discussion groups.
These efforts can take some time to work. I don't recommend
placing free classified ads even through a service or
software. I have found these just generate spam type mail
back to me.

Low cost ways of marketing include ads in ezines or on
websites. Again, make sure these ads are placed in front of
your target market and that your ad message really speaks to
them. I usually advertise my freebie and not my main product
or service. This increases my response rate tremendously as
1) people like freebies and 2) most other ads are just
ads..."come buy my stuff".

Depending on your product or service, Google Ad Words and
Oveture can be affordable, but to make the most of this
method, you need to choose your keywords carefully,
develop a great ad (again target specific), and monitor how
the campaign is going so you can make changes to improve it
if needed.

There are other great ideas and more developing all the
time. For example, Blogs and RSS systems are currently
growing in popularity for online marketers. That is why
always studying the internet and marketing is important so
you can be in the cutting edge of great new marketing
trends.

Marketing is not something that usually works right away.
Like many things in life, it takes time to develop and
consistency of practice to grow. Developing a plan and
implementing that plan in a way that has you doing some sort
of promotion everyday is the best way to generate customers
now as well as over the long run.

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