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Quality or quantity lists in email marketing

October 8th, 2009 | By Simon In Building Your Business, List Building, Traffic Generation, Viral Marketing | No Comments »

When you think of email marketing, most people are of the impression that the larger is their email list of subscribers, the more successful they are going to be with their email marketing. However this is not necessarily the case, as it is always better to have a list of qualified, quality subscribers and not a large quantity of subscribers who are not really interested in you or your product.

Quite often the email addresses that are entered into forms on web pages and squeeze pages (a form of web page that solely prompts you to give your name and email address) are false, as people provide this information just to gain entrance to sites or to see what comes next. The people who are in this email list will not have any interest in whatever you have to sell. So sending them emails about your company or product proves to be worthless.

At the most, and if you are lucky, you may only find about 1% of them clicking to your site through the link you send in the emails. However, I believe that it is better to have a quality list of people where you are sure that anywhere between 20-80% of them will click to your site when you send them an email.

Factors affecting list quality

When you speak of list quality, you have to realize that this is a trait in email lists that is determined by various factors. This is why to maintain your list quality; you will have to follow an effective and proven strategy when you sell products that lead to subscribers subscribing to your list.

So if you have a product to sell, it is often more effective to send prospective clients two emails that have links which lead to high quality information, or perhaps some audio or some software before you actually send them an email that leads to the page that will be selling your products.

This is because the clients on your list who will be most responsive to your offers will be prepared to wait to see what comes next, and they will hopefully appreciate some quality, free information or audio as a ‘thank you’ for signing up to your email list.

Of course, most autoresponder systems now allow you monitor which emails are opened and which links within that email are clicked, so you can easily and effectively monitor your list to see how responsive it is.

Offline marketing strategies for online businesses

September 16th, 2009 | By Simon In Building Your Business, Viral Marketing | No Comments »

Though online marketing is the more popular form of marketing today, I do agree that you have to implement some offline marketing techniques to effectively market your bricks and mortar business.
Including your website and email address on business cards and any print marketing material you have is a great, and effective offline marketing technique. This may seem an obvious marketing technique to you, but this is something not every business person does. Failing to do this could deprive you of a considerable number of customers for your business.

Till receipts are an untapped marketing tool

You can also include your websites address, or an offer of some description, so for example 15% of your next order, on till receipts that you give to customers. This can increase the number of visits they’ll make to your business, and could also drive customer loyalty.

Your website is your friend, so use him effectively

I know I’ve banged on about this several times, but I make no apology for repeating myself ;)
Your website is truly a valuable asset to have, however I see too many businesses that simply have a website for the sake of having one.

A clear layout and a “call to action” on every page (this could be to call a phone number or sign up to a newsletter) are essential – and that’s just for starters. Flash, sound effects, creative graphics and the like may look nice and pretty, but it does not necessarily gain you customers, in fact in many cases it has the opposite effect.

Audio or video that is targeted to your customer, contains valuable information and again has a call to action at the end of it on the other hand is something that can work very well indeed, and should be considered.

Ultimately, the internet is just another means of advertising your business, albeit perhaps the fastest growing and most popular medium for advertising currently. But do not overlook the cornerstones of traditional offline marketing such as referrals and joint ventures, and I will discuss these at a future date, as they can work very well indeed if done correctly.

Tips for effective viral marketing

April 23rd, 2009 | By Simon In Building Your Business, Traffic Generation, Viral Marketing | No Comments »

Viral marketing is a great tool to use to increase online sales. This is a form of marketing connected with mainstream networking where contacts get to know about you and your site. And as the word viral would suggest, you expect them to pass on this information to someone else, just like a virus – hence the name!

However just expecting them to promote your site is not sufficient; I have to say that there are some things you have to understand to be successful at viral marketing.

With the help of viral marketing strategies, you will be able to give website visitors sales messages or free carrier tools to promote your website. However, you are not to force visitors to deliver sales messages but use them as a side effect so that they eventually gain from the services you offer.

Using the help of affiliates

People are today using the help of affiliates for viral marketing. With this concept, a retail store selling a product starts affiliating with people in the general products genre in the hopes of increasing their sales.

With this endeavor, they link to other sites through their affiliates with the help of a banner, a clicking ad or something else that helps bring business to the retail store.

And if the affiliate succeeds in bringing some business, the affiliate is paid a commission for the sale, which is seldom more than 5%.  This is a minimal amount for the retail store but is a very cost effective means of advertisement for the store.

Make use of articles

Another effective viral marketing tool is articles and tutorials. You have to write, or have ghostwriters write articles about your product and services, or at least something related to it.

These articles then have to be published in article directories, where you state that it is possible to reproduce the article, as long as there is a reference made to your website. There will be some webmasters who will use your article on a high traffic website, with acknowledgement, and thus help in creating traffic to your website.

As there is a growing need for web content and articles in the internet, you are sure that there will be people waiting to lap your articles up. Tune in same time next week for more viral marketing tips and techniques…..

Tips to get indexed in Google

April 1st, 2009 | By Simon In Linking, Traffic Generation, Viral Marketing | No Comments »

Getting a good listing in Google is important for internet marketing as Google is the search engine that refers more traffic than any other search engine. Latest reports show that it accounts for about 60 per cent of search engine traffic. So follow these tips to ensure that your site gets indexed in Google as quickly as possible.

The first thing you have to do is to submit your site to Google through their free ‘submit your site’ form. All you have to do is to submit your home page and Googlebot will do the rest of the work of giving your website a ranking.

However, there is a hitch here; as Google does not add all the URLs that are submitted to their index, there is no guarantee to when and if your site will be indexed at all. The second tip to follow is to link your site to a site that you know Google crawls regularly.

This way, whenever Google re-crawls the website it will find your link. It will then crawl your site and index it too. In fact, Google prefers using this method to find sites to index.

Another important factor is sites that directly link to yours, as this is still held in high regard by Google. Finding sites to link to yours is quite easy and you can start by looking for sites that are linking to your competitors.

You can ask them to link to your site in what is known as a ‘link exchange’, so you may have to offer a link back to their site.

You can also post comments on blogs and forums with a link back to your site. This is a very effective way of obtaining back links to your site – just ensure the content your posting on blogs and forums is relevant and useful and just not a simple attempt to get back links.

This has to be the most effective method of getting your site indexed by Google. Plus, its not technical at all and its not that labour intensive either.

The final tip for getting your site indexed does require a little more work, but not a lot. Google loves fresh, new and unique content. By posting regularly on your blog or by placing articles on your site every couple of days, Google will soon learn that your site is updating regularly with unique information, and Google loves this.

Blogs are a great way to get indexed as by definition they’re made for regular posting of information, but the same can apply for standard sites, even e-commerce site, where you can have featured articles on pages that are behind the main page of your site.

So there you have it, a few simple tips to get your site indexed quickly on the biggest and most important search engine on the planet.

Using link bait for internet marketing

March 25th, 2009 | By Simon In Linking, Viral Marketing | No Comments »

Those in the internet world will lap up link bait and happily use it for internet marketing. This is because it is through link bait that you work at attracting visitors to your website by kindling anger, curiosity and interest in the reader.

It can be said that link bait is content written with the intention of educating, entertaining and inflaming readership to prospective readers. It is through these articles that you manage to create a buzz and this buzz spreads from site to site with the help of links and comments that others leave about your written work.

Link bait works at link building

The inbound and back links that are generated by link bait are used to rank websites by search engine algorithms. So the higher is the ranking, the higher is the listing. And with this, you have an increased volume of traffic to your website.

Basically, link bait creation is an internet marketing campaign that follows the task of link building. It is created with the hope of increasing the quantity of high quality, and relevant links to a website.

Create provoking content to initiate link baits

Link bait is usually helpful and specific content that is written by authoritative people in the market with the intention of initiating a discussion and perhaps an argument in niche subjects.

This content has to make people like or hate your content enough so that they write about it in their website, and provide a link to your site and page where the content is found. This is a basic form of viral marketing that ensures a continuous source of links to your site.

If you are interested to learn more about link baits, and using them for your internet marketing campaign, don’t forget to follow the next post!

The latest in worldwide advertising and marketing; viral advergames

September 13th, 2008 | By Simon In Building Your Business, Viral Marketing | No Comments »

The latest advertising medium used by small businesses and worldwide brands are branded online games. And only if it used correctly can it be an effective viral marketing agents.

This is because unlike other advertising methods, these advergames can keep your audience occupied, and have repeat interactions with your brand. This makes your campaign much more memorable and in the process increases the chances of making any sales.

In addition to this, I think that it can be used to guide your audience to the right and desired action is adopted. You can also create web links that lead directly to your online store for visitors to see your product or service and use ‘send to a friend’ function for spreading news about your product.

Advergames that are good will not only make people play it, but also pass it on to others. So if you have the right marketing message in the game, you are sure of a great brand exposure to millions worldwide, for the cost of glossy magazine adverts. They also have an additional benefit of not expiring and will work to provide returns to you indefinitely.

Despite all these advantages, there are some disadvantages to using advergames. You have to create a game that gives the right marketing and message to the user. It should not only give incentives for interaction with your brand, but also provide a good brand experience to the user.

This is why I say that it is important to hire an advergame designer with knowledge of video game design and development to create the right game for your brand. Also ensure that you have a successful viral marketing campaign for distributing your game.

Without this, even the best game ends up sitting idly in your website, without the necessary exposure. Use the help of an experienced viral advergame developer to launch your campaign with a successful bang.

Try out gaming to get your business off to a head start with advergames……

Important points for an effective viral marketing campaign

September 2nd, 2008 | By Simon In Viral Marketing | No Comments »

Viral marketing is a form of advertisement that is used profoundly on the internet where the regular release of a viral product like PDF reports and ebooks make your visitors return to your site looking for new free products.
It is these visitors that will spread the news about your free products, and your website. The secret to successful viral marketing is creativity and quality as the more creative and original you are, the better is the generation of traffic. This is because visitors appreciate the product and spread its information to make your site popular.
Besides offering free products, many companies offer discounts and rebates with their products so that visitors repeatedly visit the website to learn more about the next freebie you offer.
Viral marketing works well by link exchanges
Link exchanges are an important part of viral marketing where you get to exchange links with other sites which generate more traffic. In return, you receive lots of traffic, and thus get a decent page ranking.
I also like the ‘tell a friend’ script of viral marketing where you can increase the traffic to your website by placing a simple script on your site. All you have to do is to install the HTML code in your site in pages where there is informative information  worth sending to friends or family.

No programming knowledge needed to use the script
All the visitor has to do is to fill their friend’s name and email address and send this information to them like an email attachment. This mail is not considered spam as it is sent by the recipient’s friend and thus eliminates the chances of the mail getting blocked by spam filters.
In the email, the recipient receives the information and a short description of your website. The more people that uses this script, the more people get to know about your website. Moreover, this script is easy to use where there is no need of using any complicated programming knowledge.
All you have to do is to copy and past the script on your pages. This script is also easily found on goggle. On receiving the script, just ensure that it is placed in places in the site where people can easily view it.
And till we meet again……

Some more important viral marketing tips

August 6th, 2008 | By Simon In Building Your Business, Traffic Generation, Viral Marketing | No Comments »

As I have mentioned in my earlier blogpost

, viral marketing is a great and efficient means of advertising your business in the internet today. However though there are many tips you can use for improving the flow of traffic to your website, before you implement this, I suggested that you make preparations to handle this increased viral traffic.

This is to ensure that you will be able to handle the increased traffic, and its related request. To do this, you will have to do the necessary research before starting your viral marketing program. This is because if you are not prepared to handle the increased traffic, all your efforts for increasing traffic will be in vain.

Use the help of existing networks

One efficient means of increasing viral traffic is to use existing networks where you reach out to people who are interested with your product. This way you pass on information to other interested people in the network, and thus ensure that you get sufficient targeted traffic for your project.

To achieve this, you may have to give away free gifts; however it will be worth it as by working in a network you get a better chance of improving targeted traffic to your website.

Press releases and affiliate programs help in viral marketing

Never attempt to do all your viral marketing work on your own. Instead, use other resources to help increase targeted traffic like affiliate programs and press releases, which don’t need too much work from your part.

So on the overall, I have to emphasize that viral marketing is a great means of getting the necessary exposure for increased profit in your business. And if your viral marketing strategy works in drawing targeted traffic to your site, there will be nothing between you and all the goals you have set for your business.

So off you go to find the right viral marketing technique……..

Tips for efficient viral marketing

August 4th, 2008 | By Simon In Traffic Generation, Viral Marketing | No Comments »

As the name suggests, viral marketing has nothing to do with people spreading viruses through email. On the contrary, viral marketing is an effective means of marketing which is used to encourage people to pass on a marketing message to others.

With viral marketing, it is possible to get more people to see your message, and thus promote the growth of your business. With viral marketing, it is thus possible to increase targeted traffic to your site. The reason viral marketing is called so is the quick way it expands and replicates.

Give something free for successful viral marketing

After all these years of successful viral marketing, I have found a few points worth mentioning to you. of the many points, I found that the best point to remember for a successful viral marketing program is to give away something for free to likeable prospects.

This is because as everyone loves receiving something free; this is human nature. And when you give something away for free, it is possible that your recipients will show interests in your message, and thus put an extra effort to pass on your marketing message to others.

Make your message easily transferable

Successful viral traffic is ensured by the easy transference of your message. Don’t expect any results from your viral marketing message if you have to depend on others to pass your information to others. On the contrary, I suggest you pass your messages using email, websites and even through software downloads.

Just remember for a successful viral marketing campaign, you have to use a viral marketing message that is precise, to the point and can be transferred easily. Try these out on your existing viral marketing program, and I promise that you will find some improvements immediately.

Keeping a lookout for more viral marketing tips……

Use viral marketing as a part of your internet marketing arsenal

July 28th, 2008 | By Simon In Traffic Generation, Viral Marketing | No Comments »

Viral marketing can be said to be the internet equivalent of word of mouth marketing existing in our day to day lives. Here instead of your mouth, you use emails to spread your message from one person to another.

You can use any strategy to make your announcement reach as many internet users as possible. Remember that the more visible is your message; the better is the chance of it being spread. As some strategies work better than others in viral marketing, I have compiled a list of strategies for you to adopt for an effective viral marketing program.

Offer something for free

The most powerful word to use in viral marketing is ‘free’ as this is a word that attracts maximum attention from internet users. What you have to do is to offer a few quality products or services for free for their viral marketing efforts. This means you could perhaps offer an internet user a free, downloadable e-book in exchange for recommending your site to his or her friend.

Be as creative as possible to succeed in viral marketing. Use your creativity in making a message that is as simple as possible while promoting better memory, transmission and pronunciation for the user. The shorter it is, the better is the possibility of a person remembering the message.

Develop technical solutions for efficient viral marketing

I feel that viral marketing is most effective when it is easily transmitted. You can use any method of transmission of the message like emails, logos, graphics or books for your viral marketing. I suggest that you work hard at multiplying technical solutions and support so that you get best efficiency in viral marketing.

Work at spreading your message wherever possible. I even suggest you using resources belonging to others. Like if you write articles for another publication or site, find out what appears on the site, which can contain your site address. You could also consider using an article distribution service for a better impact in your viral marketing campaign.

Develop better relations with your neighbors

Remember that with the help of viral marketing, you can develop relations with other internet users through emails, virtual communities, instant messaging systems and your sites. All you have to remember is to place your message in the right places, at the right time, and you have a better chance in spreading your message and expect a better impact for your site.

So why not start work at making your viral marketing campaign as contagious as possible…..

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