- Objective – This is the place where you address the big picture. What do you want your website to achieve? Try not to get involved in how you will achieve this object and just write what you think that your business should accomplish by a certain time period. If you feel that the objective is far too stretched or easy while detailing the strategy and creating the budget, you can always modify the numbers and rework.
- Strategy – This is the part where you think of the overall strategies that you will adopt. Here again desist from getting too involved in specific implementation details. Take each objective that you have listed. So if creating awareness is the objective that you have arrived at, you could have a strategy to improve online communication with customers, set up an affiliate program or other such areas.
- Implementation – This in turn flows from each of the strategy points that you have detailed. And this is the part of the marketing plan where you need to get extremely specific. So if you need to increased online communication, chalk out details about how you will communicate, where you will procure the databases from and the like.
Three Simple Steps for your Internet Marketing Plan
Posted by admin in Internet Marketing | No Comments, on March 14th, 2010
Internet marketing is not a discipline that is as robust as traditional marketing. And one of the main reasons for the same is the speed at which the Internet has grown in terms of the possibilities. The professors and theory generators did not find the time to create hypothesis and refute or approve them and it was the practical entrepreneurs that took risks and forged ahead.
While taking risks and plunging headlong into the arena is a great idea in such unchartered areas, there is a definite advantage in creating an Internet marketing plan as well.
Internet marketing strategy is not too different from traditional marketing. The concepts remain similar. It is only that some of the practical aspects of implementing the strategies are fairly different. So while you would still have customers, competitors, issues with regards to retention or loyalty and other challenges like awareness or image, the internet marketing tactics and operational details that you adopt to rectify them will need to be different.
So do not forget to make your Internet marketing plan. Here are three steps that can help you lay down the roadmap.
Marketing your Business on Facebook
Posted by admin in Social Marketing | No Comments, on March 14th, 2010
Social networking has become so popular that ignoring any of the large social networks as a potential for marketing your business would seem foolish. However, these new platforms have sprung up so suddenly that there are very few people who really understand how they can be used for marketing purposes.
Do not make the mistake of thinking that social networks like facebook are only for kids and teens, You only have to look at the age profile of the facebook users to realize that the older age are growing. So while social networks are a great place to market products that are aimed at teenagers, it is also equally effective for those businesses that are targeting the adult audience.
Facebook has 2 concepts – Facebook pages and facebook groups. A facebook page can be created by anyone. You can create a facebook page for your business and give the details of the profile of your business on it. You can choose your profile to state business, brand or product or an artist or public figure.
Current and potential customers can choose to become fans of your company, facebook page or profile. This makes it possible for these facebook users to receive updates from you when you update any information on your business profile. You can post photos and videos of events and upload applications that may have been created too.
This kind of viral marketing is extremely infectious since other friends of someone who becomes your fan can see your page. So for example, if X becomes a fan of your page, all X’s friends will be able to see that he has become a fan of your page. It is likely that these friends will check out your business page and also become a fan. And that is how the whole thing snowballs.
There are some businesses that prefer to create groups rather than a facebook page because they feel that a facebook group is far more casual than a facebook page. One thing to note is that you need to be a facebook user already to be part of a facebook group. So keep that in mind while deciding between a facebook page and a facebook group for your...
Website Features to Choose from
Posted by admin in Web Design | No Comments, on March 12th, 2010
The Internet space has become an extremely dynamic and interactive space. The platforms that are being developed and the software that is available for you to be able to create content on the Internet is astounding. Some of the most common features that you could ask for in your website include:
- Stores – This includes the ecommerce facility that many websites offer. If you want that your site is considered to be safe, make sure that it is assessed by VeriSign or some similar authoritative body.
- Catalogs – This is another kind of ecommerce option that lists products in a specific category for a certain amount of money. This is the feature that you may have seen on other sites as a shopping cart facility.
- Auctions – Auctions allow customers on the site to bid on items. Each auction needs to have a time limit and is then closed at the specific time mentioned.
- Forums – Message boards that allow customers to leave messages about what they felt at the website. These forums are also a great way for the entrepreneurs to chat with the current and potential customers.
- Articles – Article marketing is a key part of Internet marketing for many companies. Not only can you use these search engine optimized articles on your site, you can use these to submit to directories where you can create a backlink to your site.
- News – A section that collects information from all the relevant areas and then creates articles on news items relevant for the niche is sometimes that can help attract customers too.
- Entertainment – Often enough websites have a ‘fun’ section that covers music, games, e-print and videos so that the interaction between the website owners and the visitors is not really a static one. The entertainment section in many sites helps visitor stickiness so that they come back for more. Understand the manner in which this works and you may have customers spend hours on your site.
These are definitely the most common parts of a website. However, you may need to understand that there are custom options that can also be made to make your site specific to the...
Creating an Effective Web Design Contract
Posted by admin in Web Design | No Comments, on March 12th, 2010
Many working relationships become sour because of a lack of common understanding between the client and the supplier. A common understanding of the various aspects of the work help in ensuring that there shall be no disputes. However, this is not something that should be left to chance. Assuming that verbal communication is adequate to ensure a common understanding is extremely dangerous. Ensure that you have a written and signed contract agreement, especially if you are getting your web design done by a third party.
Some of the aspects that you need to cover in a web design agreement are:
- Scope of the work – This is the definition of the scope of work that is being done by the supplier. It is also a good idea to detail responsibilities at this stage so that each party knows what their role will be in the successful completion of the job.
- Pricing and payment terms – Obviously, the pricing needs to be detailed too. While a fixed cost does not leave much room for confusion later, there are some projects that merit an hourly rate costing. In such cases, it is pertinent to document the manner in which the hours utilized shall be measured and monitored. The payment terms and release of funds is also a critical area that needs mention.
- Terms of termination – It needs to be known by either party what the ramifications are of wanting to be out of the arrangement after a certain proportion of the project has been completed. The penalties and the timeframe of exit need to be detailed clearly.
- Intellectual property rights – With aspects like web design there is always the issue on intellectual property rights. While the designers feel that the website is their creation, the client feels that it has paid for the work and therefore the designs belong to them. Irrespective of what is agreed upon between the client and the web design company, do make sure to detail whether the designer can use them as samples to showcase his work.
- Confidentially and non disclosure – An important aspect of any web design agreement, this needs to cover whether the designer is at liberty to state that he is working for a particular client, let alone discussing the details of a project. The details of the confidentiality should be discussed in detail to avoid slip ups here.
- Definition of liability – While the schedule and timelines are discussed in the scope of work and pricing sections, in most cases, the designer prefer to limit their liability with regards to any monetary losses that the client faces.
- Employee soliciting – Many clients end up soliciting employees of their design company so that they can get edits and upgrades done for much less as compared to the fee that the web design company chares. In most cases of hiring a web design service the non employee soliciting clause is mentioned upfront.
While most of these aspects also apply to service providers other than...
Super Affiliates and their Characteristics
Posted by admin in Affiliate Marketing | No Comments, on March 11th, 2010
The concept of super affiliates is soon catching up. While it was once believed that adding on affiliates would help the online merchants reduce their marketing spends, the new data shows that it is only the top 20 percent of the affiliates that bring in 80 percent or more of the revenue for the merchant.
In addition to that, while adding on affiliates may not seem to suck in upfront cash, training and managing the affiliates takes up time and effort, both of which can be converted into potential loss of revenue. Therefore the affiliate marketing industry is seeing a shift from quantity to quality.
The best affiliates for a merchant are called super affiliates. These are the business partners that have high traffic sites that have customers that are similar to the merchants target audience. Super affiliates tend to have some specific characteristics that can be used to identify them. If one wants to ensure that only serious affiliates are added onto the affiliate network, then ensuring that the affiliate recruitment process is not automatic is the first step.
Some of the characteristics of super affiliates that set them apart are listed here:
- Email marketing – Super affiliates are great email marketers. They have a large database of contacts and updated email addresses since they take pains to keep the mailing lists updated. These are generally lists that they create with opt ins or newsletter subscriptions. Super affiliates use this robust database to market new products, announce new merchant schemes,
- Different options – Super affiliates are entrepreneurs who know that they have to keep improvising as they move along in the Internet marketing arena. Just when one starts to get the handle of a particular technology and idea, there is another one that starts to surface. Staying abreast with the trends and ensuring that they think of new ways of doing things is a unique characteristic of super affiliates.
- Training – Since the success that super affiliates get in a few months, the one thing that they become immensely capable of is grooming new affiliates for the merchant. There are many super affiliates that have actually created their own sites to sell and share their capabilities and experience in affiliate marketing. Others have gone on to become part of the two tier model where they have affiliates under them so that they can be groomed to become self sufficient. The two tier model allows the super affiliates to earn a commission based on the revenue that the newbie gets in.
- Affinity model – A large number of super affiliates have been seen to use the affinity model. This really means that super affiliates tend to focus on one particular program. While the merchant may have different categories, the super affiliate may try and market the merchant’s products in various different and more targeted categories.
An increasingly larger number of merchants are realizing that unless they are careful about the quality if affiliates that they choose, the hidden costs of recruiting, training and managing...
Advantages of Affiliate Marketing
Posted by admin in Affiliate Marketing | 6 Comments, on March 11th, 2010
Affiliate marketing as a concept has seen a large amount of growth in the recent past. The concept of recruiting affiliates to market for their products is something that has caught the fancy of online merchants to a large extent. And there is adequate reason for why online merchants prefer to use affiliate marketers rather than take on the task of marketing their sites on their own. Here are some of the advantages of choosing to have an affiliate network.
- Recession proof - Affiliate marketing is considered to be a strategy that is recession proof. With marketing costs that have been outsourced and compensation of the affiliates purely on the basis of performance and sale, there is no need to cut costs for marketing efforts when and if recession hits.
- Low cost per acquisition – The genesis of affiliate marketing has basis in the growing cost of acquisition of a customer. With mushrooming websites, banner ads and online search engine optimization were proving to be too expensive for online merchants. Today the cost of acquisition of a customer through an affiliate program is as low as $15 as an approximate cost of $30 per customer based on banner ads.
- Payment on sales only – The current model of pay per sale ensures that there is no fraud involved in the manner in which affiliates send over customers to the merchant site. While affiliates can potentially create click throughs that are not genuine, the compensation based on a proportion of sales ensures that the merchant interests are protected.
- Wider reach – Recruiting affiliates is not a difficult task. In fact there are many merchants that approve affiliate applications automatically since they have a standard training module that they share with all affiliates and therefore they there is no extra cost of acquiring affiliates. However, a large number of affiliates working for your site can ensure that word about your products and services reaches a wider audience, something that a merchant cannot possibly dream of doing alone.
- Reduced marketing costs – With the marketing outsourced to a fleet of affiliates, the costs of marketing for the merchant reduce significantly. Statistics show that if a merchant increases the number of affiliates by 20 percent, they can reduce the marketing spends by approximately 10 percent on an annual basis.
- Better focus on strategic aspects – With the day to day marketing efforts left to the affiliates, the brand team at the merchant’s office has far more time to concentrate on strategic matters to help grow the website and the brand further. Aspects such as the new products to launch, additional product lines and the like can be delved into and implemented.
- Leave it to the specialists – Affiliate marketers are far more adept at customer conversions given the fact that they specialize in the specific area rather than conversions that happen otherwise. They are aware of the kind of information that the customers are looking for, whether it is brand comparisons, reviews or product...
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Posted by admin in Affiliate Marketing | No Comments, on March 11th, 2010
Affiliate marketing is an online concept of something that has been followed in traditional marketing for years. It is just that this concept has been adapted to the Internet and is being used extensively by Internet marketers to create wider awareness of their products and services.
In traditional marketing manufacturers sometimes employed the services of independent marketing people who would create catalogs or other promotion material to market the products of the manufacturer. In return for the services, the marketer would get a certain commission based on the sales that emanated from him.
In the Internet world, merchants or manufacturers recruit affiliates who are responsible for marketing the products and services of the merchant online. These affiliates create various kinds of sites like content sites, comparison sites, membership sites, discount sites or voucher sites and attract online customers to their sites.
When a customer clicks on the affiliate site and goes on to the merchant site and makes a purchase, the specific affiliate is compensated for the customer on the basis of a certain percentage of the revenue that comes with the customer. The tracking of the affiliate from whom the customer has come on to the merchant site is done using software that enables these calculations.
While the compensation methods used earlier in affiliate marketing included pay per click (a method in which the affiliate was compensated for every click that came in from the affiliate site on to the merchants site), this is a method that has almost been dropped by most merchants due to pay per click frauds that were becoming rampant.
The most common form of payment for affiliates is now pay per sale that ensures that the affiliate gets paid for actual sales that a customer makes, thereby reducing any chances of a fraud.
Affiliate marketing is extremely convenient for the merchant since it allows them to focus on other strategic issues leaving the task of attracting customers on a day to day basis to the affiliates. There are also large affiliate networks like Commission Junction and LinkShare that help merchants get in touch with affiliate and vice versa. These affiliate networks also assist in recruiting, training and managing affiliates for the merchant for a monthly...
Advantages of Link Building
Posted by admin in Link Building | 1 Comment, on March 11th, 2010
Link building is a concept that has been around for some time now. But the interesting aspect is that it has not yet become something that is as popular as article marketing or social networking either. However the importance of one way links to your website cannot be ignored if you are serious about making your presence felt on the Internet.
Back links are basically links from others sites pointing towards yours. It is known that the better the rank of the page from which the link emanates to your site, the better it is for search engine optimization for your website. Some of the most important benefits of link building are:
- Better PageRank – As the number of inbound links increases the PageRank of your webpage also increases. As you ensure that these back links are created make sure that they point to the right web page since a PageRank is assigned to a webpage and not the entire website. So do not make the mistake of creating hyperlinks and back links only to the homepage.
- Increase traffic – As the number of links in the web space increase for your website, the chances of a link being clicked and a customer landing on your site also increase.
- Trust and reliability – If link for your website are found on sites that are already respected and considered trustworthy you can be sure to benefit from the rub off effect that they have. The PageRank that is assigned to your page also depends on the PageRank of the page from where the link is emanating.
- Make more money – Links to your webpage can ensure that you get organic traffic. This is considered to be the best traffic since conversion rates have also seen to be high in such cases. With better organic traffic and higher conversion rates you are sure to make more profitability.
So before you wave off link building as an activity that you would rather not get into and opt for other Internet marketing tactics alone, think of the kind of benefits that you are missing out...
Internet Marketing Strategies/Methods
Posted by admin in Internet Marketing | 1 Comment, on March 9th, 2010
The number of sites that offer search engine optimization services has mushroomed in the recent past. While the bouquet of services and the charges vary significantly, most of the companies offer the various Internet marketing tactics that companies use. These include article marketing, press releases, articles and video submissions, social networking and bookmarking, web design, forums, blogs and online SEO.
Many Internet merchants prefer to operate in isolation with these marketing companies. And therefore while they ask for a set of 10 articles for content building from one supplier, they are likely to go ahead with another for social networking and bookmarking. These marketers generally believe that the specific expertise of the supplier or agency should be capitalized on.
In most cases, the above argument would hold true. However, there is a caveat here. Such an approach works only when the merchant or client is completely sure of the tactics that he wants to use. And in the dynamic Internet marketing arena, nothing remains constant. While article marketing is the fad for some time and seems to work, blogs become more popular and then social marketing surfaces. This means that you would need to spend a fair amount of time understanding the current practices in Internet marketing and keeping track of the trends in the market.
Another issue with the above approach is that piecemeal solutions from different vendors results in a situation where there is no cohesiveness. The tone of the content and the strategies seem to mix up and do not result in synergies. The articles submitted in the ezines sound informal while the blogs may end up being too formal.
The solution therefore is to opt for a supplier or vendor who can not only provided you with articles, blogs, video submissions and more but a Internet marketing partner that can help you devise a cohesive Internet marketing strategy to ensure that you website is noticed by the target audience.
As you opt for the strategic alliance and partnership, you will realize that the amount of time that you need to spend in debriefing and explaining your requirements reduces as does the...
Online SEO to ensure a Great Page rank for each Page
Posted by admin in Page Rank | 2 Comments, on March 9th, 2010
Many Internet marketers are under the impression that the page rank that Google assigns is done for a website. This, however, is not true! The fact is that a page rank is assigned to each webpage on your site and therefore it is extremely important that you ensure that each of the web pages that you have on your site is optimized for the relevant keywords that you are targeting.
Ensuring that your website is optimized requires a thorough understanding of the manner in which the algorithms of the search engines operate. You can expect to go through various phases when you start to get your website optimized.
The first step is to ensure that the current website is analyzed in terms of the keywords used, keyword density and the placement. It should also include an analysis of a few competition websites.
The second step is extremely critical. This includes keyword research and analysis. The keyword research is generally done using one of the keyword research tools like the Good Adwords External Keyword Tool, Word Tracker, Webmaster Toolkit, Inventory Overture or any of the other online keyword tools that are available today.
In the third step the target for the keywords and the keyword density should be decided upon. It is also pertinent that you think through the placement of the keywords and decide on the links that you want to provide.
In the next step the optimization actually begins. This requires the content on the page to be written in such a manner that it used the keywords that have been decided earlier and with the density that can ensure a good ranking for the page. It may be pertinent to hire the services of a freelance copywriter if you want the content to seem professional and well written.
If you are doing this on your own, you may need to purchase some of the online SEO tools like keyword research and keyword density checking tools. On the other hand if you assign this task to an SEO company, they will be able to analyze work site and come up with...