Marketing To The Millions DC

Marketing To The Millions
Copyright © 2006-2008 Cheryl Miller

Offline businesses are coming to the Internet in increasing numbers. Smart businesses are becoming more and more aware of the vast potential of online marketing. However there is a marked difference between online and offline marketing.


Offline you can put a classified ad in the newspaper and expect some reasonable results, but online your strategy must be a little different. Advertising to a general public will not get good results online unless you direct it to your market.


Because of the sheer numbers of people online it is critical to direct your promotions to the right market. Carefully consider the people who will want, need and greatly benefit from your product/service. Be diligent in your market research.


If your product appeals to a wide market categorize them into a few smaller specialized markets and work them one at a time as profitable niche markets. Tailor your marketing campaign for each one.


Your ads will be written differently when you advertise online. Offline ads are often longer and are designed to close the sale, with the reader. They do not rely on a second selling page. Your potential customers offline have more time to read about your product/service and their decision to buy will be based largely on your initial ad.


Online visitors/surfers are in more of a hurry. They need short eye-catching ads with enough benefits to make them click through to your sales page. Your ads do not necessarily have to sell but must create curiosity in your customer, to encourage them to click through. Your ads will presell to your readers.


2 ways to advertise online are:

Direct marketing.

Website promotion.


Direct marketing: Is when you find your potential customers and advertise directly to them. The most common way is ezine/newsletter advertising. You choose the category you want, look up your keyword on google and find ezines that match your market. For instance if your market is tennis, you put in tennis ezines. You can search for websites by just putting in your keyword. Ad coops, and ezine directories are useful sources to find ezines and newsletters relating to your topic (keyword ad coop/keyword ezine directory) Remember all newsletters/ezines are not created equal. Subscribe before you advertise. In this way you can check the quality and projected response rate before you advertise. Track and list your results. Duplicate success and learn from failures. A word of caution bigger lists are not always better.


Web promotion: With this means of marketing you will attract your potential customers to come to you. They will be in a buying mood as they have come to your website specifically looking for your product/service or something very similar. They are warm ready to buy visitors. 3 ways to promote your website effectively and attract targeted visitors to your website are:

Search engines.

Pay-Per-Click engines.

Linking.


Search engines are widely used and include Yahoo, Google, Msn, to name a few. They require Meta Tags in your website HTML. Good informative, optimized content will help you gain a better rank when you submit to the search engines. Submission to many of the Search engines is free. It takes 4-6 weeks for them to begin to index your site.


Pay-Per-Click engines are what their name implies. You pay for each click-through to your site. The best way to do this is to submit about 50 related keywords (mass submission) and bid low until you find the keywords that are pulling. Be careful to make sure your bids per click never cost you more than your sale ratio. These campaigns should be carefully monitored. PPC like Kanoodle offer free help with keywords. Do your research before using this method or you can lose a lot of money. If done correctly this is a cheap and effective way to get good quality traffic to your website.


Linking is another valuable way to promote your website, and it is free. Exchange links with related sites and gain more highly targeted visitors to your website. You can find related sites by putting your market keyword into a search engine like google. Be careful to check out the websites 1st and make sure they are of good quality and not link farms.


When you advertise online you have the capacity to literally market to the millions. With these points in mind you can advertise effectively and expand the reach of your business beyond your wildest dreams.



About The Author:

Cheryl Miller is an entrepreneur specializing in niche markets. For more information about magnetic badges and how they can help you promote your business, please visit http://www.badgemags.com. Cheryl is also the publisher of the Magnetic Marketer Newsletter http://www.badgemags.com/magnetic_marketer_subscribe.htm

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