Internet Marketing
|
Alternative Mediums For Website
Marketing |
Alternative media, by any other name, including
word-of-mouth, is a confusing collection of attempts to reach the
consumer while bypassing traditional advertising vehicles. Some
refer to it as buzz marketing. Others prefer street marketing,
guerrilla marketing, renegade marketing, virtual marketing, ambush
marketing, vanguard marketing, ambient marketing, covert marketing,
under-the-radar marketing, below-the-line marketing, diffusion
marketing or viral marketing. |
|
New Age Marketing: Personalization |
One branch of the alternative marketing
movement that has been getting more and
more attention, and becoming more and
more popular, is making marketing
personal. Advertisers seek to create
personal connections with the people
that they are seeking to entice to
purchase their product. This can be done
in many ways, but the most solidly
constructive is the creation of “street
teams.” |
|
Market Your Website By Creating a Buzz |
In a 44-page study of word-of-mouth
based on Internet chat room
participation, Professors David Godes
(Harvard Business School) and Dina
Mayzlin (Yale School of Management)
define buzz as the transfer of
information from someone who is in the
know to one who isn't. This is something
that most of us understand
intrinsically- buzz is about the “next”
big thing, the one that hasn't hit yet.
We hear about, and want to get in on the
ground floor, so to speak. |
|
Buzz Marketing Part 2 |
Have you blogged yet? If the answer is
yes, then you're either a hip Connector
who is always first to be in the know,
or an information-hungry Maven who wants
to know everything there is to know
about blogs, the latest Internet trend.
Connectors and Mavens are two of the
essential enablers critical to that
social and marketing phenomenon known as
word-of-mouth, the glue that holds the
alternative marketing universe together. |
|
Social Bookmarking For Your Business |
The online world has truly become a
breeding ground for many people
competing over the free advertising that
results from adding your bookmarks to
social bookmarking websites, like Digg,
blinklist, CiteULike, as well as many
others. For businesses, these free
services really mean that they are able
to obtain more customers and clients in
a quicker way than before. No longer do
the traditional methods of offline
marketing need to come into play because
not only are millions of consumers
already acclimated to the internet, but
these social bookmarking organizations
have really taken hold of the internet
by storm. |
|
Promoting Your Website Through Social
Bookmarking |
If you have a business then you
probably have spent countless hours
marketing your business offline and
online in order to get more visitors and
clients that will help you substantiate
your revenue. Doing business in the
offline world is often harder than the
online world because many of the issues
in the online world are not only easier
to resolve, but they are easier to deal
with in the fact that one doesn't need
to directly go through another human to
fix their problem. The internet is
definitely getting smarter and all the
tools that have been given to businesses
over the years have made business tasks
all the more easier. In fact, one of
these tools is social bookmarking
websites. |
|
Using Digg! To Promote Your Website |
If you do own a business, however,
you might question why you or anyone
else would want to use this social
bookmarking website. However, many new
people usually always ask these types of
questions simply because they don't know
how to use the site or the meaning of
the site itself. |
|
Social Networking as a Marketing Tool |
Social networking has often been viewed as a means of
bringing about people that would share a common interest for
the services provided. With the introduction of the
internet, social networking has taken on a whole new level.
Social networking for marketers via the internet has taken
the main stage when it comes to marketing ploys. The extent
of marketing through the internet seems endless, as the
imagination can roam free and social networking sites can be
used to catapult various marketing techniques. |
|
Viral Video Marketing Explained |
In recent years, the use of the internet has exploded.
The internet has become a popular location for many to turn
to for social gatherings. These gatherings can be beneficial
for both the internet user, and companies that are
represented on the internet. One of the most popular
functions that are available on the internet today is viral
video marketing. |
|
All About Viral Video Marketing |
Perhaps the most well known alternative advertising technique is
the viral video. Short videos, usually humorous or controversial,
are created. These videos are different from traditional commercials
in that the goal is generally to entertain the audience, not to
inform them about a particular product. While information transferal
often occurs as well, the aim of the viral video is to amuse. The
idea is that getting the product into the public consciousness is
the best thing that you can do; if people are curious, they will
look up the details themselves. |
|
Podcasting For Small Business |
The internet has been home to various methods for
marketing, many of which have been proven effective for the
immediate time being. It is evident that one of the more
popular forms of marketing as of late is podcasting.
Podcasting has taken businesses to whole new levels for
marketing and sales revenues, and only continues to grow
with time. |
|
Advertising Campaigns That Cause
Controversy |
With the rise of alternative marketing,
including user and consumer generated ad
content, there have also come questions
of appropriateness. There is no central
clearing house for ideas, in the viral
marketing world. There is no one point
of view through which everything is
filtered. This can create problems for
companies who put up advertising that
might be deemed offensive. |
|
A Cautionary Marketing Tale |
In a recent Time magazine article, the
Center for Digital Democracy, (an
organization committed to the
development and encouragement of
noncommercial, public interest
programming), likened guerrilla
marketing to the "brand washing of
America," a not-so-subtle reference to
brainwashing techniques. Adbusters
bemoans what it terms "cultural
corruption," an unavoidable offshoot of
alternative media activities. |
|
Alternative Marketing Backlash |
Alternative marketing has now been
around long enough to be out of it’s
infancy. Buzz marketing and guerilla
marketing have now become recognizable
tactics in the marketer’s arsenal, and
consumers are becoming immune to them.
This loss of effect is nowhere near the
precipitous drop that traditional
television and print advertising have
undergone in recent years, but it
nevertheless exists. |
|
The Benefits of Having A Custom Designed
Website |
The Internet is quickly becoming the
number one medium for information
exchange between consumers and the
business community. Aside from the
numerous benefits a properly designed
website can provide your business, in
this day and age your customers EXPECT
you to have a website. To put
things into perspective, what would your
customers think if you were not listed
in the Yellow Pages? |
|
Oglivy on (Internet Website) Advertising |
David Ogilvy was one of the most sought
after executives in the advertising industry. He
did not believe that advertising should be
totally guesswork. His firm, Ogilvy and Mather,
conducted extensive research on what really
works, and then shared their findings with the
world. He was a college dropout and former door
to door salesperson who eventually founded the
largest advertising firm in the world. So, when
Ogilvy writes about advertising it is worth
listening to. |
|
Good Copywriting Is Key To Converting Prospects
into Customers |
Good copyrighting is essential to having a
successful Internet website. Just for those of
you who don’t know, the “copy” is any sort of
text-based content that’s included in an
advertisement. No, a website is not an
advertisement, but nonetheless, you are still
trying to sell yourself, your company, ideas,
and products or services. Not only does good
copy pull the reader in and entice him or her to
conduct business with your company, but proper
writing skills are applauded by the major search
engines. |
|
Increase Sales by Properly Using Google’s
Adwords |
Most Internet users use Google and other
search engines on a regular basis to find
information, products, services and more. Most
website owners will find that Google directs 2
to 3 times as much traffic to their website than
Yahoo and MSN combined. Therefore, it may be a
good idea to pay Google to send focused traffic
to your website. This can be accomplished by
registering for Google’s advertising service –
Adwords. |
|
Why You Need To Start Blogging To Promote Your
Business Website |
A Blog is
short for “Web Log”. It is essentially an online
journal that people write in and make available
for the world to read. Blogs are generally used
by personal Internet users to write about
various topics of interest or just vent their
emotions to the world. But, for your average
business, Blogs present an excellent and often
neglected opportunity to market your products or
services. They are usually free to start, and
can operate without an existing website to
support them. |
|
Market Your Business Every Time You Send/Receive
an E-mail |
Now, before you start thinking I’m going to
write about undertaking mass e-mail campaigns, I
just want to make it clear that I’m not going to
tell you how to spam every business or consumer
in your area. What I will write about though, is
utilizing your Signature File (sig file) and the
Auto-responder function to help market your
products and/or services to clients and
customers. |

Search Engine Optimization
|
Google Compared to Yahoo! |
Google and Yahoo are undoubtedly the two biggies
when it comes to search engines. Despite them being fierce
competitors, they share so many commons
goals. Both the search engines share
common roots as they were created by
students from Stanford University. |
|
Search Engine Web Crawlers |
They go by a variety of names -
bots, worms, web spiders, automatic
indexers, web robots and web crawlers.
What they are really are programs or
automated scripts that browse the web in
a methodical and automated manner. They
are known best as web crawlers because
that is what they do – 'crawl' a website
in order to know what it contains. |
|
On-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Primer |
Once your small business has an
established website, you’ll find that
the top three search engines (Google,
Yahoo, MSN) will provide the bulk of
your traffic – with Google probably
sending you more visitors than all other
sources combined. Sure, you can submit
to directories and exchange links with
other websites, but they will not
directly provide much traffic. Now, it’s
probably fair to say that you should
focus almost all of your online
marketing efforts to ranking well in the
most popular search engines. |
|
Off-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Primer |
In the earlier years of search engine
optimization, it was all about on-page
optimization. Things like the page title, Meta
tags, heading tags, comment tags, and anchor
text were the only things that mattered. Keyword
stuffing could easily get your website to the
top of the search engines results page. If I
wanted the number one position, all I had to do
was copy my competitor’s page, add my keyword
one more time, and viola – I’d rank first. These
days, things aren’t quite that easy. In order to
obtain top positioning in the search results,
your website has to gain to credibility or “web
cred” in order to be recognized as important. |
|
Importance of Linking Building For SEO |
The easiest way of improving your ranking in
the search engines is to let them know that your
site is important. How do you do that? Well, the
best way is through the process of link
building. Link building is the practice of
encouraging other websites to link to your own
website. If other websites are linking to your
website, your “link popularity” will increase,
search engines will deem your website important,
and in turn, you should receive more traffic. |
|
3 Step Search Engine Optimization |
As it has been repeated ad-nauseum:
the key to good Internet ranking is SEO
or search engine optimization. If your
website is well organized and designed
to bring in those web crawlers, you've
got it made. Here's the way it operates:
the better optimized the website, the
higher the ranking in the search engine
and the more traffic that your website
has and therefore the more profit your
website generates. |
|
Article Marketing and Search Engine Optimization
(SEO) |
It’s vital to let search engines know how
important your website is. You can accomplish
this through a broader branch of online
promotion call search engine marketing. One area
of search engine marketing is article writing
and syndication, and it works wonders for
building backlinks to your website, as well as
providing good content for your website’s
visitors. |
|
Where Did My Website Go? An Explanation to
Search Engine Results |
There are many reasons why your website’s
position in the search engine results will vary.
One day your website could be in the top 10 for
a particular key phrase, and the next day you’re
not on the first page. Changes to a website’s
rankings are constantly occurring because
changes on the Internet are constantly
occurring. But, we can narrow the cause of the
change down to four different sources. |
|
Spamdexing and Search Integrity |
Do you find tons of information on
the subject you were looking for? Or do
you just find a lot of gibberish on the
sites you open? Well, most people think
they've been wrong about the way they
typed in their search words so they go
back and try and it's the same old
nonsense that comes up again. This
happens everywhere. For a nugget of good
information, you have a sea of…well, spamdex. |

Website Design
|
How to Choose a Domain Name for Your
Business |
A website’s domain name (also know
as a website address or URL) is an
important consideration when developing
your online presence. Choosing an
appropriate domain name is the first
step in the process of building online
credibility. Remember to choose
carefully because this online address
may be where your business resides for
the rest of its operating life. |
|
Keeping Your Website Simple is Most Effective |
What do the Internet’s most profitable
websites such as Dell, Amazon and Yahoo all have
in common? They are plain, simple, and easy to
use. The most effective web sites do not employ
fancy graphics or animations to sell their
products and services because these distractions
take away from the goal of a website – selling!
Your goal is to sell your products, services,
and yourself – not impress people with your
technical prowess. |
|
Recommended Content for Your Website |
Once you've selected a slick design for your
new website, the next step in the process is to
put together some interesting and informative
content that will impress new visitors and
educated returning visitors. |
|
Choosing An Effective Website Colour Combination |
An aesthetically pleasing colour scheme can
make or break your website. After all, in
advertising, colour accounts for 60% of
advertisement's acceptance or rejection.
Therefore, colour plays a pivotal role in
determining whether or not a potential customer
will choose to conduct business with your firm.
A web designer needs to ensure that all of your
website’s colours work in harmony, while keeping
the client’s identity consistent with other
marketing efforts.
|
|
Website Accessibility - Proper Navigation |
A very important point to
consider while designing a
website is proper navigation.
You must ensure that potential
clients or customers are able to
find the information they are
looking for without too many
clicks. As a quick rule of
thumb, visitors to your site
should be able to visit all your
pages by using, at most, 3
clicks. This is also
important when considering
search engine optimization (SEO)
because search engines will only
spider (or index) pages that are
3 clicks deep into your site.
Not only does proper navigation
allow users to find information
they are looking for, but it
also allows search engines to
spider (or index) the
information they are looking
for.
|
|
Website Content is Still King |
So, you’ve developed a website for your
small business. It has a clean design and
uncluttered layout, accented by aesthetically
pleasing graphics. Your web designer has ensured
that it is accessible to all Internet users, no
matter which browser or screen resolution
they’re employing. As you browse the final
product, you realize how easy it will be for
your potential clients and customers to navigate
to all of your website’s pages. You may think
that you website is complete - but it’s not. |
|
Making Sense of Website Statistics |
Every website owner wants lots of traffic
directed to their website, but this can
sometimes involve spending a lot of time and
money. Fortunately, most website owners can
increase their return on investment simply by
paying closer attention to their website log
files. Most website hosting companies have
special software installed that will process
these website log files and display the
information in an easy to read format. |
|
Choose the Right e-Commerce Solution for Your
Website |
More and more businesses these days are
beginning to sell and distribute their products
and services via the Internet. It’s a win-win
situation – consumers get the best selection at
the lowest prices, and retailers get access to
markets outside their geographic location. But
depending on the type of e-commerce website the
business is pursuing, the cost to implement the
project could range from a couple hundred to a
few thousand dollars. |
|
Sitemaps Benefit Viewers & Search Engines |
Search engine ranking is perhaps the most
important element that determines a website’s
success. The key to getting your website to
appear in the search engine results starts with
getting your website’s pages indexed.
However, many search engines have a difficult
time finding pages that are buried deep in your
site’s navigation structure. |

More Articles:
|
|