Internet marketing techniques have always fascinated me. For years I have been searching for the most effective tools and methods for marketing in this so-called Internet Age. What tools, what methods should an Internet marketer be using to bring in the most traffic and the most sales?
Since becoming a full-time online marketer around four years ago, that question has taken on much more significance because my very livelihood depends upon it. Not only that, discovering the most effective marketing tools and methods has really become my full-time job. It’s what I do!
I spend my work-days testing different marketing techniques, trying out new ways of gathering traffic, and trying every new tool or gadget I can get my hands on. I have spent a small fortune on web marketing info-products, different web marketing tools; not to mention all the companies who have asked me to check out their products for free.
Over the years, some very simple concepts or methods of marketing online have proven the most effective for me. They have proven so valuable I use them on all of my sites. Simple effective techniques that work.
What are these marketing techniques?
Actually, they are nothing new, marketers have been using these methods for hundreds of years. It all centers around the idea of gift-giving and the promotional gift. Companies have always found the idea of giving small promotional gifts to their present and future clients to be a very effective way of marketing.
Like countless other online marketers, I have perfected this practice of giving promotional gifts to increase my targeted traffic and to boost my sales. It is a very simple marketing technique any website owner or online marketer can use to achieve the same results.
I believe a very detailed description of my own promotional gifts and how I effectively use them in my online marketing would prove helpful to you. Then you can look at what I have done and model the same marketing techniques with your own niche or website.
First, you have to briefly understand the psychology behind gift-giving and gifts. There’s no denying it, we all like free gifts. We all like receiving gifts mainly because we all have been hot-wired or conditioned to receiving gifts since we were two years old and up. Getting a gift never fails to put a smile on our faces or a warm feeling in our hearts. Corny as that may sound, it is nonetheless very true for the majority of the non-scrooge humans living on the planet. We are all still that small child receiving a gift.
We simply love getting gifts.
However, I believe many marketers, including many small website owners, (maybe even you, highly appreciated reader) fail to realize the marketing power of these small promotional gifts. It can be a truly effective way of promoting and marketing your site or product. One that every marketer should be using.
Nor should you underestimate the power of giving away free gifts to your site’s visitors; it can be an effective way of branding your name and for acquiring repeat customers. Especially on the web where you sometimes only have a few seconds to make contact or engage a visitor; so handing out a free gift is often an excellent way of making a first good impression with your visitor and potential client/customer.
It is a marketing tactic I use with all my sites. I try to give them something of real value, or perceived value in the eye of the receiver - something of high quality that they will appreciate and remember. Of course, that something also has my site’s URL and Logo on it; calling visitors back to my site, time and time again.
That’s why on many of my sites you will see a Free Desktop Calendar that visitors can download and place on their computer desktop; this is a simple software program consisting of an ecalendar and daily planner which contains my site’s information, logo/message, plus a direct link back to my site. Something simple, practical and my visitors like and use it; I get tons of emails from these calendar users telling me how much they enjoy it.
A simple promotional gift that works. My own simple virtual version of the fridge magnet!
Another effective marketing tactic I use with most of my sites is the giving away of free guides. These are simple handy guides (in PDF or EXE file format) that I pass out to my visitors - to anyone who wants one. These guides can even be re-branded so that your visitors can pass them out for you; creating a viral gift that keeps on giving.
An extremely easy way to build your list of potential customers for your products. Anyone can create these guides and give them out to your visitors. Just use Google Docs to make the PDF files of your Favorite Tips, How-To Articles, Special Reports or Buyers’ Guides… you may be totally amazed at how effective these free promotional gifts can be to your marketing.
Since everything is in video format these days, creating free How-To-Videos is within everyone’s reach. These videos can have a viral effect and land up on countless sites all over the web. If you’re like me and lack the Spielberg gene, you can always use the videos made by your affiliate companies and promote these on your sites. Free videos work great as promotional gifts, especially if you can embed them with your affiliate links.
In the same way, I also like using re-branding software so that your vistors can re-brand these promotional products and make them their own. Also you can purchase software that will allow you to have Pop-up Forms and Subscription Boxes on PDF files - very useful for list building and boosting traffic back to your site. I use PDF Pop-Up Pro for this.
But most of all, my favorite promotional tool is the handy little buyer’s guide. I especially like giving away free Buyer’s Guides of the products I am promoting, mainly because you know these are the targeted group (potential buyers) who are at the right stage in the marketing process - when they’re seriously considering buying the product. You get their attention at the most opportune time.
It makes for very smart marketing.
These helpful buyer’s guides are in reality, very effective promotional gifts that will increase your traffic and sales. Again, you can use PDF or EXE formats for these guides, another option which I occasionally use is to deliver this buying guide in 6 or 7 follow-up emails. This accomplishes two important objectives of my online marketing: it builds my lists of potential customers and it also lets me “cookie” all these potential buyers with my affiliate IDs. If you’re new to online marketing, cookies are used to mark your customers as your referrals, these cookies can last anywhere to a few days up to a lifetime; when a customer buys within that time frame, you get credit for the sale.
The savvy online marketer will use promotional gifts as a way of tagging the receiver as their cookied referral. If you can’t create your own guides, reports, articles… there are tons of free ebooks, instructive videos, and how-to products on the web that you can use. Many of the major affiliate companies and marketers will provide these gifts (re-branded with your affiliate IDs) for you to hand out to your site’s visitors.
Promotional gifts in the virtual world can take on all these different disguises: downloadable software programs, ebooks, articles, special reports, How-to-Videos, buying guides… and the list goes on. Don’t overlook this simple way of marketing. Instead, use these promotional gifts and techniques on your own site or with your own products. A proven method of increasing both your brand recognition and your sales.
Basically, what you’re doing is taking the old concept of the promotional gift that has been around for centuries such calendars, pens, mugs, fridge magnets… and applying this concept to your website or online marketing. Of course, you can still use these (real world) trinkets to promote your site and products, but don’t forget about the virtual online version such as desktop software, ebooks, special reports, buyer’s guides, viral videos… these can prove very effective marketing tools in this brave new online world.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, instead, ride it all the way to the bank. Discover the true effectiveness of online promotional gifts for yourself and you will quickly reap the rewards.
For the latest corporate gift ideas and a handy Amazon gift-organizer try here: Corporate Business Gifts For Timely Special Savings/Deals/Coupons on Corporate Promotional Gifts…click here: Corporate Promotional Gifts 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
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Gift Horses, Scrooges And The Small Child Within (The Simple Marketing Power Of Promotional Gifts)
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Gift Horses, Scrooges And The Small Child Within (The Simple Marketing Power Of Promotional Gifts)
My clients and regulars to my ezine have heard me say many times that the gold in your business starts with the list. Having a list of interested potential clients, who want to know more about you and your services, will provide you with a long-term, successful, business.
And guess what?
When you have a list in place of potential clients who are interested in you, your services and your products they come to you! You don’t have to go out and find clients - they’re right there!
And to achieve this you need to create a List Building System, so that you can continually add people to your list, and have a ready pool of clients who want to buy your products and services.
There are many different strategies that go towards creating your successful list building system, and today I’d like to share with you three free, and often overlooked, list building strategies. And they’re all easy to implement too!
1. Leverage the power of Amazon. I bet you didn’t realize you could use Amazon as a list building strategy! It’s very easy to do. If you have an account there, simply click on Your Profile along the top, and update your profile. Include as much information as you can about you and your business, and include a link back to your website. Then set about:
* Writing book reviews. If you have favorite books that you’ve read and have found invaluable to you in your business, write a review about them. You don’t need to have purchased your book from Amazon to write the review either. Simply find the listing for that book and write your review. The author will appreciate the positive comments, and your profile will be hyperlinked in the book review - giving readers the opportunity to find out more about you!
* Building a Listmania. A listmania is simply a collection of books/audio products that you have found useful and you’ve pulled them altogether in one place, so that anyone looking for books/products on a particular topic can view your listmania to see what you recommend. It saves them having to trawl through the website researching the information themselves!
2. Trade ‘Thank You’ page space. When someone signs up for your newsletter, what does your Thank You page say? I’ll bet it says something like, ‘Thank you for signing up to my newsletter’ - not very inspiring! Instead, use this space to recommend colleague’s newsletters. You could add, ‘Here’s a list of newsletter I find invaluable and I’d like to recommend them to you too’. And better still, ask those colleagues whose newsletter you’re referring to do the same for you! This is known as co-registration (or trading ‘Thank You’ page space), and is a wonderful way to build your list quickly.
3. Use the power of Email Signatures. This is a very simple way to build your list. At the bottom of every email you send out make sure you include a link to your newsletter sign-up page and a snippet of what your free taste is about. The beauty of this strategy is that you never know who your email will get forwarded to, and who will read your email signature and sign up to your list.
Now that I’ve shared with you three simple list building strategies, pick one of them and implement it TODAY! Don’t waste any more time in building your list.
Office organization expert, Tracey Lawton, teaches professional speakers, coaches, and authors how to operate an efficient, organized, and profitable business. Learn how to create an efficient and organized office in 7 EASY steps, and receive free how-to articles at http://www.OfficeOrganizationSuccess.com
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3 Winning Strategies To Use For Building Your List
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3 Winning Strategies To Use For Building Your List
Anyone who claims to surf the net all the time but do not know what social networking is all about is probably living in a cave somewhere. The Internet has completely changed how network marketing is done and you will need to learn to adapt to the latest trends before your prospecting methods become obsolete.
If you seriously desire to build a huge network marketing downline, there is no reason why you should not harness the power of Facebook for your network marketing business because Facebook is ranked as one of the most visited sites on the planet!
Here are a couple of benefits for using Facebook:
- You get the pleasure of adding your targeted friends (and prospects) to your profile. The people you add might reciprocate because Facebook sends an email notifying that you’ve added them to your list of friends. However, don’t just add any friends… always target friends in a network marketing group, home business group, networking group and so on. These people are your target market and you should add these people into your sales funnel.
- You can also create your own Facebook group and invite your new friends to join. You can call that group an ‘Network Marketing Millionaire’ or ‘Online MLM’ group to get like minded people to participate. You can use this group that I created as an example: <a href=” http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19217593800” target=”_blank”></b>Internet Network Marketing</b></a>
- Besides just creating a group, it will be to your advantage if you create a weekly plan and post useful content to your group. You can contribute stuff like articles, blog posts and even videos! You aim is to product value so that they will sign up for your own network marketing newsletter online,
- Send email blasts or broadcasts to your network marketing group and make sure you give them quality content so that they will trust you and treat you as their leader. Once you have developed sufficient trust and respect from your group, you may safely recommend your business opportunity to them. Do it well and they may even beg you to sign them up without you selling them anything at all!
- You can also broadcast your content on your friend’s Funwall every few days or weekly.
- Help people, don’t ask for help immediately. When people see you as a person who is willing to go out of their way to help others, they will believe in you and take your recommendations seriously.
Facebook is definitely the way to keep in touch with your prospects and you can drive tons of traffic to your website even when people locate your site through your personal profile page.
Beside Facebook, another one of my favourite social networking site is MySpace.
MySpace offers an interactive environment facilitating a completely user-generated network of friends, personal profiles and links to blogs, groups, photos, music and videos - the perfect ground for a network marketing business!
Gone are the days of cold calling telephone books and genealogy lists. By harnessing the power of MySpace, you can drive lots of targeted traffic to your lead capture pages and build your network marketing downline very quickly.
Here are a couple of tips that you can use to drive traffic using MySpace:
- Your profile is your greatest weapon. You must create a profile that completely stands out. Don’t hard sell others but rather offer value and covey to prospects from your profile that you are a leader… someone that is important.
- Use MySpace to add as many friends as you can to your profile. You can never have too little friends. Another advantage of adding many friends is that people who view your profile will be able to perceive you as a very popular person (because you have lots of friends).
- Create your own group in MySpace. You can use it to start a network marketing community on the Internet. Network marketing is all about interacting with others and if you can use this strategy well, you can connect with people from all walks of life (you might not even meet these people through conventional means).
- Invite targeted friends - especially those who are interested in network marketing! You want to create a targeted group of friends within your network. But make sure you don’t jump the gun and offer your business opportunity to them right away. Make sure you build the relationship first.
- Post useful content to your network marketing group. Make sure you provide value to others and they will respect you as an authority on network marketing.
- You can also encourage your group members to join in the fun and contribute content. That way, your network marketing community learns to interact with one another and you don’t have to post so much content.
- Join other people’s groups and make friends with them
- Learn to use bulletin boards. When you have new content or products recommend, you can blast out the messages to the bulletin and your friends and group members will be able to view them.
- Always stay consistent and persistent. Building a network takes time and you cannot expect to get results overnight.
Both Facebook and MySpace are one of the best places to network and build your network marketing business. Learn to make friends and build a community and you will drive lots of traffic to your network marketing sites.
Jaz Lai is an online prospecting expert. Download your free white paper and audio on how to use the internet to Double or Triple your organization within the next 30 days. Available for the next 24 hours only, click below for instant access :
http://www.HowToNetworkMarketing.com
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Need More Prospects For Your Business? Try This Social Method
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Need More Prospects For Your Business? Try This Social Method
Learn the latest Viral Marketing and Link Baiting Strategies right from your desk; that’s right you do not even have to leave your office!
http://www.marketmotive.com/online-workshops.php?expand=text5
This live two-hour interactive workshop is specifically designed for marketers and business owners looking to learn practical methods to harness the power of viral marketing and build buzz around their businesses online. Link baiting will be covered including case studies on unique and creative content development that can help fortify your campaigns.
Originally posted here:
Jennifer Laycock on Viral Marketing & Link Baiting - August 6 12 Noon EST
Learn the latest Viral Marketing and Link Baiting Strategies right from your desk; that’s right you do not even have to leave your office!
http://www.marketmotive.com/online-workshops.php?expand=text5
This live two-hour interactive workshop is specifically designed for marketers and business owners looking to learn practical methods to harness the power of viral marketing and build buzz around their businesses online. Link baiting will be covered including case studies on unique and creative content development that can help fortify your campaigns.
Continued here:
Jennifer Laycock on Viral Marketing & Link Baiting - August 6 12 Noon EST