Tag Archives: Internet marketing

5 Reasons Why Blogging is the New Internet Marketing Tool

Blogging is a concept that started in late 90s. It used to be a way to comment an existing webpage, an opportunity for visitors and readers to react or voice out one’s opinion on the said page. What started as a single-sentence commentary has evolved into pages of personal take on just about anything and everything under the sun. As it continues to move forward, online advertising has tapped into the blog’s potential. Here are 5 reasons why you should use blogging as an Internet marketing tool.

1.Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get your piece on the net is through blogging. No skills are necessary; an average adult can read and type, or at least click a mouse. It’s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. If you have a PC and an Internet connection (who doesn’t?) then you can blog and advertise.

2. Blogging is authentic. In this day and age where advertising saturate our lives, we question the credibility of promoters’ claims. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, unscathed by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience. You definitely want to buy a tried and tested product.

3. Blogging is free. Because blogging is yet to be proven as a mainstream online advertising media, most sites see it as something to augment current marketing tools and thus offer it for free. Any opportunity for free webtime is definitely a bonus especially to businesses that are starting up. Needless to say, paid blog pages can generate more income for your seriously growing business.

4. Blogging builds credibility. As you get more and more into writing your experiences on a particular product or industry, your readers come to realize that they can depend on your posts for their own information needs. As such, you become an expert on it; as a consequence, more readers visit your site and more bloggers link to your blogs. As companies and professional organizations notice the growth of your readership base, they may soon get in touch with you for advertising on your blog page, or make you an affiliate, which pays for every referral generated from your blog site.

5. Blogging builds your market. Unless you are a Hollywood star, chances are, only your Mom reads your posts. Mom has a lot of friends, so she lets her friends know how interesting your blog site is. But you need not depend on Mom to increase your readership base. Look into the following ways to build your market through blogging:

By using your e-mail. Today, blogging is overcoming the e-mail’s popularity in quickly and effectively reaching and expanding a market. In this age of speed and quick access, logging in and downloading e-mail is simply taking longer than clicking into a blog site. Let them explore your site by using a short e-mail message as teaser to your blog site. If your e-mail is on an entirely different subject, use your e-mail signature to give a link to the site.
By using subscription. An easy way to get your readers e-mail is to give them an opportunity to subscribe to your blogsite. Keep some exclusive information for your subscribers to entice readers to subscribe and give their e-mail address. Just be responsible in using their e-mail address, as the last thing you want is a comment on your blog that you are a spammer.
By understanding your readers. Conduct a simple survey for your readers to understand their profile and advertising preferences. Ask consumers to give you feedback on a post, an ad link, or a trial that you shared. In this way, it is like interviewing your readers without the commitment and intrusion of a face-to-face interview.
By joining a blog network –A network of blogs maybe a collection of blog sites that share the same industry, interest, readership base, payment mode, etc. Consumers find credibility and convenience in clicking one link to several real bloggers about a single subject. Clearly, more bloggers are better than one.
By using RSS. RSS is the fastest growing technology on the Internet today. As such, having RSS feeds to your blog is definitely another means of generating awareness for your readership base. Having a variety of feeds can add interest to your blog site.
Give your business a boost by effectively using blogging as an Internet marketing tool.

The Cost of Internet Marketing

June 12, 2012

Sylvia Patterson

Internet No Comments

The Cost of Internet Marketing

As today’s savvy businesspeople know, to have a strong business, people have to know who you are and what you offer. In other words, you need good Internet Marketing! While a marketing plan will give your business marketing goals, a marketing budget helps you figure out practical steps to achieve those goals. How much should you spend? And where should you spend it?

What goes in a Marketing Budget?

A marketing budget typically covers costs for advertising, promotion, and public relations. Each amount varies based on the size of the business, its annual sales and how much the competition is advertising. Depending on the industry, marketing budgets can range from as low as 1% of sales to over 30%. New companies may spend as much as 50% of sales for introductory marketing programs in the first year. Smaller businesses may just try to match the spending of their direct competitors.

The overall marketing budget should include:

Print and broadcast advertising
Design and printing costs for all print materials, such as newsletters, brochures, and press releases, direct mail costs
Website development and online marketing
Public relations such as Press Releases
Trade shows
Other special events as needed

Let’s try to determine a dollar amount for each of the above categories. Keep in mind, it is usually easier to begin with a base amount for the entire marketing budget, and then allocate it into subcategories.However, each business’s marketing budget will differ, there are basically four common methods used to allocate funds:

1. Percentage of Sales

Allocating a specified percentage of sales revenue is one of the most popular methods for developing a marketing budget. The average allocation usually ranges between 9-12% of the annual budget, while the smallest businesses may go as low as 2%.

If a business is launching a new product or service, advertising and publicity needs are greater, so the percentage shouldf increase. The main advantage to using a percentage of sales is that the marketing budget will increase, or decrease, with the sales revenue of the company. The marketing budget will never spin out of control and deplete sales revenue. This is really the best approach for Internet Marketing!

2. The Flat Dollar Approach

Many businesses simply set a flat dollar amount for their marketing budget. Particularly useful for small businesses, they can base marketing budgets on what they think the company can afford instead of the company’s sales. Picking a flat rate is usually effective for companies looking at a one-time expense, such as specific public relations marketing or a trade show, and not a long range marketing plan.

Defining a flat dollar amount may be challenging in the first year of a business, since there are no past records of sales and marketing expenditures. Many first-time business owners contact others in the field to inquire about their sales and marketing projections, and from there, estimate marketing costs.

3. Matching Competitors

Another method to create a marketing budget is to analyze and estimate what the competition is spending and copy them. This is another simple way to set a budget, since maintaining costs comparable with competitors keeps the business in line with others in the field. However, this method also assumes the competitors are spending the right amount and have a comparable business. If you’re a small business competing with Wal-Mart, obviously you couldn’t duplicate Wal-Mart’s marketing budget. When using this method, the revenue of a business should still be taken into account. However, you could look at the percentage of revenues and match that percentage.

4. Marketing Plan Objectives

Often considered the most effective budgeting method, this method uses the objectives in the marketing plan to determine the marketing budget. The budget is developed by estimating the expenditures needed to achieve the desired marketing objectives. Although this method of budgeting is very realistic based on the needs of the business, it is often limited by available funds, as the desired budget may exceed what has been set asidein a given year. However, many believe this method is the most logical for determining a marketing budget.

Summary

Whatever approach is taken, a formal budget helps define the marketing needs of any business. By establishing a detailed marketing budget prior to the start of each fiscal year, and then on an annual basis, make sure any changes to parallel the growth or decline of the business.

By analyzing marketing costs and the results and on quarterly basis throughout the year, You can easily determine the effectiveness of your Internet Marketing budget. If you manage your Internet Marketing properly, you might find yourself in the position of figuring out how to allocate a larger percentage to your Internet Marketing, due to higher sales revenues!

SEO – How to Get Found Online

June 4, 2012

Sylvia Patterson

Internet SEO Social Media No Comments

The Internet has dramatically transformed the way people learn about and shop for products and services. Just ten years ago, companies reached their consumers through trade shows, print advertising, and other traditional marketing methods. Today, consumers start their shopping by looking on the Internet first, using search engines, blogs, and social media sites. For companies to remain competitive, businesses’ websites need to be found online by their customers already searching for the products and services that you are selling. Today it is now possible for a small business to actually compete with larger companies if you create the correct SEO for your Website.

Businesses must get found online by the customers searching for their products and services in the three main areas.

Search Engines – Google, Yahoo, Bing, and MSN
Blogs – Blogger and Digg fro example.
Social Media – Technorati, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn

Search Engines

Customers most frequently go to the search engines to research and purchase products and services. Is your website getting found by consumers looking for you?

Please Note: Organic Search is Best!

In the example below; If you look at the Search results, you can see that there are 3 parts to the search. Next to the RED lines is Paid Search Results and the Green represents Organic Search Results.

Paid Search Results are those listings that require a fee for the search engines to list their link for particular keywords. The most widely used form of paid listing is Pay Per Click (PPC), where you pay each time someone clicks on the link in your advertisement. The price increases with the competitiveness of the keyword.

Organic Search Results are gathered by search engines’ web crawlers and ranked according to relevance to search terms. This relevance is calculated by criteria such as extent of keyword match and number of links into that website. Ranking in the organic search results is better because not only is it free, but research demonstrates that people click on the organic results 75% of the time and paid results only 25% of the time.

How Does Google Decide

Google and the other search engines rank websites in search engine results pages according to the relevance of to the search terms. This relevance is calculated by looking at both on-page factors such as the content on your site and off-page factors in the form of inbound links to your website. Off-page factors are some of the biggest influencers in your website’s ranking in search engine results.

How To Use Search Engines

1. Find Keywords

Search Volume – Given two different keyword phrases, optimize for the one with the larger number of searches.
Relevance – Choose keywords that your target market is using to describe and search for your products and services.
Difficulty or Competition – Consider your chances for ranking on the first page of Google for that keyword phrase. Look at the sites ranked in those first 10 slots, their authority and relevance to search terms, and then create a strategy to overtake them so you can secure a spot on that first page.

2. Use On-Page SEO

Place keywords in the page title, URL, headings, and • page text.
Optimize your page description for maximum click-through-rate when your site ranks in Google searches.
Place keywords in other “invisible” places on your site, • including meta-keyword tags and alt-text on images.

3. Use Off-Page SEO

Build more inbound links from other sites into yours.
Each link serves as a recommendation or a reference to tell the search engines that your site is a quality site.
Build more links within context, i.e. those with • valuable keywords in the link anchor text (the text that is hyperlinked to your site). Link anchor text provides context for the search engines to understand what your site is about.

Build more links from trusted websites. Just as references from well-respected friends and experts offer more value, so do links from trusted and well-respected websites.

Link-building tips

Submit your website to directories like Google Yahoo , Bing, and Business.com
Communicate with others in your industry through blogs and other social media

Create compelling tools (such as an interesting Software Application) or A Blog.

4. Always Measure & Analyze

Track the number of inbound links, keyword rank over time and compared to competition. You can use Alexa Rankings to do so!
Measure real business results: number of visitors, leads, and customers using tools like Google Analytics

Get Found Online By Using Social Media

What is social media? Media (content that is published) with a social (anyone can add to and share it) component. Social media is like a business networking reception without the constraints of time and space.

Social Media is Inbound Marketing
Social media helps with SEO
Social media promotes your blog
Social media is permission centric
Since the conversation has started it’s time that you’re aware of it and develop a strategy for engaging in it and using it for marketing your products and services

Use Social Media

1. Some Guidelines for Engagement

Try to meet people and start conversations, become a active member of the community and don’t just join to advertise your products or services
Add value to the community – answer questions and help others.
Ask questions – trust experienced users advice

2. Publish, Share, and Network

Publish: Everyone can publish anything for everyone
Publish everything you have anywhere you can
Monitor what others publish and promote it
Empower your customers to publish and share with others

If you are new to internet marketing it is essential to seek the advice of experienced Internet Marketers that can help you get started and succeed! Feel free to contact me and I will be happy to consult with you!

William