05 Jan 09 Internet Marketing Sales Plan 101 For Conventional Businessmen
Most conventional marketers would frown at the idea of internet marketing. For one, the term is too general for its own good. This causes a lot of bewilderment online when people look for tips and whatnots about online businesses. Most information over the web is for business people who are trading their goods online exclusively. This means that they’re trading products that can only be used on the web (website platforms, site development services, domain names, etc).
While these things are also imperative for the conventional business man looking for ways to promote his company in cyberspace, they’re not the ones that actually lay the brickwork to earn extra money online.
Finding your niche
Whether online or offline, you need to find your niche, or your target customers when you’re setting up your promotional tools. If your goods and/or services cater to young mothers for instance, your website content, and your website design need to look eye-catching enough for these target moms.
Instead of building on the hype, or writing promotional copy for your website, fill it up with mothering how-to articles. This has two major advantages: search engine optimization; and good relations with your existing and potential customers.
Even if the individual did not originally know of your company’s existence, he or she will be led to your website once the search engine spiders find your article’s keywords. If you have worthwhile, useful articles on your site, the effort will also be appreciated by your customers. They’ll get the feeling that your company is really bent on making life easier for them and their babies.
Always write for humans
Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for anyone attempting internet marketing promotion. In a nutshell, this means designing the organic components of your website so it’s search engine attractive. In terms of writing your site’s copy, this means placing keywords strategically throughout the articles on your site so they can be indexed by search engines.
Because of the tight competition for page ranking online, some internet marketers have resorted to keyword stuffing. This isn’t recommended though, because search engines in the end find these keyword stuffed articles, and they will be excluded (if not banned) from the indexes. Besides, keyword stuffing makes your copy ugly and unreadable.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is also one of the most acceptable tools for internet marketing. Generally speaking, this means any contact you have through electronic mail with your customer. More specifically, though, it’s concerned with the exposure of your company. This means sending out actual ads or newsletters to potential clients.
When conducting your email marketing, it’s important for you not to resort to spamming. Some companies end up collecting a large number of random email addresses so they can spread the good news about their products. The catch is these strategies won’t work unless the person you’ve sent your newsletter or ad to actually cares. Otherwise, your emails will only end up in the trash bin and annoy people, which is always a bad thing for marketing.
If you really want to make money working online by using email for exposure, you must focus on your target clients. What you need to do is create a database on your website that can gather information (email addresses, etc.) from people who voluntarily ask to receive your newsletters. If you’re exhibiting in a tradeshow, you can also gather the emails of your visitors. Since these people are already interested in your products to begin with, your emails won’t be seen as spam.
