The World Business

Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

by David Batchelor

The suggestions i am dealing with in the following paragraphs, are on online marketing for online businesses. They should make the strategies of internet based promotion more accessible to people.

The understanding of how the internet is used to promote things is crucial. As this makes it clear, that this technique of promotion is geographically not limited. Articles appear online as soon as they get submitted. For this reason article marketing is not vulnerable to time related barriers. Barriers like these, were the biggest hindrance of traditional advertising methods such as the newspaper.

Articles containing backlinks, is a famous concept of advertising. They get submitted to various article publishing websites. These articles are a useful read for the visitors, therefore they will follow up the posted backlink.

Similar to the method described before, is blog commenting. Just as articles do, comments that are posted by advertisers on well read blogs contain backlinks. The reader again, will want to know what the backlink is about. Obviously the comment has to be made on a themed blog relevant to the advert.

Posting banners is nowadays the most common way of promotion, even though it is not free. Websites are paid to post banners of advertising companies'. This method is not effective if the banner is published on a less visited site.

Advertising on the web raised some serious problems. Certain companies use the internet to make profit by betraying peoples' trust. These groups try to sell fake products online.

This method of online marketing is founded on the idea that the seller can promote scam products as the buyer will not be able to track him after he has purchased the product.

Further concern of internet marketing is the issue of privacy. Companies that are specialized in advertising, see the visitor numbers of the websites they work for. This not only informs them, how many people have visited that site but it also tells them when the people visited it and where they are from. This makes some individuals feel suspicious about internet marketing.

Companies, that operate within a small community might want to chose more traditional ways of promotion such as newspapers. Local people are probably aware of that company and of the newspaper. Therefore their trust is easily won.

These suggestions on online marketing for online businesses are here to further peoples' knowledge about the basic ideas of online advertising. For those who want to know more about this useful topic, the article presented here is just a brief introduction.

Do you really want to know how to promote home based business network marketing opportunities on the Internet? Distributors from all over the world are coming online and finding out that you can actually recruit people into your organization without having to go to hotel meetings and do things like that. Am I against hotel meetings? No, they are a staple in network marketing and they do provide great energy but as using them for many years they never seem to work for me. I was always left wondering why no one joined me when I attended the meetings.

Do you want to know the reason why nobody joined me? The reason why no one decided to join was simple. I was attacking the wrong target market. In all businesses you have to have a certain and specific target that you want to sell to. The same goes for network marketing. What you should be doing is going out there on the Internet and start finding people who are interested in the concept of network marketing. That's the big secret.

Why do you want to do this? The reason why you want to do this is simple and is because they are most likely going to join you because they understand what network marketing is already and also there is a great chance that they will be great producers in your organization.

Stop trying to convince other people that you have the best product or service and that your compensation plan is number one in the industry. Instead focus on others who are already interested in the area and know exactly what to do. By doing this personally I have been able to bring many people into my business that are highly qualified and that already know what network marketing is and what needs to be done. This is a simple yet powerful strategy that I suggest you begin to use whenever you decide to get involved in this industry.

January 28, 2009 — Tips for getting your permission-based marketing emails into the inbox and the actual design of the email are closely linked. Here you will find useful information on getting into the inbox, email design tips, and the nexus between the two.

If you are just getting back into email marketing after a break, are new to it, or are sending to an old list, make sure to ramp up your sending. This does not take long. If you have a large list, do not send to your whole list all at once but ramp up incrementally to maximize email marketing deliverability.

It is very important to keep a clean list. Too many hard bounces (email addresses that do not exist any more) can hurt your reputation with the ISPs. Pay close attention to keeping a clean list and purge as many bad addresses off the list as you can before you even send through a new Email Service Provider (ESP). You want to get off on the right foot with good delivery.

Keep in mind that the worst thing you can do to build your email list is to harvest emails off of Web sites, as this a flagrant violation of the CAN-SPAM act.

In addition, do not buy a list from some guy on the Internet who promises you the subscribers have all opted-in. They may have opted-in to hear from someone, but not from you. For you, they are likely to hit the spam complaint button along with the many others to whom this guy has sold the list. Sending to this sort of list will hurt your ability to reach your best customers or prospects.

No matter which ESP you choose, they will assign you an IP address – either shared or private. This IP address, not your email address, is the “Caller ID” of every email that goes out, whether a personal message or email marketing. Make sure you setup a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record that matches the IP your ESP assigned you with the sending domain (yourcompany.com). If you do this, you will be in the elite of email marketers who are following this optimal practice and will have an advantage. If you need help, ask your ESP. If you are a techie or know one, setting up an SPF record in your Domain Name Service (DNS) records does not take long. With many ESPs, you can determine the IP (shared or private) by looking in the settings of the account; with some ESPs you may have to ask them what IP address your emails are coming from.

Here are some additional tips on getting your emails through the spam filters.

Email Marketing Design: The Coin of The Realm

Good email design is not only more appealing to recipients and better for click throughs, but it also makes the spam filters look more kindly on your emails. This matters greatly when it comes to reaching the inbox, but do not forget that people like well designed emails better than something that is hard on the eyes. Your success with achieving your email marketing goals — including click-through-rates (CTR) and conversions — will be greatly enhanced by aesthetically pleasing email design.

One of the top guidelines for email marketing design is not to send out an email that is too heavy graphics or, much worse, one giant graphic. The guiding principle is 60 percent text, 40 percent graphic. Many email recipients view emails in a preview pane, so the top left corner is an ideal location for brand placement and a good enticing lead. Also, keep in mind that many email clients have graphics turned off by default so you have to entice people to click the button that turns graphics back on. The best way to do that is to leverage strong content, a well-designed email, and a good balance between text and graphics. It is always a very bad idea to send out an email that is one large graphic because not only will it lessen the chances that people will read it, but also because spam filters hate one large graphic emails.

It is crucial to remember to include ALT text for any images you include in your emails. The reason is that anything you are trying to communicate through images will be lost until many users turn on the graphics, which usually can be accomplished with a quick click. Entice them with descriptive ALT text that describes the graphic. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then give your recipients a reason to view those images.

Tables are back – which may seem counterintuitive to those of you who have been involved in a Web design project. Tables are an important element of email marketing design. You can use CSS but it must be inline CSS if you want it to work. Consider tables in your email design and play close attention to using table attributes.

Be aware of the inherent limitations of email programs as compared to Web browsers. Consider that the optimal email width is recommended at 600 pixels wide to accommodate for various browsers and mobile devices. Try to hit this range to avoid wide and unwieldy emails that few will want to read through. You probably want to avoid very long emails as well.

Again, keep in mind that while Web browsers are developed to handle javascript, flash, etc., many emails programs simply cannot handle the fancy stuff.

In addition, make sure to have a link in your email that enables your recipients to view the email as a Web page. Most ESPs provide a very easy way to accomplish this task. Some people will just prefer to view your email as a Web page.

If you combine good design for email with an awareness of both the spam filters and an aesthetically pleasing email for your audience, then you have a recipe for success. Email marketing can be hard work but when done well it yields the highest ROI of any other marketing tactic, which, according to the Direct Marketing Association is nearly $57 for every dollar invested.

When you work in online marketing, it's easy to put on your blinders and focus solely on your SEO company and clients. This is a great way to get some work done, sure, but it is often helpful to examine your industry as a whole, and see what can be learned from the top business marketing campaigns.

Let's take a look at four particularly successful campaigns:

1. Old Spice

Despite the "old" in its name, Old Spice rocked a rather "new" social online marketing campaign featuring Isaiah Mustafa, the star of the company's TV ads. On a set staged in Portland, OR, Mustafa answered 186 user questions (in his trademark hilarious style) through a variety of networks, including Reddit, Facebook, Digg, Youtube, and Twitter. The business marketing campaign racked up a record 6.7 million views in only 24 hours.

2. Best Buy

We all knew that Best Buy's blue shirted Geek Squad employees were supposed to be helpful, but the company's @twelpforce Twitter account demonstrated just how helpful said geeks could be -- for both tech questions and business marketing. Best Buy employees from all over the country use @twelpforce to answer user questions directly. The campaign has helped Best Buy connect to thousands of customers, and it's still ticking.

3. Cloverfield

When promoting their 2008 monster movie, the creators of Cloverfield had viral marketing on the brain. The promotional team released teaser trailers online with hardly any information about the film, as well as fake MySpace accounts for the film's main characters. While the teasers helped gather hype, the MySpace profiles underscored the film's emphasis on realism.

4. Will It Blend?

Blenders aren't interesting, nor are they traditionally associated with a Gen Y audience, but Blendtec founder Tom Dickson reached out to this group -- among other fans -- through his super viral Will It Blend? online marketing campaign. In the campaign, which still exists, Dickson uses his company's blenders to demolish everything from whole chickens to iPads, posting videos of every feat on WillItBlend.com. The campaign demonstrates the power of Blendtec blenders, all the while helping to brand the company and connect to a younger audience group.

So, what can we learn from these business marketing campaigns?

1. In online marketing, humor is no joke.

For many consumers, the internet is a much-needed reprieve from the stresses of school, work, and other responsibilities. They want to be entertained online, not educated. For this reason, humorous campaigns like those of Old Spice and Well It Blend? have an edge over more straightforward advertising. In addition to giving surfers what they want, these online marketing campaigns can also help to humanize and brand a company. This is especially useful for distributors of traditionally unexciting products, like blenders.

2. Social networking is a valuable business marketing tool.

Creating a website is one thing, but if you want to reach consumers, you have to find them where they live: on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Reddit, and other social services. Best Buy, Old Spice, and Cloverfield all marketed their businesses on social profiles to tremendous success.

All that being said, for many small businesses, creating a sensational online marketing campaign isn't enough. If your brand isn't recognized and your website isn't receiving significant traffic, you'll also benefit from traditional search engine marketing internet advertising services with SEO and PPC plans.