The Biggest Obstacle in Online Marketing

The internet has opened up a whole new arena for marketing and with it has come many obstacles. There is an abundance of information on the internet that will tell you dozens of ways to market your product or business to the masses. I have purchased my fair share of courses and read more e-books than I care to admit, and I have now found the #1 obstacle in online marketing. Its not skill, its not money, its not time and its not fear.

The number one obstacle in online marketing is simply: a starting line.

The problem many of us face is that there is so much information available on so many different strategies: forums, articles, MySpace, E-bay, U-Tube, Funded proposals, etc, etc, etc. There are so many different strategies that it becomes overwhelming as to where to start. The problem is that many people get so overwhelmed with what to start with that they don't start with anything. Trying to sort through all the information available on all the different online marketing strategies is like trying to eat an elephant. My grandma always told me there is only one way to eat an elephant; one bite at a time.

So which bite do you take first? The answer is it really doesn't matter. Start at the tail of the elephant or start at the trunk, just start somewhere.

I found it easiest to start by creating a blog, writing a few articles and posting them to my blog along with a short description of me. Make sure that your blog contains links to your website. Once you have several articles on your blog, post those same articles to 4 or 5 article directories. You will now have your name and links to your company website in 20-30 places. Continue to write and post articles as frequently as you can. I try to post at least one new article every day.

Forums are also a great way to get your name out, but there are a few guidelines you should follow. Join forums that are of interest to you. These can be forums discussing your industry, network marketing, or any other hobby you might have. Use the reference box to promote your product or company, not the body of your posts. You will soon find yourself banned from the forums if you are promoting your products instead of providing assistants to other forum members. Also make sure you are adding to the discussions within the forum. No one likes a spammer. Don't post just to post. People will see right through this and you will soon lose credibility.

I also encourage you to lean on your sponsor or mentor. Find out what they did and see if they have any articles that you can borrow for ideas on what you can write about. Make sure that your articles contain information that is accurate and of value to the reader.

To be effective in marketing your product or business, you have to diversify and use many different marketing approaches. No one approach will ensure success in your business, but a combination of them will.

Internet Marketing

What is Internet Marketing?

Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing or Emarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing including low costs in distributing information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of instant response, and in eliciting response, are unique qualities of the medium.

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the internet, including design, development, advertising and sales. Internet marketing methods include search engine marketing, display advertising, e-mail marketing, affiliate marketing, interactive advertising, blog marketing, and viral marketing.

Internet marketing is the process of growing and promoting an organization using online media. Internet marketing does not simply mean 'building a website' or 'promoting a website'. Somewhere behind that website is a real organization with real goals.

Internet marketing strategy includes all aspects of online advertising products, services, and websites, including market research, email marketing, and direct sales.

Benefits of Internet Marketing

One of the benefits associated with Internet marketing is the availability of great amounts of information. Consumers can access the Internet and research products, as well as purchase them at any hour of any day. Companies that use Internet marketing can also save money because of a reduced need for a sales force. Overall, Internet marketing can help expand from a local market to national and international market places. Compared to traditional media, such as print, radio and TV, Internet marketing can have a relatively low cost of entry .

It should be mentioned that, although it may seem a relatively simple task to enter the world of online marketing, sound business strategies still apply. There is still an emphasis on business goals, namely CVP analysis when determining strategy and the overall effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

There are important characteristics that differentiate internet marketing from "offline marketing":

One-to-one vs. one-to-many approach: the targeted user, is typically browsing the internet on their own, and the marketing messages reach them personally. This can be very clearly seen in search marketing, where the users find advertisements targeted to specific keywords that the users asked for.

Demographics targeting vs. behavioral targeting: offline marketers typically segment their markets according to age group, sex, geography, and other general factors. Online marketers have the luxury of targeting by activity. This is a deeper form of targeting since the advertiser knows that the target audience are people who do a certain activity (upload pictures, have blogs, etc.) instead of just expecting that a certain group of people will like their new product or service.

Measurability: Almost all aspects of an online campaign can be traced, measured, and tested. The advertisers either pays per banner impression (CPM), pays per click (PPC), or pays per action accomplished. Therefore, it is easy to understand which messages or offering are more appealing to the audience.

Response and immediate results: Since the online marketing initiatives usually require users to click on the message, go to a website, and perform a targeted action, the results of campaigns are immediately measured and tracked. On the other hand, someone driving a car who sees a billboard, will at best be interested and might decide to get more information at some time.

Internet Marketing Strategies

Every company of any size should be making both short and long-term Internet marketing investments on a consistent basis. I won’t belabor all the reasons why, suffice it to say that with 173 million US eyeballs on the Internet last month it has become the most important media platform for communicating with both prospects and customers.

Since so many website owners and developers seem to have either forgotten or never learned some of the most important A, B, C’s for Internet marketing success, let’s take a minute to review:

A - You have to have a great site! The bar is high now and so are user expectations. You can drive a ton of traffic to a website but if they don’t want what you got when they get there, then you won’t have success. I am always amazed at how poorly so many websites are designed, not to mention how badly they communicate their value propositions and product/service offerings. For example, if you could only do one thing on my website, will it be the one most important thing I really want you to do? Or will you be distracted by all the other stuff? Most sites fail this simple little test.

B - You must have a real Internet business model that works! (Should I repeat this one for emphasis?) This is a lot easier said than done. Just think about all those thousands of well funded Internet companies with great management teams who failed miserably and most of which had pure ad models at the time. I remember when Yahoo lost a majority of their ad sales when the bubble burst and the first thing they did was to diversify their revenue streams by adding Yahoo Personals and HotJobs.com. These hosted software services provide recurring revenues and help to diversify their revenues in large markets. What is your model? Are all your eggs all in one basket?

C – Assuming you have A + B (otherwise it’s a waste of time and money to add C), then add C which is as much quality traffic as you can possibly find at a reasonable price. Yes, of course that includes CPC campaigns and natural search traffic, but your long-term Internet marketing strategies should go beyond these basics.

For example, I like to ask companies this question, “Why would you only have one website, when you could be promoting five? Or why would you have five, when you could have five hundred?” Does that sound extreme to you? Believe me it’s not. I operate a one man company (well, except for a few virtual worker bees in India and Argentina) yet have more than a thousand websites in my network of sites. So yes, I can say with certainty that growing your domain names portfolio is a critically important component towards accomplishing your short and long-term Internet marketing objectives.

And according to the other “domainers” I know, who like me attend the Traffic conferences, domain names are the real estate of the Internet and like land, “they aren’t making it anymore!” Are you building your domain names portfolio? If not, you definitely should be! This is an important part of your short and long-term Internet marketing strategies.

Why Internet Marketing Is Important

There's no more stopping the Internet. You can't deny that it has become a part of many people's lives and many are foregoing other traditional media for the internet. More and more people getting their information and other requirements online so it only makes sense for businesses to use the internet as a marketing tool. The internet can be one of the most efficient and cheapest ways to promote your company and products.

Print advertising is one of the most expensive advertising media available to businesses. Print media includes newspapers, magazines, phone books and journals. Because of the increasing costs of print media production, print advertising fees can be exorbitant. TV and radio advertising can reach a wider audience but just like print advertising broadcast media advertising fees are expensive.

With the Internet, promoting a business can be done for a shoe-string budget. Aside from cost-efficiency, one advantage of online advertising is that there many creative and efficient ways to advertise online. The Internet is much more flexible tool than print or even broadcast media. Aside from static ads, you can create active ads with sounds, motions, etc. You can also have links and create interactive advertising features. There are many creative ways to highlight your products online and they are often much more affordable than creating advertising for TV.

There are also a number of cost-efficient ways to advertise online. One method is to sign up for a cost-per-click scheme which means you only pay for every valid click to your ad or your link. With this scheme, you don't have to pay for the ad placement unless someone actually finds an interest on your ad and clicks on it.

The most important reason why businesses should consider using the internet as a marketing tool is because it is here to stay. In the next few years, millions more will get connected to the internet, it will become an even bigger force and many more people will look and find what they need online. The internet has allowed people to communicate instantaneously to anybody around the world and it has changed the way people got their information. It has even changed the way people shopped. It will continually change the way people lead their lives in the coming years. The internet is continually breaking barriers everyday. In the future, it will become an even more essential part of people's lives so it's only sensible for companies to utilize this modern communication tool to their advantage. With the internet anyone can reach anybody from anywhere practically for free. A small home-based company can reach a potential business partner, a client, a supplier who lives half-way around the world. There are no technologies available yet that has the same reach as the internet. Whereas before it would cost an arm and a leg to communicate with someone from another continent, now it is has become affordable. Aside from the distance, the internet also allows entrepreneurs to reach more people for less money.

3 Internet Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

I have put together a short list of some of the most common mistakes that internet marketers make.

1) Let's Get Rich, Slap Up A Website!

Some internet marketers believe that all you have to do to make money online, is to find any old product that has a high paying commission, slap up a website and sit back and the money will just roll in. Others just pick a product that sounds good to them, and just because they like the product, they assume that everyone else will want it too. This is the wrong way to go about trying to make money. There has to be a demand for your product. The whole principle of selling is based on supply and demand. If you are selling a product that there is no demand for, then who is going to buy it?

The best way to find out what people are demanding is to go to forums and find out what people are asking for help with. You could find an affiliate program that solves their problem and recommend it to them through your affiliate link. Or you could create an ebook yourself, that solves a problem, and sell it to them. Once you have this information and utilize it, you will be more likely to make sales.

2) Wasted Resell Rights

Another common mistake that marketers make is buying private label products or resell products and reselling them without changing the product or its sales page. If you type in the name of any resell product or private label product into google you will find lots of identical sales pages with the same sales copy and the same ebook covers. If you want to make more money you will need to be more competitive. You could add a few bonuses with your ebook, update the content, add an extra page with your own affiliate links, or if it is a software product you could write a short ebook giving instructions on how to use the product or offer some other incentive for people to want your offer.

Sometimes the information in these resell rights products is dated and so are the graphics and sales pages. If I come across a sales letter that looks dated or sloppy, I would probably not even bother to read the rest of the page. Presentation is everything. If your sales page is old and sloppy and you have made no attempt to make it look professional then people will also wonder if your products and services are the same terrible quality.

3) Give Me All Your Money!

Have you ever walked into a store and been constantly hounded by sales staff? Every time you turn around there is a different salesperson standing there saying "Can I help you?" Or they follow you around the store telling you that you should buy this product because it looks good on you, blah...blah...blah! You get the picture right? Well, some marketers do the same thing. Every single email that they send to their list is a sales pitch. Buy this, Buy that, Get It Now Before It's Gone Forever! The Price Is Going Up Soon and so on. Imagine if you had someone banging on your door everyday or ringing you up on the phone every day trying to sell you stuff. You would go nuts!

Some marketers become complacent after a while and stop offering helpful information. They just send out sales pitch after sales pitch. Sometimes the email is the exact same email that 10 other people have sent you that day for the same product.

Most people opt into a list in exchange for a freebie, usually an ebook or a report. This is because they are interested in the subject of your ebook or report. They download your ebook because they are after information. The key word here is information. Not sales..just information. The sales will come later. The trick here is to blend sales in with some useful information. You could write an email about a subject in your niche that is helpful and informative and at the end of your email you would recommend a product. Just make sure that the product is related to your email subject or your niche, don't try to sell them everything that comes along. If you do, they will unsubscribe in large numbers.