Okay, so you’ve identified your online business and the products/services that you’ll be promoting. Maybe you have already created your own website as your ‘business home’ on the Internet, or perhaps you intend to promote your products/services from an Affiliate Company’s template website/link that comes with your affiliate package? You now need to start marketing and promoting, in order to draw website traffic and make money.
What should you do next?
Now a lot of online businesses have only one website/space on the web, and once they’ve set it up, they then do little more except sit and wait for website visitors (and wonder why they have so few). It is much, much more likely you’ll be found in Search Engine searches or from Links, and thereby gain website visitors, if you do at least a few more things:
- Create a number of Social Media/Networking profiles, directory listings, bookmarks and ‘spaces’ on different websites (possibly including a Blog) to promote yourself, your business, your products/services, and your main website links.
- Be active on the Internet by placing and promoting new content relevant to your business/products/services on other websites, such as articles, videos, social media, discussions, forum comments, emails and blog posts.
- The above two Internet Marketing methods/strategies can usually be done for free. You can, of course, also do paid promotions/marketing, such as Google Adwords PPC advertising.
But either way, you need to undertake your marketing in a different way, to avoid some of the mistakes others make….
Don’t merely advertise your products/services with your website link, and expect to gain thousands of website visitors and customers this way. Bigger companies with established brands can afford to do this, as their brands are already entrenched and embraced in their consumers’ minds (even they don’t often resort to this).
But smaller companies and/or Internet Marketers first need to create something ‘special’ surrounding their products/services, in order to stand out from the masses of other Online Businesses doing the same thing or promoting similar products/services. They also need to develop their ‘Personal Branding’, something which gives them an added attraction, over and above other Online Businesses which have no personality and don’t offer any help, additional information, or real care and concern for their customers.
You can build your Personal Brand by doing a number of things:
- Providing useful information in an interesting way to your customers or potential customers, on issues that matter to them and that surround your products/services, for example, about illnesses (if you plan to sell health products), child development (if you want to market children’s toys), or wedding planning (if you wish to sell wedding products).
- Presenting benefits, uses, solutions and the ways your products/services will be useful to your customers, from their point of view (rather than product features). Try to use the word ‘you’ in marketing communications more often.
- Personalizing your contact and connections with prospects, leads, potential customers and existing consumers.
Present yourself (a real person) as the ‘front’ to your business, write personalized communications, and find out about your target market before you connect with them, so that you’re interacting with them in a way that is meaningful to them. - Building relationships with your customers, prospects and suppliers, rather than simply ‘wheeling-and-dealing’ with them. Make sure they know you care about them as individuals. This sometimes means not attempting to push a sale, because their loyalty will increase if you’re helpful rather than sales-oriented, and in the bigger picture, they will eventually buy from you, and possibly buy more and more often.
And finally, it’s never over!
Maintaining (or trying to get) your website’s position on the first page of a Google or other Search Engine Results Page (SERP), and keeping your brand/company and your Personal Brand in the forefront of your customers’ and potential customers’ minds means constant work. Placing relevant content and links, promoting yourself and your company, helping others and building relationships…. all of this is the business of Online Business.
To find out more about Social Media/Facebook marketing, including setting up your Facebook business profile, read here: http://www.kathrynrosewilson.com/2010/06/successful-facebook-marketing-social.html
To find out more about how to use Google Adwords/PPC advertising, especially on a small budget, read here: http://www.kathrynrosewilson.com/2010/03/google-pay-per-click-advertising.html
Read more detail about structuring your Internet Marketing campaign, including customers, strategies, advertising, budgeting, and monitoring here: http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/onlinebusiness/a/netcampaignpp.htm
Please note that I will no longer be updating this blog. Instead please visit the new home for this blog, http://AztecInternetMarketing.com - for all these articles, plus many more recent articles and updates. See you there! 
Picture acknowledgements:
- Man on the Moon: http://thebigfoto.com/earths-moon
- Coca Cola can: http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/brands/product_list_c.html
- Pushy salesman: http://saleshq.monster.com/training/articles/3003-buyers-avoid-pushy-salespeople?page=2
