Word of Mouth Marketing on The Web

Online marketing presents you with an opportunity to get more bang for your buck compared to traditional marketing. This is particularly true for word of mouth marketing.

Word of Mouth Marketing on The Web

Word of mouth marketing refers to a type of marketing that promotes something by enticing independent parties to promote the service, idea or product to friends. The idea is to create a buzz for the subject matter. In creating the buzz, the goal is to create enough word of mouth momentum to get the idea to spread quickly. People are the sole conduit for the momentum. If you get it right, an entire product can become an established success with little or no paid marketing.

A classic example of word of mouth marketing, often called viral, is the situation involving Red Bull. Red Bull is an energy drink. When it was first introduced in Europe, rumors spread that the drink was an aphrodisiac. Nobody knows who started the rumors, but Red Bull became very popular. It then evolved into a mixer for alcoholic drinks in nightclubs and the rest is history. It is a hugely popular product and much of the popularity arose through this word of mouth process.

Word of mouth marketing online works in much the same way. The primary difference is it tends to happen much quicker than in the real word. The Internet is full of forums where like minded people congregate. A new, cool product, idea or service can blow up a site over night. If you don’t believe me, consider the wild success of the My Space platform, Napster, EBay and so on. Most of these sites grew into behemoths because of word of mouth endorsements, not paid advertising.

Obviously, this type of marketing can lead to tremendous riches. Unfortunately, it isn’t particularly easy to accomplish. Everyone is trying to do it, so you really need to be pushing something unique. If you can come up with something, it is time to hit forums and other sites to create a buzz.

A traditional way to pursue viral marketing online is to offer a free e-book. The book will detail your thoughts on some subject matter, such as marketing. One makes the book available for downloading and also allows people to send it to others. If you are offering something of quality, the book should spread quickly to thousands and thousands of people.

The ultimate goal is to promote it over and over until hundreds of thousands of people have read it. At that point, you write another e-book which you sell for $3 to $5. If people liked the first book, they will buy the second. If 100,000 read the first one and only 10 percent buy the second, you will have 10,000 sales. This strategy has been pursued over and over by many authors.

The word of mouth approach is definitely a hit and miss strategy. The large online communities make it a viable strategy, but there are a lot of people trying to do it. If you fail 50 times, but succeed once, life will be very good.

Online Marketing And Using Calls To Action

Let’s start with a clear understanding of what a call to action actually is. A call to action is an element or that entices a reader or viewer to take note or make a decision based upon it. Relating this directly to the Internet and websites, a website call to action could be something like “Add to Shopping Cart”, “Buy Now” or “Subscribe to Newsletter”. The main goal of a call to action is to persuade the visitor to click on or interact further with your website, hopefully ending in the visitor buying a product or service or another conversion goal. It is often seen that blue underlined text is clicked on more by website visitors when given a choice because these have been the default standard for many years. It is also believed that the blue text is associated with calming and trust so it more likely to be clicked.

Having described what a call to action is it should be clear that every good business website have at least one call to action on every single page within the website. Given the nature of websites it is often important to give a couple of call to action options to users. When a visitor progresses through your website, you should be able to follow the path your website visitors have made along the path of persuasion towards your conversion goal. Ideally this would give you a clear idea on what calls to action are working and what ones aren’t along the desired flow of your conversion process. A good website will be laid out in such a way that when a visitor wants to make a slight detour to find out more information correctly placed and worded calls to action are there to guide them back on your conversion path.

So, why do you need a call to action on your website? Many studies have shown that if a website visitor does not find what they are looking for within 3 seconds they will exit your website. Many SEO experts will only focus on getting a website into the top few results but there should also be focus on the overall online marketing strategy. Any good SEO and Online Marketing company will be able to guide you in a complete online marketing strategy. It is important to know that selling the websites product or service and using calls to action to get visitors through your conversion path is of equal importance to the overall SEO plan.

A well thought out call to action in an overall online marketing campaign will provide you with more sales, lead generation and constant predictable results.

When choosing an SEO and Online Marketing company it is important to take some time and do your own research. The simplest form of research is to search in Google for SEO or Online Marketing and see how good the SEO firm is at selling their own products and services. If they are positioned well for their own services then they are likely to be able to successfully market your products and services online.

Have you got the online X factor? Does your website have buzz?

What makes a site buzzworthy? It’s hard to quantify, but it’s safe to say that a combination of: -

eye catching design

dynamic page layout

clear navigation

audio clips

news boxes

free give-aways or bonuses

regularly updated pages

quotes and recommendations

as well as great copy, all go together to create a site with the X factor. If your site has buzz, not only will your visitors stay around long enough to find out what you’re offering them, but they will tell others about you too, and this builds your traffic, so you get noticed and it puts you in a great position to get ahead, as well as bringing you an important return on your investment.

Websites that have the greatest marketing successes are buzzworthy, they have that almost indefinable X factor. How do you get the X factor?

Well, buzzworthiness is a bit intangible, but you recognise it sure enough when you see it. A website with the buzz stands out, it makes you feel that the content is written with you in mind and most important of all; it makes you stay and browse the site, not just the first page!

If you website content is not oriented towards your site visitor then they will leave, and fast check your page bounce rates if you are not convinced.

You need to focus your page content not only on the product or service you are offering but also promote the benefits of what you offer.

Here are some tips for a website with buzz:

And remember to choose an eye catching design, mediocre isn’t buzzworthy

Make the copy (the words on the page) exciting as well as interesting

Be newsworthy, be doing or offering something different.

Be seen as notable, influential and knowledgeable.

Offer something useful and free.

Look outstanding

Be dynamic

Just be exceptional

Remember to be yourself, your ‘voice’ needs to shine out of your website giving it your own special personality.

Remember to speak to your visitor not at them. They don’t want to be sold something on the first page, they want information. Tell them about how your service or product benefits them, what you can offer them, and how much you can help them achieve their goals.

If you focus on what your site visitor wants then they will stay to find out more, and you may just have found a new customer.

If you focus on ‘selling’ yourself or your products without showing that they are of value to your website visitor, then you will lose your visitors interest and a potential client.

How To Dominate A Niche With Little Marketing Knowledge

To make tons of money online, keeping things simple is the best approach. I see many people buying this product and that product to learn the latest tips and techniques etc.

If you focus on the simple things that have worked for others, you’ll make a killing in just about any market.

Here are just some of the things you can do to be successful in just about any market.

1.) Capture leads

2.) Learn your target market

3.) Pump money back into your business

Any person who knows a thing or two about marketing knows that the money is in the list. You need to capture the names and emails of your website visitors and email them continuously.

I bet you’ve heard that a million times. That’s because it works.

Yet, if you’re poking your head around different markets you’ll see that there are many people who still don’t have an email signup form on their sites. If they do have a signup form, they have the form tucked away in some little corner where no one sees it.

If you do a search for the major keywords on your market and you find that many of the websites do not have optin forms then you know that your competitors have poor marketing skills. Having an email form is one of the most basic but effective marketing techniques ever.

The second step is to learn about your target market. That’s because you need to know what buttons to push when it comes to writing sales copy. Again, it doesn’t take a lot to write money sucking copy for many niche markets. You don’t have to know the deepest psychological tricks to get visitors to buy. You need to know some of the things that your target market is interested in and then gear your ad copy towards their concerns and interests.

The third step is to pump money back into your business. That’s a fundamental factor for success in any business. When you’re selling something on a website and you have measured conversion levels, those numbers will remain the same no matter if you have 100 visitors or 1,000 visitors a day.

Let’s say you have a conversion rate of 2%. For every 100 people who visit your site, two of them become customers. Now you need to take the money from those two sales and drive more people to your site. Now you have 1,000 visitors and you get 20 sales. Take a portion of that and reinvest in your business. Know your numbers and keep tossing money to fuel the fire.

There are tons of niches online that are begging for you to step in and dominate. Simply find the markets where people obviously have little marketing skills and take over the market. You can even offer to buy out another business and pick up where they left off.

Head over to the digital marketplace called Clickbank.com and browse through the listings. Dig deep within each category and find out the products with bad sales copy and marketing skills. Do a little research to see if that market has money circulating.

To do this, all you have to do is find what the top advertisers are paying in pay per click search engines. If people are paying a lot to get traffic then you know that the people in that target market are willing to spend the money.

You then set up an optin page to capture leads and see if people are information hungry. If they are, then your optin rate will be good. I generally go for optin rates of at least 20%.

How To Use Sponsor Ads To Increase Website Traffic

How many times have you surfed the Internet and noticed that most e-zines and websites have advertisements posted all around its pages? Flashing ads that are popping up and blocking your view are often hard to get rid of. Even some search engines and directories carry sponsor ads. Sometimes those sponsor ads can get in the way, but sometimes the ad appears too tempting not to check. If it was not for those sponsor ads, you might not have realized a specific business or website existed.

The two primary goals of sponsor ads are to increase awareness of a product, brand, or business and to enhance the image of the business or brand. These goals are very important to the success of small businesses and their websites. In order to strive, small businesses need to spread the word on what products and services they have to offer in order to increase their profits. They also need to stay in communication with customers and potential customers to what they have and why you need it. This may even mean they have to send out an emailed newsletter. People like to know what is out there that they can benefit from. To achieve these two primary goals, consider using sponsor ads to increase the traffic to your website.

Using sponsor advertising can be a great way to increase traffic to your website and encourage more product and services purchases. Sponsor advertising has become increasingly popular among web site owners, allowing the businesses to develop relationships with the online community by providing information and becoming a part of the online community. Many online business owners who are looking to promote their website may be interested in using sponsor ads to increase the traffic to their website. More website traffic can mean more sales and increased profits. Sponsor ads can be free, bought, traded, or sold. It all depends where you look, and whether you are looking for free opportunities or can afford to pay for them. It will also depend on where your business stands financially and how much you plan to advertise or invest in advertising.

Sponsor ads can offer many different advantages to both the sponsor and the website. The sponsor may be able to benefit as attitudes that are more promising evolve with trust, leadership, credibility, and enhanced customer service. When the sponsor or website is able to develop good customer relationships, this may prompt the sales to grow faster. Customers want to know they can depend on a business for their wants and needs. Customers want reliability and outstanding customer service. The business website can benefit by providing secure, updated information at no charge to the customer. Visitors may also see the website as more active and responsive to their interests and therefore develop a kind of relationship with the website.

E-zines offer great sponsor ads that will be of benefit to your website. There are varieties of E-zines from which to choose. It is important to make sure you choose the ones that compliment your website or that have similar content. In this age of computer technology, there are many different types of E-zines out there. The Internet has become the fastest growing form of having an online business. There are literally millions of people online everyday searching through websites, E-zines, directories and search engines. The more sponsor ads you have in popular locations, the more likely customers will find our website and look at what you have to offer them. Making your website business available to the world and easy to find is the best way to increase the traffic to your website.

You have a purpose for having a website, so why not use every opportunity to promote your website and reap the profits. It is up to you to use sponsor ads and be the next flashing, pop up, blocking your view, hard to get rid of advertisement online. You want to be that online advertisement that gets in the way and that is so tempting, others just have to check it out. Once you increase the awareness of your product, brand, or business, you can generate more traffic to your website and receive a Return on Investment (ROI) to make all your hard work worth all your time and effort.

SEO Basics for Small Businesses

In the context of search engine optimization, many people equate an optimized site to a site with impressive search engine rankings. Sprinkle a little fairy dust over here and waive the magic wand over there and wallah… a magnificent dish of first page rankings for the Internet’s most competitive keyword terms. [enter annoying alarm clock signaling the end of euphoric online marketing dream sequence]

The fact is, if you think you are going to achieve rankings for competitive keyword terms simply by adding a few keywords to your website, you need to pinch yourself because you’re dreaming. Perform a search for your primary keyword terms and you will see a descending list, several pages deep of websites that have been “optimized” with varying degrees of success. The key is to understand the factors that differentiate those that rank on the first page from those that don’t.

The attributes that determine search engine rankings can be classified into two basic categories; “on-page factors” and “off-page factors”. In the most basic sense, on-page factors have to do with attributes within your web site and off-page factors have to do with attributes that occur outside of your web site. In a way, on-page factors tell the engines what you think of yourself, while off-page factors tell the engines what the Internet at large thinks of you.

Let’s tackle the on-page factors first, shall we? The first step is to determine the keywords that people search for when they are looking for the products or services you have to offer. Keyword tools such as WordTracker and KeywordDiscovery let you know how many people search for a particular search term and provide suggestions for related keyword terms. Use the tool to match two to three appropriate keywords to each of the web pages within your site. Once you’ve selected your keywords, incorporate then into the various html elements of your web pages including the title tags, meta tags, header tags, ALT tags, and body content. This will ensure that the search engines categorize your pages for the keywords you are targeting.

OK, so now we’ve got all the “on page” stuff hammered out, your site should start its meteoric rise to the top of the engines, right? Well, not exactly. It depends on how competitive your keyword terms are. [enter off-page factors] Off-page factors have to do with the quantity and quality of incoming links from external web pages. The algorithms that determine search engine rankings depend heavily on external linking in assessing the authority or trustworthiness of web sites. In turn, sites that have achieved “authority status” end up ranking higher than those who have yet to achieve such status.

A quality backlink is a link from a subject relevant web page that contains the keyword you are trying to rank for in the anchor text of the link. There are many ways to obtain quality backlinks. Submit your site to Internet directories such as Yahoo or DMOZ.org, ask your business partners or other friendly websites to link to you, or consult with a professional search engine marketing firm who is credentialed in the art of link building.