Marbella SEO
Posts Tagged ‘internet marketing tool’
Is Email Marketing Still Relevant
If you are wondering why there is a need to even ask this question, then you are seriously lagging behind concerning the current status of email marketing. “It is not what it used to be” opined Willie Crawford, in his article “The Real Death of Email Marketing”. He says continuing on: “I’ve talked to friends from over a year ago, who often confided in me that they sent out emails and got absolutely no response”.
You’d have to consider if your email list members did get your email, let alone read them.
Today, it has been usually accepted by many that a business–and not only the online business— stands on a shaky footing if its marketing policy is mostly dependent on email marketing.
A lot of the savvy internet marketers believe that this phenomenon is caused by email deliverability problems. These days, emails just don’t get through as much as they did some years back because of the internet service providers campaign versus spamming. Crawford opines that “Email is being filtered so heavily today that often less than 20% of a large ezine mailing gets delivered.”
In my opinion, I also think that email marketing is gradually becoming obsolete, so I accede with a lot of what Willie Crawford opined in his article. With a lot of sophisticated platforms that are emerging that deliver information with the same, if not more power, than the customary mass email distribution, why must we go through the difficulties of emails getting filtered and blocked?
One of the avenues that can be as useful and might even be a lot better than email marketing is the utilization of micro-blogging sites for example, Twitter. Jason O’Connor illustrates numerous means to efficiently use Twitter as an internet marketing tool in his article “Top Ten Ways To Use Twitter For Marketing”.
One of the best uses for microblogging websites such as Twitter, according to O’Connor, consist of taking advantage of Twitter “to promote new pieces of content you and your company create to drive traffic to your site,” by tweeting links to your company’s valuable “online articles, blog posts, videos and webinars.” The article also incorporated a feature to create your organization’s Twitter followers by making use of Twitter’s search function to unearth people who may have an interest in the products your company sells.
But O’Connor warns us not to manipulate Twitter by just posting links to sales promotions for your products. “It’s important that you don’t abuse Twitter for marketing and promoting your products, services and affiliate links,” he wrote. “Most of your tweets ought to be about offering your followers useful and valuable information. Only once in a while should you try to make use of Twitter to advertise something. “Otherwise, you’ll be perceived as a spammer, and no one wants that tag.”
But there’s a social networking site like Twitter that accepts advertisement with open arms. Wille Crawford (going back to his article) cited a website that “is built on a platform that looks and feels a lot like Twitter, except that it’s built for marketers.” The site is called Sokule, (pronounced “so cool”) and it promotes its members to advertise on the site. SoKule offers a way out to the email marketing quandary by permiting upgraded members to “direct message ALL of their followers a maximum of once every three days. That means that in a very real way, when you build a following on SoKule, you ARE building a list.”
Twitter is prominent. SoKule is not as famous. Twitter has millions of members. SoKule probably has lesser numbers. Beware of being branded as a spammer with Twitter. Market all you want with SoKule. Go for just one or sign up with both. What matters most is that your product gets as much awareness as it needs when the time comes for email marketing to wither away.
Follow me on Twitter.com/legalbear See you there. :-)
Internet Marketing Tools – Podcasts For List Building
Social site bookmarking is another great tool to use to market yourself online. Online bookmarking sites like Digg, Tagfoot, and Lensroll are great tools to use for getting content traffic. Submit your content to these sites, make friends within the social site community, and those friends eventually read your content and possibly make an inquiry about your opportunity. Also the search engines many times pick up the content and you begin to rank in the search engines. There are many factors that are involved in search engine rankings, but with these online bookmarking sites, your content has a great chance of appearing in the search results.
The internet has indeed made it possible for the little man to make it in the network marketing business. The tools are available for free and even makes it possible to earn money while in the process of building your organization. There are other internet resources that can be used but the above internet marketing tools are a great foundation. Remember find the best tool that works for you and achieve the results that you once dreamed about.
What is a podcast you ask? Well, it is a free video or audio series…the easiest way to look at it is like radio of television show…one that you download and play on your computer or iPod or phone.
Are you looking for the right internet marketing tools for your online business?
So if you’re interesting and provide great content in a podcast you will have people who want to listen to it. You know a lot of people like listening to talk radio…but there’s all the interruptions…news, weather, the same commercials over and over. That can be really frustrating, because a 30 minute show might really only have 10 or 15 minutes of content in there.
Podcasts work because a large percent of the population are what is called “auditory learners”…meaning they learn by listening. They don’t want to read your website…they’d rather hear your voice and they’ll be more responsive because they enjoy it better.
Whether you have a list already and you want to expand your audience, or maybe you are new to list building, you can put podcasting into your bag of internet marketing tools. Expand your reach and include people who want to listen rather than read and you will watch your business…and your list…grow!
You could of course do a survey…a basic ASK campaign or SurveyMonkey or whatever. You can ask in your podcast, like maybe at the end of one you ask people to tell you what they’d like to hear about next.
So you don’t have to be the expert…you just find someone who is and you talk to them.
So whether it is for a one-time special interview or a series of podcasts you can literally have your podcast partner be across the country or half-way around the world!
You don’t have to be a professional radio announcer to do a podcast…you are better off just relaxing about it and having a conversation. Some of the most popular podcasts are just that-two people casually talking about a topic.
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Your Sales Copy in the Age of Twitter: Adapt or Die
Classic salesmanship in print required a killer sales copy roughly encompassing these 4 elements: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action – the AIDA principle. This was accomplished initially in direct response sales letter and later adapted for the web in the form of the Long Form Sales Letter that we have been accustomed to all these glorious days. For those not familiar with the make up of a sales letter, there are variations but a common theme is effective use of the AIDA principle starting with a hard to ignore attention-grabbing headline, fast-paced action-packed writing, emotionally hooking anecdotes and fantastic claims couched in reality, tons of endorsement from happy customers who used the service or bought the product being pitched and culminating in an urgent call to action. Think you can’t do this with video? Think again, see this illustration of this internet marketing strategy
With the advent of rich media dominated web 2.0 world what becomes of the beloved Long Form Sales Letter? While there’s a valid reason to be concerned, this is no time for panic. Burying your head in the sand would be counterproductive and absolutely useless. There’s a glimmer of hope for those who understand the fundamentals of the sales process. Dan Kennedy’s 6 steps of sales process outlined in his outrageously amazing book “No B.S Sales Success” is the gold standard. Understanding this process and internalizing it should encourage anyone concerned about the shift towards online video. If you understand online video is just another medium to transmit your pitch, then you should have no problem adopting online video as a vehicle for broadcasting your sales message, getting prospects to take action and having them to stampede in a mad frenzy to your website and buy your stuff.
Another reason to be excited about online video, Infomercials – they provide a template that can be adapted, with some tweaks, to devastating effect. You see, while a hyper-texted web was finding its footing, infomercials were the medium of choice for savvy marketers who figured the dead airtime on cable and broadcast TV were a gold mine. Their bet was that there is a huge potential in late night TV viewership and the rest, like they say, is commentary. These savvy early adopters cleaned out their competitors’ clocks. I sometimes wonder out aloud “Isn’t this true for online video today?”. You shouldn’t wait around…!
Ok, If you understand the sales process and can tweak infomercial tactics for the web how could you accomplish this? Before you leap in here’s a cautionary reminder, online sales video must adhere to the same principles that led to the success of the sales letter: Grab attention, hook the prospect and get the viewer to take action. The catch is to do this in about 5 minutes or less. The actual video used in the sales page is only one of a series of videos that you create. The core of this strategy is adding value to your prospects before they buy one single thing from you. Though it’s possible to make your pitch in your first video, you must promise and deliver tremendous value to the prospect if the prospect takes action. Providing social proof, establishing authority and having a ‘reason why’ should be the other key components of your core strategy. This is the secret sauce to video marketing success just as in sales letter – remember the essence of the sales letter hasn’t changed much since Ben Franklin.
Here’s an excellent video that does just that – Spoiler Alert! Self Promo – not that there’s anything wrong with that;). You can start thinking of ways of incorporating its approach to your online marketing campaigns
There’s always understandable angst to adopting new techniques, process and ways of doing things. Yet, adapting to rich media based world is a reality you can’t avoid. Rock and roll with this sucker so that you can dominate your niche. You don’t want me to tell you what happens if you ignore online video…You really don’t…Get to work and take action today, break out the screen cam software, Powerpoint or Keynote Presentation and start playing with that webcam.
In upcoming posts we will discuss tools and services that will make the whole process doable and dare I say, fun eh?