Follow Up Or Fail

Writen by Ken Mathie

Why it is important to follow up your subscribers...

The mentality of put up a sales page and expect to make a sale boggles the imagination. People think that's all it takes. Logical right? You see the product, like the product, buy the product. Simple, clean and easy. Unfortunately, Internet marketing is nowhere near that easy. If it was, everybody would be doing it and making a fortune doing it. That is why the saying "follow up or fail" is one of the most important things you MUST learn when running a business online. Otherwise, you are opening yourself up to heartbreak the likes that you can't even imagine.

For starters, NEVER try to sell somebody something right away. Why? For one thing, the Internet has become such a hangout for crooks that most people online have already been the victims of a scam at one time or another. Because of this, they are very leery of buying anything, especially from somebody they don't know. You have to gain their trust. And believe me, this isn't an easy thing to do.

Okay, so how do you gain a subscribers trust? By doing just that. Make them a subscriber to begin with. Don't sell them anything. Give them something for free, most preferably, information. A newsletter series on Internet marketing might be a good start. Educate them on what it takes to properly run a business online. Teach them advertising methods that work. Show them how to use these techniques. Then, after they see that your information has actually produced results, they may actually write to you and tell you.

But, they may not. That's why follow up is so important. After you have given them your whole series, write to them. Ask them what they thought about the series. If it was helpful to them, they may write back and tell you. They may also ask if you have anything else that can be of help to them. This is where you can start suggesting things that they would have to pay for. Their thinking at this point is that you have already helped them this much for free so maybe this other product will really make a big difference in their results. You have already shown them you're honest so they are more likely to trust you. Once somebody trusts you, that is half the battle won.

But what it they write back and tell you that the information you gave them did not work at all. This can lead to two things. Maybe, if you are able to get into a conversation with them, you can find out a step in the process that they misunderstood, or maybe something really doesn't work anymore. This is vital information to your business and you can use it to make much needed changes to your newsletter and maybe even to your product itself.

The bottom line is this. Without follow up and feedback you are working in the dark. Working in the dark can only lead to failure.

That's why we say, "follow up or fail."

It's a good motto to live by.

Learn more…

PMCezine" Internet Marketing Bulletins... Receive weekly up-to-date powerful marketing tips, strategies, and secrets to grow your online business. Money making tips and tricks you must use to save you massive amounts of profit & time, increase sales & ad responses. You don't want to miss this ezine... A must read! Receive 6 FREE gifts when you subscribe!

mailto:PMCezine-13@smartprosystems.com

http://www.promarketers-club.com

Copyright 2006 – Ken Mathie. Editor PMCezine... You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made, the author's name is retained and the link to our site URL remains active.

Niche Marketing How To Find Your Perfect Niche Market

Writen by Herman Drost

If you don't find a niche market for the product or service you offer, you will have a difficult time being successful. Most newcomers who wish to do business on the Internet often market to everyone they can find with the expectation that everyone will do business with them. This is the same as throwing mud against the wall and hoping some of it will stick. They have not yet found their niche market.

What is niche marketing?

A niche market is composed of individuals and businesses that have similar interests and needs, which can be readily identified and that can be easily targeted and reached.

Finding a niche for your business means finding a great product or service for a highly targeted audience.

Here's the process to find your niche business

1. Find a niche product or service you are passionate about. This will greatly improve your chances of being successful. Why? Because it's the only way you're going to be able to devote the kind of time and effort to create a meaningful web site, build up the right traffic, generate worthwhile income, and enjoy what you're doing.

2. Choose a niche product you are knowledgeable about. Reflect on what skills, hobbies or products you know the most about. If you don't have the knowledge yet, then choose a niche product that you would love to promote, then spend the necessary time to research it, so you can eventually become an expert in your marketing field.

3. Define your niche market - do the necessary research to see if there is a market for your niche product. To create a profitable business for your niche product, you need to ask yourself these questions:

a) Is there sufficient demand for it? - if you choose a field that is too broad it may be hard to stand out from the competition. For example, camping equipment could be your niche product. Well, unless you are a large corporation such as Sports Authority (a large retail store in my town), you won't stand out from the crowd. However, a more highly targeted niche product could be Coleman Camping Equipment.

b) Keyword research - use keyword tools such as the overture suggestion tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion) or wordtracker (wordtracker.com) to find how many people are searching each month on keywords related to your niche product.

Here's an example:

According to overture (at the time of writing this article), the keyword phrase "camping equipment" was searched 76164 times in one month. If you do a search on Google.com for camping equipment you will find 1,610,000 web sites show up - heck, that's too competitive.

However "coleman camping equipment" generated 1242 searches in one month according to overture. Google.com shows 93,200 competing websites. That's much better though still somewhat competitive.

Tip: Notice there are not many web sites (even the top ones), that have "coleman camping equipment" in their titles. This is just one of the ways to obtain a high ranking on the search engines for your newly targeted web site. This will then provide lots of targeted traffic to your site.

c) Take a survey – you may already have products or services that you selling to your customers. If so, ask questions within your survey about what product or service would help your customers business. If it can help them save time by gaining more knowledge or automating tasks, you could have a winner.

d) Create Your Own Unique Selling Position (USP) - study your competition to find out what they emphasize about the product which makes them stand out from the crowd. Then decide on something that will make your business unique from the others. It could be something unique about the product (ie discount coleman camping equipment) or you could choose a more highly defined target market (ie boyscout organizations and clubs throughout the USA that use coleman's camping equipment).

4. Build and promote your web site - to develop a profitable web site for your niche product you need to create a number of informative pages that will not only attract visitors from the search engines, but inform and move them to purchase from your site.

Read my article, "How to Create a Web Site That Sells" (http://www.isitebuild.com/buildingA.htm).

Niche marketing is the key to developing a profitable business that will make you stand out from the crowd. By doing the necessary research and building an informative web site, you will become an expert in your niche marketing field.

Resources
ebook - "Strike it Niche"

Herman Drost is the author of the popular ebook: 101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your Web Site Subscribe to his "Marketing Tips" newsletter for more original articles at: subscribe@isitebuild.com. You can read more of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles

5 Internet Marketing Tips For Newbies

Writen by Jinger Jarrett

Although there are over 100 ways to market your business on the internet, some methods will get you a lot more traffic than others.

Unlike the offline world, where advertising is very effective, content rules the internet. You'll develop a more effective marketing campaign when you focus on strategies centered around developing content for your site.

Below are some of my most effective ways to market online, and I do it all for free.

1. Search Engines

Before you even develop your website, the first thing you should do is focus on the search engines. Organic, i.e. free search engine listings that are highly ranked, will get you far more traffic than using any kind of advertising.

The most important thing you should do here is find the right keywords. You can do this by using any of the pay per click search tools. You can also download a free tool like Good Keywords, http://www.goodkeywords.com

2. Articles

Writing articles not only allows you to brand yourself as an expert, it helps you to create original content for your website. The more quality content pages you have in your site, the higher it will rank in the search engines, and you will also create a viral marketing strategy for your business.

3. Press Releases

Press releases are news. Just like the offline world, where press releases are more effective than advertising, so too are they more effective online.

You should remember to focus on news about your business. Don't make your release a glorified sales letter. It will get rejected.

A simple search for press release writing will help you find resources to help you write an effective press release.

Press releases, like articles, are spider, or search engine food. The search engines love them, and a good release can be very viral.

4. Blogs/RSS

Blogging is the latest craze online. It's a very effective way to promote your business not only because of RSS, but because you can quickly and easily create content without knowing HTML, and with trackback, it has its own built in link building strategy.

RSS is nothing more than a very search engine friendly code that allows you to syndicate your content to other websites, or to be read in RSS readers.

With trackbacks, you can link back to other sites and build your links. This raises your search engine rankings.

5. Free reports

Free reports, like blogs, articles, and press releases, not only allow you to build a content strategy for your website, but you will also create a viral marketing strategy for your site.

A viral marketing strategy is very important because it's mainly passive. If you create good content, your content will be recommended by others. One person reads your content and recommends it to someone else, and before you know it, your content is all over the internet. The more entries you have in the search engines, the more likely you are to be found by your potential customers.

The point is, if you develop an effective content and search engine strategy for your business, you will get your message out a lot faster. Potential customers will find you, and they'll be eager for what you sell because they were already looking for you.

Jinger Jarrett is a certified Web CEO Search Engine Optimization professional living in Alpharetta, GA. You can get her best free search engine resources, software, and ebooks when you download her free toolbar from her special offers page at http://www.jingerjarrett.com

Internet Marketing Or Just Marketing

Writen by Rob Coxworth

What is so special about internet marketing? Is it really a different animal with special rules unique to itself or is it just another way to go to market?

Any thoughtful marketer or ebiz wiz realizes that it's both. The internet truly is a unique place to conduct business. Like any market place it has its unique rules, jargon and ways of going about its business. Internet marketing is also about people; communicating and meeting the needs of real people for goods, services, entertainment and information.

Today, the incredibly complex and rapidly changing world of search engine positioning dominates the thought and time of anyone trying to advance their agenda or bank balance online. My experience as an online seller for several years is that good, old-fashioned marketing has been too often sacrificed on the alter of page rank.

Marketers of any kind must never forget that they are talking to and trying to influence people. The search engine spiders don't buy anything, they don't even get an allowance. Taking the generally accepted principles of SEO as holy writ can cost you business and definitely take the fun out of doing business.

When I started my firm, Webfoot Leisure, I was in total ignorance of how the savvy e-marketer should name a site. It wasn't until my original name was too deeply embedded to easily change that I learned that my site name and logo (a happy cartoon duck) were completely inappropriate and would make good page ranking more difficult. I needed keywords in the title, it had to reflect the metatag description etc. etc. I was crushed! I had thought long and hard about the name and logo and thought it was memorable, appropriate and flexible. I thought it was sound marketing!

Funny thing was, I found I was right! My customers remembered the site because it WAS different, the logo was attractive and it stood out. I even signed emails "Dr. Duck" and ran a help column in this disguise. This proves to be a real plus as most online shoppers visit 6-9 sites before purchasing. Remembering who's who is a real challenge. Customers told me countless times that my site got orders because they could remember the name and logo. Breaking the SEO rules cut through clutter.

My point is not that SEO is worthless or off target. Quite the contrary, SEO is vital to success on the web. My argument is that SEO rules are not infallible. We're making it up as we go and sometimes we get it wrong. When you're evaluating any web strategy it's a good idea to go back to Marketing 101 and see if what you're considering really does make sense. The internet is about people. And people always have and always will respond to proven sales and marketing strategies. We forget them at our peril.

Rob "Dr. Duck" Coxworth founded and operates WebfootLeisure.com. an online retailer of swimming pools, supplies and equipment. A twenty -five year veteran of the swimmimng pool industry, Mr. Coxworth has enjoyed almost every minute of the challenge to build a successful retail site.

Think Outside The Box Home Internet Business Ideas

Writen by Jon Evans

Imagine never having to leave your home to work. Not having to deal with traffic, office politics, annoying co-workers, or pretentious bosses make excellent arguments to working out of the comfort of your own home. Additionally, you can create your own schedule and work around your responsibilities currently in your life. Whatever your needs, starting a business is a monumental task and you should carefully weigh all your home business idea's. There are a great many options for an entrepreneur to consider when developing a home business, so choose an option that fits into your passions, experiences, and lifestyle.

There are a variety of types of home businesses. You may wish to sell goods over the internet or provide necessary services for potential clients. In this advanced age of technology in which we all live, more and more individuals are turning to the World Wide Web for a variety of reasons. Whatever you wish to be the focus of your business, there is certainly a market on the internet. There are people in every corner of the globe on the search for everything under the sun. The trick being owning an entrepreneur home business is marketing your products or services for your target audience.

When it comes to ideas for home businesses, the sky is the limit. Whether you choose to sell custom jewelry over the internet or hock home-made jam, businesses that sell a wide variety of products prove to be quite successful internet ventures. With the popular of online auction sites and marketplaces, including the phenomenally-successful eBay, the world of online vending is made a great deal easier. Using these websites, you can easily promote your business and goods to a huge bank of customers who use the site on a regular basis to purchase any item you desire.

If you wish to sell services, the internet is an excellent place to start. Especially if you have experience or training in a technical field, hocking your services online are an excellent place. There are many individuals in need of technical assistance and website development. If you have the capability to provide such services, you should seriously consider starting an internet-based consulting firm. Regardless what your skills may be, there is certainly a market on the internet.

When you embark on the quest to being an internet-based business, you should take great care to sort out reliable, legitimate opportunities from scams. Many potential entrepreneurs are scared away from beginning their own home business due to the vast amount of scams present. These false opportunities promise money made quickly but often result in money lost. When you come across an opportunity that sounds too good to be true, it very well may be. Approach each potential opportunity with great wariness and extreme caution. If necessary, you may wish to contact the Better Business Bureau for information on any company who is promising fast money. Beware of pyramid schemes that will take away most of your hard earned profit.

Whatever you ideas you choose to explore for developing your online business, committing to a business plan will ensure your success. If you have the skills and drive, your business will become a viable means of income for your and your family. Whether you choose to use this business as a buffer for your budget or your main means of income, thinking outside the box and developing a multitude of ideas will assist you with finding the perfect business idea. Developing an internet business may be done out of your home but is no laughing matter. It will take a great deal of hard work and discipline to get your business off the ground, but focusing on the perfect idea will make it a labor of love.

Jon Evans runs http://www.SuccessAlert.net and has written the book Success Alert - Conversations with Successful Internet Entrepreneurs which has been widely acclaimed in a variety of online and print media. If you're interested to find home business ideas this book is an absolute must-read!