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Internet
Marketing The 'Right' Way
As with anything in life, there's a right way and a wrong way to use
the Internet for marketing. It's especially important to know the
difference at the beginning. Otherwise, you may make some mistakes which
may jeopardize your chances at ever using the Internet for your business.
Literally, you can be banned from the Internet. It's happened before.
Don't let it happen to you promote your business the correct way, and
you'll have a far better chance at finding success on the Internet.
MARKETING VIA EMAIL
Email is the easiest method of Internet marketing for the beginner to
understand, as it is so similar to "traditional" marketing
methods. You're sending the prospect a marketing message, but instead of
sending it through the regular mail, you're emailing it directly to them.
It's quicker, cheaper, and more efficient.
Where do you find people to email your marketing message to? From other
Internet marketing techniques that will be discussed later in this report.
There is, though, one particular technique you should avoid.
In the "real world," it's easy to rent a mailing list of people
with a specific interest in the type of product or service you're selling.
You can then send your marketing materials to the people on this list,
feeling relatively sure that they may be interested in what you have to
offer. It's hard to do this on the Internet, though, because of the sheer
number of people accessing the Internet.
There are companies, though, that will do mass emailings for a price. One
particular company advertises that they will send your marketing message
to 6,000,000 email addresses for under $200. This naturally sounds
attractive to the marketer in us how else could you contact so many people
at such a low price?
Let's think about this, though. Is this a good deal? Maybe, maybe not.
This is akin to sending your marketing message to everyone in the phone
book. Probably 80 percent of the people will have no interest whatsoever
in what you're selling. It's highly untargeted, which will result in low
conversion percentages. More important, is it the right thing to do?
NO
Mass emailing is called spamming, and it is the number one offense you can
commit on the Internet. Most people have to pay for their Internet access,
and many of them pay by the hour (and, thus, by the minute). Another large
group of them have to call long distance, since they have no local access
phone number. In other words, most of the people you send your mass email
to are paying to download it and read it, without having requested it.
Now, most levelheaded people will see the first few lines of the email,
recognize it as an unrequested marketing message, and will delete it
without thinking twice. There are people out there, though, that take it
as a personal affront, an invasion of their privacy, and a waste of their
money to receive your spammed email. They will respond vigorously with
pranks and threats. If you've put your phone number in your email, you
will receive a ton of phone calls at all times of the night.
If you've included your mailing address, you may find that your address
has been passed on to military recruiters, religious organizations,
pornographers, and all other kinds of people whom you may not want to
receive mail from. At the very least, you should expect a flood of email
full of complaints and vulgarities to your own email address. I've even
heard of people replying to spammed emails with hundreds of pages of the
same four letter word repeated over and over, so the "spammer"
can get a taste of their own medicine.
It's up to you whether you want to market your business this way. I
acknowledge that a marketing message going out to 6,000,000 people is
bound to bring in some sales. However, you take the risk of receiving a
lot of complaints and wasted time, as well as the possibility of losing
your Internet access completely. How? You could receive so many replied
emails that your service provider's computer system will get jammed up,
preventing other customers from being able to use the Internet. Your
provider will politely ask you to go elsewhere for your Internet access,
and your name will go on a list of spammers which is circulated amongst
Internet providers. You may find yourself unable to get Internet access in
the future. It's up to you.
MARKETING VIA USENET NEWSGROUPS
Usenet newsgroups are individual special interest bulletin boards. You can
post a question, an answer, information, whatever, to a newsgroup, and
anyone else can read it. Likewise, you can read anyone else's postings.
This is a heavily used area for information sharing. Used correctly, it
can also be a successful marketing opportunity.
Before we go on, you should know that very few newsgroups accept blatant
advertising. This is a very subtle technique that may take a few tries to
perfect. The key is to frequent the newsgroups that have a connection to
your products or services (if you're selling information that is helpful
for small business owners, for example, then you should look for
newsgroups that small business owners would read), and present pertinent
useful information or answers to questions, and include a short marketing
message in your sig.
Your sig is your "signature" at the end of your posting. It can
be up to six lines long (though a four line maximum is more universally
"acceptable"), and can contain information on how to contact you
(email, phone, and otherwise), as well as some short information about
your business. Readers who are interested in hearing more about what you
have to offer can then contact you. At that point, feel free to give them
whatever marketing information you'd like; they requested it.
You will have the most success with this technique if you: a) stay
"on-topic" in your postings - don't answer someone's question
with a one-line answer, only to launch into a two-page sales letter, let
your sig do the work; and b) don't overdo it - you should have the mindset
that you are trying to help the readers of the newsgroup, and, afterwards,
get the word out about your business, not the other way around.
A good idea would be to request and read the FAQ (frequently asked
question list) from every newsgroup you plan to post in. That way, you
will know their exact policy on advertising, information that may be
included in a sig, the exact topics they cover, etc. This will prevent any
postings that are "against the rules."
MARKETING VIA WORLD WIDE WEB
The World Wide Web offers the most flexible solution for marketing on the
Internet. You are free to put up whatever information you'd like, in
whatever quantity you'd like. After all, you're the one paying for the
space. Plus, you can put links on your pages so people can instantly send
an email to you for more information, you can have forms for them to fill
out, you can even take orders on your pages.
Preparing content for the web can be very easy. In many cases, you can use
the same materials you use in your printed mailings. Of course, they will
have to be converted to the HTML document markup language that web pages
are made of. This is not difficult to do yourself, once you've learned
how. If you don't want to learn how, if you don't have a scanner for
importing any images from your marketing materials, or if you want a
sophisticated website with forms and product order-taking and/or delivery
capabilities, you should choose a professional website designer to take
care of it for you.
Of course, there's more to it than just putting up your website: you need
to promote it. Luckily, this is easy to do. There are over a dozen
"search engines" (databases of websites) on the web, each of
which you can submit information about your website to. All it entails is
accessing the website of each search engine, and reading the details on
submissions. If you have a professional design your website, see if they
include this in their services - a good web designer will make this a part
of the package. And don't confine your publicizing to online. Be sure to
promote your website in the "real world" through paid
advertising, press releases, etc., just like a product.
You will need to ensure that people who visit your website will want to
come back frequently. Do this by changing your content on a regular basis.
For example, if you have informational reports that they can download for
free, rotate the reports so new ones are available at least every two
weeks. Contests can be a good idea, too. For example, give a free product
to the person who collects all the clues that you sprinkle throughout your
website over a two month period.
Put these techniques together, and you'll have an Internet marketing
machine!
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