Find Your Marketing Strength - Part 2

In part one we talked about why focus in marketing is so important. This part goes into more detail about various forms of marketing, and why it's so important they be focused on.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Possible one form of marketing that requires the most focus. Just throwing in a few keywords or doing link exchanges without a purposes will get you nowhere in the search engines. SEO must be learned, practiced, and studied. A site is not optimized, a page is. So you need to work on optimizing one page at a time.

Is it worth the time? Absolutely! If this is something which interests you, and you enjoy writing content. If not, you might do better with another form of marketing.

2. Blogs
You may have been told blogs are a great way to pull in traffic. This is true. But it's another form of marketing which requires dedication. Setting up a blog and putting up a few posts a year isn't going to help much. If you use blogging as a marketing tool, be ready to post to your blog at LEAST once a week (more if you want the blog to really help your business).

Blogs make great "search engine food" because they are pure content and updated on a regular basis. This form of marketing works well if you enjoy SEO as well, since they can be easily focused on together. Just like SEO though, if you don't enjoy writing content this isn't for you.

3. Article Marketing
If for some reason a blog is out of the question, article marketing may be a form of marketing for you. Similar to blogging, you need to be able to write. Not quite as much as blogging, but still several articles a month are required for this form of marketing to work.

Basically what you'll do is write articles related to your business. Pick out a few of the top article directories on the net and submit your article. If done on a regular basis, you will soon have a steady flow of traffic to your site. This form works especially well for those attempting to gain subscribers to a newsletter.

4. Forum Marketing
A newer concept in online marketing, but still one which can have a huge impact on your business. In part one we mentioned one of the "basics" of business was some involvement in communities (meaning you are a member of 2 or 3 message boards or groups, and offer advice at least once a week). Forum Marketing (or "network marketing") takes that a step further.

Instead of just stopping in occasionally, this is one of the only tasks you do. You aren't just a member of a few communities, but rather 10 or more. For those who have been told "don't spend all your time at groups and boards", well you will love that we've just given you permission to do just that. If of course you love to help people, share ideas, and spend all your day chatting. Yes this really IS a form of marketing!

The idea behind this is your are making a name for yourself at any given community. You aren't spamming them, but rather becoming a respected member. Although for it to be absolutely beneficial, you must be involved with a community that's also your target market. If you have trouble finding a community, start one. Either a message board or yahoo group works just fine. Actively chatting with your target market is a fantastic form of marketing!

5. Paid Advertising
While some may shy away from this form of marketing just because of the cost, others have built an entire business with nothing but paid ads. Those who enjoy math will flock to this form, since it requires figuring out your return on investment (ROI). The goal is to spend less than you make.......and use money to make money.

It too requires focus, despite what some may think. The rewards can be huge if you unlock this form of marketing though. Testing is required to see which ads pull in the most money for you. You also need to search for various types of paid advertising which will earn you the most ROI.

There are many, many more forms of marketing online and offline as well. We've only just scratched the surface! As we've mentioned in both parts of these articles, focus is required for ANY form of marketing.

However, it is acceptable to focus on more than one IF they are enjoyable and successful for you. As long as you are keeping a focus on what works, your business will succeed.

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Kara Kelso & Anita DeFrank, owners of DirectSalesHelpers.com strive
to help women succeed in direct sales. For additional help with your direct sales business, visit http://www.directsaleshelpers.com.


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Find Your Marketing Strength - Part 1

There are hundreds of different ways to market your business both online and offline. While it's good in the beginning to test out various types of marketing, you'll eventually going to want to focus on how you market best.

Finding your strength in marketing is going to have a huge impact on your business. You'll be able to spend your time focused ONLY on what works, instead of scattered in a various directions.

Also, when focused on just two or three different forms of marketing, you are able to gain the maximum benefits from those forms. When your focus is scattered, you aren't going to benefit near as much.

Let us give you an example. Let's say you are good at writing articles, and they have proved to help your business. Not just "alright" at writing, but you can write several articles a day without problems. You spend half your time on the articles, and the rest of the time doing "busy" activities that aren't beneficial to your business. Had you spent all that time on articles, how much further would your business be right now?

Here's another example. You enjoy learning about search engine optimization, but haven't quite fully learned it just yet. Instead of learning more, you throw a few keywords on your website then move on to something else. Will just a few keywords help? Absolutely not. Instead of focusing on that form of marketing, you've only done a small part thus making it almost a pointless task.

Before going any further let us say this - there is NOTHING wrong with seeking out new forms of marketing. However, most marketing is not a "quick fix" or a "set and forget". It takes time to make any form of marketing work in your favor. But if you don't enjoy it nor focus on it, it's never going to work for you.

Also realise there are certain "basics" to any marketing plan that you are going to need to learn. Websites, newsletters, and some imvolvement in communities (we say "some" because "full" involvment is a marketing form all on it's own) are all things you must do.

Bottom line is - marketing is just like chosing your business. Success comes with passion and ability to focus. Now that you understand this, in part two we'll discuss some of the various ways to market and why focus in each are important.

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Kara Kelso & Anita DeFrank, owners of DirectSalesHelpers.com strive
to help women succeed in direct sales. For additional help with your direct sales business, visit http://www.directsaleshelpers.com.

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Newsletter or Ezine Advertising

Online Advertising Secrets Exposed - Part 5

This is one of the most direct ways that you can advertise online. Newsletters, often referred to as ezines are like magazines online. Most of the time they are presented in a newsletter format rather than an actual magazine. But they have one very big advantage over most types of online advertising. They are very targeted to a particular topic. They are not paid for, except with a few exceptions such as financial and scientific ezines, but are usually sent free to their subscribers. The way that the owner makes money from their ezine is through advertising, either for their own products, or other people’s products that they have an affiliate link for, so that they get a percentage of the sale.


Because the readers of the ezine have signed up for them and receive them on a regular basis, they are very targeted on their market. After all if the readers were not interested then they would just unsubscribe. Any ezine owner that has a successful ezine also knows that they have to give their readers good content and not just advertising. There has to be a balance where the main emphasis is on the content, providing good informative content for the readers that is both interesting and useful and occasional advertising. But even then to be really effective the advertising has to fit in with the context of the article so that it is more seen as helping them to find something that could help them with a problem than just trying to sell them something.

A lot of ezine owners sell advertising space in their ezines because it is a good way to make extra money. But you have to be very careful that the ezine audience is the same as you need for your product and if the owner gives you advice on how to write your ad you should listen, as they know their readers.

It can’t go unsaid that you should also start your own ezine by collecting subscribers from your site and from your customers. If you give them quality content and occasional offers, especially if you give them a good discount, then you will be able to sell to the same readers again and again. But you need to make sure that the ezine is good so that they keep reading. Ezine advertising is a really good way to start getting good conversions for your products and when you start to get your own subscribers then you will begin to see your profits grow.

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Anita DeFrank, owner of http://www.MommysHelperOnline.com is a busy work at home mom. MommysHelperOnline.com is the leading resource available online built to assist you with your home business. Whether you're brand new to the work at home game or you're an old pro, be sure to stop by today.

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Are You Tracking?

The first sale off your website comes in. You're so excited, everyone you know hears about it. Before you know you see another, and another. When you are asked where the visitor came from, you may shrug and think it's unimportant. What matters is you got paid, right?

WRONG.

One of the most important aspects of business is knowing what makes you sales and what doesn't. You end up wasting time and money repeating actions that don't make you money. If you knew where those visitors were coming from, then you could duplicate the efforts in that specific area.

Let's put this way. Say you run 10 ads in different places, each costing you $5 each. You make 10 sales from all those ads. To duplicate those results without tracking, you'd have to spend another $50. But if you tracked those visitors you would only spend more money on the ads that worked.

The same goes with other forms of advertising. Let's say you visit 5 message boards every day as your main method of advertising (which we don't recommend by the way). It brings you 5 sales a week. If you track your visitors you can easily see which message board is bringing the traffic, cutting the time you spend on message boards down to maybe 2 or 3 a day instead.

So what can you do to track your visitors?

Simply set up a stat tracker of some kind on your website. And yes, even if you are given a rep website from your company, you NEED a website. This is one of the reasons why you do. We can't stress this enough. Your online business will be VERY limited without your own website.

Tracking is very important to any online business. It doesn't matter what type of business you run, you absolutely need to know where your visitors are coming from to increase your sales.

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Kara Kelso & Anita DeFrank, owners of DirectSalesHelpers.com strive
to help women succeed in direct sales. For additional help with your direct sales business, visit http://www.directsaleshelpers.com

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Advertising Through Content Sites

Online Advertising Secrets Exposed - Part 3

Content sites are one of the more effective ways to advertise online. If you have your own content site, then you are making your own traffic by advertising in the search engines. This means that as long as your content site is on the same topic as the product that you are trying to sell, then your traffic is going to be much more targeted. The people that are going to your site are going there to find information, so it doesn’t take a genius to realize, they are interested in that topic. So, common sense tells you that to make the best use of that traffic, you have to sell something that relates to the same topic.

You need to make sure that the quality of the content on the site is good. If the content on your site isn’t any good, then the people who go to your site will be unlikely to buy from you. But if it is good, then they will be more likely to view that product as being good as well.

You’ll also want to make sure that the content on your site is mostly original. If you just have the same content that other sites have from article sites, then the search engines will just see it as duplicate content and they will not send people to your site. But if you have original content on your site then the search engines will send properly targeted traffic to you. So if you have the right products that match the content, then you have a good chance of them converting well.

Content sites are one of the best ways of advertising online, because once the site is built and you have plenty of back links to it, then all you have to do is add content on a regular basis keeping it fresh. Another reason is because aside of the hosting costs, you have a free source of good traffic that you can send to your sales page. And in return, you’ll get targeted traffic that is interested in the product that you are selling for very little cost to you.

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Anita DeFrank, owner of http://www.MommysHelperOnline.com is a busy work at home mom. MommysHelperOnline.com is the leading resource available online built to assist you with your home business. Whether you're brand new to the work at home game or you're an old pro, be sure to stop by today.

Targeting Your Online Advertising

Online Advertising Secrets Exposed - Part 2

When targeting your online advertising, keep in mind that there are hundreds of millions of web users and at least some of them are probably looking for a product just like yours. This gives you a huge potential for profit if your product is good, your advertising is seen by them and if it lets them know how good your product is and why it would be a good thing for them to buy.

But if you are not targeted enough in your audience, then it is quite likely that you will either waste a lot of money, a lot of effort, or both. Many people, when they start advertising online, try to keep their advertising as wide as possible, placing ads just about anywhere. The reason behind this is usually that they think that the more people that see the advertising, the more they will sell. After all a product that is seen by millions of people will sell better than a product that is seen by thousands, right?

Although this sounds reasonable and in fact may be partly correct, it does not work in the context of getting a return on your effort and money. If you are advertising an exercise machine that is usually bought by women hoping to tone their thighs, there is no point in advertising it just as an exercise machine. If you do this you will be spending your advertising budget on advertising it to runners, body builders, people recovering from a broken leg, soldiers, athletes and who knows how many others. Unfortunately, many of these people will probably never buy it but you will still be paying for the advertising. However, if you sell directly to middle class women in their twenties, then you are much more likely to get a better return on your investment.

All of this is especially important if you are using pay per click advertising. Then you will want to make sure that the only people clicking on your ads are those more likely to buy. That way you get a much better return on your investment and your advertising will be much more successful. So ultimately, a lot less people may see the advertising, but it will be seen by those that are actually interested in buying it rather than those that will probably not.

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Anita DeFrank, owner of http://www.mommyshelperonline.com/ is a busy work at home mom. MommysHelperOnline.com is the leading resource available online built to assist you with your home business. Whether you're brand new to the work at home game or you're an old pro, be sure to stop by today.
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Online Advertising Secrets Exposed

An overview of online advertising ...

Online advertising can be a very cost-effective solution to promote your business or product. There are many different types and although many can give you good exposure for your money, some can lose you money very quickly if you do not know how to do it properly. Online advertising is not the same as offline advertising. It is in many ways a much more direct medium than TV or magazines.

If someone is looking at a web page that you are advertising on, then it is because they have chosen to go to that page. Of course it could be that they are just surfing around, but people these days tend to be more web savvy and targeted in what they are looking for and in the sites that they look at. Most people now use more targeted searches and so if you target your advertising well enough so that it appears in places that are highly relevant to your site, then it is quite likely that you will get a good result.

There are many different types of online advertising such as, pixel advertising, ezines, banner ads, article marketing, forum marketing, text links, pop ups, ecourses, back end product sales, content sites, pay per click, joint ventures, viral marketing, and thats to name just a few. You have to decide which is the best for your product and/or service. If you're not experienced, one of the easiest ways is to find out what methods the bigger sellers in your market are using. If they're successful in the same market as you, then it is a good bet that this type of advertising works well with that market. But that only means that it is a good place to start, after you have had some success, you will have a better idea of what the market wants and what other ways you could advertise to them.

Online advertising is really like any other type of advertising in that you have to know your market and what they want. You also need to know the right way to reach them. The best way is if you are a part of this market and are interested in what you are selling, so that you will know what they want. But if you are not, then it is a good idea to do some research. Visit sites that are on the same subject (especially forums) to find out what they are interested in. That way you will know what to sell them and how to sell it.

Online advertising can help give you exposure to your business if it's done properly. It can be very lucrative or you can loose some money. Do your research, advertise properly and you'll be on the lucrative side with no problem at all.

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Anita DeFrank, owner of MommysHelperOnline.com is a busy work at home mom. MommysHelperOnline.com is the leading resource available online built to assist you with your home business. Whether you're brand new to the work at home game or you're an old pro, be sure to stop by today.
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