Blogging can be a very effective strategy for website advertising. By linking your blog to your site, you post content that you want visitors to remember, comment on, and use it to lead them to visit your site to learn more of what you have to offer. You can use the blog to announce special offers, promote new products, and create a rapport with current and potential customers. If you open your blog up for comments, not only can you invite customers to openly review your products, you can also find out what is lacking, and what you can do to drive up sales, and satisfy your customer base.

By linking your blog to both your website and other sites, like social media sites, you promote your product, your website and your company, all at the same time. On sites such as Facebook, you can post free ads in the Marketplace to attract even more traffic. As long as you can keep the blog current, it will continue to draw viewers, and hopefully buyers. Should you be lucky enough to have so much business that you need to outsource the blog entries, remember that you will need to maintain the same level of quality it had when you began, and you should instruct any ghost blogger about that requirement.

PPC

PPC stands for “pay-per-click,” and using this system means creating a series of ads for posting online. These ads are posted on the sidebar on most search engine result pages, and should be worded so that they catch the customers’ curiosity, and are an effective website advertising tool for drawing visitors and potential customers to your site. You are charged a fee by the posting service for every click that occurs, from the ad to your site. There are ways to maximize its effectiveness, and the methods may vary from site to site. This system can become quite profitable once you figure out the click parameters of having your ads posted through PPC, and can learn how to maximize the per-click ratios.

Email Marketing

Often confused with spam mailings, email marketing is sent only to those visitors to your site that take advantage of any free listings on your site’s mailing list. This is a good way to promote your site, your products, and any other special deals and offers available as part of your marketing campaigns.

By creating newsletters and advertising gimmicks for your site and the products you have, you are not only keeping your loyal customer base apprised of any new things that may be coming, you are also keeping the lines of communication with your customers open, just like with the blog. Word of mouth has been the traditionally fastest method of promotion, and the advent of the Internet has only made it faster, with a much larger reach.

Web marketing methods

1. Affiliate Marketing

This strategy involves registering visitors to your site to act as promoters for you on their own web pages. They are paid for this service, with a percentage from any sales generated through their promotions.

2. Article Marketing

Articles are written and posted on the website so that your business gains credibility through current and relevant content.

3. Blog Marketing

Blogs are created with daily or weekly posts explaining services and promoting products, with links to your website for further information.

4. Internet Marketing

This strategy involves promoting your site and products through ads placed on search engines using PPC and AdSense services.

5. Niche Marketing

Created ads and site content that focuses primarily on products or services not usually considered to be part of the mainstream market focus.

6. SEO Marketing

This strategy utilizes keywords carefully used on your website to attract robots and spiders to them. These are usually sent by search engines to surf the Internet for new, relevant and concise information generated by the keywords entered by users. This is how search engine result pages are created.

Promotional Methods Used

1. Blogs

Blogs can provide daily and weekly updates, news, and commentary about current products and services, as well as promoting them through reviews and opinion pieces. Links throughout these posts will send traffic to your website.

2. Social Networking

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have become valuable assets when you want to promote your business through social media. By posting ads on these sites, as well as developing pages dedicated to your business, you are utilizing the age-old method of “word of mouth” to drive new traffic, and customers, to your business.

3. RSS Feeds

RSS feeds allow visitors to subscribe to your newsletters and blogs so that they can receive updates directly through their email inboxes. This allows you to get instant information out there, directly to your customer base, and will also allow you to track the impact these releases have on your sales.

4. Viral Marketing

This is the practice of placing hyperlinks within promotional materials like blogs and ads that will lead viewers back to your company’s main website, and can be used to advertise sales, special promotions and new materials.

Utilize Available Networks

If the products you are selling will fit into a popular niche market, the best way to use viral marketing to promote those products is to search out blogs and online communities that may be dedicated to similar products. Most of these are free to join and use, and will allow you to not only reach more customers for your business  but actually reach a global market through these networks. And, it’s all for free!

When used in social media outlets, like Facebook and Twitter, these ads can spread exponentially, as one circle of friends and family tells another about them, and posts links to your ads for viewing. As it circulates, traffic is being generated to your website with every click on a link. To keep this activity constant, expand out to sites like YouTube with video versions of the ads, and the traffic growth rate will go through the ceiling!

Unlimited Mediums

Beyond the Internet, this method of marketing can also have a use in the offline world. By linking rewards and special offers to the electronic ads, you can generate even more sales through these offers. Customers like to receive tangible things beyond the electronic offers, so being able to add an opt-in email list that will be sent coupons to print, offer codes, or even a registry to request catalogs sent by snail mail, will grow your customer base through the advertising tactics that embrace the best of both worlds.

Word of Mouth is the Magic Wand

The thing about this advertising medium is that it is possible that there will be people who may not have seen the video ads yet, or found the links their friends posted last week, because they simply missed them. If one of these late comers posts the link once, the whole process can be restarted through social mediums and email forwarding. And, if you can keep the ads current and relevant on a weekly basis, more links get posted, and so on, and so on, until that cash register cannot be stopped from ringing every second of every day.

Are They Experienced?

Anyone can offer their services as a professional search engine marketing consultant, but the proof of their experience will lie in their prior work, their previous success stories, far more than any spiel they can give you. They need to be able to present you with current and verifiable evidence of their work, which means active links and contact information beyond their resumes or portfolios. You are trusting these specialists with the future success and growth of your business, after all. If a candidate cannot produce such proof, then perhaps they are not the professional you need to hire, after all.

Where Are They Located?

When looking to hire an experienced professional to help you create and implement an effective advertising or marketing campaign, it would be a very good idea to hire someone within the same country as your business. Sure, the Internet itself is a global marketplace, but when it comes to having the access you will need to make certain their campaigns are what you need, it helps to be in the same country, and hopefully in the same time zone, if problems or questions arise. And this does not even take into account the potential problems that language barriers can create. Go local, you will not regret it.

Get the Best You Can!

Before deciding on a final candidate, be sure to go over your budget for advertising and marketing, so that you can be sure to afford the best that you can. Read over any literature from these individuals or firms to determine their service fees, extra charges and licensing programs. You do not want to have someone create all that media for you and not allow you to ever use it independent of their firm. That can lead to more legal issues than you will ever want to be involved in.

There are paid service versions of email platforms available, where companies pay firms a subscription fee to mail any newsletters and promotions to that company’s mailing lists. Open source refers to those packages available to the public for use without a fee. Below are the most popular versions available for download on the Internet today.

1. PHPList

As email marketing tools go, this platform is one of the most popular. Since its launch, this software download garners more than 10,000 new users every month, because it promotes itself as the perfect one-way email announcement system for newsletter and publicity launches. It can manage lists of more than 100,000 subscribers, it quickly detects and removes duplicates, and provides a tracking system so that users can tell who is opening their messages and who is just deleting them. Unlike a lot of the paid systems, it allows users to add attachments, and an email to fax version is in the offing.

2. Mailman

Mailman is used primarily for producing and managing emails. Just like the paid services, Mailman also archives messages, reports on delivery rates and will deal with bounces and spam filters effectively. Its unique platform makes it easy to scale for handling larger mailing lists, and is integrated to work on message boards systems and UNIX-based systems.

3. PoMMo

This platform is downloadable but is managed through a web-based interface. It includes coding so that users can subscribe to mailing lists through a dedicated website, as well as managing standalone lists. It will also allow senders to filter and segment mailing lists, setting up parameters for splitting up deliveries from much longer lists for quicker and more targeted deliveries.

4. Dada Mail

This one does everything the others will, but is also built so that it can be easily integrated with the user’s web hosting account. It is easy to use, and can be set up so that messages can also be sent through RSS feeds and Twitter, and the archives created can be left open for public view.

5. OpenEMM

This is one of the oldest and most sophisticated platforms available for free. In addition to all of the services offered by its competitors, it also offers transaction and time triggered emails, content management, and pre-written scripts for use. This system will run well on both Windows and Linux operating systems.

The varieties of options available for marketing online can be confusing if you are not familiar with them, but with the information we will be giving you, illustrated by making some simple comparisons between strategies, you should be able to understand what is out there for your use to promote your business and websites. The better you understand their versatility, the quicker you will be able to tailor them to your exact needs.

Advertising is Everywhere

In the area of offline marketing, when you want to promote your business, you can advertise in print, like in magazines and newspapers. If you want to do this online, your options are much greater. What you could do with print ads and articles, you can do with blogs, content on websites, and subscriber services for mailing out press releases and advertisements online.

For other media available offline, your choices are radio spots, television commercials and automatic messaging via telephones and cell phones. Online, you can turn those spots into podcasts, online subscriber and satellite radio services, teleseminars through your website, and YouTube broadcasts.

Networking is Key

If you prefer to promote your business through networking arenas, chamber of commerce meetings, or business expos and conventions, there are online versions available as well. Facebook can be used to provide links to interactive meeting sessions through sites like LinkedIn, podcasts and Twitter alerts or chat sessions.

To become used to using online opportunities and strategies, start slowly, and by all means, do not take on any more than you can handle confidently. Ask for advice from friends and relatives that may be more familiar with online media outlets, or hire a firm that specializes in this type of business marketing. Just do not give up, and miss out on the fantastic opportunities of online promotion.

1. Define your Desired Customer

What do you imagine your perfect customer to be like? What are their interests, and why does your product appeal to them? The clearer that you can define the customer you wish to attract, the quicker you can create keywords and copy designed to attract them. This is the most important Internet marketing strategy to develop, because everything will depend on whether the customer is attracted to your keywords, and whether the content on your site is appealing enough to keep them coming back and buying.

2. Targeting Ads

You want any ads you create to attract visitors to be as visible as possible, in as many sites as possible. The site most often visited by potential customers is a search engine, the place they start when they are looking for something. Therefore, it makes sense that you would place the ads meant to attract them on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, the most popular sites for searching out keywords. Check out services like AdSense and AdWords for advice on placement, content and visibility factors.

3. Keeping Costs Low

A marketing or advertising campaign lives and dies by the almighty dollar, and this means that you have to be careful and sensible about how you spend your budget. Once you have determined what kind of customer you want to attract, and how to best target that customer, you will have a better idea of what kind of costs will be needed to accomplish this. Check out the costs for pay-per-click services, banner ads, and link services so that you are not overpaying for minimal exposure.

4. Deliver the Content

Now that the ideal, target and means have been worked out, it is now time to create the ads you want to be displayed. Remember that you are not selling the product itself in these ads, you are selling the “opportunity” of owning it, the “excitement” of owning it, the “advantage” of owning it. You want to convince the customer that they need this above all else, or your sale opportunity is lost.

5. Track Activity

By closely monitoring the effectiveness of the ads through spikes in traffic to your site, or the lack thereof, you can quickly determine whether those ads are having the desired effect. If not, return to step 1.

1. Website

The first thing to think about is your domain name. You have to choose this wisely, and it has to be as concise and to the point as you can make it. Short domain names are easy to remember in a world that is based on speed and short attention spans. When your chosen Internet marketing tools drive traffic to your site, you want that audience to remember that site as having clear and current content, easy navigation and a secure system for selecting products and paying for them. If they cannot find what they want to buy, they will leave, quickly, to the next site that catches their eye. You want to build trust, not frustration or confusion.

2. Keywords

The use of keywords on your website is of crucial importance for the success of your business. The spiders that the top search engines send to seek out relevant content are driven by keywords, and if they can find keywords within your site relatively easily, your site will then be recorded within search engine result pages. You want your keywords to be concise, relevant and easy to remember and use. The programming in these spiders is limited, and they are sent out to find what they are looking for, and report it, that is it. Bury your site’s content under layers of Flash, and the keywords will become invisible to them. Using good SEO practices will catapult your site into higher positions on those search engines daily.

3. Niche Article Marketing

One way to keep the content on your site relevant and attractive to visitors is to outsource the writing of any articles about your products to freelance writers. They can produce quality without prejudice, and will enable you and your webmasters to concentrate more on the business itself, than on writing and updating content. The content is key to keeping traffic coming to your site and buying, so make the effort to keep it all up to date for their enjoyment.

4. Newsletters

Allow visitors to register or opt-in for a daily, weekly or monthly newsletter from your company. In this fashion, you keep lines of communication open, and are able to acknowledge concerns, complaints or suggestions from your entire client base. And, when used as Internet marketing tools, your company remains constantly in the public eye, and will grow your reputation through the content inside them. Like the niche articles, if you find yourself without time to produce an informative newsletter filled with good content and special offers, outsource it to trusted freelancers instead.

Contextual Advertising

As an Internet advertising method, contextual advertising will take advantage of the search results by posting ads that are based on popular keywords those users search for. Within the ads themselves are hidden links to sites that carry or manufacture what items they are looking for. While the user is reading the ad, they are gaining information that draws them in, and when they come upon the link, the text is the driving reason for them to click on it to “learn more.”

Affiliate Marketing

This method allows advertisers to develop a personalized ad campaign, and then place the implementation of it into the hands of an affiliate, someone who is willing to link those ads to their own sites, in hopes of earning extra cash by doing so. The published ads are geared towards reaching a niche market, a select group of consumers that can be easily targeted through any medium the ad is posted within.

Amazon.com was one of the first major promoters of this type of marketing, but it has now become one of the driving forces of Internet business. Affiliates are encouraged to place the ads they take on anywhere and everywhere, because they only get paid when somebody clicks on an ad and actually buys its product. No sales, no commission for the affiliate.

Email Advertising

Because of worldwide abuse in the past, the concept of email advertising is often confused with the practice of “spamming,” where annoying and potentially harmful emails were released randomly to inboxes all over the Internet. This version of email advertising contains no hidden viruses, and is  offered only to voluntary subscribers—not innocent users whose addresses were told to the highest bidder. These mailings often take the form of newsletters with niche articles, as well as about their company and products, and sometimes include special offers and planned savings to their loyal customer base.

Behavioral Targeting

This method is the result of tracking patterns of consumer behavior, while feeding them ads geared towards the subject matter of sites they most often visit. By targeting previous interests, the chance that those same customers will purchase such products becomes higher than by just sending them a random advertising notice.

Q. What exactly is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is essentially an effective Internet marketing tool, where outside agents are hired to promote someone else’s product or service through their own websites or ads. The affiliate marketer is given a code that will allow tracking services to determine how much traffic is generated by their promotions, as well as how many sales are actually created. Participants are paid a percentage on every sale made through their promotion efforts.

Q. What is the earning potential of affiliate marketing?

Depending on the promotion methods, as well as the product or service you choose to promote, you can usually make anywhere from 4% to 75% on each item sold. Sites such as Amazon.com and Walmart were founders in the affiliate programs idea and their participants have had great success over the years earning extra money through their websites.

Q. How are the percentages paid out?

The exact method will vary between companies but they typically all have a payout structure set in place that you can review prior to signing up. Most often, participants are paid on either a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. For tax purposes, you will be sent the appropriate tax forms to reflect your total income for the year.

Q. What is an affiliate ID and link?

When you register as an affiliate with a company, you will typically be issued an ID or link for you to use in your promotions. These codes tell the firm’s site when you generated a particular visit or sale. This is how the companies can determine how much business was brought to them by affiliates, as well as how much each affiliate has earned because of it.

Q. Which companies have an affiliate programs?

Today, most firms that do any significant volume of business online may also have an affiliate program available. Most will have their own in-house programs, but some use outside firms to manage these programs for them. In the case of the independent management firm, all of your dealings will most likely be filtered through them, not the store or business that you are actually promoting. They will track your actions, your successes and failures and most importantly, your earnings.