Posts Tagged ‘Return On Investment’

Marketing On The Internet Effects On Your Business

February 14th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Affiliate Marketing

What happens when you search on the Internet? How do you get to what you want? Most likely, youll skip all the banner ads, and enter your own search term. Youll skip the sponsored search engine results. Maybe at this point, you cant even see them. You probably dont even see the shaded results on the right, or any of the advertising or web infomercial type results. Its a lot like television: if you dont have a video recorder, you just tune out the commercials mentally.

Clearly, if youre marketing your goods or services on the Internet, those sorts of sponsored results and banner ads give you a really dismal return on investment. Sure, theyll generate some clicks, which will in turn generate some sales, but theyre only worthwhile for big, relatively rich companies.
Ideally, you want to optimize your site so that it naturally shows up high on the list. The playing field is much more level than in any other form of marketing. Small companies can own their much larger competitors.

In case its still not quite clear what natural or organic search means, its just the editorial rather than sponsored search results for whatever search engine you use. If you can fine-tune your site to land high in the list of organic search results, your marketing on the Internet will have the desired effects on your business. Unlike the paid advertisements, you cant buy your way in. The only way to punch your ticket for this dance is natural search engine optimization.

The playing field is relatively level, but large companies do have some advantages when it comes to natural search engine optimization. They tend to have large quantities of inbound links. This affects search engine results substantially. Vendors, affiliates and partners often link freely and unbidden to the corporations site.

Smaller companies, on the other hand, have some advantages too. Smaller companies tend to be more willing to pursue optimizing their site to generate results organically. Smaller companies also have little or no red tape to sift through in order to get a decision made on optimizing their sites. Smaller companies tend to be more willing to outsource, perhaps because they tend to not have significant resources internally. Natural search engine optimization is both a technical and non-technical problem. Simple steps like figuring out what keywords people will search for are important, as well as understanding the technical aspects of how a search engine indexes pages.

Huge corporations, tend to view natural search engine optimization as a very small piece of an enormous puzzle. Not only that, theyve been doing without it for years. Quite possibly, theyve even been doing without the Internet for years. The necessary steps to successfully marketing on the internet in order to get the desired effects on your business are often too much to get through committee after committee and miles of red tape. Smaller, leaner competitors can thus swoop in and take full advantage of organic search engine optimization and get better search engine results.

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Mailing lists are essential to your success

February 3rd, 2009 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Article Marketing

Believe it or not, in this digital age of email and the Internet, everyone still has a real mailbox.

According to “Direct Marketing” magazine, over $36 billion was spent last year on direct mail, beating both print and broadcast hands down.

However, the majority of small businesses still do not use direct mail as effectively as their larger counterparts. Nothing provides a better return on investment than direct mail. And it does not matter what product or service you are selling.

A sales letter is the most powerful employee you could ever hire. For about the price of a cup of coffee, it will persistently go out and deliver your message perfectly, every time. It will never call in sick. It will never complain. And it will never quit on you. Simply put, a powerful sales letter is like having a little automatic, money-making robot working for you, day and night.

What is the secret for getting people into a mad rush to do business with you?

The answer? Your list is the first and foremost.

If you think “junk-mail” does not work, then you are absolutely right! However, using highly targeted direct mail always work.

The most common story you will hear from other people is how they mail out thousands of glossy, beautiful brochures with pretty pictures, flowery text, and everything looking absolutely gorgeous. But they get zero response. Therefore, they assume direct mail does not work.

What could be the problem?

Direct mail when done wrong is almost always a huge waste of money. But when it is done right, you can expect tremendous results and profits. Doing it right only means one thing – getting results.

Your mailing list is essential to your success. You cannot just pick a random resident list of nearby Zip codes to your office. What you need to do is consider who your ideal customer would be and then find a way to target your message directly to them.

With direct mail, you are given the opportunity to use laser-beam, pinpoint accuracy to specifically target your message. And thanks to the growing direct marketing industry, privacy is dead in America.

There are two major types of lists available:

1. The first kind of list is simply compiled information; taken from directories, phone books, motor vehicle records, etc.

The most common compiled list is probably a geographic list. This usually will not yield the greatest results. Another way to segment a compiled list is by demographics. This is a little better way to target. For example, you could specify you only want females, age 50-65, who earn $75k and above.

But there is an even better way and that’s to combine the two methods. You can pick certain geographic areas and certain demographic characteristics that you desire. Think of your ideal prospect; the more you know about them, the better-targeted lists you can purchase.

2. The second type is called a direct response list. These are lists of people who have bought or responded to direct marketing.

In some cases, it will make more sense for you to buy a mail-order list. The people on this list have bought something from direct response methods.

What you want is a “starving crowd,” somebody who has expressed an interest in looking better. Somebody who has paid money. And that is exactly who you can find using direct response lists.

There is one more list that almost everyone forgets. It is literally a gold mine just lying there at your feet. And that is your own list.

You are overlooking an incredible source of added business if you have not put all your customers’ names and addresses into a database. This list will be the most powerful and responsive list you can use for any offers because these people already trust you and like doing business with you.

This is critically important. Especially if you are in a business that typically does not keep their customers’ names and addresses because you are missing an incredible amount of money.

Maybe you are a retailer or a restaurant owner — make it a habit for your staff to collect customer names. It is absolutely critical. It will serve a valuable role once you start sending out direct mails.

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