Nine Internet Marketing Initiatives for 2009
By Brad McGovern
We”re gung ho into the New Year and this means a fresh start concerning your online business. A New Year means new opportunities. With that in mind, we”re going to look at nine Internet marketing initiatives for 2009. There’’s no better time than now to use these tools to build your business.
Get Blogging
Blogs are great for presenting up-to-date content to your target market. With blogs, you constantly offer fresh news, tips, advice and more. You do this in a conversational manner and encourage commenting from readers.
If you do this consistently, you build an audience who sees you as a wonderful resource for keeping them informed. This encourages link backs to your website from your blog. That’’s targeted traffic to where you sell your affiliate and other products.
Create Cool Sales Pages
If you want to increase sales of your products or service learn what constitutes a good sales page. You use a sales page to direct customers to your website. It can also be a page already on your website. This web page encourages visitors to click to a shopping cart page.
Have attention grabbing content on your sales page. Make this content speak to your customers needs concerning your product or service. Educate, engage, and inspire them to action on your sales page. That action is your visitor moving forward to complete a transaction.
Article Marketing
Quality content as part of an overall article-marketing program builds traffic. Traffic to your website is the lifeblood of your Internet business. However, targeted traffic is better than general traffic. Article marketing encourages targeted traffic to your site. Your article writing efforts will be on topics related to your affiliate products. You will speak authoritatively on these topics, due to your quality research.
Your audience will gain valuable information from you. They will see you as a credible marketer and trust you. You have pre-sold them to your products. When they link from your article to your website, you are half-way through the selling process already.
Social Media
The Web is full of discussion forums on a myriad of niches. Find the ones related to your products or service and get talking. This is the new wave in marketing for the new millennium. It’’s growing every day. It’’s good old-fashioned networking gone digital. Be part of it.
SEO Optimize
Utilize Internet research tools that can help you build a keyword and key phrase list. Once you have your list, evaluate your current website with a critical eye. You may find that some or all of your web pages are lacking crucial keywords and phrases. This may be hampering your efforts to rank higher in the search engines. SEO optimize your web page content to get targeted traffic that converts.
Build Your List by Giving Something Away
If the power is in the list, how do you build that list? Do you buy one? That’’s risky. There are many enterprises selling unauthorized lists. Using one of them can get you into a heap of trouble. It’’s better to build your own list.
Have a landing page on your website where you offer something free. Just make sure the “free” thing is a “quality” thing. This can be an informative eBook, CD, DVD, MP3 download, or a report. Encourage visitors to opt-in to receive a newsletter and their freebie from you. You build a quality list of e-mail addresses this way.
E-Mail Campaigns
You have that list, now it’’s time to write effective e-mail content. Take the time to study the elements of successful e-mail campaigns. Learn to write great subject lines, headlines, sub-headlines, bullet points. Study how to write to inspire and encourage action. Let 2009 be the year you get direct sales from that list you took the time to build.
Web Design
Content is king, but eye candy excites as well. Personally evaluate your website for its appearance. Real estate agents do this all the time as they judge “curb appeal” or a homes outer appearance. Have great content, but make sure your site appeals to the eye to encourage further investigation of its content. If you can afford it, have a web designer give your site the once over.
Press Releases
If you”ve never done so, consider writing press releases to trumpet your business this year. Share the latest about an affiliate product or service you offer. Let the media spread your word to others so they know where to find you. Press releases are a simple and efficient way to create business buzz.
Its official, 2009 is here, and well underway. It’’s your call as to what you will do to build your online business. There are many methods for marketing effectively. Start the New Year off right by employing several or all of them with a focused marketing plan.
About The Author
Brad McGovern is the Marketing Manager at
Article Marketer, and offers advice and news of note to article marketers. Watch for
more from Brad in the coming days!
