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A Website Is Not Enough
Your small business needs an appealing and professional website but that is just the beginning. If no one visits your website and -- more importantly -- if it does not bring in new customers and allows you to sell more to your current customers,...
LEFT OR RIGHT - WHICH IS BEST? (Pt1)
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On a Budget? 3 Ways to Drive Traffic Quickly and Cheaply
© Copyright Rosalind Gardner, All Rights Reserved.
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You just created your own turnkey Internet business, now what?
The biggest mistake most people make when dealing with Internet business is that they think that once they build their web site, people will find their site and purchase their product or service. There are billions of web pages on the Internet...
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Why Most People Don't Use Effective But Free Online Marketing Tools
It is rather interesting that most people do not take free
online marketing tools seriously. Never mind that there is
plenty of evidence around and even more examples of web sites
and online entrepreneurs who have taken off in a hurry using
only free online marketing tools.
In a way this reaction is not surprising because we have been
brought up in world where we have been taught to firmly believe
in the facts of life. One of the major facts of life is that
there is no such thing as a free lunch and nothing valuable
costs nothing.
While all this is true, most people have failed to realize that
the World Wide Web has arrived with its' own unique and rather
unorthodox but highly effective set of rules.
Even fewer have taken note of the fact that the most successful
online business model so far has been based on the heavy use of
free marketing tools and heavy spending in marketing comes later
when the web site has already started enjoying some success.
A Famous Example
When Bill Gates was playing catch up
on the internet after an initial error of judgement over the
future importance of the net, one of the areas where he found
himself way behind was in free email services. The likes of
Yahoo already had millions of users when Hotmail was re-launched.
Did one of the richest men in the world go for prime time
television to advertise his new free email service? Did he book
newspaper spots across the states? Not really, he used a free
online marketing strategy that worked like a dream. A brief
signature at the end of each email sent out invited the
recipient to open a free Hotmail email account. The rest is
history. This simple referral marketing strategy that cost
nothing took Hotmail from virtually zero users to millions in a
few short months.
There are numerous other examples, but I shoe this one because
it is somebody we all know rather well.
Conventional Advertising Does Not Work Online
There
is one other reason why free online advertising tools are so
effective. And this is based on the fact that conventional
advertising as we have always know it has so far been a big
failure online.
Banner advertisements with all the color and gimmickry was such
a huge failure that it prompted somebody to come up with what
they thought would solve the problem and become a huge success.
I am referring to the much-disliked and extremely annoying
pop-up advertisements. Even the so-called pop-under ads that are
supposedly less annoying have not been received with much
enthusiasm online.
All these options are not free and people have been paying good
money for them.
The reason why conventional ads do not work is simple and yet
most people still don't get it. Folks do not come online to be
advertised to. They come online, usually with very little
time
on their hands and looking for some very specific information.
Is it any wonder that any form of unsolicited advertising, be it
pop-up ads or unsolicited email (SPAM), is so annoying?
This is why informative well-written articles are such an
effective free online marketing tool. Only those who are
interested in the information you have to offer will read your
article. And they do not mind whatever advertising you put in
the resource box at the bottom of the article, because it does
not look like advertising to them. Especially when they are
interested in getting more information on the subject at hand.
Marketing Is No Longer That Simple
What people need to realize is that marketing online does not
fall into the neat offline categories we have been used to.
For example the most successful online advertising has been PPC
ads or Pay -Per-Click ads. The main reason is that these ads
have been based on relevance to the information being looked for
right from the beginning. We first saw them next to search
engine results. Those ugly small text things that looked like
they were part of the results searched. They have worked like
magic because advertisers only pay for actual clicks on their
ads, so results and response to the ads are easily quantifiable.
It should not be lost on anybody that these ads actually do not
look like ads. More so now when the market leader in PPC ads,
Google have their AdSense ads in small sites and blogs all over
the net. There is even more emphasis on relevance to the
information being looked for.
Free Is Actually Not Free
Then the other extremely important factor to note is that many
of the most effective online marketing tools are really not
free. For instance, even if you write your won informative
articles to use for marketing purposes, this is a very
time-consuming exercise. Time is even more valuable than money
because unlike money, it can never be recovered when it has been
lost. So it is just that people pay using some other currency.
Conclusion
Anybody planning an online marketing campaign should look very
carefully at the so-called free marketing tools and options, the
effectiveness of some of the techniques will surprise them.
Article by David Callan. David is the leading search engine
consultant with AKA Marketing.com's Search Engine Optimisation
Ireland team. AKA Marketing.com provide full SEO services as
well as telephone based consulting for those preferring the DIY
approach.
About the author:
Article by David Callan. David is the leading search engine
consultant with AKA Marketing.com's Organic SEO team. AKA
Marketing.com provide full SEO services as well as telephone
based consulting for those preferring the DIY approach.
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