For today’s internet marketing advertising business owners there is a growing complexity as to what are the best ways to advertise their goods and services. With all the many marketing options out there today it can become rather confusing when it comes to selecting the top on and offline marketing systems.
With the extreme changes to our economy over the last few years it makes achieving a comfortable income very challenging for today’s business women and men.
My main goal today is to help small business owners with their offline and online web marketing strategies. Hopefully this will instill confidence, thus allowing the business owner to move forward with a solid plan that can be implemented easily and effectively. And also I would like to show them a way to generate an additional revenue stream, further solidifying the financial stability of their business.
Now I would like to assess some of the most common marketing systems used and why they aren’t the most effective or easy to use.
1. Pay-Per-Click: Also known as ppc marketing. This is where the web marketing firm places ads on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. and they pay a pre-determined amount for each visitor that clicks on their ad. This can be a good way to reach targeted prospects for your goods or service. It can also be very complex and frustrating as the search engines, especially Google, change their algorithms quite frequently. For example, back in December 2009, Google banned over 100,000 advertisers from their network. Many of these were long-time web marketing businesses that have advertised for many years.
2. Marketing to a targeted group of those that know you fairly well. This is also called Web 2.0 internet marketing advertising. You can develop a large list of followers, but patience must be used when marketing this way. You can set up free accounts at Squidoo, Hub Pages, Facebook, MySpace, etc. These types of advertising strategies can be effective if many months are spent growing these accounts. Once you do have a substantial amount of followers, it is very essential you don’t spam these people. If you do you’ll come off as being a selfish spammer. This form of advertising is best for those with very little money and an abundance of time. And it’s common for trends to fade out just as quickly as they were started. Because of that, this can become a feast or famine type of internet business advertising.
3. Classified ads can be placed on sites like: Gumdrop, Kijiji, Backpage, etc. You’ll have to spend hours placing enough ads to earn anything though. and often the people that frequent these sites have some type of product or service they want to sell you. So, unless you enjoy being reverse-marketed to. I suggest staying away from these internet marketing advertising sites.
4. Advertising offline: This is where you place ads in Newspapers, tv, magazines, etc. The good thing is your ad can be shown to many prospects. The bad news is it can be extremely expensive to advertise in the various periodicals. Your ad is usually shown to a wide segment of society and not targeted at all. Not only that, but once you submit your ad to the media company it can take forever for your ad to be seen. What I mean by that is: say your ad is shown in a magazine that is published in March. You will have to have your ad submitted and paid for weeks if not months in advance. It can take months to see a return on your investment.
Now that we’ve reviewed some of the more common offline and web marketing methods, I feel it best to move on to some relatively unknown marketing strategies that can produce results that are both rapid and lucrative.
1. Broadcasting Via Fax: This little-known gem can produce massive results at practically the speed of light. For a minimal charge, your message can be blasted out to your targeted audience. These fax broadcasts can produce many sales literally overnight.
2. Send postcards: You probably don’t realize this. But with the internet’s popularity, there are less advertisements sent in the mail, thus lowering competition. This is a great way to reach customers that are great prospects for whatever it is that you sell. The affordability of postcards is also a real bonus. Not only that, but people just love getting their hands on something that’s real.
3. Email Marketing: Due to the 2003 Can Spam Act this marketing method has lost some of it’s sizzle in recent years. Especially for those that don’t know how to do correctly. You see, if you broadcast your message to a large, annonymous audience you most likely will end up with little if any results. However, if you send out a smaller broadcast to a list of people that have requested information on whatever it is you’re selling. You will be astounded at the high level of response.
About the author: Wayne Hinrichs has operated a profitable small business internet marketing company for the last 5 years. He enjoys helping others with this complex task. web marketing is the most important factor in determining a companies profitability. As an owner knows how to get their ideas out to their best customers, the other parts of the business becomes rather easy.
categories: web marketing,small business internet marketing,internet business,internet marketing,how to market an internet business,how to market a business on and offline,small business marketing,online business marketing
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