The 3 Basic Strategies of Internet Marketing.

Whether you are selling other peoples products or your own, if you approach the Net without a Marketing Strategy you will be fighting an uphill battle to get people to buy your product or service.

Sustaining a steady, increasing flow of income from the products and services you are offering on the Net cannot be achieved by a shot gun approach to Marketing.

If you are planning to build an online business, then your time and money will be well spent taking the time to design the strategy you are going to use to build a "customer-for-life" database. If done right the majority of your customers will buy your first product, and most likely the ones that you sell in the future.

Here's 3 Basic, Effective Strategies you can put in place now....

1. PUSH STRATEGY... Newsletter, Ezine, Daily Email Broadcasts.

If you are a serious Internet Marketer and plan to earn any substantial money online, then you must get the word out about you and your product, and build traffic to your website using this essential strategy.

The basic idea is to Email out something of *VALUE* to your target audience who have requested information from you (Opt-in), on a regular basis. Providing you continue to send valuable information to this audience on a regular schedule, then you can expect your subscriber base to grow into a solid opt-in list to which you can promote your products and services.

The mailing can be in the form of a Newsletter, Ezine, or Email Tips Broadcast. The topics and themes you choose for your publication will be something of interest to your target audience. Some ideas you can use; your views on subjects relating to your field of expertise or hobby, suggestions on issues/problems that relate to your field of expertise or hobby, or a perhaps a collection of "How To Tips".

If your publication is consistent in holding the interest of your target audience, then over time your subscriber base will build. Your subscribers will begin to notice your name and look forward to hearing from you. They will come to trust you to deliver something of value and familiarity will begin to grow.

When your subscriber base reaches 1000+ you can expect to start earning income from each issue. Either your subscribers will buy what you are promoting in the publication, and/or other Marketers will seek you out to place paid advertisements in your publication to reach your valuable readers.

This strategy will not generate a great deal of income in the beginning, it will take time for your publication to gain creditability and a substantial subscriber base, however when you get there it will be your GOLDMINE!

2. PULL STRATEGY.. Building Traffic To Your Website

This topic would require volumes to do it justice. However, for the purpose of this article let's touch on the essentials of building traffic to you website.

Contrary to what a good majority of people think, "If you build it they will come" is a great line from a great movie, and has nothing to do with the number of visitors who will visit your website uninvited.

It goes without saying that once you manage to get your *TARGET AUDIENCE* to visit your website you will not keep them there unless you have a well designed site.

FIRST, CREATE A GREAT WEBSITE:

- Design your website's content to address your customers needs, have it speak only of the benefits to the buyer. Your product's features can be addressed at the point in which your customer decides they are interested in buying what you have to sell.

- K.I.S.S Design, enough said.

- A clear pathway that keeps your customer moving through the sales message to the desired results that you want....An Order!

- A simple navigation design that will keep your customer on your website, and moving in the direction of the order page. Make sure they are not left stranded on a page in your site where they cannot return to your desired "sales pathway".

- Fast Loading, keep graphics to a minimum. Fancy graphics will not Sell you product.... good sales copy loaded with benefit rich content WILL!

- Timely content that is updated frequently and keeps the customer coming back. You want your website to be one added to your customers bookmarked websites.

NOW CREATE THE TRAFFIC....

- Collect Email addresses on your site. BY REQUEST ONLY!

- Submit your website to the Major Search Engines. Although I recommend manually submitting your websites URL's to the major search engines, here are some services that will do it for Free:
http://www.123submit.com/freesubmit.htm
http://accusubmit.com/submit.html
http://www.hileytech.com/freesub.html

- Submit your website to 1,000's of smaller Search Engines.
Although advertising your site on the smaller engines will not produce a whole lot of traffic, they will produce some. It's worthwhile. One free online submission service to 1,200 Search Engines and link pages is available at:
http://www.submitxtras.com

- Submit articles you have written to Ezines for publication. Be sure to include a resource box at the end of the article with your contact information and a small commercial for your product and services. Some free databases to use for submitting articles to Ezines are:
http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm
http://www.ezinearticles.com/add_url.htm
http://www.ideamarketers.com/
http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm

- Place paid Ads in Ezines which are read by your target Audience.

- Submit Ads to Free classifieds. To get started here are two sites:
http://www.icclassifieds.com/
http://www.uran.net/imall/FREE_Sites_A-H.html

- Start your own newsletter, Ezine, Email broadcast. For tips on how to start your own Ezine look up the February 15 ,2000 issue of AS&W at: http://wealthinmind.com/archive.html

- Place bids for Keywords on "Pay for Clicks" Search Engines.
These are new Search Engines which allow webmasters to purchase any keyword they want by bidding on it. The higher the bid for the keyword, the higher the position in the Search Engine. The webmaster pays the bidded price for each visitor who clicks on their link from that Search Engine. Here are some:
http://www.searchenginedog.com
http://Goto.com
http://RocketLinks.com
http://www.sprinks.com
http://findwhat.com
http://SearchHound.com
http://win4win.com
http://www.SearchGalore.com
http://www.kanoodle.com

- Trade links with webmasters who have websites that compliment your products and services.

- Participate in some Online Discussion Groups and Forums where your target audience is likely to hang out. Be sure to offer solutions and good advice to posted questions you reply to. Keep away from selling yourself or your products in any post that you make, and add value in your participation. Anything less will work against you. Some good places to look for a forum or discussion group are:
http://forumone.com
http://www.friendsinbusiness.com/forum/
http://forums.list-universe.com/
http://homebusiness-websites.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi
http://talk.businessbug.com/

3. DANGLE STRATEGY.... Offer Free Valuable Intellectual Property

People are hungry to learn today, so if you know something why not share it? In this virtual world you will be giving people an opportunity to experience you. Some excellent vehicles to offer free information are:
- Email Broadcasts
- Newsletters & Ezines
- Teleclasses
- Courses offered via Email or Autoresponders
- Articles
- Ebooks
- "How To" manuals

Ideally all 3 strategies will become part of your Internet Marketing Strategy. They work for any business or practice, and for any product or service you are promoting on the Internet.

There are many excellent sources available that will give you step by step guidelines to follow to put any or all of the above strategies in place for your business. Contact me for my recommendations on which programs or courses might be best for you based on the level of Internet Marketing experience you have.

And as always, I must stress again, these strategies take time to work their magic. But they are proven strategies that will ensure you have an ongoing viable online business for your future.