Category: Internet Marketing

The very first step in your Internet marketing strategy should begin with SEO ( search engine optimization). Search engines are what are used by millions of people searching for information on the Internet. Even with all the competition for high rankings on the Internet, It is still possible to achieve high ranking placement on search engine results listing for your website or any one of the pages on your site. Now there are a lot of different things involved in high-ranking placement on search engine results listing. And it begins with SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO is a methodology of strategies, techniques, and tactics used to increase the number of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search engine results page listings. Which can produce hundreds of thousands of potential customers daily, visiting your website, and the ability to make money beyond your expectations!

What is a Search Engine?

Search engines are what people use to search for information on the Internet. Google is a search engine considered to be one of the top search engines of all time. A search engine is a site set up to accept website listings and is used by Internet users to find specific websites including your website on the Internet.

Optimizing your web pages for the search engines can produce amazing results! And, it costs you nothing but time. The time you spend on SEO (search engine optimization ) will be well worth it! For a website to be successful you need massive traffic to your site, SEO is the way to go.

Create Search Engine Friendly Web Pages

Search engines, for the most part, rely on automated software agents called spiders, crawlers, robots, and bots. These bots are the seekers of content on the Internet, and from within individual web pages. These tools are key parts of how search engines operate.

It is a waste of time to tell all the search engines about your great new site, if when the search engine bot arrives to index it, the database finds it isn’t search-engine friendly. Your objective should be to create search-engine-friendly Web Pages that consist of relevant content, keywords, and key phrases, focused on the theme of your website.

Keywords and Key Phrases:

A keyword is a word that forms all or part of a search engine query—it is the word or phrase that Internet users type in a search box when they are seeking information on the Internet. It is not impossible to get high rankings based on keywords alone but Instead, you need to think about key phrases. The easiest way to determine your keywords and key phrases is to ask yourself the question“what would you enter into the search engine, search bar if you were trying to find your product, service, or information you are offering?” Ask family and friends to get their perspectives.

Long-Tail keywords

As you do your keyword research, you’ll notice that while a handful of keywords get typed in thousands and thousands of times every day, there are a whole lot more that don’t get typed in nearly as often. These are probably more descriptive keywords or less common variations but the important thing to note is that these are known as long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords in SEO are incredibly useful. Long-tail keywords are keywords or key phrases that are more specific – and usually longer – than more commonly searched for keywords. Long-tail keywords get less search traffic, but will usually have a higher conversion value, as they are more specific. They are less competitive keywords that tend to be extremely relevant to your business objectives. Long-tail keywords may not have a lot of search volume on each term, but they each do have some search volume, which is important.

The important part, you might be able to find hundreds or thousands of these long-tail keywords that together have the potential to get you more traffic than ranking for a more competitive keyword would have from the start. Long-tail keywords are used to target very specific audiences.

For example, people searching for: Women’s Handbags. Long-tail keywords are those three, four, or five-word phrases that are likely terms customers use to find information on your product, topic, or initiative. Whereas overall the competitive keyword might be women’s handbags a less competitive keyword would be more specific, know as Long-tail keywords such as specific details about the product. For example Women’s Black Handbags or Women’s strapless handbags etc.

Optimizing Your Pages

Once you identify the keywords and key phrases people are using to search for your particular product, service, or information online it is time for you to optimize your web pages by incorporating the Keyword or keyword phrases into your pages. Keyword or keyword phrases must be carefully selected and placed strategically throughout your web pages to draw users to your content.

In short, Internet Marketing is the way that businesses develop relationships with customers over the Internet. Internet Marketing strategies, use advertising and marketing efforts that use the Web and email to drive traffic to your website in addition to sales leads from Web sites or emails! The Internet offers a lot of opportunities for a person with only a small advertising budget to do the majority of Internet marketing themselves, working with little or no money!

If you’re thinking about advertising on the Internet, keep in mind that many of the same rules that apply to other forms of advertising apply to electronic marketing. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), their rules and guidelines protect businesses and consumers and help maintain the credibility of the Internet as an advertising medium. The following will give you an overview of some of the laws the FTC enforces.

Online Ads

The FTC Act prohibits unfair or deceptive advertising in any medium. When it comes to online ads, the basic principles of advertising law apply:

-ADVERTISING MUST TELL THE TRUTH AND NOT MISLEAD CONSUMERS.

– IN ADDITION, CLAIMS MUST BE SUBSTANTIATED.

-ADVERTISEMENTS CANNOT BE UNFAIR

In interpreting Section 5 of the Act, the Commission has determined that a representation, omission or practice is deceptive if it is likely to:

-mislead consumers and affect consumer’s behavior or decisions about the product or service.

-In addition, an act or practice is unfair if the injury it causes or is likely to cause is: substantial not outweighed by other benefits and not reasonably avoidable.

-A claim can be misleading if relevant information is left out or if the claim implies something that is not true.

For example, a lease advertisement for an automobile that promotes $0 Down may be misleading if significant and undisclosed charges are due at lease signing.

-In addition, claims must be substantiated, especially when they concern health, safety, or performance.

-The type of evidence may depend on the product, the claims, and what experts believe necessary.

-If your ad specifies a certain level of support for a claim test show X you must have at least that level of support.

Sellers, Advertising Agencies or Website Designers and Catalog Marketers

-Sellers are responsible for the claims they make about their products and services.

-Third parties such as advertising agencies or website designers and catalog marketers also may be liable for making or disseminating deceptive representations, if they participate in the preparation or distribution of the advertising, or know about the deceptive claims.

Advertising Agencies

– Advertising agencies or website designers are responsible for reviewing the information used to substantiate ad claims. They may not simply rely on an advertiser’s assurance that the claims are substantiated.
In determining whether an ad agency should be held liable, the FTC looks at the extent of the agency’s participation in the preparation of the challenged ad, and whether the agency knew or should have known that the ad included false or deceptive claims

Selling Online

Catalog marketing is a sales technique used by businesses to group many items together in a printed piece or an online store.

-Most important, catalog marketers should trust their instincts when a product sounds too good to be true. To protect themselves, catalog marketers should ask for material to back up claims rather than repeat what the manufacturer says about the product. If the manufacturer doesn’t come forward with proof or turns over proof that looks questionable, the catalog marketer should see a yellow caution light and proceed appropriately, especially when it comes to extravagant performance claims, health or weight-loss promises, or earnings guarantees. When writing an ad copy, catalogers / online sellers or promoters should stick to claims that can be supported.

Online Disclaimers and Disclosures :

Although online commerce (including mobile and social media marketing) is booming, deception can dampen consumer confidence in the online marketplace. To ensure that products and services are described truthfully online and that consumers get what they pay for, the FTC continues to enforce its consumer protection laws. Most of the general principles of advertising law apply to online ads, but new issues arise almost as fast as technology develops.

Disclaimer

A disclaimer is a statement in which a person says that they did not know about something or that they are not responsible for something. The company asserts in a disclaimer that it won’t be held responsible for the accuracy of information

-Disclaimers and disclosures must be clear and conspicuous. That is, consumers must be able to notice, read or hear, and understand the information. Still, a disclaimer or disclosure alone usually is not enough to remedy a false or deceptive claim.

Disclosure 

The purpose of disclosure is to make available evidence which either supports or does not support claims about a particular product, service, or information.

-A disclosure is more effective if it is placed near the claim it qualifies for or other relevant information. Proximity increases the likelihood that consumers will see the disclosure and relate it to the relevant claim or product.

-For print ads, an advertiser might measure proximity in terms of whether the disclosure is placed adjacent to the claim, or whether it is separated from the claim by text or graphics. The same approach can be used for online ads.

-When advertisers are putting disclosures in a place where consumers might have to scroll in order to view them, they should use text or visual cues to encourage consumers to scroll and avoid formats that discourage scrolling. Text prompts can indicate that more information is available.

-An explicit instruction like “see below for important information on restocking fees” will alert consumers to scroll and look for the information. Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising, provides additional information for online advertisers.

-Demonstrations must show how the product will perform under normal use.

-Refunds must be made to dissatisfied consumers if you promised to make them.

Advertising directed to children

Advertising directed to children raises special issues. That’s because children may have greater difficulty evaluating advertising claims and understanding the nature of the information you provide. Sellers should take special care not to misrepresent a product or its performance when advertising to children.

The Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus has published specific guidelines for children’s advertising that you may find helpful.

Read the complete guide to Advertising and Marketing for small businesses.

Imagine the feeling you had the last time you received a handwritten note in the mail. It means something to you, and it’s personalized. The power of a handwritten note can go a long way. I encourage you to treat your email marketing efforts the same way. Just as a handwritten note in the mail has the power to move a person, so does the next email you send. Email can drive change, and ultimately help you achieve your mission.

Email marketing can build brand awareness. You can drive action from your subscribers to complete a task on your website. You can even encourage them to become an advocate of your organization by sharing your content with their networks.

Email marketing is one of the only channels that consumers ask to receive. The majority of businesses using the platform only send messages to those who have signed up to receive them. This can allow for much higher conversion rates as a business is only targeting those who already have an interest in their brand.

If you aren’t currently including email marketing in your digital outreach efforts, you’re missing out. Think about email marketing in the same way you think about tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and your website. It’s another digital platform that allows you to reach your customers and achieve your goals. There are three areas to keep in mind when executing a successful email marketing strategy.

Measuring Success

In any digital effort, it’s important to define what success looks like. Email metrics analyze various aspects relative to the tracking of the email marketing strategy performance. Identify key metrics by aligning them with your organizational and email marketing goals.

-What do you want your email subscribers to do?

-How would you measure those ideal actions?

Set a baseline for your own email marketing efforts. How many people are opening your emails now? How many people are clicking through to your content? How is email impacting your Web presence and social media presence? Let your goals drive your success metrics.

A/B testing

Optimizing your email marketing efforts for your particular audience is important, and testing is a key part of email marketing optimization. A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a way of working out which campaign options is the most effective in terms of encouraging opens or clicks. In an A/B test you set variations of the one campaign and send them to a small percentage of your total recipients. The best approach to testing is to develop a hypothesis based on insights you’ve gathered from your email marketing metrics and create a test that would prove whether that hypothesis was right or not.

Let’s use email titles as an example. Do long titles work? Do questions work better than statements? Does putting all words or specific words in CAPS work? Testing these theories will help you learn what works best to engage your email subscribers. Here are some elements to consider testing:

-Email title

-Email by line

-Date/time of email

Customer Feedback

It’s important on any platform to listen to your customers’ feedback and use it to improve your strategy and tactics. That means using metrics to dictate how you change. Whether you’re using A/B testing, reviewing metrics, or collecting feedback in a survey, it’s important to listen to your customers’ insights to improve your email efforts.

Email marketing is an ideal way of promoting products, services, and events to customers, business prospects or members. Email marketing is much more cost-effective than traditional direct mail marketing and banner ads. Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.

Because email takes less time to create and send than other marketing and advertising channels do, you can communicate with your customers more frequently. Instead of only being able to send them a flyer or catalog once a month or once a quarter, you can easily send them offers once a week. Email is an important part of your Internet Business, you will use it for everyday communication and it is an absolutely essential tool for marketing when done right! If you aren’t currently including email marketing in your digital outreach efforts, you’re missing out.

Think about email marketing in the same way you think about tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and your website. It’s another digital platform that allows you to reach your customers and achieve your goals. Email marketing can be used in different ways, depending on your communications goals.

-You can build brand awareness.

-You can drive action from your subscribers to complete a task on your website.

-You can even encourage them to become an advocate of your organization by sharing your content with their networks.

How Does Email Work?

Email is messages distributed by electronic means from one computer user to one or more recipients via a network. A major difference between email and conventional mail is that while postal letters are not entirely secure, email is even less secure. Unless the message has been encoded, it could be intercepted without your knowledge. For this reason, ordinary email should never be used for sensitive communication.

How Do I Get An Email Address?

If you have a website normally your web hosting company will provide you with at least one free email account depending on your plan you may have access to numerous email accounts. The following is a list of free and popular email services you can use to set up a web-based email account.

-Gmail: http://www.gmail.com/

-Outlook: https://outlook.live.com/owa/

-Yahoo Mail: http://mail.yahoo.com

-AIM Mail: http://mail.aim.com/

Email Marketing Services

Normally you can not use ordinary email services to send out a large number of bulk emails because they limitations. when it comes to sending out bulk emails. There are also various restrictions on using an ordinary email account for bulk emailing. Some free email providers do offer limited tools for bulk emailing. Email marketing service providers are set up to handle bulk emailing. Many hosting companies offer this type of service at an additional fee. There are also some free bulk email marketing service providers such as Mailchimp.

Free Mailchimp Email Marketing Service (mailchimp.com)

Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers online primarily because they offer a forever free email marketing service plan. Mailchimp comes with an easy email builder, autoresponders, segmenting contacts into groups, and simple tracking for analytics. It also allows you to set up delivery times based on the user’s time zones, and you can setup segmenting based on geolocation. But you are required to display their branding in your email. The program can be used with many different popular applications including WordPress.

Targeted Email List

A good email marketing campaign begins with an email list full of qualified leads Subscribers that are interested in what you have to offer. Commercial unsolicited e-mail messages are considered spam and against The CAN-SPAM law. Email spam also referred to as junk email, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming).  The best way to build a targeted email list is to convert your website visitors into subscribers.

How Do I Get Subscribers?

When someone comes across your website, blog or social media channel, you’ll want to present them with a signup form where they can subscribe to your emails. Email service providers have pre-designed sign-up forms and email templates.

-You can Customize them for your brand.

-Type in your messages.

-Drag in pictures.

-Add links to your site.

What Is An Email Marketing Campaign?

Once you have your email Subscribers it time to create an Email campaign, an email marketing campaign is a series of emails a business uses to communicate with current and potentials customers. They are used to persuade customers to engage with the company, such as download a sample product, sign up for an offer, or make a purchase which may include a coupon that is known to produce higher conversion rates. A successful email marketing campaign will get the recipients to take action and help you to get more leads and sales.

Email Marketing Strategy

In any digital effort, it’s important to define what success looks like.

-What do you want your email subscribers to do?

-How would you measure those ideal actions?

Set a baseline for your own email marketing efforts. Check with your email marketing service provider to see if they offer any features which will enable you to see:

-How many people are opening your emails?

-How many people are clicking through to your content?

Opt-out Option

First and foremost, your email marketing campaign or lists should have the option to opt-out of emails.

Using email marketing is a standard practice, knowledge of the do and don’t of The CAN-SPAM Act can save you thousands of dollars.

Opt-out Option

First and foremost, your email marketing campaign or lists should have the option to opt-out of emails. Subscribers may have their reason for removal from your list and to capture their explanation, add a comment section before they officially remove themselves. The CAN-SPAM Act, a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

Each separate email in violation of the law updated as of January 2020 is subject to penalties of up to $43,280, and more than one person may be held responsible for violations.

For example, both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that originated the message may be legally responsible. Email that makes misleading claims about products or services also may be subject to laws outlawing deceptive advertising, like Section 5 of the FTC Act. The CAN-SPAM Act has certain aggravated violations that may give rise to additional fines. The law provides for criminal penalties – including imprisonment – for:

-accessing someone else’s computer to send spam without permission,

-using false information to register for multiple email accounts or domain names,

-relaying or retransmitting multiple spam messages through a computer to mislead others about the origin of the message,

-harvesting email addresses or generating them through a dictionary attack (the practice of sending email to addresses made up of random letters and numbers in the hope of reaching valid ones), and taking advantage of open relays or open proxies without permission.

What Is The CAN-SPAM Act

The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages and your guide for using electronic mail message systems: put by the FTC (federal trade commission): The CAN-SPAM Act establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email. It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law.

The CAN-SPAM’s The CAN-SPAM Act specifies how to prepare your Email Marketing Campaign message in order to comply when current no spam laws.

Main requirements:

–Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.

–Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.

–Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.

–Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.

–Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.

–Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.

–Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.

For more information see FTC Fact Sheet below:

bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

Harness the power of social media to increase traffic and exposure for your business. Making social media a priority for your business will allow your business to: establish a stronger brand and boost sales!

You could be missing out on huge growth opportunities for your business if you are not using Social Media. Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service.

Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers.

Popular Social Media Marketing Sites

You’ll want to include at least one or two of the most popular social media channels in your Social Media Marketing strategy such as:

Facebook.com

Facebook has more than 2 billion monthly active users, making it by far the most popular social media channel. Facebook is a social networking website where users can post comments, share photographs, and post links to news or other interesting content on the web, chat live, and watch short-form videos. You can even order food on Facebook if that’s what you want to do. Create pages and post regularly on Facebook to gain exposure for your business and brand.

LinkedIn.com

LinkedIn is a social network that’s made specifically for businesses and professionals. It is an efficient tool for locating those who may contribute to the success of your business. LinkedIn allows you to: Have an online resume and business card where potential clients, customers, and joint venture partners can learn about you and your business and connect with you You can set up a personal profile and/or a company page. And you can also share content and publish articles directly on the platform, allowing it to serve as a sort of blog for your brand.

YouTube.com

YouTube is the largest video platform with more than 1.8 billion active monthly users. You can create videos to promote your business. How to” videos are very popular on youtube. You can also embed videos on your website or other forms of content. YouTube also so offers the opportunity to make money with your videos if they become very popular.

Twitter.com

.Twitter, one of the most popular social networking services in the world. Twitter is good for networking with customers, suppliers, and partners, it is a microblogging platform, which allows registered users to post, and send to short messages other registered users, These short messages are limited to 140 characters, which are called Tweets.
Relevant tweets may also appear at the top of search results, increasing your potential for organic reach.

Pinterest.com

Pinterest is a social media platform that lets users bookmark (pin) image-based content. It’s especially relevant for brands with strong visuals, including designers, bloggers, photographers, and eCommerce businesses.

Instagram.com

Instagram is a free, online photo-sharing application and social network platform that was acquired by Facebook in 2012. Instagram allows users to edit and upload photos and short videos through a mobile app. It’s an option for consumer-facing businesses that create striking images, like fashion designers, interior decorators, and crafters. It’s also popular with teens and young adults.

Snapchat.com

Snapchat is a messaging app that lets users exchange pictures and videos (called snaps) that are meant to disappear after they’re viewed. It’s advertised as a “new type of camera” because the essential function is to take a picture or video, add filters, lenses or other effects and share them with friends or to broadcast it to their network.

Slideshare.com

SlideShare allows you to share slideshow presentations, infographics, and other documents to a large audience online. It’s owned by LinkedIn, so it’s easy to connect your LinkedIn account or share presentations with your audience on LinkedIn.

For any business whether large or small the most important thing is marketing. Local Business listings keeps you ahead of your competition. Reaching people in your locality Increases your visibility and can help your business grow far beyond your expectations. When you list your business on popular platforms you gain trust among consumers because consumers can verify your services, through reading reviews.

NextDoor

NextDoor is an ideal place to start advertising your local business. NextDoor is a social platform used to connect neighbors. They also offer a free business page for small businesses. It is a great place to reach people who live in your neighborhood. People generally post neighborhood updates, missing or found pets, items for sale. It is also a platform where neighbors routinely ask for recommendations for home repair, real estate, and maintenance and much more.  You can claim your free business page listing here.

Google My Business

Google my business includes a business’ name, address, phone number, and website. This business listing information is available through a variety of Google properties — including Google Maps. In fact, Google My Business offers everything you need for a potential customer to find and use your services, buy your products or visit your business. Once you’ve registered or claimed your local business listing via the Google My Business dashboard, you can respond to customer reviews and add images to help your business stand out.

Bing Places for Business 

Bing Places for Business is a free Bing service that enables businesses to add their listings to Bing. Whether you have a web site or not,  you should consider adding Bing Places for Business to raise your visibility to potential local customers. Bing Places for Business can help local, small and chain businesses by showing the business listing in local search results, making it more visible to online customers you can also enhance how your business appears to customers with content like photos, services offered and more.

Superpages.com

Superpages.com is the local expert and a top online resource for finding information and insights on businesses and retailers. Every month we help millions of consumers find valuable local business information from driving directions and hours of operation to Web links and customer reviews.

Manta

Manta is a site that gets over 22 million global visitors per month. The majority of those visitors are consumers looking to research, connect, or buy from companies that are part of the Manta community. Our primary mission is to help small businesses promote themselves online and gain customers. Submit your company listing here.

MerchantCircle

MerchantCircle is a Walnut Creek, California-based digital company that helps small and midsize businesses network with other local businesses and reach local customers through free marketing tools and social media features. Submit your free business listing.