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ONLINE MARKETING RESOURCES MARKET IT YOURSELF AND SAVE!
Most people visiting this page are interested in marketing either some specific product such as an invention, or else interested in setting up their own web site and marketing from there. But how best to do it? - Should you pay a professional organization to do it for you, or else could you do it yourself ?! How is marketing different from promotion ? - These are some of the burning questions I will try to answer for you.
1. The difference between promotion and marketing.
The product one intends to sell - whether an invention, a piece of real estate, or a contract cleaning service - does not exist as far as the public is concerned. Visibility is a real problem with the Internet. True, it is a huge market place of roughly 100 million people, but equally, there is so much to look at that your goods are all but invisible to start with, however well packaged.
Therefore, the first thing to do before you would even contemplate selling, is to put your wares on show so that people become aware of their existence. Promotion is therefore mostly concerned with making people aware of your product. It is more than mere advertising, as the Internet is an interactive medium and your visitors will often comment, or ask questions. An other point is, that you have far more space for explaining your product and also illustrating its more important points by using photos, drawings, and the occasional animation. Therefore, you have a superior medium for impressing the public with the potential benefits of your product - as this is not usually possible with off-line advertising, due to cost. Finally, your visitors form a targeted audience, as most people only visit your site if they are interested in the subject you are discussing. The aim of Internet promotion is therefore not so much selling, as raising the profile of your product in front of a worldwide audience. Often, this leads to many enquiries and offers, but once approached, it is you who will have to clinch the deal. Therefore, Internet Promotion can be seen as an essential first step for marketing your product. A well establishe & tried promotional package is available from Inventors' Net, the hosts of these pages.
There are companies that will take over the marketing of a product (including promotion), so that you will not have to lift a finger. Some will charge an up-front fee of $400 to $600 USD (non-refundable) and will also want around 40% of the eventual sale price. Others will not charge you up- front, but will want a higher %-age of the eventual sale. In most cases, these companies invariably deal with only high value products, well in excess of 1 million USD. It is alledged, that there are irregularities and downright fraud connected with a number of these companies and that there are numerous litigations under way. Consequently, you would be wise to be extremely careful, especially with those companies that charge a non-refundable up-front fee.
Due to the high cost and often questionable value derived by using an outside agency, increasingly people opt for the 'do it yourself' techniques.
But just how effective can this be? - First of all, consider your marketplace:
Internet Marketing –Who Is Online, and What They're Buying
It has been shown that currently, two-thirds of the American population is now online - and they're busy searching and buying. On an average day about 68 million people - approximately 53% of all Internet users - will go online.
Who are these Internet users? What makes them tick, and what exactly do they do when they go online? Hopefully, after you read this article, you will have some business insight into the behavior and mindset of the 68 million people who search and buy online.
Correlation between trust and age
Younger users, those in the 18-29 year old range are more likely to use search engines - and to regard them as indispensable. The young also use search much more frequently. 27% of those under 30 search several times per day.
A similar pattern emerges for confidence in search results, though sometimes the data is difficult to interpret. Oddly enough, fully 72% of adults under 30 say that search engines are fair and unbiased, which seems counter-intuitive given that the youngest users probably know more about search technology, including how it can be manipulated.
This means that the younger your market, the more important SEO and ranking in organic results becomes. While plenty of Internet users seem comfortable with the quality of search results, a surprising number of younger users believe in the impartiality of a natural listing in search results pages.
More seniors online
Among the mature crowd, there seem to be two camps - the ones who have never used the Internet and don’t intend to, and those who are giving it a fair chance.
One in four Americans has never used the Internet - and doesn't know anyone who does. Most of those non-users are senior citizens and many — eight out of ten — don't think they will ever go online.
But the situation is changing. The percent of seniors online increased by 47% from 2000 to 2004, with 22% aged 65 or older now having access to the Internet — up from 15% in 2000. That works out to about 8 million Americans aged 65 or older who were online in 2000, that number is a lot higher today.
And they're buying. Almost half of online seniors had bought something on the Internet by the end of 2003. That's an 11 point increase from 2000.
If you’re looking for an emerging niche, consider the over 65 crowd. And remember that there is an entire marketplace of baby boomers with considerable buying power. Even if they can't convince their parents to get online, count on them to shop for their senior parents online.
What are these people looking for? Everything under the sun. Even though the top search terms are still for current happenings, like "Tiger Woods" and "lyrics," users also search frequently for music, games, airline flights, and other commercial items, in addition to news, sports scores, and holiday-related paraphernalia.
Google provided almost 90 million of them with results, followed by Yahoo! at 68 million and MSN at almost 50 million. (AOL was a strong contender at 36 million, and may see an increase as a result of their recent deal with Google). That should give you a good hint as to where to spend your advertising dollars.
A large number of users, 44%, say the information they look for in search engines is critical or needed to answer an urgent question. This may be difficult to reconcile with the nature of most search engine queries. But news, travel schedules, phone number lookups, and even sports scores could fall into the “critical” category for many casual users.
And there is good news in all this for serious marketers. Overall, commerce related searches have increased, while pornography related searches have decreased dramatically since 1997.
Use search engine loyalty to save you time and energy in your SEM (search engine marketing) efforts. Because users tend to stick with one search engine, you can still capture a substantial audience by optimizing for organic results in just one of the big three - and filling in the remaining with PPC.
If you're trying to sell your own products or services online, then
setting up your own affiliate program is the single most effective way to
grow your business.
Take Amazon for example - their affiliate network is one of the reasons for
their great success! Every day, Amazon make thousands of extra sales thanks
to their affiliate program - wouldn't it make sense for you to enjoy the
same marketing advantage?
What is an Affiliate Program ??
The way affiliate programs work is that you offer a financial incentive
to other web sites for advertising your product. The incentive can take many forms. Usually, it is most effective to give a sizable direct financial inducement - say 30-40% of a sale that came through the web site of the affiliate. This way, you can assemble a huge international sales force - free of charge - all happily selling your product !!
Here is an example of an affiliate sales link. It is for helping you to stop smoking by substituting herbal smokes for tobacco products: 7 day Smoke Away
But how do I set this up?
At this point you're probably wondering:
How do I find the other sites ?
How do I manage the program ?
Isn't issuing and tracking payments going to be a lot of work ?
Where do I get the technology to do this ?
What kind of program should I set up ?
The good news is setting up an affiliate program has never been easier, because
there are now ready made out-of-box solutions to the whole issue. One mid-price solution Inventors' Net can recommend is sold by IMC as we ourselves have used this product.
As well, here is a personal referral from a user not connected with Inventors' Net:
I have purchased the AssocTRAC affiliate software to run my affiliate program. I
knew nothing about affiliate programs or affiliate software to run it, but now I know
this. Two months has past since it has been installed on my site and I have made
well over $30,000 from my site. This is simply unbelievable! I used to spend
$2,000 each month on flyers and newspaper to bring in $6,000 in sales. Now I
don't spend anything to promote my business and mortgage applications are just
pouring in. It is all pure profit for less than $1,000 dollar investment. Now,
that I know how to do it the right way, I decided to build my second site.
There are thousands upon thousands of business ideas over the Net. Many of these are just a devious way of getting money out of the unsuspecting reader. There are these chain letters with a 'killer message'. You suppose to copy the letter and send it to one of the listed names together with a donation of $5. Soon your letterbox will be stuffed with $5 notes some others will send to you (or so it is claimed). There are many variations of this technique - none of them work. So give them a miss! On the other hand, there are some valuable new ideas worth investigating. Inventors' Net will slowly assemble a selection of these.
Here is one: we saw the following announcement: "Operate your own home-based cyber travel agency. Complete with advanced web site, marketing, training and resources. Just $495 - Become an Online Travel Agent ! Click here join the worlds hottest industry!" We did click and had a good look. We also talked to various people about it and now it seems that this may be an excellent idea and one that is extremely low cost for getting a foothold into a relatively new and promising marketing area!
Here is an other one - "freelance work opportunities. Work from home: FREE report, FREE market tips, FREE bulletins".
Again, this is a bona fide opportunity to market your particular expertise, know-how or just simply work from your home. Rather than trying this and that, this resource will put you in touch with the best such opportunities from around the world and will also give you free tips and reports to help you on the way. Worth checking out!
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We did click and had a good look. We also talked to various people about it and now it seems that this may be an excellent idea and one that is extremely low cost for getting a foothold into a relatively new and promising marketing area!
Again, this is a bona fide opportunity to market your particular expertise, know-how or just simply work from your home. Rather than trying this and that, this resource will put you in touch with the best such opportunities from around the world and will also give you free tips and reports to help you on the way. Worth checking out!