Online Business Marketing Strategies
(Lessons 7-8)
I’ve broken down these online business marketing strategies into effective strategies and efficient strategies.
What's the difference? If you are working effectively, you are able to focus on what your goals are and design tasks that can help you reach those goals. If you are working efficiently, you are performing your tasks skillfully, with a minimal amount of effort.
In the world of business marketing strategies, both effectiveness and efficiency are important because you have to keep the bigger picture in mind of what your goals are, and should not waste time achieving these goals too slowly. There will always be a faster competitor waiting to take advantage.
Lesson 7 - Learn Effective Marketing
Make sure first that your business marketing strategies are designed to convert interested prospects into customers.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Who will be the most likely person to want and pay for your network marketing service or product?
- What crucial need will that product or service satisfy in their lives?
- Will they see your product or service as something that will satisfy their needs?
Then, design a marketing business plan around your answers.
Where Can You Find Your Customers? Your prospective customers are going to fall into one or more demographic categories that you will have to focus on, including the following:
- income
- net worth
- home value
- location
- profession
- gender
- age
You can research all of these demographics and customize your business marketing strategies to find out where your ideal customer lives and works. You can then put your products in front of your prospects on their own turf -- often with just the click of a mouse button!
The best tool for me in selecting the right demographic for my projects is Cities Ranked & Rated , by Bert Sperling & Peter Sander (it should really be called "Communities Ranked & Rated" because its statistics target regions more than actual cities). In this book, which gets updated yearly, you can find descriptions and statistics on the people living and working in communities all over the U.S. and Canada.
The rest of my demographic research I found on the Web. Wikipedia articles such as "Highest-income places in the United States" helped me to cone down to the cities that I was interested in targeting with my ad campaigns.
Get creative with online searching and see whether other criteria you are using to target your demographic are available on Wikipedia or in other corners of the Web. You'll be more likely to market effectively with the right people in front of you.
Lesson 8 - Learn Efficient Marketing
Don’t waste your advertising dollars on poor leads that don’t fit within the target audience you have identified. Depending on what marketing methods you choose, here are several ways you can avoid this (I will cover more of these business marketing strategies in my Newsletter):
Newspapers. After you have narrowed down your audience to certain geographic locations, use www.usnpl.com to easily search the newspapers that serve any U.S. cities and communities you have identified.
You’ll want to call the newspapers before you place any ads with them. Ask them about their circulation. Make sure that your advertising dollars aren’t wasted by casting too broad of a readership net.
For example, don’t advertise in a newspaper that serves all of Orange County if you’re only interested in marketing to readers in Anaheim. You’ll pay for the advertising that extends beyond Anaheim since the cost of placing ads is based on the total circulation radius.
Search engines. The most effective search engines for advertising is Google Adwords, but their pay-per-click campaigns can get expensive! Pick up a copy of Perry Marshall's The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords before you spend any money with this marketing channel.
Make sure that you are selecting the best keywords that potential customers would use when they search (remember, people are searching for solutions to their problems, not for your products or services specifically).
Try the free trial for Wordtracker Keywords to help you brainstorm the most effective keywords for your campaigns with some helpful training and guidance. Also, take a look at the free features in SpyFu to see which keywords your competitors are buying and which ones they use to optimize their own sites.
If you are serious about targeting only certain locations, don’t be shy about using location-targeted campaigns with AdWords. Google would prefer that you keep your marketing campaigns broad, but you have to do what is best for you.
If you only target Web visitors in certain locations, your pay-per-click costs will go down dramatically.
EZines. You can also advertise in online magazines known as EZines, which are electronic magazines/newspapers that cater to people with specific interests and hobbies. An EZine is only transmitted to people who have subscribed, so it gets your business opportunity into the hands of warmer, friendlier potential customers. A FREE list of EZines (categorized by topic) is available here.
Next: Lesson 9 - Seek Mentoring
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