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The 11 Commandments of Online Marketing

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Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

An online marketing guru reveals his secrets to being successful on the Internet.

Online marketing is in fashion, and it is a fact that some companies are already making millions in profits by selling their products and services on the so-called Network of Networks (Internet).

But, just as many are making millions, others are failing terribly. What are the secrets to being successful online?

To answer this question, we turned to Bruce Judson, author of NetMarketing (Wolf New Media) and creator of Pathfinder , the website of the giant media company Time Warner ( http://www.pathfinder.com ), which offers Your visitors links to all of your posts.

Judson offered us the following practical tips:

1. Set a clear goal. Don’t go and design a website just because everyone else is doing it. Know exactly why you are building a website and design it with that goal in mind. But don’t limit yourself: websites can serve a number of things: they can advertise your business, sell products or services, build a customer or prospect base, or much more.

2. Start by experimenting. We are talking about a new means of communication, in which not everything is said. Learn through experience. It is much more important to have a site up and running than to spend months and months planning it.

3. Find ways to save the most. An 800 or toll-free number to take orders from your customers costs about US $ 1 per minute. On the other hand, if your clients communicate with you through the Network, these costs will be totally eliminated and the savings will go directly to your income statement.

4. Set aside a budget to carry out what you have learned . Interactive marketing is still very new; no one knows for sure what will work and what won’t. Therefore, you should modify your site (no matter how much you have planned it) based on what you learn during your operation.

5. Design a promotion plan. More than 5,000 new business websites emerge each month around the world. You will be competing for that audience, so you need a promotional plan. A strategy based on the premise of “I’m going to build a site and the customers will come by themselves” will never work.

6. Promote your website everywhere you can. Include your email address and website on all your corporate stationery and product packaging, as well as on your business cards and in any mass advertising you decide to carry out. Consider buying media online so that potential customers come directly to your site from someone else. Use active ads, in which with a click, the navigator will arrive directly at your site.

7. Register your website on all search engines . The Internet has many search engines that send surfers to different sites depending on the information they are looking for. There are, for example, Yahoo! ( http://www.yahoo.com ), Lycos ( http://www.lycos.com ), Altavista ( http://www.altavista.com ) and Excite ( http://www.excite.com ) , in English, or Starmedia ( http://www.Starmedia.com ), El Sitio ( http://www.elsitio.com ) or QuePasa ( http://www.quepasa.com ) in Spanish. Registration is free. Seek to register in as many as possible.

8. Offer a referral service . If you have an extensive line of products for sale, ask your visitors for information about their needs so that you can program your website to recommend a certain product or service. By offering these options and offering your customers just what they are looking for, you are offering an invaluable value-added service.

9. Seek feedback. Ask your visitors if they want to be notified about new products or services or about an offer you plan to launch. It is very easy and not at all expensive to collect the names and email addresses of your visitors who want to receive these notifications via e-mail.

10. Include the best of your business. Take a good look at how your best sales rep promotes your product or service. The essence of what he or she says is the basis for building a successful website, as it should contain a lot of information about the benefits of your product or service.

11. Visit your competition. A frequent monitoring of your competitors’ websites will help you not only to generate new ideas, but to always think about doing something better and offering more and better tools to help your customers online.

Feature Image credit: Depositphotos.com

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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How Data Blending is Levelling the Playing Field in Online Marketing

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When online marketing first began, it was relatively simple.

You ran some PPC ads, an email marketing campaign, and worked on your content marketing.

Today, however, it’s not just a case of creating these things and seeing how they do. You’ve got to successfully manage your social media marketing, social media advertising, PPC ads, email campaigns – if you’re not careful, it can feel like throwing spaghetti at the wall just to see what works.

Fortunately, data analysis and – more specifically – data blending can make your marketing decisions faster and easier to make, with more impact.

What is data blending?

Data blending is simply where you take data from multiple sources and combine them to give you one united dataset.

This is incredibly beneficial regardless of what data you’re looking at but can be even more so for online marketing.

Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of consolidating your marketing data with data blending.

The benefits of consolidating your marketing data

See results across multiple platforms

If you’re running PPC ads on various search engines and platforms, it’s going to take time to look at each individual ad or campaign and assess all the different metrics. It’s going to be even more difficult if you want to see your overall costs at a glance, your overall conversion rate, and more. This is where data blending steps in.

If you’re using a business analytics platform like Sisense you’ll be able to automatically generate data blended dashboards that will present anyone at any level with easy-to-analyse data. You don’t need to pay for data entry to unite your dashboards, and you don’t need to waste your marketing team’s valuable time. They can see what’s going right – or wrong – and make new decisions.

And for the sake of a visual example, a PPC blended view within Sisense would look something like this:

Results-Across-Multiple-Platforms-Sisense-Pay-Per-Click-Campaign-Optimization-Data-Blending

You can see everything about your PPC campaigns – your cost-per-click, conversion rate, and whether or not there is a problem in your funnel.

In the above example, we can see that the funnel is working perfectly, filtering down from impressions to won opportunities. If that funnel effect suddenly dropped off at leads created, you know you have a chink in your armour.

Create anyone-can-read reports

Reports and dashboards really aren’t worth the money if there are only a handful of people on your team that can read them. Especially if they’re not the people that need the data.

If your data essentially needs translating before it’s useful, it’s not doing anyone any good. Sisense reports can be read by just about anyone – if they understand the terms, they can understand the data. It’s crystal clear, which means the right decisions can be made fast.

Identify trends

Do you know that your Instagram ads almost never get clicks on a weekend? Is it like that for all your ads across the board? Using complex data, you can see which campaigns are most effective – or not – and when.

And to truly see such statistics and trends in action, refer to the visual below.

Identify-Trends-Global-Best-Times-to-Post-on-Instagram-Data-Blending

Save money and increase revenue

To build on my point above, knowing when your campaigns are most effective will help you save money and increase revenue. For example, if you are a B2B organization and you realize that you get almost no new leads over the weekend, you could dramatically decrease your spend over the weekend and save money.

Alternatively, if you identify that you get the most for your money on a Monday, you could increase your ad spend and thus increase revenue. It’s important to remember that your ROI depends on smart spending and marketing, not blanket marketing, so it’s worth using a data blending tool to ensure your marketing budget is being utilized effectively.

Hit KPIs or identify where you’re falling short

Your online marketing efforts are one of the biggest reasons why you will be meeting or falling short of KPIs, such as MQLs, sales revenue metrics, and more. Using one dashboard with a blended view will allow you to see if your online marketing is contributing to the problem.

If you have a sales team, you may find for example that your online marketing gets the leads, but they fail to convert once they’re talking to a member of the sales team.

Even if your sales process takes place entirely online, you’ll be able to see how each marketing activity contributes to your results – you may find your PPC ads aren’t converting, but your content marketing and email marketing are. You can then reassess, make changes, and see how things change for you.

As highlighted by Indeed, KPI metrics within business and marketing may include:

  • Dollars spent on marketing over a certain period
  • Online traffic (the number of visitors to the company website)
  • Organic online traffic (the number of visitors to the company website via search engines)
  • Web traffic (to determine how many visitors are new vs. returning)
  • Mobile traffic
  • Click-through rate (the ratio of web traffic that clicks on a particular ad)
  • The number of visits to a particular piece of content

And based on the needs of your business or client reporting, these KPI metrics can scale further in either direction.

Finding the right tools

Blended view analytics tools are the key to success in online marketing, but it can be difficult to decide which is the best fit for you.

Here are two tools you need to know about:

Sisense

If you’re looking for a tool to manage your complex data, optimize campaigns, and manage your multi-channel marketing efforts, you won’t find better.

Sisense allows everyone in your team to see vital data at a glance, whether or not they have an analytical background. You’ll be able to track the impact of each campaign in one place, see which campaigns and platforms are delivering, and which aren’t. You can then decide if you need to tweak the ad to better suit the audience, or scrap it and double your efforts on a platform that is converting well.

For a complete visual of the platform and it’s many different marketing dashboards (from digital to traditional), you can view them all in action here.

Finding-the-Right-Tools-Sisense-Data-Blending

Google Data Studio

If you’re new to using blended dashboards and complex data and are a small business, Google Data Studio is a great place to start. While it is largely a platform that allows you to create reports, you can also use some blended views.

As with many Google tools, it is easy to use but it will throw you right in with no introduction, so you may have to spend some time Googling (ironically) how to get the most out of this tool.

To learn more about the many benefits of Google Data Studio and how to best use this solution, feel free to read over this helpful overview.

Finding-the-Right-Tools-Google-Data-Studio-Data-Blending

Wrapping up

If you’re a large organization, you’re not going to find a better tool than Sisense. Their solution is currently being used by businesses in nearly all industries to access the at-a-glance insight they can’t get from their complex data.

However, if you’re new to using insights or are a small business, Google Data Studio is one of the best tools to help you get started and understand what you want to see from your analytics tools.

No matter what solution you end up going with, it’s more important than ever to start using data blending in your business and marketing efforts.

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Guest author: Zac Johnson is a world-renowned blogger and entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience in the online marketing space and has helped his readers generate millions of dollars online. He shares his story and guidance at ZacJohnson.com

Sourced from Jeff Bullas

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4 Low-Cost Online Marketing Strategies

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By Thomas Griffin,

Not all online marketing has to break your budget. There are several tactics you can implement when resources are tight.

We know that marketing on a tight budget is far from easy. There are many strategies you have to consider, and one misstep can have negative results for your business.

It’s important to touch base with your audience across all platforms, including your website, email, and social media if you want to increase your sales and conversions. The people who visit our websites are spread across the internet, so reaching each subset of your audience can dramatically improve your site’s performance.

Today, we are going to look at several ways you can add powerful marketing strategies to your business without using all of your resources. Some of the tips we mention here today will cost you nothing, except for your time. Other suggestions have a very low cost and are great for small businesses looking to enhance brand awareness and grow their business.

Write high-quality blog content.

Creating content for your blog is, without a doubt, the cheapest way to build your brand. Websites with blogs tend to see more engagement, organic traffic, and sales. Generally, your blog’s content should either educate or entertain your audience while keeping the industry in the spotlight.

One of the things that make blogging so effective is the freedom to use your posts to market to specific customer pain points and goals. So, if your business sells musical instruments, you could create an article on the history of guitars, how to play guitar, or the best guitar solos of all time.

All three posts are targeting the same audience subset — guitar players. However, each title has a unique benefit to your readers. A post on the history of guitars is meant to educate and entertain, which can improve your traffic. The article on how to play guitar is educational and great for growing sales by including links to your products. Finally, the best guitar solos post is meant to be purely informative, and could significantly boost engagement.

Research shows that when people buy your products, at least 60% spent time reading about products on your blog before completing their order. Not having content on your website can cause you to miss out on over half of all sales.

Consumers expect websites to offer more than a standard online store in 2020. They want to visit sites that provide an experience tailored to their needs. Creating relevant, informative content is the first step to marketing your website if funds are tight.

Find guest posting opportunities.

Creating content on your website is a great start, but more work needs to be done if you want to market your site to a broad audience. Our next tip focuses on publishing content on other websites.

Guest posting is essentially when a publication allows other people to create content for their website. The posts are relevant to the industry and help the publication generate traffic while offering more exposure to the business owner or marketer writing the guest post.

If you want to start publishing guest posts on other websites, the first step is to find relevant publications or brands in your industries. You don’t have to restrict yourself to sites that only publish content. Businesses that have a blog and sell a product within your niche are also likely to accept a well-written guest post.

After you find a list of potential publications willing to accept a guest post, it’s time to send out your pitch. Create a highly personalized message where you include the topic you would like to write about, your experience with the website, and why you believe your content will add value to their audience. If you can, make the email personal by including the editor’s name and tell them about some of your favorite posts that recently published on their site.

This form of marketing is perfect for promoting your business or introducing a new product or service.

Create more video content.

Diversifying your content is another excellent way to step up your marketing without breaking the bank. Text is a common form of content, but videos have proven lucrative for business owners across all industries. In fact, marketers that use video claim to see an average lead increase of 66%.

There are plenty of ways to include videos in your content marketing strategy. You can go all out and create a YouTube channel known for driving traffic and engagement to websites. Platforms like YouTube make it easy to build a vast library of helpful content and guides for your audience. Hosting them on YouTube will also decrease loading times if you decide to add videos to your site, which you should.

Why?

For starters, adding videos to your lead magnets can boost on-page conversions by 86%. There are a couple of reasons for this phenomenon. First, users are more likely to watch a video than read a long-form blog post. There’s more to it than that, though.

Videos also encourage engagement because they keep visitors interested in your brand for an extended period of time. Consequently, if someone isn’t sure if they should buy your product, the extra time on your site could help them make a concrete decision.

Build your email list.

Building an email list is one of the best ways to grow your company and increase sales. Email marketing has a stunning 4,400% return on investment, making it one of the most effective marketing tools you have at your disposal.

The thing that makes email marketing special is it allows you to build rapport with each customer over a long period slowly. When you consider that 96% of people who visit your website are not ready to buy, fostering connections is a great way to convince more undecided people to switch to your brand.

You can send various types of content to your subscribers, but most people like content and promotions. Sending out your recently published posts in a newsletter is the perfect way to keep people invested in your brand. You can also send out special offers that encourage email subscribers to come back to your website and make a purchase.

But your emails must have great content and look nice. Visually unattractive emails have a 79% chance of getting deleted when they land in a mobile user’s inbox. Focus on creating concise, helpful, mobile-friendly content for your emails. When you consider that most people check their email using a smartphone, mobile-friendly emails make perfect sense.

The best part about this strategy is it will cost you very little to get started. Despite the low entry fee, you can dramatically grow your business by investing in email marketing.

As you can see, there are plenty of options to consider when you want to market your business. The cost of some choices may seem daunting at first, but when you use these tactics to grow your brand, you’re building a strong foundation for the future.

The profits you gain from this foundation can help you go on to buy pricier tools that deliver even more impressive results for your business. The key is to start the process of growing your business now. You can’t wait for a marketing opportunity to come to you. Instead, take the time to pursue some of these inexpensive marketing strategies to grow your brand.

By Thomas Griffin,

I’m president and CTO of OptinMonster, a powerful lead generation tool that’s installed in over 700,000 websites.

Sourced from Business.com

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Online Marketing Tips That Actually Work

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By Evan Varsamis,

This year has been quite a roller coaster for marketers so far, and it’s still unclear how things will go in the next few months. However, when it comes to designing a marketing funnel, you can’t stick to your traditional methods anymore. You have to start thinking outside the box and picking up new techniques that can enhance your brand’s presence on the web. Online competition has grown massively over the last few years. It’s not just about being present on the web anymore. It’s about sustaining an omnichannel presence.

What Is An Omnichannel Presence?

Years ago, we used to think of online marketing as finding the platform that works the best for you and prioritizing your activities there. Today, with so many different platforms having unique structures, it’s even more difficult to figure out what works the best for your brand. It’s not about finding your best platform anymore. It’s about learning how to be present on every channel and make the most of it.

What works on Facebook won’t work on Pinterest. You have to figure out how to be present on both channels with equal effectiveness.

Now that you’re familiar with an omnichannel presence, let’s take a look at trends and online marketing tips that will help you sustain your business in 2020.

Cobranded Content

Every individual is loyal to a certain number of brands. As a marketer, if you can leverage that engagement by combining two brands, there’s nothing like it.

Sophia Bernazzani explained this concept beautifully on HubSpot: “One of my own beloved childhood memories was a product of co-branding: Betty Crocker partnered with Hershey’s to include chocolate syrup in its signature brownie recipe. There’s something brilliant about that co-branded product: It’s a fun way to marry two classic brands into one delicious experience for fans of baking and chocolate alike.”

So, to make your 2020 marketing work, you can connect with brands that appeal to you and use that collaboration as a marketing campaign. You could choose to go for video advertising or even audio influencing through podcasts or webinars. Either way, cobranded content can help you soar high with the help of loyal followers.

Micro-Influencer Marketing

If you have experience with influencer marketing, you’ll know why micro-influencers are the near future. Reaching out to big-time influencers is difficult, and you can’t expect them to review free samples that easily. So brands that are tight on budget can opt for micro-influencers who cater to their product niche.

These influencers have enough popularity to still be influential, and they also tend to have better engagement rates with their followers because they are less overwhelmed with sponsorship offers, which gives them the bandwidth to keep in touch with their followers. A study (paywall) from HelloSociety suggests that micro-influencers with around 30,000 followers have 60% higher engagement and are about 6.7 times more cost effective than influencers with more followers.

Nontraditional Social Media Marketing

Ever since we started social media marketing, we’ve primarily used Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. While these platforms continue to be the rulers in the industry, there are several others that are making their way up with the help of the younger generation. These platforms include Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit and Medium.

So when it comes to planning a successful marketing campaign, you need to think outside the box and come up with ways to work on every platform instead of sticking to just one or two. In fact, it may seem far-fetched, but TikTok could work for your brand, depending on what you are trying to promote.

Contextual Targeting

When you throw random ads at people, you can’t expect the click rate you desire. That’s because not everyone will want to see the product you are showing them. Instead, with contextual targeting, you can showcase your ads on pages with related information. People who see your ads will have a higher chance of clicking them because they are already interested in your product niche.

Programmatic Audio

With podcasts and audio streaming apps becoming more and more popular, they’ve turned into avenues for online promotion. The advantage of programmatic audio promotion is that it enables you to place ads in the audio content.

Depending on your preference, you can opt for ad formats such as companion, ad pods, or pre-roll and midroll ads. Currently, companies including Google, Rubicon Project, SoundCloud and the BBC offer audio advertising features.

Video Advertising

Every social network is focusing on video content. Many are even looking for ways to implement product shopping directly from videos.

Consider using traditional video advertising methods by placing your ads on YouTube. You can even work with brands on Facebook and Instagram to promote your products in videos.

Mobile-Friendly Emails

As more people switch to primarily using their smartphones, the entire email marketing industry will change. Email designs need to be mobile-friendly and minimal, and they must have the call to action (CTA) button in a place where the user can easily find it. Another crucial point is to avoid too much content in your email. You can always opt for a drip email campaign to send out information sequentially.

Augmented Reality (AR) And Virtual Reality (VR

If you are an e-commerce brand, chances are you’ve already heard of implementing AR and VR for better product discovery. By implementing these technologies in your marketing funnel, you may be able to draw the attention of people who hesitate to purchase online. Give them the opportunity to try out products virtually before purchasing them.

Having said that, it’s also crucial not to forget the tone of voice you use while implementing all your marketing campaigns. The world is going through a massive change in 2020, and it’s important to understand the emotion of your audience before you try to promote a product or service to them. An empathetic and genuine tone can always take your brand a long way.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

By Evan Varsamis,

An entrepreneur and Founder/CEO at Gadget Flow, as well as an investor and marketing advisor at Qrator Ltd.

Sourced from Forbes

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Learn Internet Marketing Strategies To Increase Your Profit

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By Rolf Joho

There are many web marketing tips that can be employed depending on what you’re able to do technologically.

Affiliate promotion is not spamming everyone on the Internet. It takes a lot of understanding and strategy.When taking a chance on affiliate marketing, it will be beneficial to seek out and sign up with affiliates that will provide you with the products and service you will be selling.

Try to have multiple affiliates. This will give you a variety of income feeds. Research the affiliate programs thoroughly before working with them. You need to know that you will feel comfortable promoting their products.See how a company tracks outside orders when choosing an affiliate company. You might lose a lot of commissions if those outside sales are made by mail or on the phone.

In order to make sure the money gets where it needs to be, you need to consider affiliate companies that provide different payment options. There are companies that require you to make a certain amount of money before they will pay you, but there are also those that direct deposit funds into your bank at your discretion.

A lot of affiliates end up losing valuable time by having to re-read emails that contain instructions for tasks in their email and then check them.

This is a great way to save time as you will have all the important information in one document.

When searching for an affiliate marketing partner, find companies that continuously make new products. Go with a solid reputable company and one that is constantly coming out with many new products, this way you can get repeat business. You may not succeed with the new hot product.

You should choose an affiliate that has a lot of different options when it comes to getting your payments.

People who access a themed website, like sports, are already thinking about sports. Placing a link for an affiliate website won’t give you any benefit unless it is related to sports. Links that have some pertinence to what is on the mind of your visitors will provide you with the most benefit.

Only partner with reliable affiliate companies. You should look for less than 20% or higher on their products.The best affiliates offer high percentages to their business.

Think carefully about the products that you want to link to before you do it. You will see money roll in when you know how to put your links in the right places.

Carefully consider which products you put on your site. It is crucial to strategically place your affiliate links in order to ensure profitability.

When doing affiliate marketing you should never be deceptive about what business you are in. If you are endorsing a product that you are profiting from, let the audience know and don’t attempt to mislead their choices. If a visitor thinks there is any dishonesty going on with your site, they will go instead to the merchant site for their purchase.

There is a variety in affiliate programs. Each one is unique in it’s product and level of flexibility.

Look for affiliate partners with a high ratio of customers to visitors. A 1% transformation equation is a favourable gauge.Knowing what is going on in real time is essential. This lets you know how many users have been to your site and the number of sales conversions.

Offering a product for only a limited amount of time can be an effective affiliate marketing strategy. If your customers see there’s a small window of time for them to purchase your product, it may give them a push to purchase it. This extra push can be a terrific way to maximize the volume and efficiency of sales.

Be honest with readers about your audience when you have affiliates. Being honest shows that you respect your customers and they can trust you.

Tell your readers information about your affiliations. Being honest shows that you respect your customers and they are sure to appreciate that.

Make sure you attract a good audience for the products you are going to market. When you have a product that is costly, more direct targeting is necessary.Putting a trivia question in a banner ad can intrigue your visitors to want to answer it by viewing your site. Curiosity is a powerful motive and can add many clicks to your banner ad. Sweeten the pot by offering discounts to visitors who got the question right.

Do not rely on just a small number of affiliate partners to make up the entirety of your internet marketing campaign. Have a large variety of products in your inventory. A spread out group of affiliates will prevent you protected from large losses when you cut out one that have become unprofitable. If you are not advertising just as many products as you can comfortably handle, seek out more.

The most sought after commission in affiliate marketing enterprises is known as a lifetime commission. Lifetime commissions are very difficult to find. They amount of money you can generate however, means that they are still worth looking for. Vendors pay the webmaster a commission for purchases made by the customers steered to them by the webmaster. Usually, the commission is given only if a buyer buys within a time period after they click on the link. The potential rewards are so great that it is worth it to find the rare lifetime commissions out there.

Even a slight negative connotations are not good.

Back-links are a great way to attract more visitors, but you should always make sure your back-links describe your content accordingly. If your customer comes to your site looking for an HP tablet, they won’t be able to see iPads. It takes an extremely compelling marketing effort to overcome the mistrust that such deceptive backlinks foster in your would-be customers.

It is important to always be honest with anyone reading your clients in online marketing. Honesty is the key to having a loyal user base.Keeping your affiliate marketing techniques relevant and timely is one of the most crucial elements to success. Take the time every few months to look at new programs your affiliates may be offering. New tools are currently being implemented to maximize the usability of affiliate programs to make ads appealing to readers.

You should do your web marketing in the same manner you would any other business. You want your links that do not directly mention the real seller.You want your customers to get the impression that you are closely connected to the product you are selling.

57e7d0454854a414f6da8c7dda793278143fdef85254774e742b7ed19f4e 640 2 - Learn Internet Marketing Strategies To Increase Your Profit

When you use affiliate marketing you should use your products personally. Placing reviews and articles about the product online is a great way to let people know how useful you find the product to be. In addition, you can post on a number of forums and discuss the ways in which the product has been beneficial to you. Each time you post anything, remember to link back to your site.

All good affiliate marketers should be aware that pay-per-sale plan can be risky. It can also be quite lucrative if done properly. Do your homework and look into the affiliate’s background to determine if it will be a good partnership before you might be interested in.

Do not put an excessive amount of banners on your site. A website stuffed with advertisements is not one that welcomes visitors. You will drive away potential business and appear unprofessional if you load your pages down with too many ads. Make sure that there is an abundant amount of content on your website. Design your website so that when someone visits it, their attention is immediately focused on the content, and not the banners.

Affiliate marketers who reside in California have been resolved so accounts suspended in 2011 can now replace the links that they lost. The law that made Amazon drop their clients has been edited so that they can participate again. Be sure to sign up for the program if affected.A person going into affiliate marketing has to realize that working with a pay-per-sale company, through affiliate marketing, can be a risky undertaking. But if it works well, they can lead to a great deal of money. Look into how the affiliate performs for others and how well the product would fit your site, and make a careful decision.

Join an online web marketing forum to get fresh ideas and advice. There are a number of different online forums on the internet that allow you to exchange ideas and help each other.If isn’t broke, don’t fix it; sell what is already sought after instead of coming up with something new. Some affiliate marketers will stay away from the popular categories because of the increased competition. It is easier to persuade visitors to your site to buy things if you are selling a popular product. You should remember that the popular niches have a buyer pool that is already primed for the products and connecting with them is the only challenge. You have to create a marketing plan that gets you noticed.

Back-end sales are necessary in order the maximize the success of web marketing campaigns. You should get commissions on the sales that result from referrals you refer customers to. Get everything you deserve by being involved with businesses that give you a percentage for these back-end sales.Become a member of some of the reputable online affiliate forums to learn new tricks and share what has worked for you. There are a huge number of affiliate marketing forums where you can get help, as well as tools and programs to make your affiliate site even better.Use paid advertising to increase the sales and profits on your campaigns. Buying ads focused on the right keywords will create sales and sales. The numbers of prospective buyers will increase when doing this.

Set yourself small goals every single day to aid you in your affiliate marketing strategy. Motivation remains as long as there are unfinished tasks visible in the task bar.

Tracking Service

Try converting customers into affiliate partners. People that actually use and like the products are going to be better at selling it. By recruiting customers to be affiliates, you can greatly increase the number of sales you make. You can increase your gain and you will have another outlet for new customers to visit.

Use a reputable tracking service you are owed. If an affiliate doesn’t calculate your sales correctly, it will be your bank account that suffers. Avoid this by using a reliable tracking service at all times. Paying for a small fee is worth finding a reputable service.Use a reputable tracking service that provides accurate reports of what you are owed. Affiliates have been known to incorrectly track sales, which can cause a loss of profits for you. A reliable tracking service will protect you from this let down and inconvenience. This service will be a very practical investment that will protect your profits.

Consider creating an e-book to post on websites that share documents. This helps highlight your expertise and also attract those that are searching for information that is similar to content on your website. Do not be shy about promoting yourself and your website links in the document.Know your niche when you pick affiliates. You should make sure that your affiliates are promoting products and services that are compatible or complementary to what your website offers. The clients come to your website for a particular product and have particular ideas in mind ahead of time. Always offer advertisements that will meet the needs of your clientele.

Use a multitude of advertising to spread the word about your affiliate product. A lot of your customer base will prefer online shopping. Some customers prefer to receive brochures and fliers. Some people might respond well to a special deal or savings coupon. You will draw a wider audience by employing several venues to advertise your product.You need to think about how your article affiliate marketing is leveraging the power of social media. Social media is certainly considered important to Google. Social media is a large factor in how market sites are booked and how search results are produced through Google. The tendrils of social networks like Twitter and Facebook grow deep, touching nearly every page on the Internet.

You need to invest some money in online marketing before you see the profit you want to garner. Reinvest in web marketing profits by advertising to new venues. Many major sites, Yahoo, which can draw a lot of traffic with the right ad.Make education into the best ways to market product a priority if you wish to be a profitable affiliate marketer. Some affiliates use whatever they can find for free. It is true that you have nothing to lose if you find a program that is free; however, it is crucial to keep your goals in mind and chose ones that will get you there.

Try to mention different uses for the products if you can. For instance, if you have a shoe mat, post a video to your site of using it as a dog water and food tray, or putting one under a candle to prevent wax dripping everywhere.This will greatly appeal to an older audience, like baby boomers. Design your website for this audience. You could for instance make your font a few points bigger to make it easier to read.It is common to see newcomers to internet marketing jump at the first option that is offered free offering. Free methods are not necessarily bad; however, but you need to focus on effectiveness.

If you use these ideas, you will be able to find how to get the right people and make a good profit. Your skills may advance past those in this article through practice in this field. It’s always key to remember the fundamentals and keep your marketing campaign as simple as you can.

By Rolf Joho

Sourced from https://duracmarketing.com

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Shopify expands native ad options for online marketing

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By Meagan Simpson

Shopify will soon be adding new native ad-buying functions for Facebook and Snapchat, as it looks to make it easier for merchants to access marketing campaigns through their online stores.

As of today Shopify’s online merchants now have the ability to create Facebook dynamic ads, and over the next few weeks, the company is also rolling out Story Ads on Snapchat. This expands Shopify’s existing marketing integrations, which include carousel ads on Facebook and Google Smart shopping campaigns.

The new marketing section was originally launched in October, with the tech giant stating it understands that marketing is extremely important to direct-to-customer brands. Shopify noted that it wanted to make it easier for those merchants to access marketing, therefore decided to centralize marketing integrations. It made the integrations available to access alongside online store, inventory, and sales management.

Along with new features for its online customers, Shopify is also putting emphasis on brick-and-mortar retailers. Last week, the company finally launched its Tap & Chip Reader, allowing in-store retailers to service payments quickly and securely, through payment-enabled phones, as well as debit and credit cards. The announcement marked the first launch of the Reader since it was originally announced in early 2018. It was made available to merchants along with a retail kit, that includes a Dock for the reader, and retail Stand for iPads.

While still primarily an ecommerce company, Shopify has been expanding its in-store retail offerings over the past few years.

“We want to make sure that we take all of the years of work we’ve been doing for [Shopify Plus] customers and make sure we deliver it to them in a way that makes sense and helps them with their unique problems. Shopify Plus did that for the enterprise and Shopify Retail will do that for the physical region,” Satish Kanwar, VP of product at Shopify, told BetaKit earlier this year.

He noted that often, Shopify’s customers are not one specific type, with some brick-and-mortar retailers moving online and vice versa. He said the Ottawa-based company is looking to meet its customers at whatever point they interact with Shopify, looking to create a cohesive experience between online and in-store features.

In terms of today’s announcement, Shopify noted that when it comes to its online businesses it “know[s] that marketing is extremely important” and is hoping to make ad buying and content creation as easy and simple as possible. Shopify also expressed that more features for its new marketing section will become available later this year.

By Meagan Simpson

Meagan is the Associate Editor for BetaKit. A tech writer that is super proud to showcase the Canadian tech scene. Background in almost every type of journalism from sports to politics. Podcast and Harry Potter nerd, photographer and crazy cat lady.

Sourced from Betakit

 

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Probing for facts in a fog of online marketing

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By Neil Macdonald

Manufacturers have seized discussion forums. Corporations are buying reviews

About three years ago, Costco hired a fellow named Chris Wheatley to pick up a faulty hot tub being returned by one of its customers in Nova Scotia. Costco would come to regret having done that.

Wheatley, who runs a small business in Halifax selling and servicing tubs, had, out of disgust at what he calls the confidence game of the hot tub industry, established a website meant to educate consumers.

When the tub’s exterior panels began falling off during the ride back to the Costco warehouse, Wheatley abruptly pulled into a parking lot, took out his smartphone, and launched into an impromptu technical review.

It was savage. Wheatley took the viewer into the guts of the $10,000 tub, pointing out its skimpy insulation, a design defect that caused its pumps to overheat, the inferior quality of its fiberglass shell, which appeared to be propped up internally by Styrofoam, and the cheap plumbing of its hoses and connections. He then posted the video on his website, hottubuniversity.com, where it remains to this day.

“It went viral. I got, like, 200,000 hits in a very short period.”

Costco, says Wheatley, was in touch pronto.

“They told me to take the video down or they’d take legal action. I told them every message from them, every statement, would be put up on my website for public inspection. After that, they went away.”

Wheatley didn’t know it at the time, but he was on his way to becoming probably the North American hot tub industry’s most influential influencer. He says his website now attracts nearly 100,000 unique hits a year, mostly from people about to spend somewhere between $7,000 and $20,000.

Influencers are the big thing in marketing nowadays. Some are celebrities, some are Instagram stars who make big money promoting makeup, but most are just independent operators who found a niche. What they all seem to have in common is the ability to engender trust. Wheatley is a perfect example. His reviews are blunt, his language sometimes rough, and he answers all his emails – 4,500 last year – personally.

Manufacturing reviews

He reckons he influences, directly or indirectly, hundreds of millions worth of purchases from consumers who want to buy, but are gasping in the fog of the internet, most of it put there by the marketing departments of the unregulated hot tub industry.

“The online discussion forums are all controlled by the manufacturers,” he says. “People are getting lied to. This is a crappy world where companies trick customers with marketing for their crappy products.”

They do it because it works, of course. Research in the U.S. indicates that more than 80 per cent of buyers sometimes check a review before purchasing, and 40 per cent read them every time they buy. Younger buyers are especially reliant on reviews.

The hot tub game, says Wheatley, is being taken over by private equity firms that buy up manufacturers, cheapen the product by using cut-rate components (for which replacements can only be purchased from them), then package it with glossy, misleading marketing.

“You’re buying a product that’s designed to fail.”

So Wheatley doggedly plugs a small group of manufacturers that still use standard parts you can buy anywhere. He endorses brands that produce strong hand-rolled shells, glued-and-clamped plumbing, and proper insulation. He refuses advertising.

But he also lives in the world, and has to make a living. The website costs money. He has employees. He has to procure tubs to dissect and review. So, like most influencers, he’s begun taking money from manufacturers he recommends. Enough to break even, he says. He will disclose, if asked, which ones they are.

And he turns down all offers from manufacturers that don’t meet his standards.

Does taking the money make Wheatley less credible? Maybe, a bit. But where, nowadays, does a consumer turn? As Ira Rheingold at the National Association of Consumer Advocates in Washington puts it, never has more information been available, and never has so much of it been fake.

Now, a disclosure here: When a physiotherapist prescribed a hot tub after some surgeries two years ago, I found myself poking around the internet, seeking some reliable advice, and finally found Wheatley. I am certain the information on his site prevented me from making some awfully costly mistakes.

Controlling consumer information

But the more I researched, the more I realized how completely corporate interests, open or veiled, control consumer information online.

A Google search for almost any consumer item will turn up a raft of review sites, most of which are clearly for-profit operations offering to rank companies’ products in return for payment, or want to solicit customer complaints as a profitable means of developing leads for lawyers.

Sales and review sites routinely offer sellers more visible billing in exchange for a premium. It’s the online equivalent of fees companies pay to ensure their products are placed prominently in store aisles.

Consumer review sites, where individuals testify about the quality of a purchase or sales experience, are equally sketchy. Reports abound of shills driving up five-star rankings.

In fact, says Rheingold, companies are taking steps to stifle negative reviews.

“When you buy something online you might be unknowingly agreeing to a non-disparagement clause buried in the fine print. We’ve seen a number of companies turn around and sue over a bad review on a site like Yelp. The idea is to scare people.”

Enabling consumers, says Rheingold, is not a priority in the United States nowadays. Quite the opposite, where the Trump administration is concerned. In Canada, we just seem indifferent. We’ve never had much of a consumer movement here. We certainly could use one.

Feature Image: We’ve never had much of a consumer movement here. We certainly could use one. (Atsushi Tomura/Getty Images)

By Neil Macdonald

Neil Macdonald is an opinion columnist for CBC News, based in Ottawa. Prior to that he was the CBC’s Washington correspondent for 12 years, and before that he spent five years reporting from the Middle East. He also had a previous career in newspapers, and speaks English and French fluently, and some Arabic.

Sourced from CBC

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Build Your Brand Reputation With These 4 Techniques

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By Susan Gilbert

Today I have some branding strategies to help you create more visibility and increase your brand reputation. Here’s four links with tips and tricks to kick start your work week.

Establishing your business as a leader in our industry takes time and cultivation through the right relationships and marketing methods. Using the strategies can help you connect more with your audience and influencers. There are several ways to help you focus your efforts and improve awareness. Take advantage of these ideas, and let me know how these work for you!

1 – Go beyond online marketing

Build a wider audience through offline marketing. With this strategy your business can reach interested prospects by being active and engaged with them at places like industry trade shows, concerts, book signings, and more. By making a personal connection you can create a memorable experience that will translate into your online properties as well.

2 – Create trust in your community

People who trust your business enough will the spread the word online and offline. This is free advertising for your company that can have a continual payoff. As you build relationships within your niche through methods such as exclusive events, live video, and Twitter chats your customers will have an opportunity to share their experiences. As you take a positive, and encouraging approach with a high value offer you will begin to see your products or services being recommended by others online.

3 – Leverage influencer marketing

Make an action plan to connect with leaders in your industry. This will open the doors for guest blogging opportunities and recommendations that can help bring more visitors to your website and social networks. Engage on places like LinkedIn, Medium, and other blogs to attract more brand followers. After establishing your expertise and authority it won’t be long before your business or name is recommend on authority websites.

4 – Podcasts and video marketing

Would you like people to find your brand online quickly? This is a powerful and popular way to bring interested prospects into your business, provide a how-to segment, or showcase an expert interview. Hosting a podcast or uploading videos to YouTube are effective with both live and pre-recorded methods.

Hopefully you will find these brand reputation methods useful to your online strategy. Are there any that you would like to add as well?

Have fun with these tips and tools.

By Susan Gilbert

 

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The Hands-Off Method of Online Marketing That’s Both Fast and Easy

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By 

You don’t have to do all the work yourself when it comes to marketing your passive income site. That’s where affiliate marketing comes in.

The following excerpt is from Nightingale-Conant’s book The Power of Passive Income: Make Money Work For You. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | IndieBound

Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest and easiest online passive income businesses to get started in. Depending on the path you choose, the investment to get up and running can be minimal. It all depends on your preferred marketing model and how much you need to outsource as opposed to doing it yourself. And the best part is, you can do this with any kind of site you set up, whether it’s a blog, general interest site, or ecommerce store. Once you get your foundation in place, your main ongoing costs are associated with advertising and promoting the products you sell, and you get to choose how much or how little you’d like to put into the process.

Affiliate marketing is essentially a way for you to earn cash for promoting and selling items or services without ever having to be responsible for the product, shipping, or fulfilment of the order. You strike a deal with a business, company, or individual to promote their products, and in return, when an item is sold through your affiliate account, you get a commission—a certain percentage or dollar amount for that sale. It’s a win-win situation for you and the business: They get free advertising and customers they might not have otherwise reached, and you’re compensated for the work you’ve put in. The commission they pay you is essentially part of their marketing budget. For some companies, it’s their exclusive form of marketing.

Let’s explore how this works.

Personalized affiliate links and cookies

There are two ways an affiliate program will track the prospects you send them:

1. Personalized affiliate links. If your affiliate program uses links to track sales, you’ll be given a login and a link associated with your account, which you’ll send to customers so the purchase can be traced back to you.

2. Cookies. Some programs use cookies instead of personalized links. Cookies are tiny pieces of data the internet uses to track someone’s online habits. It’s a way to see where a customer came from and what they bought.

Different programs have different duration policies. Some companies will pay you for life any time a prospect you have sent them buys something; others pay only on the initial sale. Some programs have specified time ranges — 30, 60 or 90 days — during which they’ll pay you on purchases made by the prospect you sent them.

As with anything, there are a few drawbacks. You have to be willing to invest your time, energy, and patience into making it work for you. Small sales here and there are great, but if you want to make this your main source of online passive income, you have to be able to land a lot of sales to make a significant amount of money. You need to think about your efforts as building a business. Two considerations in that vein are creating systems that are set up to get consistent new lead acquisition and choosing higher-margin offers (same amount of work, more money).

For this to be sustainable as a long-term income stream, you need to create promotions that lead to consistent sales. This will take commitment, time, and dedication but will be easier for those of you who have some experience with search engine optimization (SEO) or paid traffic generation.

Finally, you really need to choose your affiliates wisely. If the merchant’s site isn’t up to par, slow, buggy, full of errors, and not geared toward making the sale, you’ll lose out as well. Take a look around the site and ask yourself, “Would I feel comfortable buying from here?” If the answer is no, you may want to reconsider becoming an affiliate for that business.

Types of affiliate offers

Most offers you’ll be exposed to can be lumped into three categories: products, services, and stores.

Products

There are two types of online products you can be an affiliate for: physical and digital. The marketing strategies you will employ won’t really change either way, but they do each come with their own sets of pros and cons.

Physical products

Pros: Not all consumers buy digital products, but pretty much all consumers buy physical products. If you choose a product that’s in demand, made by a trusted brand, and sold through a credible online store, the selling is really already done for you.

Cons: The biggest cons to physical products are the shipping cost and the fact that it takes some time for the product to arrive. Also, there are certain products that consumers want to be able to touch and experience before they buy. That can sometimes hamper an online purchase.

Digital products

Pros: One of the biggest advantages of a digital product is instant gratification. The consumer can immediately dig in and enjoy the product they purchased while they’re excited about it. If you’re in tune with your prospects’ problems and have a digital product that gives them the solution to that problem, conversions can be really high. No shipping costs are another plus.

Cons: Digital products are often swimming among a lot of competition that you need to stand out from. Also, you’re at the mercy of the retailer when it comes to making sure the product downloads properly. Sometimes digital products are so complicated they overwhelm the consumer, which can hinder additional sales from that prospect.

Services

There are many services people pay for online that have affiliate programs. Some examples are:

  • Financial services like tax preparation
  • Social media and digital marketing services
  • Professional services (hosting, payment processing, etc.)
  • Travel-related services like Hotels.com and Travelocity

Storewide programs

There are tons of stores that will give you commissions on the entire purchase made by a consumer you send to their site. This is great because it gives you the flexibility to market just one product they sell and still get credit for anything else your prospect adds to their cart, or you can just promote the entire store in general.

Feature Image credit: RamCreativ | Getty Images 

By 

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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The Hands-Off Method of Online Marketing That’s Both Fast and Easy

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By NIGHTINGALE-CONANT

You don’t have to do all the work yourself when it comes to marketing your passive income site. That’s where affiliate marketing comes in.

The following excerpt is from Nightingale-Conant’s book The Power of Passive Income: Make Money Work For You. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | IndieBound

Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest and easiest online passive income businesses to get started in. Depending on the path you choose, the investment to get up and running can be minimal. It all depends on your preferred marketing model and how much you need to outsource as opposed to doing it yourself. And the best part is, you can do this with any kind of site you set up, whether it’s a blog, general interest site, or ecommerce store. Once you get your foundation in place, your main ongoing costs are associated with advertising and promoting the products you sell, and you get to choose how much or how little you’d like to put into the process.

Affiliate marketing is essentially a way for you to earn cash for promoting and selling items or services without ever having to be responsible for the product, shipping, or fulfillment of the order. You strike a deal with a business, company, or individual to promote their products, and in return, when an item is sold through your affiliate account, you get a commission—a certain percentage or dollar amount for that sale. It’s a win-win situation for you and the business: They get free advertising and customers they might not have otherwise reached, and you’re compensated for the work you’ve put in. The commission they pay you is essentially part of their marketing budget. For some companies, it’s their exclusive form of marketing.

Let’s explore how this works.

Personalized affiliate links and cookies

There are two ways an affiliate program will track the prospects you send them:

1. Personalized affiliate links. If your affiliate program uses links to track sales, you’ll be given a login and a link associated with your account, which you’ll send to customers so the purchase can be traced back to you.

2. Cookies. Some programs use cookies instead of personalized links. Cookies are tiny pieces of data the internet uses to track someone’s online habits. It’s a way to see where a customer came from and what they bought.

Different programs have different duration policies. Some companies will pay you for life any time a prospect you have sent them buys something; others pay only on the initial sale. Some programs have specified time ranges — 30, 60 or 90 days — during which they’ll pay you on purchases made by the prospect you sent them.

As with anything, there are a few drawbacks. You have to be willing to invest your time, energy, and patience into making it work for you. Small sales here and there are great, but if you want to make this your main source of online passive income, you have to be able to land a lot of sales to make a significant amount of money. You need to think about your efforts as building a business. Two considerations in that vein are creating systems that are set up to get consistent new lead acquisition and choosing higher-margin offers (same amount of work, more money).

For this to be sustainable as a long-term income stream, you need to create promotions that lead to consistent sales. This will take commitment, time, and dedication but will be easier for those of you who have some experience with search engine optimization (SEO) or paid traffic generation.

Finally, you really need to choose your affiliates wisely. If the merchant’s site isn’t up to par, slow, buggy, full of errors, and not geared toward making the sale, you’ll lose out as well. Take a look around the site and ask yourself, “Would I feel comfortable buying from here?” If the answer is no, you may want to reconsider becoming an affiliate for that business.

Types of affiliate offers

Most offers you’ll be exposed to can be lumped into three categories: products, services, and stores.

Products

There are two types of online products you can be an affiliate for: physical and digital. The marketing strategies you will employ won’t really change either way, but they do each come with their own sets of pros and cons.

Physical products

Pros: Not all consumers buy digital products, but pretty much all consumers buy physical products. If you choose a product that’s in demand, made by a trusted brand, and sold through a credible online store, the selling is really already done for you.

Cons: The biggest cons to physical products are the shipping cost and the fact that it takes some time for the product to arrive. Also, there are certain products that consumers want to be able to touch and experience before they buy. That can sometimes hamper an online purchase.

Digital products

Pros: One of the biggest advantages of a digital product is instant gratification. The consumer can immediately dig in and enjoy the product they purchased while they’re excited about it. If you’re in tune with your prospects’ problems and have a digital product that gives them the solution to that problem, conversions can be really high. No shipping costs are another plus.

Cons: Digital products are often swimming among a lot of competition that you need to stand out from. Also, you’re at the mercy of the retailer when it comes to making sure the product downloads properly. Sometimes digital products are so complicated they overwhelm the consumer, which can hinder additional sales from that prospect.

Services

There are many services people pay for online that have affiliate programs. Some examples are:

  • Financial services like tax preparation
  • Social media and digital marketing services
  • Professional services (hosting, payment processing, etc.)
  • Travel-related services like Hotels.com and Travelocity

Storewide programs

There are tons of stores that will give you commissions on the entire purchase made by a consumer you send to their site. This is great because it gives you the flexibility to market just one product they sell and still get credit for anything else your prospect adds to their cart, or you can just promote the entire store in general.

Feature Image Credit: Image credit: RamCreativ | Getty Images

By NIGHTINGALE-CONANT

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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