There are three fundamental tenets that should be your focus when developing your online marketing strategy.  If you understand what these basic building blocks are and the effect they can have on your marketing it will be easier to develop an effective strategy.

As you develop your marketing strategy there are several additional tactics that will want to add due to the complexity of internet marketing. Should you miss the mark on any one of these building blocks, your overall results will be considerably diminished.

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Before getting to the details if this article I would like to explain to all who read my posts why you haven’t heard from me recently. I had major surgery on my neck on March 1 and have been unable to move my head enough to do any typing. I am still restricted in the amount of time that I can spend at the computer; therefore, will be limited in my activity for several more weeks. I must wear a stiff neck brace 24/7 to allow time for healing which will be followed by physical therapy.I trust this article will be beneficial as you advance your internet marketing career.

Email marketing as a primary customer engagement and sales tool has often been under siege in recent times as being an outdated method of marketing. Currently, social media marketing is the chief contender. There are both benefits and drawbacks to social media, which makes comparing it to email marketing an appealing task.

It will be much easier to compare both options and decide which one is going to be the best for your business. if you can understand what social media marketing has to offer. Let’s take a few moments to look at a few differences between the two and see how it affects their overall value.

Reasons Email Marketing Is Still the Best Option

1. Social Media Isn’t Scalable on Every Platform

So you understand the term: in electronics (including hardware, communication and software), scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process, to handle growing amount of work in a capable manner or, its ability to be enlarged to accommodate that growth.[1] For example, it can refer to the capability of a system to increase total throughput under an increased load when resources (typically hardware) are added.

One of the primary problems with social media is that it still isn’t scalable to the level that email marketing is. This is particularly true on certain platforms. You can easily get thousands of followers on Facebook and Twitter, but niche social media sites such as LinkedIn isn’t going to be as scalable for networking purposes. On the other hand, no matter how small your niche is – email marketing will always be able to grow as long as you are generating leads.

2. Individual Messages are Temporary

An email that has not been deleted is always available to be read again. With social media your messages won’t in front of your audience for very long. In some cases, it may only be for a few minutes.

Also, with email and an autoresponder such as Aweber or Get Response , you can create a set of 10 or 20 or more emails that will be sent automatically to every single prospect who signs up. With social media you will constantly have to generate new content.

3. Social Media Isn’t a Direct Line of Communication

With most social media platforms there isn’t a good way to directly communicate with an individual person or group of people. Even though interacting through comments is still possible, the one-on-one setting isn’t. With an email, you are speaking directly to one person, regardless of how many people you are sending it to. social media can make it much more difficult to build a deeper relationship with anyone, outside of a group setting.

Reasons Why Social Media Could Surpass Email Marketing

1. Subscribing is Easier

Facebook. doesn’t require any personal information and it takes only a few seconds for someone to follow you. It only takes one-click to get a Facebook follower, but much more to get someone to opt into your list.

2. You Don’t Need to Give Anything Away

Getting everything set up for an e-mail marketing campaign takes more time and effort than setting up a social media profile. Most people will only sign up to your email list if you are giving away something of value. They will follow you on Facebook and Twitter. because they find you interesting or fascinating.

3. There is no Training Involving Your Followers

With e-mail marketing, it is important that you get your followers into a routine. If you send a newsletter you need to do it on a regular schedule.On the other hand,with social media marketing,  they will be shown your message regardless of whether or not they are looking for it.

It doesn’t matter what type of campaign you are running, your landing page should be designed for one purpose and that is to capture more leads. You can do numerous things to make your traffic squeeze page more effective. We’ll cover 6 of those here to help you do this.

1. Create a Page That Requires No Scrolling

I do not have any survey results with specific numbers.  However, I believe the majority of people who visit your landing page will not scroll down and will leave the page. If you do choose to have a page where they must scroll you will jeopardize your chances to capture leads.

The better choice is to create a page with a compelling headline, a brief message highlighting the benefits of your program and concluding with a strong call to action.

2. Benefits of Your Program

Create a mini-headline followed by 4 or 5 benefits of your program highlighted by bullet points

3. Develop a Clear Call To Action

Without a clear call to action, how do you expect your landing page visitors to know what you want them to do? There are a variety of different ways to do this. Preferably, you should keep it short –generally with only one sentence. One way to help you stand out is to make the text a color that contrasts with the dominant color of the page and other text.

Don’t forget to ask your visitors for their name and email address. Some squeeze pages will request phone numbers and even home addresses. If you ask for too much information visitors will be less likely to sign up.

4. Don’t Let Your Visitors Travel

One of the biggest mistakes that many landing pages make is that they include links to other pages on the website.  The belief is that these links will get the visitor to explore the rest of the website in hopes that they will convert later. I don’t buy this philosophy because if they do go to the website they probably will not think about returning to sig up for your list.

5. What About Infographics?

Another recent trend has been adding infographics to landing pages in order to capture the visitor’s attention immediately.  A very thoughtful and well-designed infographic can be a benefit and may increase conversions.  At the same time, they take up a lot of space that may be better utilized differently.  If you are going to create an infographic for your landing page, make sure that it is thought-provoking, useful, and continually test it to make sure that it is actually helping your conversions.

6. Offer a Free Gift

There are some who now wonder whether offering free reports are any longer beneficial. People still like to get free stuff. You should provide them with a compelling reason to join your list and include a free item or two as a bonus to help seal the deal.

While these six methods tend to be fairly common, but it is important to repeatedly test and tweak your landing page for maximum success. Just remember, your landing page has been designed for one purpose and that is to capture more leads.

Traffic is unquestionably important in the success of an online marketing business. However, it is important to understand why quality website traffic is critical to the success of your site. That’s what we are going to help you with in this article.

Why are the visitors there? Is it because they are interested in your niche or your product and the content on your site or are they there because they have been paid to click on an ad? Those in the first group are there because of their interest. They are targeted or pre-qualified leads. The latter group is not targeted and unlikely to stay on your site very long or to ever return.

It will be much easier for you to strive for targeted traffic once you understand the difference. Let’s take a look at some of the ways the experts do this.

You are no doubt familiar with the phrase” content is king” and that certainly applies to your website or blog. It is greatly important that the content you put on your website is interesting to your visitors. It should also be informative. It can be educational; it may answer a question or even solve a problem.

The information you post should be updated frequently. This will keep your visitors interested and increase the chances they will return often.

Now let’s examine some ways to drive even more traffic to your site.

• Write Articles. Writing articles pertaining to your niche is a good long term strategy for sending traffic to your website. This is especially true if you submit them to 4 or 5 top article directories like EzineArticles, GoArticles ArticleDashboard Buzzle, and ArticleBase.

For article marketing to be successful you should submit articles on a regular basis. The articles need to be 400 – 500 words long with an author’s resource box at the end which directs visitors to your site.

• Use Social Marketing. Facebook and Twitter, as you no doubt know, are very popular all over the world and more and more internet marketers are making use of these sites to market their business. These sites offer exceptional opportunities to advertise your site for free.

• Participate In Forums. Forums can be of great help to you in 2 ways. First, you can learn from others in your niche what has been successful for them in their internet marketing endeavors. Second, you can offer your own advice or assistance to others which will increase your credibility and the trust of others. This can be big boost in your traffic.

• Do Your Keyword Research. I could have placed this at the top of the list because it is so important. However, hear near the end is a good place to emphasize how important it is to use the right keywords to improve your website traffic – and increase your sales.

There are numerous sites and tools available to help you with keyword research.and many of them are free such as GoogleKeywodsAdwordsTool.

Using keyword phrases related to your topic will help people find your website. You need to develop a list of these phrases that you have determined to have a high number of searches and low competition and the use a different one in in each of your article and posts to your site.

These are all ways to get quality website traffic- traffic that is targeted and pre-qualified to improve your sales.

Creating and managing a blog is much easier and cheaper when you compare it to a website. It also gives you access to a world wide market. As a result blogging has proven to be an exceedingly valuable tool whether it is a small part of your website or the entire base of it.

The main reason that it is so effective is because you are providing readers with a regular supply of valuable content. Ideally, this means that you are getting readers to visit your website on a regular basis. Therefore, part of your marketing strategy should be creating frequent posts. Here is a quick look at 4 reasons why you should make this part of your routine.

1. Regular posts build a routine

One of the chief benefits in making regular posts is that it establishes a routine for both you and your readers. With this strategy you are guaranteed to have at least one post per week or whatever interval you decide to use.

In order to ensure that you continually create these types of posts, you should .establish some type of content publishing routine. This also creates a routine with your readers because they know when to expect your content.

2. Regular posts draw people back

This strategy trains people to come back and visit your blog on a regular basis. While using e-mail marketing and RSS feeds is a great way to syndicate your content as well as to let your subscribers know when you publish new content, there is no guarantee that they will actually return

In many cases, they will simply miss the update. However, with recurring posts you increase the probability that they will visit your blog on a regular basis, regardless of the rest of your posting schedule.

3. Posting regularly creates a basis for future products and reports

Over time your recurring posts alone will have established a very strong foundation for the possibility for promoting additional products. You will be able to discover .what your regular readers want to learn about.

In some cases, you will be able to actually repackage these posts without making any significant modifications. This means that you can create free reports within a matter of minutes instead of having to write entirely new content.

4. Recurring posts give you a sounding board

The final benefit of using a recurring post schedule is that you can test. areas in which you can introduce new ideas and concepts to your readers. This will permit you to learn more about what your website visitors are interested in.

The main thing is to decide what your recurring theme will be and sticking to the schedule. All you have to do is find out what topics your niche is interested in on a consistent basis. Then set a schedule for posting and stick to it.

It is easy to set up a blog site with Blogger.com or WordPress but the difficult part is promoting it. To shorten the learning curve and to get the tools you need to build and promote your site I recommend the Affiliate Power Group.

If internet marketing was the easiest thing to do, everyone would be doing it. However, there are no magic buttons and it does require work.

There is one way to make it easier that far too many people overlook. They don’t make a plan. Simply saying “I’m going to make some money on the Internet” is not a plan.

At one time in my business career I owned a franchise and the company had a very detailed plan for just about every aspect of running the business. The purpose was to provide the best opportunity for the franchisee to achieve success based on the company’s success. I also owned a traditional bricks and mortar business. and we had both detailed short term and long term business plans. Both were updated annually at a two day retreat.

A business plan for internet marketing success is going to take time and effort. Without one, however, you will be wandering aimlessly through your business and any money you earn will be purely due to luck.

You may make some money, but you won’t realize your full profit potential without a business plan in place. Think of it as the difference between having a hobby and having a real business that makes you money.

Your plan is like a road map to help you define and reach your goals. A good way to start your business plan is to think of where you want to end up and then start working backwards from there.

What is your goal?  Do you want to develop the business to sell it for a profit?  Is your end goal to pass it in on to your heir? Perhaps you just want to earn money to allow you to travel extensively.

Whatever your goal you need to answer a lot of questions about how you are going to get there. Part of your plan also has to be a financial plan including how much you can invest.

The questions you ask are important. Try to think of as many aspects of your business as you can. And when answering, be as detailed and specific as you can.

The next step is to start organizing your plan. Try to arrange things in a logical way so they make more sense. As I mentioned earlier divide your plan into short and long term goals. You will find that it is necessary to alter your plans occasionally so you should revisit them periodically.

You should be ready to make revisions to your plan as needed. Your business is going to grow, and the Internet market place changes frequently. So you need to be able alter your plan when the situation warrants it. Remember, your business plan isn’t written in stone and is there to work for you.

As you can see, one of the chief factors in becoming a successful internet marketer is to have a business plan. Some would say that if you don’t have a business plan, then you don’t really have a business.

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options to get you setup and running within a few days.

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Internet marketing is a term that is frequently misunderstood. If you ask, some would say it’s all of the junk email messages they receive. Others may think that it pertains to all the information available online.

If you are thinking about becoming a home based business internet marketer, you need to be aware of what the term means. In simple terms marketing is described as the method of selling something and internet marketing is a way to reach large numbers of people promoting your product or service.

The first principle of marketing is to find those people who are interested in what you have to offer. The second principle is actually comprised of two points: 1. Advertise in the right places and, 2. do not advertise everywhere.

Any worthwhile internet marketing strategy is based upon systems. Many marketers think that if they have an attractive website and put it online the customers will come. You might make a little money this way, but it won’t be very profitable. So you need a step by step system.

To begin with you need to know who your market is even prior to creating you site. You should also determine how your product or service will help them. You need to be precise. Many inexperienced marketers think there are markets where none exist.

Assumptions are not good when it comes to internet marketing. It’s important that you locate the market first, and then work out how to accommodate them.

Next you need to figure out the best way for potential prospects to find you. An internet marketing system takes this into account. Again, here’s that word assume. You cannot assume that they will just find you by searching for some product or service at Google. That’s really a long shot.

They may, or they may not. The truth is that you get to decide to a major extent how you want people to find you. Whatever you choose, make it a part of your marketing system.

Now you can begin thinking about putting your website together. Your site needs to incorporate everything you have done up to this point. You need to know the best way to communicate with your market, and how you are going to direct them to your site.

There are many methods and strategies for internet marketing such as article writing, blogging, search engine optimization and forum marketing. In addition, the internet marketing business has appeal because you can make money from home and you have so many marketing ideas to choose from.

However, if you are like I was in the beginning with little experience and little first hand knowledge of the Internet, the learning curve can seem insurmountable. If you need help with any part of internet marketing I highly recommend the Affiliate Power Group as a great, inexpensive way to learn home based business internet marketing.