INTERNET MARKETING THE "RIGHT" WAY

INTERNET MARKETING THE "RIGHT" WAY

As with anything in life, there's a right way and a wrong way to use the Internet for marketing. It's especially important to know the difference at the beginning. Otherwise, you may make some mistakes which may jeopardize your chances at ever using the Internet for your business. Literally, you can be banned from the Internet. It's happened before. Don't let it happen to you promote your business the correct way, and you'll have a far better chance at finding success on the Internet.

MARKETING VIA EMAIL

Email is the easiest method of Internet marketing for the beginner to understand, as it is so similar to "traditional" marketing methods. You're sending the prospect a marketing message, but instead of sending it through the regular mail, you're emailing it directly to them. It's quicker, cheaper, and more efficient.

Where do you find people to email your marketing message to? From other Internet marketing techniques that will be discussed later in this report. There is, though, one particular technique you should avoid.

In the "real world," it's easy to rent a mailing list of people with a specific interest in the type of product or service you're selling. You can then send your marketing materials to the people on this list, feeling relatively sure that they may be interested in what you have to offer. It's hard to do this on the Internet, though, because of the sheer number of people accessing the Internet.

There are companies, though, that will do mass emailings for a price. One particular company advertises that they will send your marketing message to 6,000,000 email addresses for under $200. This naturally sounds attractive to the marketer in us how else could you contact so many people at such a low price?

Let's think about this, though. Is this a good deal? Maybe, maybe not. This is akin to sending your marketing message to everyone in the phone book. Probably 80 percent of the people will have no interest whatsoever in what you're selling. It's highly untargeted, which will result in low conversion percentages. More important, is it the right thing to do? NO

Mass emailing is called spamming, and it is the number one offense you can commit on the Internet. Most people have to pay for their Internet access, and many of them pay by the hour (and, thus, by the minute). Another large group of them have to call long distance, since they have no local access phone number. In other words, most of the people you send your mass email to are paying to download it and read it, without having requested it.

Now, most levelheaded people will see the first few lines of the email, recognize it as an unrequested marketing message, and will delete it without thinking twice. There are people out there, though, that take it as a personal affront, an invasion of their privacy, and a waste of their money to receive your spammed email. They will respond vigorously with pranks and threats. If you've put your phone number in your email, you will receive a ton of phone calls at all times of the night. If you've included your mailing address, you may find that your address has been passed on to military recruiters, religious organizations, pornographers, and all other kinds of people whom you may not want to receive mail from. At the very least, you should expect a flood of email full of complaints and vulgarities to your own email address. I've even heard of people replying to spammed emails with hundreds of pages of the same four letter word repeated over and over, so the "spammer" can get a taste of their own medicine.

It's up to you whether you want to market your business this way. I acknowledge that a marketing message going out to 6,000,000 people is bound to bring in some sales. However, you take the risk of receiving a lot of complaints and wasted time, as well as the possibility of losing your Internet access completely. How? You could receive so many replied emails that your service provider's computer system will get jammed up, preventing other customers from being able to use the Internet. Your provider will politely ask you to go elsewhere for your Internet access, and your name will go on a list of spammers which is circulated amongst Internet providers. You may find yourself unable to get Internet access in the future. It's up to you.

MARKETING VIA USENET NEWSGROUPS

Usenet newsgroups are individual special interest bulletin boards. You can post a question, an answer, information, whatever, to a newsgroup, and anyone else can read it. Likewise, you can read anyone else's postings. This is a heavily used area for information sharing. Used correctly, it can also be a successful marketing opportunity.

Before we go on, you should know that very few newsgroups accept blatant advertising. This is a very subtle technique that may take a few tries to perfect. The key is to frequent the newsgroups that have a connection to your products or services (if you're selling information that is helpful for small business owners, for example, then you should look for newsgroups that small business owners would read), and present pertinent useful information or answers to questions, and include a short marketing message in your sig.

Your sig is your "signature" at the end of your posting. It can be up to six lines long (though a four line maximum is more universally "acceptable"), and can contain information on how to contact you (email, phone, and otherwise), as well as some short information about your business. Readers who are interested in hearing more about what you have to offer can then contact you. At that point, feel free to give them whatever marketing information you'd like; they requested it.

You will have the most success with this technique if you: a) stay "on-topic" in your postings - don't answer someone's question with a one-line answer, only to launch into a two-page sales letter, let your sig do the work; and b) don't overdo it - you should have the mindset that you are trying to help the readers of the newsgroup, and, afterwards, get the word out about your business, not the other way around.

A good idea would be to request and read the FAQ (frequently asked question list) from every newsgroup you plan to post in. That way, you will know their exact policy on advertising, information that may be included in a sig, the exact topics they cover, etc. This will prevent any postings that are "against the rules."

MARKETING VIA WORLD WIDE WEB

The World Wide Web offers the most flexible solution for marketing on the Internet. You are free to put up whatever information you'd like, in whatever quantity you'd like. After all, you're the one paying for the space. Plus, you can put links on your pages so people can instantly send an email to you for more information, you can have forms for them to fill out, you can even take orders on your pages.

Preparing content for the web can be very easy. In many cases, you can use the same materials you use in your printed mailings. Of course, they will have to be converted to the HTML document markup language that web pages are made of. This is not difficult to do yourself, once you've learned how. If you don't want to learn how, if you don't have a scanner for importing any images from your marketing materials, or if you want a sophisticated website with forms and product order-taking and/or delivery capabilities, you should choose a professional website designer to take care of it for you.

Of course, there's more to it than just putting up your website: you need to promote it. Luckily, this is easy to do. There are over a dozen "search engines" (databases of websites) on the web, each of which you can submit information about your website to. All it entails is accessing the website of each search engine, and reading the details on submissions. If you have a professional design your website, see if they include this in their services - a good web designer will make this a part of the package. And don't confine your publicizing to online. Be sure to promote your website in the "real world" through paid advertising, press releases, etc., just like a product.

You will need to ensure that people who visit your website will want to come back frequently. Do this by changing your content on a regular basis. For example, if you have informational reports that they can download for free, rotate the reports so new ones are available at least every two weeks. Contests can be a good idea, too. For example, give a free product to the person who collects all the clues that you sprinkle throughout your website over a two month period.

Put these techniques together, and you'll have an Internet marketing machine!