Monthly Archives: November 2009

Advertising Is Not Marketing

Marketing,

25 November 2009, by Ariadne Cedilla

–just to make the distinction clear. It’s like the general confusion people get when they try to distinguish between “tactics” and “strategy”.

Using Wiki-fu, we can break down the difference:

  • Advertising “is a form of communication used to influence individuals to purchase products or services […].”
  • Marketing, on the other hand, is “an integrated process through which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return.” (Italics and emphasis added.)

So, you market your products and services by means of making them known through advertising. Marketing plans, advertising promotes. How else are the two different? Continue reading Advertising Is Not Marketing →

The Top 5 Most Basic Marketing Goals

Business, ,

People who are most likely to express interest in your product or service make up your target market. The challenge of marketing lies in finding the people who are most likely to want what you’re selling, and then getting them to buy.

Correctly targeting your market saves time, money and effort in your advertising. Using a common scenario, rather than spattering buckshot everywhere in the hopes of hitting your target, targeted marketing is like using a rifle: with repetition and focused adjustment, the odds of you hitting what you aim for are much higher.

What follows are 5 ways you can refine your targets. Continue reading The Top 5 Most Basic Marketing Goals →

3 Common Marketing Myths That Can Break Your Heart

Marketing,

For many first-timers, their first giddy rush in internet marketing can be something akin to falling in love. The product is perfect, the possibilities are endless, and they don’t need anything else.

At this point, they’re dazzled by the images of sure-fire success — and totally getting ahead of themselves. When the time comes that the thrill and the glitz wear off after the initial rush, the disappointment and pain of the event can settle like lead in the belly, and sour them for anything similar in the future.

Like a kid jumping into the deep end of the pool, it’s a recipe for disaster.

If you’re not that strong or prepared yet, it’s better to do some research first before wading in: all that glitters in not gold (or e-cash), and all that.

What follows are 3 common myths that continually crop up and break newbie hearts, and can trip up even the more experienced players. Continue reading 3 Common Marketing Myths That Can Break Your Heart →

Top Two Free Traffic Building Methods

Communication, ,

If you want get and direct more traffic to your squeeze page, this segment will cover 2 ways you can do so: article and forum marketing. At the end our goal is to give you enough information to help you gain more visitors to your site, help your sales and boost the traffic to your squeeze page. And you can do this all with no money down.

Article marketing is the marketing method where you submit original articles, which as a rule are composed of 400-500 words, to article directories. It’s a very good traffic-generating approach: aside from the fact that many excellent article directories are free, the more high-quality articles you write, the better your odds of getting attention because of the quality of your work, attention that then can be redirected to your site.

When people uses article marketing, the generally use it for promotional means: pushing an affiliate product, for example. As a secondary (and even better) side-effect, article marketing is excellent for list building, because readers (without having to commit anything) get free, useful content, which enhances click through to your site, and attract potential subscribers. Article marketing is one great method to attract subscribers to your squeeze page, but not the only free one. Continue reading Top Two Free Traffic Building Methods →

5 Basic Things To Include in Your Newsletters

Communication, , ,

In a previous article, How To Engage Your Newsletter Readers , we went over important factors to consider when you want to keep the people on your hard-earned mailing lists. In this installment, we’ll share 5 of the basic bits of information you can share with them.

Aside from the worry about the time you need to invest in setting up and creating engaging content for your newsletter, even if you think you’re gong to run out of things to share, there are very basic (some may say essential) subjects you can stick to that can help you greatly in keeping your readers reading, and save you work in plotting out what to say.

If you only share information that helps them, the scheduling can be adjusted to whenever you have useful information, like software updates, special offers and ‘Coming Soon’ events. You don’t need to flood your mailing list with updates on everything you’re doing (you can use Twitter for that) and there’s less pressure on keeping to a hard schedule of ‘publication’. Continue reading 5 Basic Things To Include in Your Newsletters →

The Top 3 Pitfalls In Internet Marketing

Business,

If you’ve done your research you probably already came up against the scary statistics about the very high failure rate among new marketers. Newcomers to the game fall for the glitzy, hard-selling offers promising BIG MONEY and OUTRAGEOUS RETURNS in just MONTHS if you sign up RIGHT NOW while the OFFER is OPEN because time is RUNNING OUT!

Behind the scenes however, you don’t often get to see all the effort, tools, hours and resources that the Big Names expended to get to be the Big Names. A membership list of thousands isn’t one that gets built up overnight, or even over weeks, despite what the hype says. Affiliate products, marketing courses, eBooks and marketing plans (with joint ventures, educational packages–again with ebooks, audio-visual material, etc.), everything needed to attract more people to sign up and opt-in, still need to be created and put together in enticing packages.

If you’re truly determined to make it online, here are the 3 most important issues in internet marketing you need to be aware of so you can reduce your chances of failing: Continue reading The Top 3 Pitfalls In Internet Marketing →