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Local strategies for Minnesota
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Internet marketing tips for Big Planet in Minnesota
By ArticleArticle911.com
For updates visit the Big Planet Tips Blog
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Who's taking in moola on the web?
You're doing business in Minnesota or maybe Minnesota is where you reside. You're selling a product or service and you need to market it to people who reside in Minnesota and various other places too. You've read that internet surfers are spending lots of money each day shopping online and you're commited to learning how you can earn money from the internet.
Truth #1
People do make a lot of money online, but it's most likely not you.
Truth #2
Those that do make the money, are not necessarily more web savvy than you.
Truth #3
Those that are successful online are not especially gifted or better educated, but rather they have learned a few tricks of the internet trade. The difference in the 'haves' and 'have-nots' is not measured by any number of college degrees, but rather by the application of a few common sense strategies.
Are you one of the following?
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A person involved with Big Planet
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An individual reselling someone else's products or services?
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A small business, with your own products or services?
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An affiliate, linking to other sites to collect commissions on
customers you refer?
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A network marketer, distributor, or direct sales professional
marketing products or services of your 'parent' company?
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Someone with a garage full of 'stuff' you want to get rid of?
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A website owner living in Minnesota
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Or a small business owner thinking about doing one of the items listed
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If any of the above activities sound like you, this article is for you. You are about to discover exactly what to do this year to help assure that next year your business, website or blog is enjoyably profitable.
Internet marketing tips and techniques for Big Planet...
If you wanted to state simply 'what' the Internet is, you could make a strong case for the following:
The internet is a place to find things
Listen closely to what folks say when they're talking about the web:
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"Look what I found online yesterday..."
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"I'll check MapQuest to find directions..."
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"Do a Google, and get back to me with on what comes up..."
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"Yes, I compared 4 like items and found the best buy online at..."
Everybody's looking, finding, or searching for something. Everybody. So, it's your business to help customers and prospects find you. It's a little harder, but it's not nearly as hard as you would likely expect. Give yourself about one hour to explore in detail each strategy listed below. After you understand the basics, you might wish to pace your efforts so that each week you tackle one approach until you have each one working.
STRATEGY #1
Blogs have become a required part of any well planned marketing strategy. Bottom line, get one. A blog is nothing more than a forum helping you to rattle on about what you might be interested in... perhaps topics related to your business, your industry, or the benefits and customer stories surrounding your products and services.
Market statewide by focusing on how this all relates to Minnesota or the benefits people from Minnesota might experience.
The reason a blog or weblog is a must for your web campaign strategy is because it gives you an instant platform to be heard on the internet to provide news and information about the stuff you are doing. Your blog should link to your various other web pages and sites. Blogs are "search engine" friendly and much more likely to get ranked in Google, MSN search, Yahoo etc than your website.
Invest a little quality time setting up a 'profile page' on your blog (or connected to your blog) that tells visitors a little about you and your business. Also link to this profile page from your various other web site pages.
Post short but frequent messages every week (more often if possible). Keep it lively, interesting, and topical but above all don't hype and don't write sales pitches.
Need advice? Here are links to a few highly popular blogs that offer top notch services. Some are hosted others you can host.
STRATEGY #2
Invest a little time learning about "folksonomy" or "tags" and how they can benefit your online marketing campaign. A good place to start is Technorati http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html
Once you understand the basics of how tags function, start using them on your blog and in comments you post to other blogs. Open a complimentary photo sharing account at Flickr http://flickr.com/ to upload photos with descriptive titles and stories related to your business, Big Planet, or your products and services. Don't forget your tags!
Open a FURL http://furl.net/ account to save and share bookmarks or favorites linked to all your important web pages. Again, add well worded descriptions and associate proper tags to every bookmarked page.
Never stop linking... return to your other site pages, your blog, and your profile page and add links to your Flickr and FURL pages.
STRATEGY #3
Start an opt-in e-mail list and/or give visitors the opportunity to subscribe to your RSS or XML feed.
Most site owners have learned few people purchase anything on that first visit. How often has anyone ordered or even contacted you from your site? It takes a bit more "dating" to get past first base, so to speak.
Here's what researchers have learned about who's most likely to buy merchandise on the Internet:
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40% of adults with net access, subscribe to or have received opt-in e-mail in the past three months... (Source: Bigfoot Interactive)
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People tend buy from non-brand names AFTER they subscribe to newsletters put out by those same web site owners.
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91% of opt-in subscribers are more likely to buy... (Source: eMarketer Inc)
What's the bottom line here? No matter how much traffic you generate to your web pages or blog, if you do not provide visitors a motivating reason to sign-up for a newsletter, you will likely diminish your opportunity to make sales by over 90%. Add a subscription box to every page that you plan to direct visitors to. Do not list any web page on a search engine, business card, or other promotion if that page does not have a way for visitors to sign up for your list.
Internet marketing tips Bonus Idea: Many web site owners now offer XML or RSS feeds as an alternative to newsletter subscriptions (not necessarily a replacement). Explore options to offer XML or RSS feeds to your site visitors. Email as a communication vehicle has lost some of its penetration and profitability in recent years. Users are confused about what is quality content in their email folder and what is SPAM and unwanted advertisements. XML or RSS feeds are not nearly as complicated as they sound and are worth investigating.
STRATEGY #4
A pay per click search engine marketing campaign will generate more website traffic at a lower cost than any other form of website marketing. Period. Yet the vast majority of website owners ignore this path to a continuous flow of highly targeted visitors.
Consider these facts.
Jupiter-MetaMetrix statistics show that search engine usage is expanding at double-digit rates. Marketing Sherpa studies report that website owners who implement search engine marketing campaigns realize a 24% - 500% greater revenue.
A Georgia Tech study shows that 85% of its participants discovered websites through search engines and were searching with the intent to make a purchase.
And... eMarketer research showed that over the past year, search engine marketing has grown tremendously. Growing up to 125% in last year alone -- (US statistics). Paid search accounts for over 30% of total online ad investing.
All these millions are being spent by entrepreneurial businesses, large businesses and people just like you. It's called PAY-PER-CLICK ( PPC or COST-PER-CLICK ) and it allows you complete control over your search engine listings. No more optimizing, waiting and praying only to end up as listing number 5814 on page 548 under the keyword phrase "middle of nowhere" because that's where some search engine employee (or worse yet, some robot) thought you belonged.
With pay-per-click, site owners decide how high in the rankings (or search results page) they want to appear by bidding penny by penny for the top spots. Keywords popular among site owners cost more while other more diligent site owners find less expensive keyword niches that may bring equally good results for much lower per-click bid rates.
Pay Per Click positions you behind the the controls where you can whip-up well worded ads (called listings) with zippy headlines (referred to as titles), compelling descriptions (10 or maybe 20 words) and bake up perfect matches between keywords and keyword phrases. YOU chose and the destination or landing pages you want to link search visitors to.
The great advantage in PPC marketing is that you can bid on dozens or hundreds of keywords connected to your products, services, business or affiliate offer while never spending a penny until someone CLICKS your listing. Add to this the fact that some keyword listings in some PPCs can start as low as 1 penny or a few pennies a click.
There are many expert websites and eBooks with recommendations about setting up a PPC marketing campaign. Many charge you upwards of $100 (be careful), but the best we've found is free and is available to people joining this internet marketing newsletter.
Recommended Newsletter: Musings of an Internet Guru
Follow link below to join (search engine eBook complimentary)
Join: Musings of an Internet Guru
Here are a few very useful search engine suggestions and keyword brain storming ideas to get you thinking:
- If your product or service is something that can be related to a locale, like a city, state or region you may be able to find some ripe tomatoes in phrases like: 'retirement homes in Florida', 'Mississippi flat rate phone service', 'herbal sunscreen for southwestern sun', 'indoor air filters for Los Angeles'.
- Discover more keywords by narrowing down to extreme specifics. People can be VERY specific when they search. Use names of months and years like '2004 tax savings', 'May flowers', 'Christmas of 2005' or 'September back to school supplies'.
Let's say you are marketing a broad line of herbal products... why not get a list of all herbs (there may be thousands) and use that list as a keyword list. Maybe your product doesn't contain every herb on the list, but people searching for any ONE herb specifically may be interested in others. Try specific model numbers, makes and designs if your products are sometimes referred to this way: 'Epson stylus CX6400', 'Apple G5', etc.
- Add adjectives to your keywords like: big, purple, new, cheap, affordable, soft, aromatic, healthy, etc.
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The Minnesota Marketing Secret
Go local. Yes, entrepreneurs from Minnesota search for products and services using "Minnesota" as their keyword. That means you must include search ads targeting Minnesota and bid on keyword phrases which have your state: Minnesota.
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The quickest way to making money with any pay-per-click marketing campaign is preparation and consistency. Do your homework in the beginning to find less expensive keywords to bid on, compose a quality title and description for your search listing and stick with it for at least 10 months as you learn the ropes. Set a consistent budget that you are comfortable with (perhaps $85 a month) and consider that your tuition in the search engine school of hard knocks. After you graduate, you'll begin to see results. It's an education worth the time, money and effort.
STRATEGY #5
Don't start any other methods until you have the techniques outlined in this article implemented. However, you should invest in yourself by reading articles and eBooks on internet marketing.
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ArticleArticle911.com source:
Article researched by ArticleArticle911.com staff and contributors.
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© Copyright 2005 by
ArticleArticle911.com
or article author
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