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State specific strategies for Oklahoma
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Who's bringing in cash on the internet?
You're interested in Oklahoma or maybe Oklahoma is where you live. You're selling a product or service and you want to market your product or service to customers who live in Oklahoma and various other states as well. You've read that customers are spending lots of money each day shopping online and you're determined to figure out how you can tap this online market.
Truth #1
People do make a sizable income from their website, but it's most likely not you.
Truth #2
Site owners that do make the money, are not necessarily more web savvy than you.
Truth #3
What separates those that make money and those that go broke has more to do with common sense approaches than graduate course degrees. 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 any of the following?
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A person involved with Creative Memories
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A entrepreneurial business, with products or services of your own?
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Typical homeowner with a garage overflowing with 'stuff' you want sell?
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A reseller of products or services provided by another source?
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Someone interested in affiliate programs?
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An MLM'er, distributor, or network marketing professional
representing products or services offered by your company?
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A website owner living in Oklahoma
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Or a person thinking about doing one of the above listed items
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If any of the above activities sound like you, this article is for you. You are about to learn precisely 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 Creative Memories...
If you wanted to state simply 'what' the Internet is, you could make a strong case for the following:
The net is a place to find stuff
Listen closely to what many people say when they're talking about the web:
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"I'll check MapQuest to find directions..."
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"Yes, I compared 4 like items and found the best buy online at..."
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"Let me pull-up the TV guide, I think it's on tonight..."
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"Welcome onboard, how'd you hear about us? Online?"
Everybody's looking, finding, or searching for something. Everybody. So, it's your task to help customers find you. It's a little work, but it's not nearly as hard as you probably expect. Give yourself about one hour to explore in detail each strategy listed below. After you are exposed to the basics, you might wish to pace your efforts so that each week you tackle one approach until you have each one mastered.
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 platform for you to rattle on about what you're involved in... perhaps topics related to your business or web site, your profession, or the benefits and testimonials surrounding your products and services.
Go local by focusing on how this all relates to Oklahoma or the benefits people from Oklahoma might enjoy.
The reason a blog is a must for your internet campaign strategy is because it gives you an instant presence on the internet to provide news and information about the activities 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 website. Also consider linking 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 well known blogs that offer affordable services. Some are hosted others you can put on your own server.
STRATEGY #2
Invest a little time learning about "folksonomy" or "tags" and how they can benefit your online marketing efforts. A good place to spend time at is Technorati http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html
Once you understand the basics of how tags work, start using them on your blog and in comments you post to other blogs. Open a free photo sharing account at Flickr http://flickr.com/ to upload photos with descriptive titles and stories related to your business, Creative Memories, 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 chance to subscribe to your RSS or XML feed.
Most website owners have unfortunately found out few people purchase anything on that first visit. How often has anyone ordered or even communicated with 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 products or services on the Internet:
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94% of US adults who have subscribed to a permission based (opt-in) email have made a purchase from the retailer... (Source: eMarketer Inc)
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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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A recently conducted a study on E-mail Newsletter readers and concluded newsletters "create much more of a bond between user and company than a website can"... (Source: The Neilson Norman Group)
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 traffic 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 join your list.
Internet marketing tips Bonus Idea: Many 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 website 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 inbox and what is SPAM and unwanted advertisements. XML or RSS feeds are not nearly as complex as they sound and are worth learning about.
STRATEGY #4
A pay per click search engine marketing campaign will drive more website traffic at a lower investment than any other form of website marketing. Period. Yet the vast majority of website owners ignore this route to a continuous flow of highly motivated visitors.
Consider these statistics.
A Georgia Tech survey shows that 85% of its respondents discovered websites through search engines and were searching with intent to purchase.
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.
All these millions are being spent by entrepreneurial businesses, corporate businesses and people just like you. It's called PAY-PER-CLICK ( PPC or COST-PER-CLICK ) and it allows you full control over your search engine listings. No more optimizing, waiting and praying only to end up as listing number 5547 on page 797 under the keyword phrase "find me if you can" because that's where some search engine employee (or worse yet, some robot) thought you belonged.
Pay Per Click puts you behind the mix-master where you can whip-up perfectly worded ads (referred to as listings) with lively headlines (referred to as titles), compelling descriptions (10 to 20 words or so) and stir up perfect matches between keywords and keyword phrases. YOU control everything and the destination or landing pages you want to link search prospects to.
With pay-per-click, web site owners decide how high in the rankings (or search results page) they want to appear by bidding against your competition for the best spots. Keywords popular among site owners cost more while other more diligent web site owners find less expensive keyword niches that may bring equally good results for much lower per-click bid rates.
The great advantage in PPC marketing is that you can bid on dozens or hundreds of keywords associated 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 lists and eBooks with recommendations about setting up a PPC marketing campaign. Many charge you way more money than it's worth (be careful), but the best we've found is free and is available to anyone joining this internet marketing newsletter.
Musings of an Internet Guru: Newsletter
Click here to subscribe (free PPC eBook included)
http://www.danhollings.com/class/newsletter.html
Here are a few very useful search engine tips and keyword brain storming ideas to get you thinking:
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The Oklahoma Marketing Strategy
Go local. Yes, entrepreneurs from Oklahoma search for things using "Oklahoma" as their keyword. That means you must include listings targeting Oklahoma and bid on keyword phrases which have your state: Oklahoma.
Ad Calculator
A straightforward and easy-to-use tool, but incredibly powerful in the hands of the serious Internet marketer. Ad Calculator calculates the maximum you should pay per click, or per thousand impressions ("CPM"), for any of your advertising campaigns. (Exclusive Product) |
Click/Counter Tracker PHP Script
A simple but powerful script that allows you to track how many clicks each of your ads receives as well as the number of visitors to your web pages. (Exclusive Product) |
Image Protection Rocket
Image Protection Rocket can stop people copying your images, prevents right-click in user's web browsers, and also offers a premier bandwidth protection ("anti leech"). (Exclusive Product) |
CBRocket PHP Script
Allow visitors to search ClickBank from your site. Display the latest ClickBank products (download *ALL* the latest data with the click of a mouse button). Show targeted ads on your web pages, and more! (Exclusive Product) |
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The quickest way to results with any pay-per-click marketing campaign is preparation and consistency. Do your homework upfront to find less expensive keywords to bid on, write a quality title and description for your search listing and stick with it for at least 5 months as you learn the rules. Set a monthly budget that you are comfortable with (perhaps $44 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 commitment.
STRATEGY #5
Don't start any other techniques until you have the methods 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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