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Localized methods for South Dakota
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Internet marketing tips for EcoQuest in South Dakota
By ArticleArticle911.com
For updates visit the EcoQuest Tips Blog
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Who's making money on the web?
You're doing business in South Dakota or maybe South Dakota is where you live. You're selling a product or service and you desire to market your product or service to people who live in South Dakota and other places too. You've read that customers are spending money head over heels each day shopping online and you're determined to figure out how you can tap this online market.
Fact #1
People do make a sizable income from their website, but it's probably not you.
Fact #2
Business owners that do make the money, are not necessarily smarter than you.
Fact #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 EcoQuest
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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 South Dakota
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Or an individual thinking about doing one of the items listed
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If the things we've listed above remind you of yourself, this article is for you. You are about to discover step-by-step what to do this year to help assure that next year your business, website or blog is more profitable.
Internet marketing tips and methods for EcoQuest...
If you wanted to state simply 'what' the Internet is, you could make a strong case for the argument:
The net is a place to dig up information, products and services
Listen closely to what people say when they're talking about the internet:
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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 them find you. It's a little more effort, but it's not nearly as hard as you might 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
Everyone is talking about blogging, but do you have a blog yourself? A blog is little more than a forum for you to rattle on about whatever you're interested in... perhaps things related to your business, your industry, or the benefits and recommendations surrounding your merchandise.
Promote your business locally by focusing on how this all relates to South Dakota or the benefits people from South Dakota might experience.
The reason a blog is a must for your online marketing strategy is because it gives you an instant platform to be heard on the internet to provide news and information about the activities you are doing. Your blog or weblog should link to your 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. Also remember to 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 well known blogs that offer affordable services. Some are hosted others you can put on your own server.
STRATEGY #2
Invest a little time studying about "folksonomy" or "tags" and how they can benefit your online marketing promotion. A good place to spend time at 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, EcoQuest, 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 invitation 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 "schmoozing" 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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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 manage to get to your web pages or blog, if you do not provide visitors a motivating reason to sign-up for a newsletter, you will likely reduce 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 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 email inbox and what is SPAM and unwanted advertisements. XML or RSS feeds are not nearly as technical as they sound and are worth learning about.
STRATEGY #4
A pay per click search engine marketing campaign will create more website targeted traffic at a lower investment than any other form of website marketing. Without question. Yet the overwhelming majority of website owners ignore this path to a continuous flow of highly targeted visitors.
Consider these points.
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 home run businesses, corporate 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 5681 on page 449 under the keyword phrase "find me if you can" because that's where some search engine employee (or worse yet, some robot) thought your site 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 newsletters 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 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 suggestions and keyword exploratory ideas to get you thinking:
- When cooking-up your keyword phrase list, use an extended "keyword discovery" phase. Your competition, like you, will do basic keyword research. You can only beat them if you take it to the next level, and that won't happen in the first day. Having a large number of targeted keywords in your campaign is a side effect of an extended period of brainstorming, discovery, research, or whatever you want to call it.
- Not very wood with gords? There is a hidden target market of quality visitors who type in incorrect spellings of what they are looking for. Site owners often overlook this. In a recent 30 day period on a major search engine at least 108 people where searching for a 'buisness'? Hundreds more were searching for: 'vitiamins', 'vitimans' and even 'vitamens'... You can bid on misspellings and have very little competition on the search results page.
- Assume that at least half your keywords will be rotten eggs, that is, no one will ever look for them and end up at your site. Because there is no extra cost to add as many keyword phrases as you can think up, treat them like biscuits and bake-up as many as you can... 100 or more keyword phrases for each destination page you list in any PPC search engine.
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The South Dakota Marketing Winning idea
Go local. Yes, entrepreneurs from South Dakota search for stuff to buy using "South Dakota" as their keyword. That means you must include search ads targeting South Dakota and bid on keyword phrases containing South Dakota.
The secret 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, think up a quality title and description for your search listing and stick with it for at least 11 months as you learn the methods. Set a consistent budget that you are comfortable with (perhaps $85 a month) and consider that your investment 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 strategies 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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