Marketing Ideas

Online marketing is becoming more and more important and forms an important part of any marketing campaign. Online or internet marketing comes in many forms and shapes. Below are some ideas which I think are very useful.

For people with no or little marketing budget

1. Free online advertisement/directories

There are a lot of free advertisement websites on the internet. If you go to Google and search for “free online advertisement”, you will find many of these sites. Some are better than others. Do not be too picky at this stage. Find as many online advertising sites as possible and post your advertisement there.

2. Forum advertising

Again, use Google to search for “network marketing forum”, “MLM forum”, “business forum” etc. Register, create a profile and include your Gem Lifestyle website address in your profile. You can also include your website address in your signature which will appear at the bottom of you post. PLEASE DO NOT HARD SELL. Try to be helpful and answer other people’s questions. Build up a good reputation in the forums and people will automatically go to your profile to find out more about you.

3. Web 2.0 or Social Networking

If you are not using web 2.0 marketing, you are missing out on a lot of free traffic. I divide web 2.0 marketing into a few sections below.

3a. Social Network

Have you heard of Facebook and MySpace? These are online social networks where people can create a profile and interact with other people in the network. There most popular ones are Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Linkedin and Twitter. Once you have created free accounts on these websites, write a couple of paragraphs about yourself and your business and then include a link to your website. People love to view other people’s profiles and find out what they do. DO NOT hard sell.

Once setup, do a search on subjects like “Entrepreneurs” “Network Marketing” “Property Investors” etc. (I’m sure you will think of many) and start inviting people to be your friends and start connecting with people.

Some of these sites like Facebook let you create groups with specific interests and other people can join your group. This is also a great way to drive traffic.

3b. Blogs

A blog is a personal journal. It is a system where anyone can create their own online presence for free. Simply sign up for a free account and start posting! Popular blog hosts are Blogspot and WordPress.

Blogs have the advantage of being very search engine friendly (means your blog can be found be Google and Yahoo easily) and bloggers like to look at other people’s blogs, hence creating free traffic.

3c. Other web 2.0 site.

There are other websites where you can network with other people and create your online presence. These are neither blogs nor social network site but have similar function and advantages. These include Squidoo and Oneview.

4. Ezine Marketing

There are many Ezine websites where you can contribute and submit your articles. You should create articles which are of value to other readers and submit to these sites. You are usually allowed to put your website address at the bottom of the page. A popular Ezine is the one you are reading now. You can find more similar one using Google.

5. Video Advertising.

Videos you put on Video Sharing Sites like YouTube are very search engine friendly and can attract a lot of viewers or visitors. You can put up any videos you like but make sure it is business related. You can then put your website address on the video screen (if you know how to do that) or in the video description. Other video sites are Google Video, Yahoo Video and TruVeo. Again, you can find more of these sites using Google.

For people with some marketing budget

If you have some money to spend, you will be looking at paid advertising online. There are basically two types of paid advertising, Pay-Per-Click/Pay-Per-View and fixed time advertising.

1. Pay per Click/View

This basically means you put an advertisement online and you only pay when someone click on the advertisement and visit your website. The amount you pay per click is decided by you. The more you pay per click, the higher your advertisement will be in the rank.

The largest and most popular pay per click advertisement company is Google. If you go to Google, type in “network marketing” in the search box and click search, the left hand column (main area) is your usual search result, and the right hand column (the smaller one) shows pay per click advertisements.

Google’s advertising site is called Google AdWords. You can either read through the Help section to learn how to set it up or visit their learning center where you can go through some video tutorials. You can also get free support from Google to help you set up your campaign.

Other popular pay per click companies are Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter. At the time of writing, Microsoft offers £50 worth of FREE click for new customers. It is worth making use of that because you will get reasonable amount of traffic to your site with £50.

One pay per click advertisement not many people know of is Facebook Ad. It is not a bad way to get targeted traffic.

2. Fixed Time Advertisement

This means you pay a fixed amount of money for your advertisement to be displayed for a fixed amount of time. The amount you pay does not depend on the number of visits/clicks. This could be better or worse depending on how popular is the advertising site and how effective is your ad.

I think that is all I have to say about online marketing. If you have any question, please feel free to contact me.