Archive for Internet Business
Offline Marketing Strategies for Your Online Business
Posted by: | CommentsMany small business owners fail to successfully connect their online business with the offline world. What this means is that they either don’t realize that online businesses can be promoted with offline strategies, or they don’t know how to make it work for their specific situations. The truth is that many traditional forms of offline advertising and marketing strategies can be extremely successful for businesses that are entirely online based.
It’s easy to get caught up in the world of online marketing when you are running an Internet business. Indeed, 
succeeding in the areas of search engine optimization, social networking and PPC campaigns are all extremely important to the success of your business. Additionally, they are all extremely cost effective forms of advertising and promotion that enable you to reach a potentially huge market. No online business would be wise to avoid online marketing.
However that doesn’t mean that you have to forgo offline marketing or traditional advertising altogether. In fact, what is consistently proven time and time again is that the most successful businesses form comprehensive marketing plans that incorporate many different tactics and platforms. Including offline advertising into your online marketing plan is simply a smart way to broaden your horizons and diversify your plan of attack.
The most important thing you have to remember though is that not all offline advertising opportunities make sense for online businesses. The trick is finding the ones that work for your particular business or industry. There is a huge variety of different options, including newspaper ads, trade magazines, conferences and tradeshows, post cards, radio advertising and more. So how is your online business supposed to find the platforms that work best?
Just as with your online marketing work, you are looking for cost effective, efficient and highly targeted forms of advertising, marketing and promotion. In the world of search engine optimization you wouldn’t try to target the broad search market of “cars” when what you are really offering is “vintage car auctions in New York”.
You would be facing far too much competition, and the costs of your efforts will be significantly higher. Additionally, the people who eventually find you may not be interested at all in what you have to offer. They may be looking for “car repair shops” “cars with the best gas mileage” or anything else.
Of course the same rules apply when you are working with offline marketing. You want to target your market as effectively as possible, and reach out to your potential prospects and customers in the places where you are most likely to find them and where they are most likely to listen to what you have to say. This will help you keep your costs down while providing yourself a better shot at actually reaching out to interested parties.
The offline methods of marketing you choose have to have clear, tangible benefits for your business. Just advertising and opening up your budget for the sake of it isn’t going to get you anywhere. Instead you need to think about what you specifically are trying to accomplish and then devise ways of making that happen.
Are you trying to add 1,000 new names to your email list so that you can grow your presence and find new prospects? Are you trying to promote a new product or service you just released? Are you offering a limited time discount or promotion designed to get customers into your doors with the hopes of selling to them repeatedly over time?
Whatever you are trying to accomplish, the first step is specifically plotting out your desired results. From there, you can find the quickest and most cost efficient ways of achieving that goal. To find 10 or 20 highly valuable prospects a tradeshow or conference may be the best route, but to send as much traffic as possible to your website a newspaper or radio ad may make more sense.
Think about your goals, keep your budget in mind and then choose the offline marketing strategy that fits the best with what you are going for. Remember, online businesses aren’t restricted to the online world. There is no unwritten rule that says a website can’t promote itself using traditional methods. So dive into the world of offline marketing for a way to increase the success of your online business.
Can a Press Release Drive Quality Traffic to Your Internet Business?
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Traditionally, press releases have been one of the most powerful tools that a business or organization had in order to increase exposure and generate interest. However, as the world of media and technology has changed, there has been a change in the way that press releases can be used as well. It’s important to understand how press releases have changed and how they can be utilized today for an effective marketing program.
In the past, a press release was used solely as a way to promote a product, company, service or event through the media. Perhaps you released a brand new product with some fantastic features that customers have been looking for. Your company writes up a press release, sends it out to all of the major news providers in your area and hopes that it sparks their interest.
If a journalist or reporter sees your press release and thinks that it makes for a good story, they will follow up and either write an article on it, do a television segment for it or in some other fashion highlight the information that was given to them. In this way your company gets free exposure in a major media outlet all for sending out press releases to various sources. It worked for the media because they got new stories and information and it worked for businesses because of the coverage they received as a result.
Today with the Internet though press releases have changed. Yes, there are still traditional press releases being used everyday in standard media outlets. However, there is also a new class of press releases, the online press release. An online press release is made specifically to be distributed to online press release websites, as opposed to traditional outlets. How do these really work and can they be effective tools for driving high quality traffic to your business?
There are actually several different benefits to distributing an online press release. The first of which is that you are going to be including links back to your business. The major press release sites are all high ranking, meaning that the links that you include on these sites will help boost your PageRank and search engine standing. The result is more traffic driven to your website from searches as your site enjoys an increased reputation.
Another benefit to the online press release is the power of search engine optimization. When you create an online press release you get a chance to include links back to your website, as mentioned. However you also get to control the anchor text of those links, and you also get to fill the press release with the keywords and phrases of your choosing. By doing this, you can get the press release highly found in the search engines.
When somebody performs a search for a topic, sees your press release and then clicks through to your website you’ll be gaining a great deal of traffic. This traffic will be highly targeted when you make use of effective SEO techniques, and your website will receive a big boost as a result.
For example, let’s say that you’re developing a new line of cheap workout clothing for runners. If you optimize your press release for that term and related phrases, then people searching for those items will come upon your press release. Reading about your company and their new release, they’ll follow through to your site and you’ll have a highly interested prospect that’s primed to be converted.
Don’t forget that with an online press release you can still potentially gain traditional media exposure. While their main benefits lie in SEO and traffic generation, online press releases are still official press releases that media outlets will pour through to try to find stories. Therefore if you’re lucky you will enjoy all of the above advantages and you’ll still receive traditional media coverage as well.
As with every other area of marketing, advertising and promotion, the realm of press releases has changed and evolved over the last decade. While traditional press releases are still powerful, online press releases are quickly growing in importance. You can increase your presence, improve your ranking in the search engines and send high quality traffic to your website.
