subject: How Can I Ramp Up My Online Marketing Skills to Get Results? [print this page] How Can I Ramp Up My Online Marketing Skills to Get Results?
It is always interesting, when people tell me they have no idea about marketing, or a clue how to apply it. My aim, in this article, is to provide you with a clear definition of marketing, and help you on your way to start applying it in your daily activities, to provide the results you desire.
To begin with, I want to differentiate the meaning of sales and marketing, as many people mistakenly confuse the two as being the same. Broadly speaking, marketing is about getting people to your store, or website, and sales is about closing the sale, once they are there.
Now that we have that point cleared up, we can concentrate on developing our marketing skills. Whilst it doesn't do any harm to be a graduate of an expensive university course on marketing, I have found that personal trial and error has been a great teacher, and it is from this experience that I draw my response from.
Next, we need to make sure that our potential clients know about the existence of our product or service, and that is our starting point. There are numerous mediums to choose from, both offline, and online. Whilst I recommend that both are employed, I will concentrate on the online methods for now.
Each method takes either time, effort, or most likely both, and I will not advocate any short cuts. I always recommend quality, and that includes investing the time to nourish a great result. Numerous methods of online marketing may be employed, and I have a list below, of some of my favourites:
o Article Marketing
o Blogging
o Report Writing
o Short Courses
Whilst this list could certainly be longer, I have concentrated on the methods I use, and know that work.
Firstly, I recommend article marketing, which involves taking a topic of your choice, that you have experience and knowledge about, and writing a short piece on it. This way, your reader will get the information they need, and will hopefully, feel they have gained some knowledge, or at least, a part answer to their problem. The bio box at the base of the article is the area they can click on for further information from you.
My second choice for marketing is blogging. This is where a specific type of website is used, such as Word Press, which is designed for regular updates for your readers. This may be in the form of short articles, or suggestions, or different topics for the day, and so on. The reason I recommend blogs is that technically, they work very well with search engines, so that a person searching for information, with certain keywords, is more likely to find your blog, if it is populated with similar keywords.
Thirdly, report writing is about producing a report, around ten to twenty pages in length on a given subject. I often make these reports freely available to my readers, where I provide useful information, that is more detailed than a single article. Again, I provide links in the report for the reader to click through on, and it is important to provide real, useful information, in these reports. I provide access to these reports from my various websites, or blogs, often in exchange for their name and email address. Again, make sure you are providing good value in your report.
Finally, I also recommend short courses, online, that can be delivered by an auto responder email system. The way this works, is that after you have received your client's name and email address, they are provided a course of several emails, possibly around five to ten, that also include useful information. It is important to always be providing value to your client. This way, you will build respect, as well as rapport.
The above four examples are good starting points for your marketing strategy, but remember, you are limited only by your imagination.
