Some Steps to Creating Your Internet Marketing Plan (small business coaching)
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What do you want to accomplish by using Internet marketing? To find new clients? Provide services and info to existing clients? Sell services or products? Educate your target market or your staff about your product or service? Create an online community for your target market? How much money to have to spend each month on this Internet marketing plan? Having a goal and budget in mind will make your marketing more effective.
Marketing Funnel:
The most successful online business owners have a marketing funnel (think of it as an upside down triangle) through which they “funnel” clients. The process begins from the wide top of the funnel, representing low-cost products or free give-aways, and moving clients down through the funnel to the narrower portions which represent gradually increasing investments from the clients from your higher-priced products and services. What products and services do you currently offer? Are they at varied price points that would create a funnel effect? What plans do you have to increase your product or service line? Will those new offerings plug gaps in your marketing funnel?
Your Competition:
Knowing and understanding where you stand among your competitors can you help you strengthen your marketing message. Do a keyword search for the terms someone might use to find your business online. Write down the URL’s of your top 5 competitors. How popular and relevant are their sites? You can check their traffic ranking with Alexa, , as well as see what other sites link to them. Does your competition offer something unique? Where are the gaps in the service or product offerings?
4. Target Market:
Instead of trying to marketing to everyone (the shotgun marketing approach), find a clearly definable target market that you can easily describe and locate. Are they male or female? What age group? What industry? What socio-economic group? Where do they hang out on- and off-line? What do they read? To what groups and associations (real and virtual, personal and professional) do they belong? How much money do they make? Can they easily afford your product or service? What keywords are they using to search for businesses like yours online? (Note–you can do keyword research with free downloadable software, www.infozabout.com
Solution to a Problem:
The reason that someone will buy your product or hire to you to provide a service is to solve a particular problem that they have. What problems and issues plague your target market? How does your product or service solve that problem? How does your solution differ from that of your competitors? What makes you uniquely qualified to provide the solution to their problem?
Branding Your Business:
Your domain name can either help you be memorable or cast you into a sea of “brindles” solutions. At a minimum, you’ll want to buy both your personal name as well as the name of your business in the .com version, if it’s available. Then buy the .com versions of your product names and program names. If you use a full-featured domain registrar, you’ll be able to point and mask these domains to internal pages of your web site, or use them as stand-alone sales letter pages.
You may also think of problems faced by your target market or solutions that you provide and buy domain names in the .com version of those as well. Internet marketer Dean Jackson brands his ebook on how to stop a divorce by owning the domain name, StopYourDivorce.com, This is a compelling solution to his target market — men who have been ignoring their wives’ complaints of marital dissatisfaction and come home one day to an empty house and a note telling him that she’s filing for divorce.
Assess your website.
Your web site should be visually appealing, with one primary font for the text and a simple primary color scheme, along with an easy-to-navigate layout, and readily identifiable buttons to link to other pages in the site. Your content should focus on and address the problems of your visitors and how your product or service can help solve their problems. Rather than listing the features of your product or service, detail the benefits they’ll gain from purchasing your product or service. People rarely buy features — they buy benefits. Don’t depend on your web site designer to write your content — that is best done by you, as you know your business and your target market better than anyone.
Present a clear call to action that is clearly shown on every page of your site. In an online business, your primary call to action should be getting the visitor’s name and primary email address by asking him subscribe to your ezine or by giving him access to a free ecourse, special report, audio recording, or ebook. Lastly, provide an abundance of readily available information to demonstrate your expertise (articles, blog posts, free downloads, giveaways, contests). Your visitor is always asking WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) — make your web site about your visitor, not about you.
Internet Marketing Strategies:
How will you create traffic to your website? There are countless ways to do this, including: pay-per-click purchases (in which you buy a keyword at a search engine and pay for placement on that search engine for that keyword and pay for each visitor who clicks on that link and is sent to your site); organic search engine listing ranking (in which your site comes up at the top of the non-sponsored listings on a search engine by having keyword rich descriptions in the page title and page description meta tags and then optimizing each page for no more than 3 keywords in the first 250 words on a page); well-written email newsletter that is published on a regular basis; submission of articles on topics related to your target market to article submission directories; regularly post entries to a blog aimed at your target market, full of content discussing issues related to that target market; series of podcasts containing interview with experts of interest to your target market; ongoing series of teleconferences containing value-added content for your target market; submission of online press releases with new tips information for your target market; exchange relevant links with others in different industries with the same target market;
Building a Team:
You’ll never be able to do this all alone. The most successful business owners don’t even try. You need to add experts to your team who are great at what they do so that you’ve got the time and energy to go out and do what you do best — selling your products and services to your target market. Some great experts to add to your team include a virtual assistant or online business manager, an online business coach, a web site designer, a graphic designer, a writing expert (editor, ghost writer, proof reader or copy writer), a bookkeeper, and intellectual property attorney, to name a few.
Is It Really Possible to Make Money with Free Business Opportunities Online?
By Ben Needles
It must be one of the most overused words in the online home business industry. Wherever you look, there is a free this and a free that. Money-making sites often claim that you can join for free and make money without paying anything. Is this really possible? Can you really make money with free business opportunities online?
Well, believe it or not, it is possible. The affiliate marketing business model means that you actually can promote something for free and make an income.
Most affiliate marketing programs allow you to join for free, although many will expect you to upgrade to a fee-paying membership at a later date. Most of the time the choice of when you do this is up to you, and some people only do this once they have started earning. With other programs you may only get a limited period of free membership, so you will have to pay if you decide to stay with them.
The point is, within a few moments you can be set up with an affiliate identification which is coded into an affiliate website that you can start promoting straight away.
You earn a commission whenever you make a sale. The cost of doing this is nothing; there are many very effective ways of marketing for free on the internet. The only cost is your time.
However, before you resign from your job and start signing up with all the free affiliate programs you can find, you need to know a few things.
1. I have said that making money from a free business opportunity is possible. However, it is also hard work and there is much to learn first. You do need to master internet marketing methods such as article writing, blogging, forum marketing, traffic exchanges, directory submission and more.
2. The affiliate web page provided by your merchant is going to look the same as every other affiliates web page in this program. This makes it very difficult for you to stand out and get above the competition.
3. People often like to think things over before buying, so they will often look at a website and then leave. You will have no way of following them up, and if theyve already left your site, how do you ever get them back again?
But dont be disheartened. You can get round these problems and be successful. However, this is where spending a little bit of money comes in.
In order to have a unique presence on the internet you really need to create your own website and send visitors to that. You can promote all of your affiliate programs on this and make it completely unique so that it stands out from the competition. Of course, you have to pay for the hosting, but this is not really expensive at all.
In order to follow up your visitors, you capture names and email addresses through a newsletter sign-up option on your website and deliver regular emails to them via an autoresponder. Again, the autoresponder may cost some money, but again, its not much.
Once you have a website you can also create sales pages on which you give a personal testimonial on the product or service you are promoting. You can load these onto traffic exchanges and this will put you ahead of those affiliates who are only using the merchants web page.
So, is it possible to make money with free business opportunities online? Well, yes. But you are far more likely to be successful if you spend a little bit of money on website hosting and an autoresponder. Compared to more traditional home business start-ups, this is a tiny outlay.
About the Author (text)
Ros runs her own online business and is also a successful writer and life coach.
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About Start-Up Business Loans
By Irish Taylor
Business loans are especially created to meet the specific financial demands of entrepreneurs. By acquiring financial assistance, an entrepreneur can enjoy more flexibility and ease in bringing his business ideas to life. On the contrary, without sufficient funding, it would be very difficult for a business owner to execute his plans.
Business loans are also called start-up loans, bank loans, new business loans, commercial loans, small business loans and other names. Different lenders may demand varying terms and requirements with the loans they offer. Nevertheless, all these financing options are exclusively offered for business owners.
New business loans or start-ups are especially offered for new entrepreneurs or aspiring business owners who have yet to establish their companies. On the other hand, bank and commercial business loans are offered for both new and older companies. Those who have already established a company and in need of additional funding may apply for traditional bank and commercial business loans.
Secured or Unsecured?
Business loans are also classified as either secured or unsecured. Secured business loans require the submission of collateral from the borrower while unsecured loans do not. Consequently, unsecured loans have higher interest rates and charges compared to loans with collateral. Which one should you choose?
Your decision may depend on your financial capability and situation. For instance, if you need a large sum of money for your business, you may consider a secured loan since submitting collateral enables you to borrow more from a lender. If you want to obtain a secure loan remember that your loan is tied up to your collateral. Defaulting on your debts or falling behind your payment schedule can cause you to lose the property you submitted.
On the other hand, if you dont really need a very large amount, you may opt to apply for an unsecured loan and minimize the risk involved. Nevertheless, to avoid unnecessary costs such as increased interest and penalty charges, you should still make it a point to submit your monthly payments on time.
Things to Prepare
What things do you need to prepare for before applying for a business loan? First, make sure that your business plan is ready and impressive enough to win your lenders approval. A good plan should contain complete information about your business. It must be presented in a concise way and must convince your lender that your business has a strong potential.
It is also recommended to check your personal credit report before submitting your business loan application to your chosen lender. Why is this important? A low credit score or a bad credit history may cause your application to be rejected. By checking your credit ahead of time, you can do the necessary steps to raise your credit score in case it needs improvement.
Other documentations that youll need to prepare are your business proposal, business permits and licenses, tax ID number, balance sheets (if applicable), etc. Since different lending companies have varying requirements, knowing what these requirements are can help you prepare in advance and avoid unnecessary delays in getting your loan approved.
Irish Taylor is a bussiness loan consultant with SBA Loans for Startup Business
and has been providing consumers and business owners with startup business financing since 1992. For years she has helped people with credit and loan problems especially pertaining to business start up, SBA Loans
and Unsecured Loans
. Copyright 2008
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