6 Simple Internet Marketing Tactics (That Don't Cost A Penny)

Internet marketing doesn't have to be difficult and doesn't have to cost you a fortune. In fact there a number of internet marketing tactics that are highly effective and don't cost a penny.

1. Email Marketing

Possibly the most effective form of internet marketing is email marketing. Email marketing enables you to develop a relationship with your potential customer so that they come to know, like and trust you and as a result, be more inclined to buy from you. As an online business owner, you should be constantly building your email list of prospects. These are people who have shown an interest in your business and given you their permission to send them more information by email.

2. Social Media

As a general rule, most social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Instagram work best for doing a very specific job for your business. And that's creating leads, not sales. Interact with with your target market on social media, deliver valuable information, answer questions, offer quizzes and create contests. All this generates interest in your business and pushes traffic to your website.

3. Give Away Value (For Free)

People love getting something for free. If they know that what you give away is of value to them, they will happily exchange this for their email address (see point #1 above). Items like reports, eBooks, PDFs and even videos are all excellent ways to do this. Regular newsletters will help you keep customers that you already have. Free items that offer value can also be passed around internet from person to person, all driving traffic back to your website.

4. Video Marketing

Videos are easy to create and there are lots of free tools to enhance your video. People enjoy watching videos. They boost traffic to your website and it's a great way to promote your products and services. Plus, you don't even need to appear on camera if you don't want to.

5. Write A Blog

Blogging is all about informing and educating. Writing a blog helps to broaden your business, catch the attention of more clients and maintain relationships with your existing customers.Regular blog updates keep your website content fresh which helps to get your website noticed by the search engines.

6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This organic, or unpaid traffic, is important for every online business. It's all about getting the right keywords and phrases onto your website pages so that the search engines see your website and list it in their search page search results.

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How To Leverage The Law of Reciprocity

We all love getting stuff for free. If you've ever been given something that is useful to you unexpectedly from someone else, even a stranger, you most likely felt an element of gratitude. You're grateful for that person's actions. Research show that this also develops a feeling of respect and appreciation for the gift giver.

Building Your Email List

As an online business owner, you unquestionably must give away valuable content, or physical products, to build your email list. Your email list is your most valuable resource. The people who are on your list a your prospects and future customers.

You may be thinking that if you spend a lot of time and effort creating an amazing piece of content, why should you give it away? Why not sell it? The answer lies in how the human brain works when you receive a gift. If you're new to email list building, you may be concerned that building a list of "freebie seekers" will lead to poor sales and profits. And that's a valid concern.

But our brains are hardwired to respond in a favorable way. Unconsciously, without even knowing it, your brain will begin looking for options to repay that person. This is known as the Law of Reciprocity.

When you receive something of value, either virtual or physical, without having to pay for it in some way, you automatically feel like you "owe" that person something.

Your Online Business and The Law of Reciprocity

You are beginning the relationship by giving away something for free, without asking for any money. Everyday your audience are bombarded with messages from businesses trying to sell them something that they don't need. But when you provide value, they see you as one of the 'good guys'. This is why people will be happy to join your email list in return for something they see as more valuable than their email address.

Always Provide Value

It's up to you to make sure that the resource, e-book, checklist or physical product is extremely valuable and useful to your prospect. If you give away something that is rubbish, this will reflect poorly on your business.

Make sure it solves a big problem in your prospect's life. You want them to come to know, like and trust you. If they see that you provide a high level of value for free, they will believe that you'll provide even better value foe your paid products and services.

You may think that producing a valuable resource will take too much time to create, research, write, format, publish and market. Don't worry, free resources are easy to develop. You probably know more about your market that 99% of your prospects. If you create an e-book and you offer it away for free, it becomes even more valuable. To learn more, download my Free Checklist: How To Write An E-Book: http://jonallo.com/ebook

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Significant decisions

The video below shows how being brave and taking a 'momentous decision' can greatly improve the quality of life. Far too often we stay stuck in jobs/routines which are considered 'safe' and considered to be of an acceptable 'status'. The pressures of a materialistic outlook can generate uncertainties and even insecurity and whilst clearly money is important to sustain life, it is what use it is put to which is what gives us real satisfaction. To be in a position of being financially comfortable doing something we enjoy is clearly worth trying to achieve and if we can also benefit others in some tangible way, family, friends, others less fortunate, it can increase our self esteem, and ultimately leave us feeling pretty good about ourselves. This blog is aimed at highlighting ways in this can be achieved, enabling TIME to enjoy the opportunities that arise from having a healthy income that can be achieved working from the comfort of your armchair.
As a 'young' 70 year old I am re-energised by my involvement in a programme designed to access the benefits of online marketing, something which frankly 12 months ago was quite a scary prospect. Not so now, I have found that the potential of social media is staggering and whilst at one point I felt it was largely used by adolescents for meaningless chatter, I have totally revised my view to the extent that I am now on my way to being able to achieve the comfortable lifestyle that I referred to above. It is my main object to pass on my experiences as I am learning (you never stop learning) and to this end I have generated three free gifts in the form of reports which outline the basics of marketing online, It costs nothing to check them out and who knows this could be the 'momentous decision' which could well set you on the road to financial freedom too. 
Best wishes
Ray

Click here for your FREE Gifts

5 Ideas to Build a Profitable B2C Campaign

Marketing to consumers is big business and when done right, can be very profitable for your company. The Internet is where most consumers spend their time, so it makes sense to focus your B2C marketing efforts there. This is common knowledge today, but many businesses still fail in this arena. This is why a lot of companies hire SEO professionals for help.

According to one study done by WordStream in 2013, small and medium businesses were wasting away 25 percent of their PPC budgets. So a small business that's dishing out $2,000 monthly on AdWords would end up wasting $6,000 per year on under-performing campaigns.

The loss is even bigger for medium-sized businesses that spend about $20,000 monthly on PPC, which equates to $60,000 wasted dollars annually. This is a lot of money that could be saved by improving their B2C marketing campaigns. If this is something that's plaguing your business, then keep the following tips in mind.

Host Unique Contests

This is an excellent way to get attention on social media and get people engaged. There was a great example of this last year, when Lay's announced their third annual 'Do Us a Flavor' contest. They crowd-sourced ideas from consumers for their next best-selling flavor. This naturally attracted people on a global level, so you can say this was a success. In 2014, Lay's revealed they received over 14 million submissions, which was up from 3.8 million back in 2013.

Offer Something for Free

The only thing consumers love more than a deal is freebies. This was proven in a study done by Harris Interactive in 2013, which showed a drastic increase in repeat purchases and word-of-mouth referrals when there were free add-ons. The results also showed that 90 percent of consumers were somewhat more likely to purchase frequently from a retailer that gave away a free gift, and 65 percent were more likely to share their experience after receiving a free gift.

Make Intent-Driven SEO a Priority

It's not surprising that global brands top Google's search results for electronics, toys and apparel. It would be insanely expensive and exhaustive to even try and attempt to rank highly for such keywords, let alone maintain those positions. Instead, it's recommended that you focus on long-tail keywords that are relevant to your product, and that drive purchase intent.

In another 2013 study done by Adchemy's Thi Thumasathit, it showed that long-tail keywords were 66 percent more profitable than head keywords. This is an opportunity for small and medium businesses to build a profitable B2C campaign.

Build a Network of Micro-Influencers

You don't have to know A-listers to get a great endorsement. If you play your cards right, all you need is a handful of micro-influencers. Together, these micro-influencers can provide enough publicity for your brand. An example of this was seen a few years ago when Shoes of Prey decided to allow a 16-year-old beauty vlogger endorse their custom shoe company. In just a few days, traffic to the company tripled and the sales soared. You can find micro-influencers just about everywhere - on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook. Look for them in places where you know your audience hangs out. Otherwise, you won't be reaching the right prospects.

Take a Mobile-First Aproach

If your marketing doesn't think of mobile users first, then you're in trouble. According to Shopify, 50.3 percent of ecommerce traffic is performed on mobile devices. Make sure your online shopping experience is designed with mobile users in mind.

All of these tips can improve your sales, user engagement and help with online reputation management. If you need help figuring out a strategy for your B2C marketing campaign, consult with SEO companies and hire one that is reputable and offers Web design services.


http://www.ithinkanidea.com/ is a leading, full service internet marketing agency. I Think an Idea works with serious business owners small to large alike. Based out of Los Angeles, CA providing great results for services such as SEO, social media marketing, Online reputation management and PPC management. I Think an Idea can maximize your search engine presence and amplify your brand across social media channels, and help safeguard your reputation.

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Follow Up Emails

The first step in building a relationship with your opt-in list is the email sequence which follows on from either a subscription or a purchase. The majority of your subscribers will arrive via a free offer through which you encourage visitors to your website to exchange their name and email address (or other details) for a free eBook, report, etc. This is achieved using what is generally known as a "Squeeze Page". The squeeze page will contain a link to the free download which can be accessed by filling in a short form giving name and email address.

Once your website visitor has given their name and email in exchange - what happens next? The first thing they will receive will be a thank you email on which will be the link to the eBook or report for download. Once the subscriber has downloaded their gift the immediate transaction is completed. As far as an internet marketer is concerned, however, this is not the end of the story but the beginning. At intervals after that more follow up emails will be sent. An initial one (probably the following day) will arrive in the subscriber's inbox to 'reinforce' the thank you and check that the download was successful and offering help if there was a problem with this and offering to answer any question the subscriber might have.

The relationship building will then continue through subsequent emails (perhaps a couple each week). These will offer further free gifts or bonuses, raise interesting issues related to your niche or give links to interesting articles or videos. The whole process will keep your subscriber aware of your continued interest. In amongst the information they receive will be the occasional promotional emails, either for new products of your own or related Affiliate offers. The ideal is to build such a rapport with a subscriber that they look forward to receiving messages from you. That will more-or-less guarantee that they will, at least, open your email rather than ping it straight to the Trash.

To have a large opt-in list is the ambition of all internet marketers. It is much easier to promote products and services to your list than to go fishing in cold waters every time you have a new offer. In our home town or neighbourhood we all have our favourite shops and/or businesses we go to for certain things. We will probably have our favourite shop for groceries, our preferred DIY store to meet our household needs and our favourite restaurants or pubs. It is just the same online as off. If our subscribers have been treated well and have received quality products and quality service they will keep coming back. The response to new offers will be massively higher from our subscribers than from advertising in the wider marketplace.

Follow up emails are one of the very best ways to keep our subscribers happy. However, don't see them just as punters to be milked dry. They should feel valued and not taken for granted. If you want to take you must be prepared to give, give and give again.

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