Internet Marketing Is Simple - But Not Easy

There are many misconceptions about Internet Marketing circulating today. Some see it as a "Get-Rich-Quick" scheme - which it most certainly isn't. Others preach a message of doom and gloom: "It doesn't work; it's a rip-off; it's a waste of time and money" - which, again, it most certainly isn't. The more informed and open-minded see it as a great business opportunity which, like almost everything else in life, can produce great results for those prepared to put in the work - which it certainly is!

Whether you succeed at internet marketing is far more up to you than any other factors. For most people beginning an online business there is a lot of new information to take on board, a lot of new skills to learn. The actual process of internet marketing is well-known and easily understood. Almost any informational sources will tell you, it is just about following a pathway which has been trodden by many successful entrepreneurs over the last few years. By following in the footsteps of those who have walked the path before and doing exactly what they did you will succeed. This is good advice! You must be prepared to do what needs to be done with a single-mindedness of purpose. You can only reap what you sow. However, as I said in my headline, internet marketing is simple - but not easy.

The secret to success is through consistency and persistency. You will have tough days and exasperating failures at times but, if you are able to accept these and be prepared to learn from your mistakes, success will eventually come. Promise yourself that you will never give up however difficult it becomes at times. Many people are making very significant amounts of money from internet marketing so keep in your mind just what your success will mean to both you and your family.

"Anything worth doing is worth doing well", says the proverb. This is so true. Set out to do everything to the very best of your ability, follow your plan to the letter and don't be distracted. You are likely to be bombarded with all sorts of information offering a new way or a better way of running an online business. Keep your head down, keep your focus to follow the plan you have set out for yourself. Once you have begun to make money you can start to explore other options - and not before! Remember you are running a business which could ultimately change your life so treat it as such. Once it turns into little more than a 'hobby' your chances of success will be zero.

To draw on my musical background, all instrumentalists will tell you that practising scales is an essential part of learning to play well. However, not many would admit to enjoying practising scales. It is work that has to be done but takes willpower and commitment to do it. It takes a certain mindset to do this essential work. The enjoyment and satisfaction ultimately comes from using your improved technique to play the music you really want to play and to be able to play it better. I'm sure you can see the parallel.

My headline was "Internet Marketing Is Simple - But Not Easy" which really is true. The process is straight-forward but applying that process is not. Your eventual success, however, depends on you and your ability to see it through; to learn what needs to be learnt and to do what needs to be done. I wish you every success in your business.

Robert Hinchliffe is an experienced writer on the subject of internet marketing and related topics. If you have found this article of help and would like to learn more about how to earn money with a profitable online business, please visit http://www.internetmarketingmanual.com for further information on the subject. Internet marketing is the business of today. Discover how you can become a part of it.

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Capturing Your Social Media Success With an Analytics Tool

You work hard at ensuring that your content produces positive results for your business. However, without tracking the results of your social media efforts, you won't really have a clear understanding of how you are doing. Are your efforts really paying off? The only way to know for sure is to capture the results using an analytics tool.

Using the right approach
In some respects, there is nothing that is more important than your content and the results that it produces for your business. It is important that you do not discount (or underestimate in any way) what a powerful and important tool social media is for your business. Hopefully, you are interacting on the most appropriate social media channels for your particular business.

It is important that you become very well acquainted with those social media platforms so that you can be certain that they are right for your business. That also means that you need to understand exactly what they have to offer and how you can leverage all of their features (or, at least, the ones that apply to your business) for maximum benefit.

After you have successfully increased traffic, the next thing that you need to do is to measure the results of your efforts. You will do that through an analytics tool. The reason that it is so important to capture that information is because the results will show you in which areas you are doing well and in which areas you need to improve or make some sort of change. That information will prove to be invaluable to your business.

At this point, you may be wondering exactly what you need to do to track your social media efforts.

• Establish objectives that are tied to you social media interactions: It is very important that you have objectives toward you need to work before you actually make the effort to capture the analytics. You will want to establish those objectives when you are creating your social media marketing strategy. It will serve as an important part of your roadmap. If you stick with the plan, you will eventually achieve those objectives successfully. Your objectives should have the following attributes: they should be precise, measurable (as we have already discussed), realistic, relevant to what you are doing and what you stand for, and they should be accomplished in a timely manner.


• Choose an analytics tool: Once you have gotten to this point, you will need to choose an actual tool. Google Analytics is one of the most popular tools and it will probably serve you well. If you choose to use Google Analytics, you will need to set up an account so that you can connect with your metrics. After you have done that, you will be able to generate reports with the results of your social media interactions.


• Establish the goals of your analytics: You may be surprised at what you discover once you start tracking your social media activity (both positive and negative). Gathering analytics will help your business in many different ways, including allowing you to understand how to increase your return on investment (ROI). The analytics will give you a very clear idea about where you need to go with your efforts and where you should not waste time or effort.


• Interpreting your analytics report: The report is important for your business because it helps you to understand how your social media efforts are impacting your business. The report will cover important issues such as a general overview of your activities, referrals within the various social media networks, the level of engagement of your target audience members (which also includes how and how much those people share your content with other people), information about your landing pages, your ability to track how other people are linking to your website as a result of your content, the number of conversions that you are able to achieve, the number of social buttons that other people have clicked on (that is, of course, tied into engagement as well), and the increasing number of users to your website.

What to do with the results
Once you have captured data on your social media activities, you will need to capture that data in one place. It is very important that the data align with your social media objectives. The more buttoned-up and organized you can make the information, the better it will serve you in the long run. You will definitely have occasions going forward in which that information will come in very handy.

Conclusion
All business owners need to capture the analytics from their social media activities. That is the only way that they (and you) can determine if your efforts are well spent and if they are paying off or if you need to focus your efforts elsewhere. It will ultimately save you a great deal of time and effort. You will be able to choose which aspects of your efforts are most critical to your success and you will see that capturing that information will help you to achieve your goals more quickly and easily than you would otherwise.

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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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In the world today, small businesses suffer from the lack of marketing their customers and sometimes its due to the insufficient amount of money they have to brand and advertise their business. Just to have a billboard of your company on a building you would need close to a million dollars for advertisement. I had the privilege of catching up with Ed Buss, a CEO of fresh filtered air Inc in the small town of Shawnee Oklahoma. Ed Buss and his wife started his company by the idea of his wife seeing an ad in the local newspaper about 21 years ago and thought it was a good idea so they decided to create Fresh Filtered air inc.

Ed Buss has and runs a small filter service business, he serves his business on a 2-week service plan, 2-4,6-8-10-12-week plan for his customers. His business isn't a popular company but it does well for how small it is. Some of the challenges he faces with his filter company is in the social media marketing area. He doesn't have a true website, his company isn't on any social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. he doesn't have a strong way to connect with current or future customers, his business has been stringing simply from word to mouth over 21 years' span. He also struggles with a company logo which I personally believe will help him establish a bigger customer base. By allowing his company to partake in the social media world it could improve his customer base drastically and help bring in more potential clients rather than going from door to door selling his service price by word to mouth.

Another challenge Ed Buss faces with his small business is field expenses, he has to make sure that when someone calls in for a service order that they are for sure going to go through with it due to gas and mileage on the trucks. Ed Buss's filter service has two employee trucks and he does a great job making sure that all the services are around and done on the same route. Ed Buss says that his employees have a lot of window time and drive a little over 90,000 miles a year. As a small company that means that your customer base isn't very big, so you want to make sure you have enough funds in your business to keep the trucks that carry out your business's service orders in good shape.

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The "Sexiest" Thing About Free Traffic & the Best Times to Post

Introduction

As a blogger or Internet entrepreneur, you need traffic. If you are unfamiliar with the term, it simply means people going to your website or blog. Just like all of the people you encounter in their vehicles when you are driving to work constitute real world vehicular traffic, everyone surfing the web at any given time is a part of Internet traffic.

There are two ways to get traffic to your site.

• 1) You pay for traffic.
• 2) You get traffic for free.

Paid traffic is a smart part of a serious online entrepreneur's marketing plan. You control every aspect of traffic when you pay for it. Ad campaigns with Google, YouTube, Amazon and Facebook make it possible to laser-target your advertising to the exact demographics you want to reach.

However, paid traffic can cost you a lot of money, delivering little to no results, if you don't know what you are doing.  Even if you do eventually develop a successful paid traffic marketing plan, it doesn't happen overnight. You have to pump a lot of revenue into buying traffic each and every day, spend your time and testing and retesting, and there are no guarantees that you will get the results you're looking for.

The "Sexiest" Thing About Free Traffic  -  If you think the reference to free traffic as being "sexy" is a little overboard, you are incorrect. Free traffic is beautiful, sexy, attractive and desirable. Why is this so? The answer is simple... because it's FREE!

In many cases this doesn't just mean being free financially. A lot of methods you are about to learn require a little bit of your time on the front end, but then they just continue to deliver free, targeted traffic to your site or blog with little to no upkeep on your part.

Other methods will require regular input by you, but since your financial outlay is zero, and the Internet never sleeps, you can employ these free traffic methods anytime of the night or day, whenever you have a few minutes or hours of spare time.

Some of the free traffic sources are:

Start Building a List  -  You absolutely, positively must be building a list. This is true if your business is off-line or on, and technology makes it easy to do so when you have a blog or website. To build your list you need a freebie - Lists of resources work well here. A short PDF that answers one big problem your audience has is another winner.

Social Media  -  Social media can provide a lot of free traffic. However, there are so many worthwhile social media websites out there, you have to be careful not to spend the bulk of your time chasing this low-converting traffic. Regardless what social media "gurus" will tell you, the return on your time investment trying to get people from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn back to your website to join your list is not very high.

People go to social media sites to hang out. They are socializing. Make sure you approach them in a social manner. Don't ever attempt to sell on Facebook or the other social media sites. The Best Times to Post on Social Media  -  HubSpot studied tens of thousands of posts and updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media sites. They discovered the best possible times for you to engage your audience. Those times are listed below (as of June 2016).

Facebook:

• 3 o'clock to 4:00 PM on Wednesdays
• 1 o'clock to 4:00 PM on Thursdays and Fridays
• Noon to 1 o'clock PM on Saturdays and Sundays

Twitter:

• Noon to 3:00 PM on Mondays through Fridays
• 5 o'clock to 6:00 PM on Wednesdays

LinkedIn:

• 7:30 o'clock to 8:30 o'clock a.m., noon, and 5 o'clock to 6:00 PM on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays
• 10 o'clock to 11:00 o'clock AM on Tuesdays

Pinterest:

• Evening hours every day
• 2 o'clock to 4:00 o'clock AM every day
• 5:00 PM on Fridays
• 8 o'clock to 11:00 o'clock PM on Saturdays

Instagram:  Anytime between Monday and Thursday, avoiding 3:00 o'clock to 4:00 o'clock PM

* Understand that multiple factors will influence whether your content is shared, liked, commented on and develops engagement. However, if you stick to the times just mentioned, you give yourself the best possible chance of driving a lot of free traffic to your blog or website.

Mobile  -  In late 2015 mobile searches passed desktop searches on the Internet. Experts say that now (in 2017) more than 60% of all web searches are on mobile devices. This means several things. First off, most people are searching from their smart phones. This display is tiny compared to your laptop, your desktop and even your tablet

Build A Mobile Application: Don't worry; you don't need to be a web designer or app developer. You can head over to Fiverr.com or UpWork and have a freelancer create a mobile application for your business inexpensively. This can be as simple as a checklist or list of resources, or some other helpful piece of information.

On-Page SEO  -  You are probably groaning at the 3 letter acronym SEO. In case you don't know, that stands for search engine optimization. This means making your website, content and webpages attractive to Google and the other search engines. If you have fallen prey to so-called experts that promised to deliver search engine rankings by offering their SEO services, it is understood that search engine optimization is a topic you would like to avoid.

Blogging  -  Guest blogging doesn't provide the big traffic boost that it used to. However, it is still a great way to reach a large audience. Contact the owners of the biggest blogs relevant to your niche or market. Offer to write an original, high-value blog post for their site. In return you ask for a link back to your website.

Answer Questions on Q and A Websites  -  There are sites which allow web surfers to post questions about anything and everything. Online marketers like yourself answer those questions, and the question that gets the most positive feedback is chosen as the top answer.

Start a Podcast  -  This may seem daunting at first. However, all you really need to start a podcast is a decent microphone and a computer. Odds are you have a blog. There is a pretty good chance that your competitor has a website or blog as well. On the other hand, podcasts are few and far between, which makes them the perfect free traffic source that sets you apart from your competition.

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7 For 17: Trends to Look Out for and Adapt in Your 2017 Marketing Strategies

1. Interactive & Multimedia Content
Because 2017 won't be all about the impact of words; it will be about the experiences created for the consumer, and sometimes words are simply just not enough to educate, entertain and engage. We have all found ourselves skimming through text only to move to something new because we lose interest. For this reason alone, all brands must try to engage their audiences through images, quizzes, clips, GIFs, videos, infographics - anything that will make your brand's value jump off of the screen, because words alone are like empty promises nowadays. Start experimenting and explore the endless possibilities on offer!

2. Live Streaming & Video Content
Ditch the script, improvise, and go live - simple as that! What better way to engage with your audience than giving them a real glimpse of what you're doing and what your core values are. Live streaming and video content will continue to push the boundaries, allowing brands to drop the corporate veil, connect human-to-human, and allow users to participate in brand storytelling in ways that enrich the customer experience. So, start embracing the digital conversation by incorporating live content streaming, visuals and videos!

3. Personalisation
Everyone's special, or at least we all like to think we are. No matter what your stance is on this, you have to get personal with your target audience - for starters, your website, emails and social media should. Start segmenting your content to reach different types of audience members based on their preferences, habits, etc. - because let's face it, if you keep treating them as one homogeneous group you are bound to lose out on the huge potential of your message. Start truly analysing the data: location, age, needs, hobbies and so forth - the technology is available, so make the most of it and you won't lose out.

4. Purpose Driven Marketing
Become a brand that gives and gets! In today's world we're all looking to be part of something bigger, something meaningful that will make a difference. Everyone's passionate about their causes and trust me, customers will love that you have one too. Partner with a non-profit or charity, or set up an internal programme that "gives back" in some way - and you're bound to win over the hearts of your customers as well as employees, helping them connect more fully with your brand as a whole.

5. Native Advertising
No one likes ads, unless you manage to slip them into content contexts that your users are already part of and give value to. This is the core reason native advertising is taking the marketing world by storm: $36.3 billion will be spent on native ad spending by 2021. Good native advertising is not meant to be trickery; it's merely allowing a storyteller to share publishing tools with marketer, whilst at the same time maintain consumer trust by telling the truth, being transparent as to who's telling it, and finally adding value to the conversation with an audience. If done properly, it can be a win-win situation.

6. Mobile
Mobile is not just first, it's second, third - it's everywhere and everything! Internet traffic is firmly derived more from mobile devices than desktops and if you're not gearing your content, ads and online experience towards mobile users, you are definitely missing a huge opportunity. Remember not to stop at optimizing for mobile. Also, ensure that the specific content is integrated and respectful of the lifestyles of users-on-the-go!

7. Embrace the lOT
How awesome is it that your fridge can actually remind you that you're running out of milk and gives you the option to place an order immediately! Everyday objects are beginning to connect to the internet, and this trend is going to open the doors for brands to play a more active part in the everyday lives of consumers. By 2020 there will be 75 billion connected devices - now that's a boom! The implications are huge and far ranging as we will witness a transformation in the way we live our lives, and consequently the way we market our brands.

In short, keep the 7 in mind, utilise your budgets effectively and stay ahead of the game

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