Tag Archives: knowledge

Why Knowledge Is Your Most Valuable Marketing Tool

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Why Knowledge Is Your Most Valuable Marketing Tool

Without a doubt, knowledge is your most valuable marketing tool. It is the essential and necessary element needed to succeed in any marketing venture. This holds especially true for Internet Marketing.

The right marketing knowledge will save you time, money and a whole lot of stress.

But where does one acquire such knowledge? Where does one find the necessary information you need to market successfully online? And just How does one go about acquiring such knowledge?

Internet marketing is a relatively new field. The Internet itself is a relatively new phenomenon, created within the living memory of most of the people reading this article. Most of its now common features… search engines, online stores, email, websites, blogging… are all new inventions for our glorious cyber age.

Take for example, one of the Net’s major players Google; it has only been crawling and searching the Net since 1998 – who would have believed that google could wheel so much power and influence?

Other players such as Amazon, Yahoo, Ebay, MSN… are all just new kids on the block when compared to the long history of marketing.

Like any industry, business or field of study – Internet Marketing has produced its own experts. People who have mastered the art of web marketing from first-hand experiences, lessons learnt and drawn from the trenches – the most trustworthy of all knowledge. Valuable knowledge they can use again and again to market their business online.

This knowledge has become a valuable marketing tool for those who have mastered the skills of the trade. It can quickly turn any website into a profitable endeavor, producing income 24/7/365.

Nor should this knowledge be seen as anything magical.

Knowledge in any field can produce wealth; think of all the fine craftsmen and artists of old who had to learn a skill and knowledge to produce great priceless pieces of art. Think of the cabbies of London who must acquire the Knowledge of the routes around London in order to make a living.

For that matter, think of any modern profession and you will have to acquire the proper knowledge in order to practice your trade or profession.

Internet Marketing is no different. You must acquire the skills and knowledge to market successfully online.

But the question still remains, where does one acquire this knowledge, the real marketing tool you need to succeed online?

One source would surely have to be the experts. Who else will know the answers but the present day Top Internet Marketers? But who are these people? What are their names?

If you surf the web, no doubt you have come in contact with these marketers. Directly or indirectly their handiwork is everywhere. Their ideas, methods, and marketing techniques have influenced most of the sites on the web.

Many of better known ones even have mentoring programs to train and teach.

Acquiring the knowledge could just be a matter of hooking up with one of these so-called marketing gurus.

All these Internet Marketers have opt-in lists and ezines which you can join to get first-hand tips and advice.

Many of these Marketers have their own info products which you can purchase to gain more knowledge. Many also have free guides, reports and articles you can learn valuable information from. Most have websites choked full of valuable marketing information.

One of the saving graces of the Net – it is a vast storehouse of our collective knowledge. We can access that knowledge anytime, anywhere. One large reservoir of marketing knowledge can be found in the online marketing forums. If you need direct, hands-on Internet Marketing training manuals, try the free Masters Courses. Net Writing, Action Guide, Affiliate Marketing… are all covered in these excellent handy guides.

Don’t forget the pioneers of marketing in general, try to get your hands on copywriting and advertising tips/advice/techniques from marketing Masters of the past.

Many of their marketing methods and theories still cast a ghostly reflection in all of today’s Internet Marketers.

Keep in mind, studying any trade takes some time and effort on your part. So do your homework – study the Masters, past and present! Acquire some of their knowledge, learn some of their skills and yes, model some of their marketing methods and techniques in your own online marketing.

Persevere, examine, harvest and digest the wealth of knowledge that’s yours for the taking. Acquire as much marketing information as you possibly can. Then apply that knowledge to your own online interests as you would any other marketing tool.

Then the next time you’re tempted to buy some expensive piece of marketing software – go ahead and buy it! But if you have done your homework and studied all your marketing lessons, you will know that knowledge is the one and only marketing tool you need to succeed online. Never forget it! Just keep repeating it…

Knowledge is my most valuable marketing tool.

How To Choose the Best Niche for Your Skills and Knowledge

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How To Choose the Best Niche for Your Skills and Knowledge

When you’re trying to choose the precise niche that your business will fill, the best strategy is to make sure that you know what you’re doing with the product, so that you’ll feel much more comfortable in your niche and you’ll enjoy what you’re doing.

The best successes are always achieved by those who like their work. Therefore, the first step that you can take for defining your own niche is to make a list of all the things that you like to do best. This may have to do with your current job, a job you used to have, a hobby you enjoy, an art form, a sport, or anything else that you happen to enjoy in life.

Begin by writing down your areas of interest, and then look at each parts of that list separately so that you can break it down into more focused sections.

To help to inspire you in building your list, think about the following questions and get your mind moving. Write down everything at first, not really thinking about whether or not it really has potential. The key to this step is simply to get the ideas flowing and see what you come up with, getting it all down on paper. You never know; the idea you write down right now might not seem like much, but when you read it over later, it might stir much bigger thoughts.

• Would you like to be in this field every day as your job?
• Do you already have any skills or knowledge in that category?
• What type of person would be interested in the type of product that would come from that category?
• Would you enjoy working with your niche market target?

Once you’ve come up with your primary list of interests, use the above questions to go over it and narrow it down to those that have the highest chances of bringing you success. Give yourself a bit of time to mull over those topics that remain, and choose one of them that appeals to you the most.

Use that topic and begin writing down all of the basic things that you would require to learn or obtain in order to achieve success within that category. Put all of these things into a logical order, and then break them down into smaller parts which are then arranged in their own logical orders.

Once you’re done, you should have a much clearer idea of what you’ll be able to offer your prospective customers, and if you have the ability and motivation to work toward success in that specific category from your original list. To help determine if your successes are likely, go over your current list and ask yourself the following questions:

1. Do you have any special knowledge about this topic?

2. Do you have any skills that are related to this topic?
3. Are you able to come up with a product that would help or please people in some way within this topic?

4. Is there anything that you can offer in this topic that is outstanding and not already present in today’s marketplace?

Make sure that you’re always writing your ideas down. With all of the thinking and brainstorming you’ll be doing, you’ll be surprised how fleeting ideas are if you don’t get them down on paper. Even if some of them look rather odd when you write them down, when you delve into them, they might have a lot more potential than you first thought.

Once you have some substantial ideas in front of you, consider showing them to your friends and family. Listen carefully to their thoughts and opinions and let them inspire you for further ideas and details. You might be surprised at what the people around you might think of that may never have crossed your mind.

Another great resource is the internet. Do some research around your topic and prospective product(s), finding websites of general interest and potential competition. This will give you some great ideas about what’s out there and an understanding of what people are really looking for. It will help you to better polish your idea or develop a whole new one that you think is better.

Knowledge Of Marketing And Selling Online

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Knowledge Of Marketing And Selling Online

Marketing on the Internet involves online advertising to reach out to potential customers. It requires creativity like designing, development and technical aspects like marketing and advertising. Affiliate marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing and interactive advertising are all different facets of Internet marketing. It also includes sales, public relations, information management and customer service. Ever since the advent of Internet, it is widely used for all kind of purposes. Among the advantages of Internet, some helps in doing business, shopping, etc, from the comfort of the house. According to a research, a quarter of the Internet users shop online. It has also helped grow electronic commerce and Internet marketing is a part of electronic commerce.

Direct marketing techniques like radio and television commercials, mails, and newsletters are the inspirations for Internet marketing, which involves direct response marketing strategies and is rapidly growing. Business-to-business, also known as B2B, and business-to-consumer, also known as B2C, are the two business models to which Internet marketing can be linked. B2C companies were the first to start when Internet marketing originated. They are companies that sell directly to the customers. B2B companies are meant to do business with each other.

Websites built for Internet marketing are slightly different than others. There are peer-to-peer modeled websites which are used to exchange products and services between each other. Other is name-your-price, where the customers have to specify their price range that they can spend and select products that fall in that price range. Priceline.com is an example of such a website. Amazon.com is a website which is based on find-the-best-price model, where customers can find the lowest prices. Last are online auctions sites, where items are bid. Ebay.com is an example.

The companies who use Internet marketing are at an advantage. They don’t need to put in huge amounts of energy and time in Internet Marketing like other traditional methods. With the help of only few resources national and international markets can be reached. Because of very low investment, even small businesses are turning to online marketing. Websites and blogs have been developed for this purpose. Internet marketing is advantageous in the sense that the data is easily available on the Internet. Newsletters can be directly sent to customers and if it doesn’t contain the information they are looking for, they can search for information about the product online, make a decision and purchase it online itself.

One of the factors that hinder the growth of online marketing is delayed loading of the page. The web pages that take a lot of time to download test the patience of the consumer. To add to that, if the businesses design complex web pages with lots of graphics and animations, it will slow down the speed even more. Another minus point of online marketing is that the customers cannot feel, taste, smell or try products in order to make a good decision. To over come this, some of the online stores have created liberal return policies with the help of which the customer satisfaction is guaranteed.

Another biggest threat of online shopping is identity theft. Paying online using credit cards, e-checks are susceptible to hackers and information can be stolen and used. Many hackers and websites have been caught who were involved in buying and selling of personal information. Most of the websites have taken measures and incorporated good security on their websites. One of the best methods is encryption. When the data is being transferred between two computers; there is a possibility of a hacker intercepting it. So the data is changed by applying some encryption algorithm and is sent through the network and upon receiving, the decryption algorithm is applied to bring back the data to its original form.

Online selling is influencing all kinds of businesses like banking, advertising, music, etc. Instead of going to a store for buying cassettes and CDs, music can be bought online. Bank transactions like depositing, withdrawing, transferring funds, and paying bills are all performed online. Billions of dollars are invested every year in online advertising alone.

Target Marketing

Internet has made reaching out to the targeted customers can be very easy. Search engines can be utilized to the maximum extent for this purpose. The thing to be exactly searched can be typed as a keyword or search phrase in the search engines and the results brought on the first three pages will be of great value. But lots of time and investment is involved in this process, as different keywords will fetch different search results. So efforts should be made to finally get what is desired.

Next best thing is reaching out by newsletters and ezines. Many ezines are related to marketing, finance, shopping, Internet, etc. A number of ezines websites can be found in an ezines directory, which even contains the contact information, advertising price, etc. The list of ezines website sites should be cut down to which are relating to the target market and ad should be placed in the ones selected which should include all the product advantages if the ad allows that many words.

Recognizing the target market is crucial to any successful advertising and sales campaign. Once it is recognized, they can be reached through different channels like websites, newspapers, magazines, etc. This makes the customer think that he is being directly addressed to. And since the whole approach will interest them, the amount of traffic received in return will be simply overwhelming and the whole effort will be worth it.

How To Sell Information Products Online

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How To Sell Information Products Online

Creating your online presence is about establishing yourself as an expert in your niche. Releasing information products is a great way to offer up your knowledge and make money at the same time.

Here are some of the steps you’ll want to take in creating your first information product.

Step 1 – Create the Product

You can create an ebook, special report, physical book, mp3, video or any combination of these products. There’s nothing to say that you can’t hire a Ghostwriter to do the writing and proof reading for you.

This product can be as long or as short as you like but just make sure it’s information that people are really in need of and it delivers high value to their lives or problem.

Have someone go through your finished product to proof read (or view/listen) it.

Step 2 – Set up The Salespage

Of course you’ll need a place to sell your new product from. Though you don’t technically need a new domain for this it’s always a good idea to have a domain specific to the product because it looks more professional and can make it easier to find.

If you don’t have experience creating websites or writing content that makes sales, then this would be another great place to outsource these tasks to get it done.

Step 3 – Set up an Affiliate Program

Though an affiliate program isn’t an absolute necessity, it’s a great idea to set it up from the start to really leverage your new product and create more sales.

There are so many strategies you can get into for finding great affiliates and I’ll have to leave that for another article. Getting a few key players helping you promote a new product can make a big impact on its release.

Decide on a commission to pay your affiliates. For my first product, which sold for $19.97, I decided to offer 50% commission to my affiliates. You’ll want to offer an attractive commission to your potential affiliates so they see it’s worth their time to promote your product.

Step 4 – Get a Graphic

Having a graphical representation of your product really does make it look more professional. If you can’t afford to spend the money right away to get a great graphic done, don’t try to do one yourself unless you know what you are doing. It’s better to have no graphic at all then a poorly designed one.

Step 5 – Start Promoting Your Product

The ways to promote your information product are pretty-much endless. Here are a few ideas to get started:

* Add a short ad in your email signatures.
* Change your forum signatures to draw people to your new product.
* Make a special offer on a forum in your niche that allows such a thing.
* Make an announcement to you list that you have a new product available.
* Post about your product on your blog.
* Search out and contact people who are authorities in the topic your product addresses and ask them if they would be interested in becoming an affiliate.
* Do teleseminars or online conferences on your topic.
* Keep your affiliates motivated by providing them with resources on how to promote your products.

It’s important that you get out there and start making things happen, don’t just wait for your product to start selling like hotcakes because that likely won’t happen unless you are already well known for the information you put out there.

How To Succeed On Blog Marketing

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Blog marketing is something that most anyone that has a blog can do. However, can just anyone that owns a blog do it and do it effectively so that it gets results? Yes, just about anyone that has a little bit of internet knowledge and common sense can market a blog so that it will get the results that you are looking for. If you are wanting to begin marketing a blog that you started a while a go, and are familiar with blogging and what that entails then you are a step ahead of the beginners.

If you are beginner blogger, then there are some things that you will need to know. The simplest thing that you can do is to start one, and just journal in it for a while. This will allow you to learn just what it takes and what it is all about to keep up a blog. When you are just journaling your thoughts and what is on your mind, you have nothing to lose and nothing to gain. You don’t even have to make your blog public if you don’t want others to read what you have to say. That is a personal preference. However, doing this will let you see how it works. Then you can move on to trying to market a product or a service. Just to get familiar with blogging though, you should have a practice one. You will be glad that you did that later.

Content is king, and so very important when you are marketing a blog, website, or what ever you choose to market. When you have your own blog, you are in charge of the content that is posted on it. You can decide what is said, and what is not. You are after all writing it all, right? So, the sky is the limit. Whether you want a blog that does website reviews and takes nominations, or you want to sell things that you make out of your home, the choice is yours. Using a blog to get the word out about whatever you want too is a great way to market and promote something. You will get results that you will love by using good content that is original.

Blog marketing is only as complicated as you make it. You are going to see that anyone can market something if they have the mind set to do so. Getting your blog up and going is the first step and most important one make sure that you have chosen a topic niche that will get you good results as well. As that will mean that there is not as much competition for the topics that you choose, but yet there are many searches that are done for it as well. Finding a niche that hardly no one else has touched is kind of hard to do at times, but can be done if you look hard enough. Start by thinking about things that interest you and things that you like to do yourself. If at all possible, find something that you know all about all ready or can learn quickly to become an expert in that field.

Blog marketing is all about results. If you market long enough and hard enough, you are going to get the results that you want and are looking for. The keys to achieving this are patience and determination. Something that you have to have to do most anything.

Blog marketing is quite easy to get started in. If you all ready have been blogging, you will more than likely pick it up very easily and naturally just as if you have been doing it all along. Also, if you all ready blog, you might find out that you have been marketing the whole time anyways, and just not realizing it.

For anyone that has never blogged before, you will of course want to start a test blog just to get the feel of how it is. You want to become familiar with the blogging platforms that you will be using and know how to make a post. While most blogs are free, you are also going to see that many of them are quite different. You will have to get to know the kind that you are using, and want to use. Otherwise, you might get lost along the way. So starting a blog and just blogging for a little while will help you with this. You can blog about anything that you want to. Maybe journal for a few weeks, or talk about your favorite movies. The sky is the limit.

So once you have become familiar with blogging and what it takes to post and make changes, you are ready to go further. The next thing that you are going to want to do is choose a niche market. You will want to choose something that is low in competition, but yet is something that people are searching for. If you happen to have a hobby or something that you love to do, there you go. Otherwise, you may have problems coming up with topics.

Now that you have your topics in place, it is time to begin blogging. When you are blogging for the purpose of marketing, you want to give your readers something that they have to keep coming back for. You want to peak their interest and make them want more from you. This will keep your readership base up and will allow you to have followers that will follow you anywhere to see what you are going to say next on their favorite topic.

Now that you have a topic, you want to determine just how much time you are going to spend updating and posting in this blog. If you tell your readers that you are going to post on a daily basis, do so. If you let them know that you will be blogging weekly, you should also stick with that do that also. Whatever you tell them, be sure that you do not let them down. Otherwise they will find another blog to read in the place of yours. Which is something that you will not want.

Learning SEO and applying it to your blogs is something else that you may want to do. This will help you as far as search engine rankings are concerned and will allow you to go further up the page. After all, that is the point to all of this, right? If you do not have time to learn what SEO also known as search engine optimization is all about, you may want to hire someone to apply it to your blog for the best results.