Basic Online Marketing
If you’re new to the internet and you want to start a website to accomplish whatever task that you want to do, then you’re going to need to know some basic online marketing strategies that will help you to achieve your goal. Online marketing is easy, but you can definitely spend a lot of time wandering around if you don’t know what you’re doing. Luckily I’m here to help.
Basic online marketing for some people means that you set up a website, submit it to the search engines, and that’s it. TOTALLY WRONG. The old axiom “If you build it they will come” does not apply to the internet. You have to actually do some marketing. And you never want to do online marketing in a way that doesn’t bring you targeted traffic, and for most people – income.
The bottom line is that basic online marketing strategies are all that you need to use to have success with your internet business. These are strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click advertising (PPC), banner or display advertising on websites, blogs, and forums online, video marketing, article marketing and syndication, and much more. Now I’m sure you’ve heard of all of these things before, but do you know how to actually carry out a plan to use these strategies effectively?
You know, some people like to “shortcut” their way to riches. To them, when you start an online business, you’re supposed to make money IMMEDIATELY. So what do these people do? They employ so-called “basic online marketing” techniques such as:
– Solo ads
– Blasting their website to 1,000,000 people using a service
– Buying email lists
– Using classified ad submitters
– Using submitter software that claims to submit their site to 100’s of search engines
– And more terrible strategies
I’ve seen people lose ALOT of money using the technique of solo ads. For the most people, most solo ads are scams. Not all are scams, but in my opinion and from what I’ve seen and tested myself… about 98% of them are scams. However if you lurk around Facebook groups about solo ads, you may tend to think otherwise.
Why is that? Well, you will see glorified testimonials from people saying that they made $5,000 to a solo ad mailing to only 200 people. And etc. For the most part it’s nonsense, and the solo ad sellers play a dangerous game deluding people with fake leads and results. Some of these sellers will even buy your cheap product to make you think that your having success, when in fact they still profit while you lose – and more than likely – you will return to purchase a solo ad from this seller again.
And once they get your money, they will do the same thing – over and over again. It’s sad, but many newbies think that this is basic online marketing. In fact some people base their entire advertising money and online marketing campaign on this method. Little do they know that they’re being scammed and robbed right in front of their faces.
Basic online marketing needs to start with math. You need to know the numbers in your business. You need to know what you’re selling, how much you’re selling it for, what you cost per lead is, what your cost per sale is, what your break even number is, what your plan is to make more money from your customers, how to maximize the overall total revenue from your customers, how you’re going to include a continuity program into your business, and more.
These are the BASICS. If you don’t have these basics ready to go, how in the world do you plan on making profits? Sure you may get “sales”, but what good are sales if you’re not making money? It may look good to family and friends, but if you’re 40 years old and you’re still working a job for $8/hour… people are going to start to doubt you and your claims. And God forbid that any of your customers or competition finds out about it. They both can destroy your business because you would be lying to them.
Look, basic online marketing techniques that I’ve mentioned earlier are essential to your growth online. You need a plan, and you need to think out everything in advance before you spend a dime on advertising. In fact, you need to think everything out in advance before you register a domain name and buy a website. Don’t be clueless like most people and spend the next 5-10 years losing money.
If you want to learn some basic online marketing skills, keep reading and continuing your education about internet marketing. Regularly visit forums, blogs, and websites that teach you the fundamentals – and then start doing some small experiments. When people ask me what’s the best way to learn how to run an online business, I tell them to go and sell on eBay. I think you should try this also, just to get a feel of how to run a business online.
Search in your home or sort through some personal belongings of your’s, and sell things that you don’t use or want/need anymore. Then go to eBay and list them for sale. You will be surprised how fast they sell. From there, you will learn how to package and ship out items, how to utilize the automation tools that they have along with other 3rd party services, and you will come up with creative ideas of how to make even more money with eBay.
Then simply use your basic online marketing skills that you’ve learned from searching around the internet, and apply it to your eBay selling. And then eventually (if you choose to do so)… you can start your own website, and sell whatever you want to sell – all while using the same online marketing techniques that you were using on eBay to drive traffic and get sales.
Don’t make this harder than it has to be. Simply utilize the core, basic online marketing fundamentals and you will be good to go.
