The 10 Essentials to Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing is an essential tool that you need to use to attract people to your website, to increase the number of customers for your business, and to enhance the brand image of your business and its products. Beginning an online business can seem like a daunting task in itself, but without Internet Marketing working for you, your business will be left in the dust of your competitors or may never get noticed at all.  Using the 10 elements below as a guideline, make sure you’ve included each in the planning of your online business. Most online entrepreneurs overlook one or more steps, but I’m giving you the breadcrumbs that you’ll need to successfully promote your business.

 

1.       Begin with a simple plan to outline your business and development strategy to achieve your goals.

2.       Learn to use auto-responders to effectively carry out email marketing campaigns to bring more traffic to your site.

3.       Use good search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to get your site ranked at the top of major search engines.

4.       Create fresh industry-centric content for your site and use it to dominate your niche with affiliate programs.

5.       Build an opt-in email list to send periodic information regarding your industry, specific niche, new content on your site, your products and recommended competitors products.

6.       Continually write and publish articles about your industry and niche to online ezine sites.

7.       Write and publish press releases about your company and its products and submit them to online journalism and newspaper sites.

8.       Create and maintain a blog to keep your visitors informed and supplied with new content to keep them returning to your site.

9.       Create and publish videos about your industry, niche, your business and its products.

10.   Keep track of how effective your Internet marketing campaign has been over a given period of time. Tweak areas of your marketing strategy that are under-performing.

By following these guidelines you’ll be able to create a strong Internet marketing strategy that will boost the potential of your business online. The key is not to get overwhelmed by these strategies. Keep them simple and work through each one at your best pace. A good foundation is not made in a day… it is planned and executed over a period of time!

 

Laying The Foundation

 The key to starting out right with any Internet business is taking the time to lay a good foundation that will help your site and new career endure the test of time and competition. Every person who looks to the Internet to become an Internet entrepreneur may not fully understand the nuances involved in creating and running a successful Internet based business.

There are many different facets to running an Internet business. Unfortunately, many people will jump into creating an online business before they fully understand the environment. The first step in starting your online business should involve laying its foundation and learning the key factors that determine whether it will be a success or failure.

There are plenty of people and their websites out there that offer advice and products on how you can create your new business, but there are few that can offer the basic foundational rules that you’ll need to truly become successful. Most information available online tends to bog down new entrepreneurs, heck, even the old entrepreneurs, and does not clearly define for them what’s required mentally before starting an online business!

Everyone gets excited at new prospects in their life, especially those that promise to enhance the quality of life. Likewise, everyone has the tendency to jump right into the task of building a website and trying to establish their online presence as soon as possible. Hopefully you’ve found this article before you’ve gone too far down that path. Even if you have and are experiencing frustration in your business because things haven’t quite worked out as you hoped, it’s not too late. Before you start anything more on your new or existing online business, take the time to read the following elements and understand the significance of each. If you approach your business using these principles, your frustrations and misdirection’s will become clearer.

The keys to laying a good business foundation:

1.        Keep it simple. This is an obvious and well used phrase, but it’s important for you to understand what the impact is for not applying this key element to your business. If you take a moment and think about the startup of your new business and you feel confused or overwhelmed, it’s because you’ve started with too much complexity. If you’re in an existing business and you share the same feelings, guess what, you’re probably so mired in all the different concepts and products out there that have promised to make your business more profitable that you can’t see the proverbial forest from the trees. Simplify.

 

2.        A good step toward simplifying is cutting out all the “noise”. One challenge when working in the Internet business market is the vast amount of “help” being offered, most of which is either duplicate, pirated, or rehashed from someone else’s original content. Another challenge is listening to others who recommend for you to opt-in to every guru site out there in order to stay on top of all the latest market conditions and offers. The best thing you can do for your business, or potential business is to clean house. Choose a handful of those gurus who are truly well known in the industry as leaders, and anyone who offers information that’s particularly useful. Pitch the rest. Too mush distraction, too many choices or directions will ensure that you’ll never be efficient and get your business headed in the right direction.

 

3.        Don’t be negative about anyone in your business, niche, or those offering advice that’s blatantly wrong or misleading. You have a choice. Use the information you find online to help you and your business or you can opt-out. Bashing others will only draw negative opinions about you and your own site. You can be more successful by offering your own opinions, guidance and training to rally against the information you find less than useful out there. Take the high road, offer a difference, and become a guru by accident!

  

4.        Create a plan for your business, not a business plan. A lot of people think of two distinct ways on how to begin or maintain their online business. There’s the one camp that believes in the need for a firm business plan. Sure, that is necessary for a lot of businesses with brick-and-mortar roots, but it’s not necessary for most Internet entrepreneurs. A lot of people get scared when the word “plan” is mentioned, but there’s no need to. The other camp works fast and loose without any plan. Without some kind of planning how do you know you’re on track, or going the right direction? How will you know if you’ve arrived? The key to planning for Internet entrepreneurs is to arrive at a compromise between both camps. Your likelihood of success will increase substantially if you plan your business. But remember — keep it simple — we like simplicity in our business. Take out a piece of paper and write down some bullet points.

 

·          What is your business about?

·          What is your product offering?

·          What are the boundaries of your offering?

·          What do you need to work on to get to your destination?

·          When will you complete each step that you need to accomplish?

 

5.        Create the content for your site before you launch it. If necessary, you should delay the launch of your website until you have all the content, or have enough content to look credible. Everyone would like to hurry and establish a website as quickly as possible because of the excitement involved in the new venture. Unfortunately, most of the websites that launch early become unsuccessful in the end. Let’s be real here — it’s far easier to throw together a webpage, or two, sprinkle a few things that we hope will create the success that we anticipate. We wait, we get frustrated, we try another idea, we wait, we get frustrated and at that point some people might even quit. However, by delaying the launch of your website, it’ll continue to nag and eat at you until you complete it! Having the constant reminder will become a motivation day after day. We’ll be far more inspired to work on getting all the content right.  The excitement will continue to mount as we get closer to our planned launch date. Remember the planning! There’s a balance though, that’s why it’s important to sketch out your plan. You don’t want to delay you’re launch to a point where you become stagnant and never get it finished. Be realistic, plan the content you’ll offer, and set some realistic dates to complete your tasks. When you finally launch your website, you’ll be more proud of your accomplishment, and you’ll see more success resulting from the efforts you put into it.

  

Trying to figure out exactly what you need to create success online is not easy. There are a lot of products out there that can help you achieve your goals. But, if you begin the process of developing your online business with the foundational techniques you’ve learned here in mind, you’ll end up being far more successful in a shorter period of time. By simplifying, planning, and focusing on the tasks you really need to do to create your new site, you’re likely to be far less frustrated and have more control over your motivations and your ultimate success. Along with the reduced stress by using these principles… the traffic you’ll receive from a better planned out website will quickly lead you to the quality of life you were seeking in the first place. This will allow you to focus on your next conquest. By de-cluttering your mind during the development of your first website and learning even more from the process, you can complete your next one more efficiently.

Internet Marketing Sins

 

Catch the Ground Swell

 

There’s been a storm brewing silently in the Internet Marketing world. There have been a few murmurs here and there over the past few months, but it wasn’t until recently that the murmurs were silenced with a loud “THUD!” from Sylvie Fortin.

Her open letter to the Internet Marketing industry and the consumer has opened the proverbial can-of-worms that I predict will be in the forefront of IM seminars for years to come.

In my conversation with her this morning, Sylvie was as candid and forthright as she comes across in her letter. We’re at a crossroads in the Internet Marketing world where we need to get better about how we conduct business, and police our own by not putting up with the crap of tricks that give us all a black eye. Her stance is that we’re not only hurting the consumer through the use of underhanded techniques, but we may be unintentionally cutting our own throat.

As an industry, we need to be professional and offer legitimate products to the consumer using above board techniques. We don’t want to end up as a community of pariahs, akin to all those “work from home” signs we see along the freeway exits. It’s time to take a stand. This site was established to communicate a better way of teaching our important business building to those who are truly looking for help and don’t want the tricks. We always talk about creating long-term relationships with our customers and our lists. Turning a quick buck at there expense will not accomplish that goal.

Sylvie and I are committed to changing the mindset of the IM community. It’s not going to be an easy road or a quick trip in the process. This will need to be a grassroots effort and a call to action for the community, but will be the best investment we all can make in guaranteeing our futures and a continuing stream of customers coming to our sites for years to come.

Our customers are looking for real — useful — information that they can apply and begin seeing results right away. So many customers are new entrepreneurs looking to make a beginning online and many more are existing Internet entrepreneurs looking for a new technique… an edge to leverage to see more success in their online business. Neither one has the time or the cash to spare chasing the riffraff that Sylvie outlines in her letter.

In our discussion, we agree that this has been a long time in coming. It has to end… this methodology of marketing that’s becoming rampant. It’s going to take a concerted effort by a lot of us in the Industry to quell this tide before it stars to affect everyone’s ability to sell in the marketplace. We don’t want the stigma of being like “Used Car Salesmen” (no disrespect meant to those of you who sell used cars!)

Sylvie has thrown down the gauntlet and you’re either onboard or will continue your ways, but be assured that this effort to police our own won’t go away. I expect it will only grow and will be spoken about at upcoming seminars and be a point of discussion for year to come.

Don’t miss out on her eye-popping letter! Get your copy here: “Internet Marketing Sins: An Open Letter to Internet Marketers”

 

Keep the Brick Walls Out of Your Business

I was listening to the news a couple of days ago and something profound caught my attention. The tragic but inspirational story of Randy Rausch. In case you haven’t heard his story, I’ll briefly outline it before I go on to tell you why this is one of the most important lessons you can learn for your business, let alone how to change your life.

In 2007, Randy Rausch, was a pioneering computer scientist and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University where he gave the last of his lectures to a packed audience. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Instead of giving up, Randy decided to share with the world the best things he’d learned in his life. The most undeniable truth he had learned was that we can’t change the cards we’re dealt. We can only change how we them.

Randy started his lecture with some push ups to show that he was still strong. He didn’t want his audience to pity him.

He joked, “I am dying and having fun and I am going to keep having fun.”

Randy talked about his childhood dreams, how he found that there are ‘brick walls’ or obstacles in front of every big dream.

His discussion about the brick walls hit home with me. I’ve never been one to let brick walls stand in my path to success. But this isn’t the case for most of the people in the world. Randy’s most profound statement should be permanently burned into your mind and into your heart, like it is with mine.

He stated, “The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!”

He nailed it. What more needs to be said? Remember this everyday and don’t loose sight of your dreams. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it, or make it, or earn it… especially yourself!

Don’t live in fear of failure, but take the steps you need to succeed to achieve your dreams. In your business, as well as your life, don’t be afraid to take risks or even simple steps because of the brick walls you or someone else has put in your way. Find a way around them. They may not even exist in the first place. We perceive many things and our emotions get in the way of our success. Fear is a very real emotion with us and it can stop us in our tracks.

Do you have a brick wall in your life? Does it seem like you have many? Do you feel boxed in by the walls with seemingly no path forward or around?

Try this first, sit down and think about the wall. Write down what it is. Wave your hand over it… crumble up the paper and throw it away. It’s that simple. It doesn’t exist any more.

Now go to another sheet of paper, take a few minutes to brainstorm things that can get you past the wall. Now do them. Check each off as you complete them, but keep track and do it! Forget the fear or anxiety you feel, just move on.

Most people’s brick walls are monetary. This may be a real wall in some cases, but how can you get over that wall? It’s simple, but many people aren’t willing to take the time to get over it. It’s a syndrome like our children have… you know what it is… you want it all right now! Don’t give up on your plan or your dream because you can’t afford to get there. Just lower your goal temporarily to get you started, then ramp it up as you see that you’re successfully scaling that wall. Break up your dream into smaller, achievable steps that you can recognize and appreciate the progress you make toward the final destination.

These walls we see in our path are perceived. Are they real? No. But the fear that we have to find a way past them keep us stationary in our path. It’s human nature. Recognize the barriers in your life… in your business… and waive your hand. Make them disappear and succeed!

Remember Randy’s message. Remember my words as well, “Plan where you want to be”.

Live by these two messages and you’ll find the extraordinary life that you seek.

Yours for Bigger Profits,

Stuart Scriven

Key Steps to Developing an Internet Business Plan

Do you really need to develop a business plan if you have an Internet business?

Yes! Of course you do!

Developing a business plan for your Internet-based business is essential because it serves as a guide to what you’re planning to do, how you’re planning to get there, and when you plan to arrive.
Besides that, it increases the likelihood that the time and money you’ll invest in creating your site will pay off. Now, I realize that many people fear the idea of creating a business plan because it seems like it’s a daunting task that only an MBA should attempt. There’s no need to fear, a business plan can be only as complicated as you want to make it, but it’s still essential.

It’s not rocket science, but the real need behind developing your online business plan is to define the boundaries of your online business and to serve as a road map.

You should define what you need to get your business up and running within a reasonable amount of time. Even a rough draft of a business plan is all you need to ensure that the time and effort you put into developing your website is well spent in areas you’ve defined.

Be sure to get on my email list and receive more detailed, indepth articles called “StrategyTime”.

Your’s for bigger profits,
Stuart Scriven

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