March 2016 – TP Javeton WebNet

Plurality of strategies

It has been a long held belief among marketing professionals that no single marketing strategy will be as effective as a combination of two or more such strategies; and this pertains to both online – Internet Marketing (IM) – and traditional offline marketing venues. This is hardly a recommendation for marketers to try and implement every known marketing strategy to promote his/her business. It is however, an opinion that various strategies can work in combination with each other; but only after proper market-based tests have been conducted, and resulting determination made, that it is worthwhile to market from a number of different perspectives to help the marketer achieve business-related goals.

In this article we will examine the importance of combining email marketing with other types of IM strategies to create an effective, multi-tiered marketing strategy, and also offer some ideas on managing more than one marketing strategy simultaneously. According to the old adage, “There’s more than one way to get the job done,” and this is certainly true in the case of marketing on the Web; because, while you may enjoy a great deal of success with email marketing, it certainly doesn’t mean that you should not try other types of online marketing such as website creation, message boards, banner ads, affiliate marketing campaigns and back-linking.

Of course it is possible that not all of these strategies will be effective for your particular business, but you are probably more likely to find at least one other option that will compliment your email marketing, which might also go a long way to help you achieve your business-related goals and ultimate success.

Online-offline approaches

That having been said, you can take a look at combining your email marketing campaigns with other, more traditional marketing strategies such as radio ads, television ads and ads in the print media. It is important to keep in mind that the absense of these advertising strategies in the online marketplace does not mean that they will not be effective in generating more business. In fact, advertising both online and offline can allow you to reach a larger target audience; since you will likely reach Internet users around the world, while also reaching potential customers who do not utilize the Internet for purchasing or researching products/services similar to the ones you offer.

Some popular marketing strategies that might prove effective when combined with email marketing include banner ads and message board participation. These are all online activities, and each one individually is fairly simple, but when combined with email marketing, these simple activities can create a powerful statement, in the sense that you may send out emails offering useful information about your products/services, while purchasing banner ad space on websites which may be of interest to your potential customers; and also participate in industry-related message boards where you can earn the respect of potential customers and pique their interests.

Test. Evaluate. Market.

But even if your potential customers are not currently in need of the products/services you offer, seeing your business name so often can have a powerful branding effect, since branding is also an important business process during which consumers see a company name so often that they are more likely to select a product from the particular company when they are in need of an item offered by that company. So the long-term benefits are just as important as any short-term gains you derive from your combination of marketing strategies.

If you are planning to combine multiple forms of advertising, you should be aware that this can make it difficult for you to evaluate the effectiveness of each strategy. This is especially true of the marketing strategies that are implemented concurrently. When you are only using one type of marketing strategy, you can generally attribute increases in sales or website traffic to changes in that strategy. However, when more than one type of marketing strategy is in effect, it can be quite difficult to determine which strategy is producing the desired effect.

This situation can be handled by not making changes to more than one marketing strategy at a time, an approach which will help you to pinpoint which changes produce an increase in sales or website traffic. It can also help you to determine when changes to your marketing strategy have a detrimental effect on your sales and website traffic. However, if you are having difficulty determining which marketing strategy is most effective, you can consider asking customers to answer survey questions and provide information such as how they learned about the products or services your business offers.

From mere comments to profits!

Blogging has come a long way since the late nineteen-nineties when it was seen as a way to merely comment on existing webpages, or an opportunity for visitors and readers to interact with each other and voice their opinions about various types of content. The amazing thing is, what started as a single-sentence commentary has evolved into pages of personal views on just about any topic imaginable; and as it stands today – March, 2016 – and continues into the future, blogging has increased its revenue-generating potential by attracting an increased share of online advertising.

So if you are already a blogger who have spent, and still spend, a fair amount of time blogging, you could literally make money simply by asking for it, as long as you had previously laid the groundwork for this eventuality. In other words, if you’ve already established a blog for which there is a regular readership (following), the expectation that a portion – if not the majority – of this following can be transformed into a customer base for any products/services you recommend is certainly reasonable. Therefore you would have an easier time turning a profit by hosting sponsored links or banners on your blog, thereby deriving an income from this activity practically overnight.

But even if you did not start your blog with the intentions of turning a profit, the ability to earn supplementary income from your blog may be easier than you think. Keep in mind, however, that there is still a lot of time, work and effort involved in the monetization process; but the question any serious-minded blogger must address is, if s/he is already putting in the appropriate time, work and effort needed to monetize a blog just to maintain it, why not also opt for the monetary reward? And for anyone who is not currently blogging, but might want to embark on a career in blogging, this method of making money on the Web might be just the thing that could start your Web marketing career as will be discussed later.

Blogging: Simple, authentic, free!

The simplest and fastest way to express your point of view on the Web is through blogging, because there really no skills required other than the ability to legibly convey your thoughts in a way that others can understand; so in this regard, an average adult who can read, type and click a mouse can start a blog and be good at it. Blogging can be compared to having a virtual piece of paper on which you write your ideas, experiences and new products while hoping that the truth and quality of your articles shine through and entice readers to also try your product. And to think that all you need is a PC and an Internet connection to begin blogging and attracting advertisers.

In this day and age when advertising saturate our lives, we question the credibility of promoters’ claims, and this is where the authenticity of a blog is not only an asset to its owner, but is seen as a valuable resource to those who read and follow it. And although blogs, in their truest form, allow real people to share their real-life experiences without the distraction of paid advertising, reading a blog about first-hand product use is like talking to an individual about his/her first-hand experience. And after all, don’t most people prefer to buy tried and tested products?

Blogging is free, and despite the fact that, today, it is considered a marketing tool from which considerable incomes can be generated, many blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr as well as several others, still see it as something to augment current marketing tools and offer it free of charge. This opportunity for a free web space and time is definitely a plus for new businesses that are just starting up, and needless to say, a blogger having the ability to monetize his/her blog pages without incurring an expense for the space and time in which the blog is accessible, can generate a generous income for his/her growing blogging business.

Blogging credibility builds your market

A prerequisite to establishing a following and building a market for your blog is credibility. Your blog’s title, content and availability on the Web (reliability) must be credible; so that as you proceed through the writing of your experiences on a particular product or industry, your readers will come to realize that they can depend on your posts for their own information needs. Therefore, you become an expert in the particular topic of conversation and are seen as such, which results in more readers visiting your blogsite and more bloggers linking to it.

When companies and professional organizations notice the growth of your readership base, they will soon contact you with offers for advertising on your blog page or make you an affiliate, in which case you’ll be compensated by the affiliate program for every referral to the merchant’s site that was generated from your blogsite. So credibility is that element of blogging which must be maintained at all costs in order to begin the very important task of building a market for your blog; because unless you are a known entity (pro athlete, Hollywood star, politician, etc.) chances are that nobody reads your blog, except maybe your mom and a few friends and family members.

However, the group of people you know is certainly not big enough from which to build a market, so you’ll need to start looking at a number of different methods that can be effective in your market-building objective and take your blog to the next level. because without a viable market for the products and service promoted on your blog, you could be destined to the same fate of those who have spent months or even years blogging just to realize that the money they make from advertising adds up to such a negligible sum that it is hardly worth mentioning.

Blog market-building tips

Concentrate on those elements (prequisites) mentioned earlier (title, content and reliability), and then make sure that the subject matter is appealing to your target audience, which in turn will enduce advertisers to reach out to you and help you to monetize your blog. With this in mind, we hope you find the tips and methods provided in following paragraphs helpful to your your blog marketing aspirations.

Start using your email to communicate, if you are not currently doing so; because today’s blogging is overcoming the popularity of emails to quickly and effectively reach and expand a market. And in this age of speed and quick access, logging in and downloading email is simply taking much longer than clicking into a blogsite. So allow them to explore your blog by using a short email message as a teaser to your blog site; and if your email is on an entirely different subject, simply use your email signature to provide them with a link to the site.

Invite readers to subscribe to your blog or to a newsletter. In order to do this you’ll need an opt-in form through which your your readers can provide their name and email address, two of the items needed for them to authorize you top send them information via email. Giving your readers an opportunity to subscribe to your blogsite, and providing them with exclusive information that is not given to anybody else, will entice them to subscribe by giving their name and email address. Just make sure to be responsible in your use of their information, as the last thing you want is a comment on your blog that you are a spammer.

Surveys and blogging networks

Make a serious and ongoing effort to understand your readers. You can start by conducting a simple survey for them to complete, which will provide you with a better understanding of their profiles and advertising preferences. Ask your blog followers and readers to give you feedback on a post, an ad link, or a product trial that you shared. Using this approach is like interviewing your readers without the commitment and intrusion of a face-to-face interview.

Consider joining a blogging network, which is a collection of blogsites that consist of content about a common industry, common interests, common readership base, common payment mode, and other similarly common characteristics. Most consumers find credibility and convenience in clicking one link to several real bloggers about a single subject. In this regard, more bloggers are clearly better than, and more influential, than a single one.

Ultimately, the only way to find out if you can succeed in blogging by taking advantage of the free software offered by the various platforms, build credibility, create a market and succeed in attracting advertisers to monetize your blog, is to start one; and if you are already blogging, you really have nothing to lose. So give your online presence a boost by effectively using this free Web marketing tool that could propel you to new heights in the blogosphere.