If you or your organization is currently not employing internet marketing to enhance it’s sales and product awareness, then it time you stop letting a larger chunk of your sale and product awareness slip through the cracks. Cause that’s where they’re going. This is no joke; read on.
Internet marketing is probably being employed by your competitors on a daily basis, and at the same time you still end up competing with them on the physical level while they are carting away sales of product and services through tactics they’re taking part in on the internet.
This does not put you or your business in a strong position at all and they will continue to do well and continue growing with a larger profit margin than yours.
This is all and simply due to the fact that they’re involved in internet marketing in one form or another.
So below I”ll give you some of the important tips and reasons as to why you should start marketing the way the successful and professionals are doing it and remember it doesn’t take a lot of money; instead it takes a lot of passion. For many business owners, when it comes to their business, passion is all they have!
Internet marketing can be generally described as the promotion of your goods and services on the internet through various avenues and social networks, blogs, classified ads, websites, newsletter e.t.c. These can include, and definitely not exclude creating sharing accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google+ and even not-so-popular sites for sharing content like StumbleUpon, Diigo, and Delicious; and of course following other people on this sites so they’ll start following you too and see your posts/updates.
Here are the top 5 reasons you should add Internet marketing into the mix of your spending budget.
Please note that we can’t cover everything in this article as to all the ins and outs of using the internet to market goods and services, but it’s mostly a low down of why you need to start harnessing the power of the internet rather than simply hoping customers will read your Yellow Pages ad.
#1. Offline marketing is much more expensive than going the online route
Recently I had to create some fliers for my local business group, and ended up finding out that, in order to make a flyer that I think everyone would love, I would have to spend around $7.50 (even with a coupon) for 50 units of fliers.
As of last month that would get me in front of about 1000+ target individual (which would be US based traffic).
If you do basic math I’m sure you’ll see the obvious difference in the price vs what the outcome was and would have been.
When it comes to doing business every penny spent it usually accounted for in the final return of investment calculation. With internet marketing; the idea is usually to spend as little as possible for a higher return Unlike offline marketing, you can start internet marketing with about a daily budget of about $4.00 to $5.00 and still see positive improvements in your profit.
#2. You build better relationships with existing and new costumers
Additional costs will be incurred if you are the type that follows up on your clients for more business. If done the conventional way i.e sending SMS, email and voice calls.
But in contrast, internet marketing almost gives you instant access to your potential clients or customers. A large portion of the world spends a good portion of their time on social media sites so going where they are to promote your business is like fishing in a pond overwhelming with fish. Go get em!
Once you’ve started generating leads and getting inquires about your product or service through the varying social media avenues, you can follow up and send thank you messages just to show your interest, and customer service. You can ask them nicely whether they’d like to be put on your email list where you can send them occasional newsletters, invitations and/or product discounts and coupons.
Using social media will ensure that your costumers are always kept up to date with your latest stock or service – and everybody loves a discount.
The one thing we’ve learned about customers is that many times they prefer to buy from a previous seller, since the seller already proved authenticity with previous purchases. With social media marketing, you have the chance to keep your current customer’s engaged, and to remember you the next time they need a product or service from you – with social media, you don’t exactly go away.
Internet marketing also lets you discounted product and get them out to the public quite quickly and the expense for doing so is quite small. It usually takes up more of your time writing up and arranging the promotion than it is to get your new and current customers in on the promotion and signing up! That equals more profit margins in the end.
#3. Internet marketing is More Convenient
With internet marketing, all you need most of the time is your credit card, design (just like a flyer) and a laptop. There’s really no need to hire extras people for distribution as it can all be done through a few simple clicks. The object is to understand where to post those clicks and promotions. Hint hint – on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. But you must remember to build your following on those social sites so there is someone who will read and engage your product pages.
Using social media sites (and Google Adwords) simply takes the stress and worry out of conventional marketing and you can easily monitor the outcome of your campaign in real time with different tools which are free and available online.
#4. Increase in sales and product awareness
Through internet marketing you have access to a larger range of potential customer to market your product to. For me I do believe marketing is more of a numbers game; the more you hook your place in the ocean the higher your chances of catching a fish and taking it home. What else can give you the opportunity to cast your net across the populace without having to rob your bank more than internet marketing?.
Internet marketing, if carried out with the right tools and services also helps in narrowing down your target audience which is one of the most important aspects of a successful marketing plan. Thankfully, with little or no work from your end you can just tick a few boxes during your marketing campaign setup, input the data you require and the system will place your ads in front of that particular target audience. Geo-locating your potential customers is easy in all Ad platforms and help you actually get customers who are looking for, may be interested in your product and dwell near or quite close to your target location.
It would be useless to target customers living 2 states away when you can actually target people on social sites that live a few streets from you. They’re the type of potential customer that can and most like will turn into a real life one.
But just like offline marketing, people seeing or listening to your ads does not guarantee a sale or income. You need to test and test till you find a pattern or method that works well for you.
A good idea is to in a way copy the kind of online ads your competitors are doing. They’ve been in the game for sometime so they’ve been able to try and test which ads work the best. As Tony Robbins would say, “Emulation success to become successful“. It’s as simple as that.
It’s better to work with already proven systems and methods. I suggest you take an Internet marketing course online. Their a lot of them available, but I recommend the one taught at ALISON.com because they are packed with marketing tutorials of every kind and just spending a few hours there will really put you in gear to getting a good marketing campaign started. Remember, it’s all for free and the tools and tactics they suggest don’t cost nearly as much as conventional marketing methods do.
#5. Everybody is doing it
The bottom line is, everyone is doing it. These days there are very few people who aren’t taking advantage of what the Internet has to provide when it comes to generating leads and income.
All you need to do is take that one step: tell yourself you’re going to set aside time this week to learn about Internet marketing and SEO and in due time you’ll be coming back to those post and thanking me that you took my advice.
Once you get started, it’s easy, and it’s almost addictive because there results come in almost right away, sometimes within the same day.
What are you waiting for? Go get started!
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