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Is Your Online Marketing Connecting with Consumers?

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Watering can and word business drawn on a blackboard concept forNo matter the product or service you are marketing, connecting with consumers is always your top priority.

In today’s challenging economic conditions, connecting with consumers is as important as ever.

Face it; many consumers have myriad of choices of where to buy their goods and services from, so your marketing efforts need to stand out from the pack, especially when pitching the public via the Internet.

With that in mind, are your online marketing efforts truly connecting with today’s consumers?

Use the Internet to Make a Connection

In order for your online marketing efforts to hit a home run with consumers, you need to cover all your bases.

These would include:

  • Email marketing – Although some marketers have pulled away from email marketing to some degree or another, countless others still rely on it to state their cases to consumers. If you’re using email marketing, keep the messages short and sweet. Keep in mind that consumers are typically bombarded with pitches from marketers and businesses on a daily basis, so don’t add to the frustration they sometimes feel by getting yet more marketing messages in their in-boxes. Also make sure your pitches come across as informative and worthwhile, not just looking for a sale and nothing else. Lastly, leave a positive but not over-bearing call to action to end your message;
  • Mobile marketing – More and more marketers are putting their time and efforts behind mobile marketing. With this version of marketing having exploded in the last few years, mobile marketing is a great means to reach consumers in an instant. Whether you are marketing real estate, legal services, vehicle maintenance products and services, home furnishings, children’s products, or hundreds of others goods and/or services, mobile is where it is at today. Mobile marketing gives you a great opportunity to reach shoppers when they are in the decision making process. You should also use your mobile opportunities to offer consumers discounts and rewards programs, both of which are likely to encourage them to make a purchase or two. Just like with email marketing or any other form of marketing, don’t be over-bearing when it comes to trying to make a sale;
  • Social marketing – Marketers who shy away from social media are leaving themselves without one of the best means with which to reach consumers. Your social efforts should be concentrated on the major players in this market, among which include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn etc. Keep in mind that you may not be even marketing a product or service per se, but instead an invitation to attend a seminar, conference, open house etc. LinkedIn is a great venue to do just that given the countless professionals using the site on a daily basis. Also be sure to regularly engage consumers on your social media sites. Unfortunately, some marketers pay little or no attention to their social venues, thereby missing out on great opportunities to market their brands. You, on the other hand, should not be one of those marketers. When consumers come to one of your social venues with a question about a product or service, engage with them as soon as possible. Your ultimate goal should be to send them away satisfied with your time and efforts, leaving them with the idea of doing business with you. Lastly, always stay positive on social media. The last thing you want to do is to get into a negative conversation on a social venue, a conversation that could ultimately end up hurting your brand;
  • Being a good listener – You might stop and ask, why is being a good listener part of my marketing needs? Simply put, those businesses doing too much talking and not enough listening are typically the ones struggling to make inroads with consumers. With millions and millions of consumers flooding the Internet, take a few moments to step back and hear what they are saying. What do they need? What do they like and don’t like about your industry? How can you be their go-to brand? These are but a few of the questions you should be mulling over and having answers for. As great as your marketing campaigns may be, it is listening to the consumer that ultimately wins you the prize, most notably their business.

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com

About the Author: Dave Thomas covers marketing topics on the web.

How Long Term Thinking Makes You a More Accomplished Internet Marketer

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Successfully Working From a Home-based Office

One trait that hurts human beings more than anything else is impatience, the impulsiveness, the haste to get where we want in a flash and that too without moving a muscle?

How funny it’d be to see someone promising to get moving, only after he reaches the destination? Ironical, to say the least, and still majority of us keep doing it all the time, hoping for the destination to come our way without even starting to travel. Short-term thinking stems from this human characteristic of being impatient, because we are not ready to go the distance, we opt for the short-cuts, looking to get there quickly, but what do we get? A constant state of disgruntlement, just because we cannot put up with the “pace of nature”…

If you are one of those young ones getting into the field of Internet marketing, one virtue I’d like you to take up is thinking long terms, no matter what you are doing. From content creation to link building, and from social media to email marketing, thinking long term will help you devise strategies that will work, and save you from wasting your time and resources on goals that wouldn’t even matter after some time.

Following are some ways thinking long term will bolster your internet marketing endeavors.

You will be looking to form relationships:

Thinking long term means that you will invest time and resources on building relationships with the right guys in the cyber world, instead of wasting your time on sending spam posts to numberless websites for link exchange or getting paid links. Those tactics might bring you some garbage links resulting in a very short lived boost to your rankings, but in the longer run, it will do more harm to your website than good. On the other hand, a healthy relationship with a blogger or well-connected person can be of help in more than one ways.

Guest posting on the right blog:

Guest blogging is one of the very few ways of link building, which is still in grasp of common bloggers or website owners. If you are thinking short term, you will be missing some great opportunities on blogs which are fairly new, just because they don’t have the page rank or number of back links to boast. When you are choosing a guest blog, it is imperative to look at the potential, and not on the current standing, because you never know which blog will go on to become a considerable force in blogosphere and a most-wanted platform for guest bloggers.

Milk an opportunity before it implodes:

Internet Marketing is all about detecting the opportunity and making the most of it before it gets overdone. It’s better to take up a tactic and get on a platform when it’s fairly new, as compared to trying and taking some advantage when everybody and their grandmothers are trying to get their share of the pie.

Being proactive:

Thinking long term means that you will be proactive in your planning and implantation, instead of being reactive. If you look around, you will notice that a big majority of SEO and Internet Marketing professionals are busy doing the damage control (e.g. trying to revive the drop in rankings because of some Google update); however these drops wouldn’t even have occurred only if they were proactive.

Hardly any trend or change in algorithm is sudden in nature, it happens that we keep reading about the upcoming changes or trends but continue to ignore just because our short-term tactics seem to be working, and then our websites are throttled by one of those updates. Thinking long term will help you take the right decision at the right time, because Onlline Marketing is not about damage control, it’s about seizing opportunities before they become commonplace.

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Author’s Bio:
Natasha Mesty is an Internet Marketing expert, writing mostly on topics related to link building, guest blogging, Link Tracking and how to use link reports to evaluate your Internet Marketing campaigns.

Thank you, Natasha!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Should Your Company Be Hip to Online Marketing?

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With the different means available to advertise one’s small business, how much if any of a role should online marketing play?

As the economy continues to struggle and companies look to interact with current and potential customers, online marketing can provide a major helping hand in giving consumers valuable information regarding your business.

That being said, many experts of how to go about marketing your company will tell you there are pluses and minuses to online marketing. So, which side do you believe in?

On the positive side for online marketing:

  • You gain increased access to potential customers who are able to view your products and services, thereby enhancing the possibilities of more sales;
  • The cost to promote your business online is less expensive than other forms of marketing like print and television advertisements;
  • Given the 24/7 lifecycle of the Internet, you can talk with your customers and interested individuals in real-time. With a mass e-mailing, you can also reach out to far more people than you could with other mediums;
  • With 24/7 Internet access, you have the availability of instant feedback from your audience. With that in mind, you can make nearly instantaneous corrections etc. if needed to your product/s.

On the negative side for online marketing:

  • Having an Internet presence will also invite additional expenses such as running the company Web site, deciding who will oversee the online marketing efforts, and being able to instantaneously reach out to customers who will go to the competition if they don’t feel like they have received quick assistance;
  • Not everyone flocks to the Internet for their shopping needs. While the Internet presence is important, keep in mind that there are a number of other ways to make sales;
  • With online marketing or anything online for that matter, there is always the possibility of security issues. Fraud is a major issue to deal with online, so you could miss out on potential customers who would otherwise use the Internet to shop with you;
  • Technology mishaps can always lead to glitches in your site, including it being down for an undetermined amount of time. If interested individuals come to your site and are having problems with it, they could go elsewhere to handle their business.

At the end of the day, your company needs to remember that online marketing is not perfect, but it is a rather inexpensive and catchy means by which to reach out to consumers.

When engaging in online marketing, make sure your company checks out all its options, including pay-per-click and banner advertising.

Online marketing can be a great way for your business to get its message out to countless individuals instantaneously and at the right price too.

Photo credit: pinnacle-websolutions.com

Dave Thomas, who covers among other subjects’ vehicle insurance , writes extensively for business.com an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.