Does Online Marketing & Advertising Work & Where to Start?

Struggling with online network marketing or wonder if it really works? Maybe your were taught home parties, go out and meet people or bring to the weekly meeting opportunity.

This has always worked and will continue to work. But, you can to extend your reach exponentially by learning a few online marketing strategies to generate leads for your business.

Finally, you are out of your warm leads or people you know, run. This is where online network marketing comes in

If you already have the Internet and not experienced network marketing success with online methods, then change how you do things. In this article, I share why network marketing strategies are a must for generating leads.

Generate Leads With Online Network Marketing

I have to generate leads online a few years. Focus and consistency has allowed me to make my business work from home full time with internet marketing strategies that build.

There are many online marketing tools to help you learn to do this properly. Check the current approach and be honest with yourself. Are you displaying your company posting all social media?

The Internet was supposed to tell us which ads work and which ads don't. But instead it's flooded consumers' brains with reviews, comments, and other digital data that has diluted the power of advertising altogether.

Nineteenth-century retailer John Wanamaker is responsible for perhaps the most repeated line in marketing: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don't know which half."

Today, marketers are grappling with the Wanamaker Paradox: The more we learn which half of advertising is working, the more we realize we're wasting way more than half.

Perhaps you're nodding your head about now. Most people you know don't click online ads. At least, not on purpose. But now research is getting closer to quantifying exactly how few people click on Internet ads and exactly how ineffective they are. It's not a pretty picture.

What is Internet Marketing?

Depending on whom you ask, the term Internet marketing can mean a variety of things. At one time, Internet marketing consisted mostly of having a website or placing banner ads on other websites. On the other end of the spectrum, there are loads of companies telling you that you can make a fortune overnight on the Internet and who try to sell you some form of "Internet marketing program".

Today, Internet marketing, or online marketing, is evolving into a broader mix of components a company can use as a means of increasing sales - even if your business is done completely online, partly online, or completely offline. The decision to use Internet marketing as part of a company's overall marketing strategy is strictly up to the company of course, but as a rule, Internet marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of nearly every company's marketing mix.

Some people believe that you have better internet marketing is just about having a nice website. These days the website is really just one small component. If you have a beautiful flower shop with the best smelling flowers but no one knows about it, well its only a matter of time before your loses force closure. Internet marketing is about traffic and then optimizing that traffic with a call to action. Optimized for mobile devices other people claim that what you need is seo search engine optimization to get better results in major search engines. Who hasn't heard about social media? There's an opinion that only the major social networks are actually read well by the search engines. The fact is none of the statements are entirely correct. What you really need is a strategy and essential the interconnect system of all the marketing channels to work together in a perfect harmony on how to reach your goals, improve your business and save your money.

IMPORTANT PROCEDURES TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN MARKETING ONLINE

Follow The Customer Online

Many companies in technical fields have moved to offer live support personnel on their websites. It is something every company, in every industry, should strongly consider adopting. If your operation is too small to do this, plan an elaborate routing process so that customer inquiries make it to a live person rapidly. Then ensure that your personnel know that every second counts. The goal at my real estate company is to respond to every form inquiry, and every email inquiry, within 30 seconds of it arriving on our computer.

Be curious

Follow-up to customer inquiries need to be well planned and well trained throughout the customer service and/or sales departments. Most companies throw a volume of sales propaganda at prospective customers who only want an answer to a question, and this leads to poor conversion and lost opportunities.

Seek first to understand. Be curious. Our first responders need to be prompt and the primary goal is to get the prospective customer to reply to the response. Every good conversation requires give and take, and it is imperative that this first customer contact begin as a conversation that can be cultivated into a long lasting customer relationship.

Pay attention

Our customers give us hints at what we need to know in order to facilitate a great experience for them. Whether it is through direct communication (the questions that they ask) or through deduction (as an example, deriving the occupation of the consumer by taking the time to read the signature block in an emailed question), we must pay attention in order to find what we need to relate better to the customer.

Seek common ground

Commonality, or common ground, is a wonderful way of building trust in a new relationship. Our sales staff has been taught to establish commonality with prospective customers in order for the customer to identify with them. We need to be able to do the same thing in an email “conversation” that we once did during a verbal conversation. Any time there is an opportunity to strengthen the trust component of the relationship, it must be embellished.

Short Conversational Dialogue

If you were to ask a group of children to demonstrate how they communicate with each other through cellular phone texting, you would gain a great understanding of the evolution of written communication. Our customers do not expect the Queen’s English, but they do expect prompt responses.

I still require proper spelling and grammar from my sales personnel and customer service employees because I want to emphasize professionalism (competency) at all times, but speed and simplicity are the heart of a properly executed customer communication.

Today we all increasingly use online resources to inform many of our everyday decisions and it is evident that as consumers we have fundamentally changed our behaviour when it comes to researching, evaluating and selecting products and services whether we choose to purchase online or offline or whether we are at work or at home.

Consider how your own behaviour has changed. Do you still go to your traditional sources of information like yellow page directories and classified ads in newspapers? Or are you like many today, even searching and looking up information on your iPad or smart phone from the comfort of your couch while watching TV?

Why would you expect your prospective customers to behave any different to you?

Understanding the dynamics of online marketing is a strategic imperative for businesses in todays online centric world.

Where To Start Your Effort

 Whether you are an owner of a small company or a large company, running any business profitably is a task and not an easy process. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, there is no shortage of online marketing platform, but with the reducing organic traffic, these platforms are charging the customers to enhance their visibility and reach the target audience. One important step to jumpstart the online marketing campaign is having a functional online marketing strategy. And, if your strategy is not leading to sales and revenue, you are definitely lacking in the marketing efforts and you need to work on it. The following methods will help taste success in the marketing efforts.

Search engines provide an accessible and ready pool of in-demand prospects that can be tapped into by businesses across all sectors whether they operate b2b or b2c businesses.

From an advertising perspective, search engines will for the majority of businesses provide the best ROI when compared to other forms of online advertising and often outperform offline advertising options.

Google is the search engine of choice for New Zealanders with over 90% market share. Google's advertising platform called Adwords provides access to advertising in Google search and options to advertise on partner sites and on over a million websites that accept google advertising.

As with any form of advertising, success is dependent on sound planning and obtaining the right advice. Search engine advertising platforms are very accessible, but run on complex systems which require solid expertise and experience to achieve the best results.

Where To Find Customers Online

Customers are the lifeblood of your small business. Finding out where your customers are online is also a crucial part of your efforts to build your business. There are many ways to raise your profile with potential customers, but too many business owners waste a lot of time using five or more social media sites a day. If you focus your efforts on one social media site (and it should be the one where your target audience is spending the vast majority of their time online), that is when you will be able to become a brand in demand. You want to connect and then communicate with compelling content, consistently, to become a trusted member of the online community, which will eventually turn into commerce for your business.

It is a constant and consistent effort that builds your customer base online. Use Google analytics and the tracking tools provided by the difference social sites to make sure you are driving traffic and engaging your audience. Give your endeavor time to develop and then carefully evaluate your efforts to determine where you go in the future.

Marketing to your customers online is an ongoing process. When you build it into to your day, focus on just building a brand on one site. You will grow your customer base organically and build a strong, sustainable

Here are strategies to find out where your customers are 

online.

1. Identify Your Customer

How can you find someone if you don’t know who you are looking for? One of the most important keys to finding customers is identifying the unique traits, characteristics, and preferences of your key target audience. It is incredibly difficult to find your customer online without this information. If you have not yet developed a detailed profile of your target customer, do it as soon as possible.

2. Determine Your Keywords and Hash tags

Now that you know your target customer, you must determine what keywords and hashtags this audience uses to search for content and information about your topic, expertise, or solution.  My favorite keyword tools are wordtrakker.com, overture.com, and Google keyword research tool.

3. Identify Likely Hotspots

Once you have identified your keywords, do some additional research to figure out where your customers spend time online. It is possible to spend hours on this research, so focus on essentials. If your ideal customer skews older and more professional, you may find them on LinkedIn. If you sell a product that has great design, your customers might find Pinterest or Instagram more appealing. Facebook still offers a great cross section of customers and has great free analytics; however, be aware that younger audiences are not spending as much time on this social media network

The majority of consumers start their informing and quest for information by using a search engine and in NZ that's predominantly Google. Google is the most common online starting point for NZ consumers of all types when reviewing available options at the beginning of the buying cycle.

Understanding that consumers are actively in the "buying cycle" when on search engines, means that they are likely to present as qualified prospects and are therefore more open and receptive to targeted advertising messages.

4. Create a Specific Campaign

You may think that you can use the same campaign for every social media marketing channel, but each site requires personalization and modification. Your campaign should include content that can be highlighted to show the network’s strengths. For example, your efforts should skew more toward the visual, rather than content, for Pinterest, and you’ll have to use bite-sized messages for Twitter given its character constraints.

5. Time Your Outreach

It is cliché, but timing is everything. Pay attention to the time zones your customers are in, and schedule your content to be published around that. Seasonal variances can also make a big difference. If you sell spices, barbecue season may be the perfect time to launch a big campaign. These are the elements that can subtly undermine or boost your efforts to find your customers online, so make sure you pay attention to them all.

What Will It Cost

There are several ways to conduct online advertising campaigns. You can pay search engines or other Internet publishers hosting your ads each time one of your ads is clicked, every 1,000 times the ad is seen, or every time the ad prompts a more sales-related action.

The third option entails a user clicking on your ad and signing up for a free trial of a product, registering for a free download, or buying your product. Signups and registrations generate company leads, while sales generate immediate cash in your pocket.

With this type of advertising you pay the host an agreed-upon fee for each specified type of action. For leads that can mean a set amount, while for sales that can mean a set percentage of the sale amount.

This method of online advertising is called “cost per action” (CPA). It can also be referred to as cost per acquisition, “pay per action” (PPA) or performance-based advertising.

How can cost per action advertising benefit advertisers?

Cost per action advertising generally involves less risk for advertisers than other advertising techniques. Since you only pay when you get a lead or a sale, you are protecting yourself from potential eyeballs that won’t convert, as well as click fraud. Those possibilities can put a dent in your pocketbook fast.

At the same time, you are ensuring that you only pay when you have money coming in, or when the prospect for money coming in is relatively great.

How can cost per action hurt advertisers?

You can actually lose money from a cost per action campaign if you have a low leads to sales ratio. This is because you may be paying publishers more for leads than you are generating from sales revenue.

That may be worth your while if you have a plan for converting more leads to sales or believe that the advertising exposure outweighs any current loss in revenue.

If you are losing money, you can try negotiating a lower cost per action fee from the publishers hosting your ads. Or you can switch over to a CPA campaign based on sales. Either way, know that your success at conversions can impact your ability to find a publisher willing to run your ad on a cost per action basis.

A great aspect that makes advertising online low risk is that every activity and response can be measured. Unlike most forms of advertising, this means online campaigns can be measured to a point of conversion thus allowing effectiveness in response and lead generation/sales and associated costs to be accurately determined.

This capability also allows for campaigns to be quickly modified and refined to a point of optimal performance.

In the case of search engine advertising, there are normally no time period commitments for advertising and budgets can be set and adjusted on a daily basis and can start from as little as a few dollars per day. This provides a low entry barrier for businesses to trial advertising in this medium.

With so many benefits and little risk, all you need is some good advice to start generating results online.

How much should I pay per action?

While it is ultimately up to a publisher to accept or reject your offer, you should go into cost per action negotiations with a figure in mind. It's important to do some homework when determining how much you are willing to spend per action.

For example, if you are already involved with a cost per click or cost per impression campaign, you should figure out how much you are paying for each conversion, whether it is a lead or sale. You can determine this amount by using an online cost per action calculator, like the one offered by ClickZ.

To get your cost per action you must enter either your cost per 1,000 impressions or cost per click, your conversion rate, and, if it’s a cost per impression campaign, your click through rate. You can get this information from within your pay per click account or a web analytics tool.

Once you have your current cost per action, you should try using a lower cost per action for a cost per action campaign.

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