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Online Marketing: Five Principles That Help You Succeed NOWI have been working for Internet companies since 1994. First at America Online and now in my own marketing and design business. The only online marketing rule I adhere to is that things are constantly changing. That could make marketing difficult. To keep moving forward, I use the following five principles:1. Ask the right questions Unless you ask the right marketing questions, you will waste a lot of your valuable time on things that don't matter. Abraham Lincoln was quoted as saying, “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax.” Gather the people you trust to work on business problems and ask them to make a list of the three main problems your customers have identified for you. Then analyze those problems to see what marketing questions you should be asking. Instead of asking how to increase revenue, perhaps you should be asking how to make it easier for your customers to check out using your shopping cart. Continue to drill down and simplify until you have a list of very specific questions and set about to answer those. 2. ‘Think Big; Act Small' This principle captures what I think is imperative for anyone marketing online today. Jason Jennings' book ‘Think Big Act Small' details how companies succeed by maintaining a small business attitude. Embrace the qualities that ‘smallness' provides- quick improvements, employees that are close to the problem and the ability to connect with your customers. I've worked with companies that assume their competitors are better because they have deeper pockets. The notion that more marketing dollars ensure success is misguided at best. Look at your product or service and continue to improve it. Online buyers want quality and service. That part never changes. 3. Search for what's different and strive to understand it The popularity of online marketing tactics go up and down like the stock market. Pop-ups, podcasts, ezines and blogs are all effective if applied to the right audience at the right time. The key is to continually ask yourself, “what's different today?” Are customers suddenly responding to something you don't highlight? Are they bored with your current promotion? Read everything you can about new ideas and cultural trends. You don't have to try to apply every one of them, but you do need to know what your customer knows. Keying into changes on a weekly basis ensures that you won't suddenly find yourself with an outdated marketing strategy and no customers. 4. If you're not the customer, ask her! Don't spend your time debating with other staffers about what you ‘think' your customer wants. Unless you ARE the target customer, you don't really know. I have listened to endless debates about customer needs based on no actual customer data. Ask your customers. They will be happy to tell you what they think. If you don't want to hear what they think, you've got a different problem. 5. Do what's difficult I find that this principle separates the wannabes from the real innovators. If you know what tactics need to be applied to make a difference, but you are too lazy or disinterested to try them then stop reading now. Nothing you do will make a difference until you tackle the hard work necessary to grow. If you need a better designed website, a new database or an easier shopping cart, you need to do that, NOW. About the author: Digital Media Works, Inc.(http://www.DigMediaWorks.com ) is an Internet marketing and design firm. A seasoned 25+ year management/marketing professional, founder Stephanie Diamond, former AOL Marketing Director, is experienced in building profits. Circulated by Article Emporium The Importance of Articles in Web Promotion No doubt you have come accross this time and time again; to improve your websites popularity, search engine ranking etc., you need to write articles. You will also probably think, as I did, that I can't do this. There are ways around this. You can purchase the rights to a... Online Marketing: Five Principles That Help You Succeed NOW I have been working for Internet companies since 1994. First at America Online and now in my own marketing and design business. The only online marketing rule I adhere to is that things are constantly changing. That could make marketing difficult. To keep moving forward, I use the ... 20 Totally Easy Ways To Turn Visitors Into Subscribers 1. You could offer your visitors a discount on all the products you sell if they subscribe to your free e-zine. 2. You could offer your visitors a free ebook if they subscribe to your free e-zine. 3. You could offer your visitors a free su... Signatures -- The Long and Short of It >What is the accepted standard for signatures? Who sets these standards? The signatures in question are those blurbs that we include after the body of our main message content in our emails for the purpose of identification and contacts. I'm really not referring to sign... There is a Time to Sell, And a Time to Educate It has often been said that the true nature of marketing is four-fold, what is referred to as the four p's of marketing: * Product * Place (distribution) * Price * Promotion Most people who do business online look at the sole element of Promotion and b... One Way Linking Campaigns This aarticle explains in detail the various issues related to the linking campaign that you will need to mount, to establish your worth in the algorithms of search engines . Some of the issues that we will be tackling in this & subsequent articles are: -Creating one way i... How To Approach A Guru In 5 Easy Steps It's in all the books and courses lately, to be successful online you have to joint venture and tap into established marketers (gurus) huge lists and high traffic websites. If you've ever tried it though, you know that getting ahold of a guru is not always ... Adding Fresh Content to Your Existing Ebook You have permission to reprint ©-by Brian Holte Ok, so you're at that stage where you've gotten just enough content to publish your first e-book, finally the grunt work is out of the way. Sit back and pat yourself on the shoulder for a job well done... What is Google AdSense? In the mid 1990's websites used to earn income by receiving money from advertisers by publishing or allowing companies to deploy a banner ad campaign on your website. Usually these banners would be brilliantly designed to catch the eye of the consumer along with a short message. Th... 10 Ways To Shift Your Sales Into Overdrive 1. Publish testimonials for your free stuff. It would increase their value and if they're viral marketing tools, you'll have more people giving them away. 2. Give your visitors a good time so they will visit your web site again. Use a few jokes, humorous gr... Is your website's link directory even worth having? A reciprocal link directory if a vital part of having a good Google page rank. However there are ways to make it a useful and important part of your website for reasons other than a high ranking in the Google directory. Let's face it, getting (and keeping) a good Goog... Great Site Ranking in Google The Secret's Out How many years did you register your domain name for? If it was only one then Google could hold that against you. Why? Because the majority of Spam websites only register a domain name for one year. A domain name registered for a longer period implies that the... How my page rank went from 0 to 5 in one update. How yours can too. Increase Your Google Page Rank! This article will put a damper on web sites that sell information which will supposedly increase your page rank. I may make some enemies here, but this is already common knowledge. In fact, to make sure it worked, I designed a new ... Buying Textlinks: the Latest SEO Craze With search engine algorithms changing seemingly daily, the quest to rank high in the search engines and stay there is proving to be quite the challenge for most webmasters. One of the more recent popular ways of achieving this is through buying text links on websites that have hig... Search Engine Optimization - Advice and Tactic Unique content is King. Search engines love new, unique and updated content. If you produce new content at a rate of just one reasonably sized page per day and tied in with the other advice throughout the site, I can almost guarantee you will get good listings. Remember though, wri...
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