Archive for the ‘Web Marketing’ Category

How to Use E-Books to Grow Your Email List

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Ebooks are traditional email list building tools. With ebook distribution, you can entice your prospects to subscribe to your list. Of course, you will want to get as many qualified subscribers as possible, because this is how you will keep in touch with them, thus being able to sell more of your products and services to your prospects.

How exactly can you use ebooks to support your email list building efforts? This is what this article will show you now.

Email list building: a free ebook after the subscription process is completed

This is the most famous and traditional approach to email list building: you build a Web site, blog or single landing page and invite visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. If they do subscribe, you promise to give them a free ebook in return.

This method is highly effective. Many Internet marketers, webmasters and bloggers apply it successfully across several different niches. In fact, many consider this to be the only method you would want to take into consideration when you use ebooks for email list building. However, there are other methods too, as you will see below.

Email list building: a free ebook before the subscription process is completed

This approach is different from the previous one because you will offer a free ebook to your visitors without asking them to subscribe to your newsletter. That is, they will get the ebook for free and you will not demand anything in return.

Nonetheless, here is the trick: you must make sure that your ebook mentions your newsletter and contains links to the subscription page. You can add these links to each page’s footer, or have a whole page to discuss the benefits your newsletter offers to subscribers. What matters is that you will be promoting your newsletter without putting too much pressure on your prospects. Depending on your industry, this email list building approach may bring you great results.

Email list building: invite ebook buyers to subscribe to your newsletter

This method is not discussed as often as it should. It consists in using paid ebooks for your email list building campaign. You sell your ebook and then send the buyer to a page where he or she will be invited to subscribe to your newsletter.

The reason why you would want to do this is because this is a highly qualified prospect. After all, he or she spent money to buy your ebook. Therefore, this is exactly the type of subscriber you–and any other newsletter owner–should target above all.

An email list building campaign becomes easier when you use ebooks as auxiliary marketing tools. Take your time to study the tips above and choose the one that is best suited to your email list building needs.

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Public relations, a revelation made!

Monday, August 31st, 2009

What is Public Relation??

Bill Gates once quoted “If I was bankrupt to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations”. As you might know, Public relations are the art of managing the information flow between people and an organization. It involves monitoring and evaluation of public attitude and helps in maintaining a mutual relation between two individuals or between an organization and its public. If an organization has to be portrayed the right way then it has to have good public relations. There are a lot of special fields that can be covered by public relations like media relations, Investor relations or even labor relations. A person who is responsible for the public relation is commonly called as the PRO or the Public Relations Officer.

Investor relations:

The term investor relations come as a part of the scheme of things in public relations. In simple terms, it refers to the relation between an organization and its investors, usually represented by a financial officer. Due to the potential impact that the investor relation has on a market, it is always necessary to take utmost care in selecting the financial and corporate governance terms. It is always necessary that investor relations officer should know about the upcoming issues and claims that the organization might face.

Media Relations:

It is one of the key concepts of Public Relations, and usually involves different types of media channels. This can be very challenging as dealing with the media could get complicated at times, as the ultimate control does not lie with you but rather with the media. Media relations help in spreading key aspects of your organization to the outside world through a power medium known as the MEDIA. When you deal with the media, it is always better to meticulously plan each and every step that has to be taken. Always develop your own media list, target the story and finally wait for the right time to announce it.

Labor Relations:

This looks at key aspect areas of communicating within an organization. In simple words, it is the art of managing your own employees, who are usually represented in a group known as the employee union. The labor relations are a specialist part of the public relation aspect and are usually used in the industrial variant. You might always want to consider which news to break to the labor unions and how to break it. Labor unions and Labor Relations are an important part in the successful functioning of an organization.

Other Aspects!

Other common Public relation techniques might include publicity events, photo shoots, blogs, speeches, debates, meet and greet etc. The method of conveying can be as important as the message that has to be delivered, and it is of utmost importance that the right message is delivered at the right time. As the famous U.S President Harry Truman once said “All that a president, is a glorified public relations who actually spends his time flattering and kicking the people to do something that they are anyway supposed to do!”

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Marketing via RSS, A latest Frenzy!

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

RSS is a relatively new term and a new concept to the world of internet. It is usually used to publish latest works in a website to you in a standardized format. A standard RSS document can contain hyperlinks as well as text data, and internet advertisers have left no stone unturned in tapping this new source of powerful advertising. But in the RSS marketing scenario, the customer runs the show. Sometimes, this can be a nightmare for advertisers but if tapped properly, it can turn into their advantage and in fact become the best weapon to target mass audiences.

Some of the common techniques to make your product felt via RSS marketing are by making sure the subscription to your RSS is easy. Also consistent posting makes sure that your feeds do not run out of active content. Until now internet marketing was limited to tools such as direct marketing, search engine marketing, blogging etc, but now with the birth of RSS marketing a whole new dimension has opened up for online advertisers. A lot of companies, including global leaders in online marketing, have now turned to this as the most viable solution for online marketing.

Techniques used in RSS

Some of the valuable techniques that can be followed for a successful stint in RSS marketing make sure of the following techniques,

  • Include that you have original content on your feeds. Never will a customer like to read a content that has been ripped of another website or another RSS feed.
  • Also it is best suited if you break up your text, as people tend to get bored with long texts. A picture or a clipart or a quote would always be handy.
  • Never bombard the reader with more than what can be handled. If a user is bombarded, then they might lose the interest on the product and hence stop subscribing for the feeds

Building a relationship with the potential customer is another common technique that has to be followed when you resort to RSS marketing. Since, the customer holds the key in RSS marketing, it is always better to make sure the customer feels satisfied. Also the audience who are likely to be the targeted customers must be chosen wisely.

Key Tips

A successful RSS would not only increase in your product sales, but also it would increase the marketing potential of your company where minimum cash investment is required. It is always better to remember two key aspects in RSS marketing; the customer is always in control and rich content impresses the customers. Following them would ultimately assure you of success in RSS marketing strategies and open up an entirely new avenue for the product. With the acquisition of feed burner, one of the world’s first RSS by Google which has a massive advertiser and ad word database, it is very much evident the impact it has had on market leaders. This will directly influence the importance of RSS advertising as it is now becoming merged to the main stream advertisement and marketing techniques.

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Blogs and your business

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Widespread Internet usage has resulted in the creation of millions of blogs which are essentially personal and informal pieces of communication. These blogs are published instantaneously and updated frequently and often contain links to other sites of interest and other blogs, No matter what topic they address, they are:

  • highly personal often conversational
  • published and updated in real time.
  • equipped with a unique distinctive tone and voice reflecting their author
  • linked  to other pages of interest and other blogs

Surveys in the USA in mid 2006 showed that 12 million Americans had created blogs which were read by 57 million Americans, figures that have almost certainly increased now. They are definitely here to stay and can prove to be a valuable tool in your business if used constructively.

Your customers:  Blogs provide a friendly and easily maintained method of communicating with your customers. Your customers are provided with information about your company in an interesting and entertaining fashion and can be instantly updated as and when the situation requires. You can brief them on your culture, your accomplishments, your products and services without boring them to death. Using a blog as the “voice” of your company to your customers is a smart move and an excellent way to supplement traditional and conventional sales and marketing efforts.

Your employees: use a blog to communicate internally with your employees. And encourage them to post their news and opinions, thereby providing genuine two-way communication.  This also has the benefit of keeping all of them constantly updated and entertained unlike traditional newsletters or in -house magazines.

Your website: a blog is an entertaining way to inform visitors to your website and a big improvement on traditional web pages or static brochures online. You can educate people on your culture or your products and services or indeed, anything you wish.

Your potential recruits: Incidentally, people you are looking to recruit will definitely research your company and will be favorably impressed by a good company blog. They will also be better prepared for a meaningful job interview. Incidentally, their own personal blogs, if they exist, could provide you with useful insights about these people that may determine whether they are ultimately hired or not.

Your source of business intelligence: as blogging has become so widespread, it is likely that the employees of your rivals and competitors are publishing their own personal blogs.  Follow blogs posted by these employees, their companies and other sources in your industry. These may well provide a source of  competitive information as well as a database of potential recruits for your company. In the same vein, your own employees are likely to be blogging, and you would wish to issue suitable guidelines to safeguard sensitive company information. You will need to strike a sensible balance between your company interests, and the rights of your employees to express their views freely.You want to encourage them to disseminate good feelings about your company and yet not give away trade secrets.

In short, use the burgeoning popularity of blogs to further your own business interests.

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Viral marketing – what is this?

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

In simple terms, viral marketing is a marketing technique which is based on spreading information by the individual, rather than a publicity campaign.   A person who talks about something to their friends are spreading the word just like sneezing would be spreading a virus.  In the same way people transmit information to others, who will in turn transmit it to other people and so on.

Microsoft Hotmail service used viral marketing to spread the word about their email services.  Since the beginning of hotmail, advertised the possibility of having a free email address by passing emails.  Each email sent automatically contains a link to the website service, along with a short catchy phrase.  Once an email is received, the recipient can click on the link and start making use of Hotmail by signing up.  Again, the new users sent more emails and each email contained a link.  The word spread like wildfire and Hotmail was using the power of the masses to advertise its service without any effort from its side.

Viral marketing is essentially a very inexpensive tool to market a service or a product. There is no need to create new resources, but advertisers use the ones already in place and each user becomes a testimonial for the company.  If someone uses the service and lets others know about it, that person is advertising the services of the company.

Hotmail used a very effective way to promote itself.  It was a subtle way of saying, ‘I am using this service and it is good. Try it out.’   This stands to show that the service in itself works and what is best, someone who is close to you such are your friends are telling you about it.  Viral marketing allows the message to be spread faster than traditional advertising campaigns.

The process of viral marketing or a viral marketing campaign can be categorized in different types.  They all use the same concept: spread the word.

  • Pass it on.  Emails are used mainly to pass messages fast.  With a click, one can send a message to one, ten, twenty persons and so on.  Very often there is a note to forward or to click on a link or both.
  • Create false news so that people will talk about it and let others know about it. There is no real reference to passing it along, but the news can be so sensational or different, that it will be passed on automatically.
  • Controversial facts.  This is used very often by people in the entertainment industry.  Having something to tall about is a tactic used by most gossip magazines.

On the other hand, viral marketing is often attacked by people mainly consumers, marketers and lawyers since some emails breach the privacy of the individuals and are an annoyance to the recipient.  There are other viral marketing campaigns which are very subtle and use its techniques skilfully to attract favorable reactions from others and aim at passing on the message.  A good viral marketing campaign is like a terrible virus which spreads unknowingly to others.  Catching a cold and being part of a viral marketing campaign is very simple.

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