Thursday, July 13, 2006

Sometimes It Pays to Follow the Crowd — 3 Internet Marketing Trends You Can Use

It doesn't matter if running an E-Biz is old hat for you or if you're just getting started: advertising is always going to be a key element of your business strategy. Search engine marketing is probably the biggest tool available for promoting your web store, so you need to stay on top of trends in that area to be competitive. In addition to SEO, there are certain developments in online marketing that your E-Biz can benefit from using:

1. Blogging for Profit
One of the hottest trends on the Internet right now is blogging. What started as informal personal journaling has become a great way to boost your web site's traffic. Adding a blog to your web site gives it a personal face, thereby increasing the quality of your site and giving your customers a reason to come back. If your E-Biz specializes in chocolates, you can blog your favorite recipe for chocolate brownies or sum up an article highlighting the health benefits of eating chocolate.

Blogging about topics related to the product or services you offer also helps you get ahead in the search engines' natural listings, for several reasons:

    • You're constantly adding fresh, relevant content which is exactly what search engines are looking for.
    • You're also adding keywords in those blogs, that reinforce your site's topical theme to the engines.
    Blogs are getting preference in search engine rankings right now. This is especially true of Google — even more so if you use Google's blogging service, Blogger.com.
2. Results You Can See
Internet marketing expert Derek Gehl, of MarketingTips.com, shares how an increased demand for trackable results in paid advertising in the last few years is working to your advantage. When you run a pay-per-click advertising campaign, search engine companies actually give you the tools to monitor the visitors each keyword brings to your site. Gehl recommends running a keyword campaign to track which keywords bring in sales conversions as opposed to those that only bring in traffic.

Suggests Gehl, "Start with anywhere from two hundred fifty to five hundred keywords and key phrases targeted to your specific market — that's considered a good test." Don't bid too much; you can still get a lot of words for ten and fifteen cents. From there, you can gauge what direction will be the most advantageous for you to take.

3. You've Got Mail — Running a Smart Email Campaign
If your business has conducted any email campaigns of late, you've probably been affected by the new changes in spamming laws. The recent crackdown on spammers has made it increasingly difficult for legitimate business' mailers to reach their customers' inboxes. But what many E-Biz owners don't know is that the big email service providers (Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc.) have what are called "white lists." Gehl counsels, "Legitimate email marketers can go through a process on each of those web sites to get white listed. And once you're on that white list, your email automatically goes to that inbox."

Following the crowd isn't always bad advice — by incorporating profitable marketing trends, you can help keep your E-Biz on top of the search results and in front of your customers.


BIOGRAPHY:
Product Sourcing Radio is Created and Hosted by Chris Malta and Robin Cowie of WorldwideBrands.com, Home of OneSource: The Internet's Largest Source of Genuine, Factory-Direct Wholesalers for online sellers. Click Here for more FREE E-Biz & Product Sourcing info!

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