Online Marketing 101 - 10 Techniques to Market Your Company Online

Online marketing is a highly fluid profession, but there are several techniques that never go out of style. Combined with the new, innovative approaches being developed every day, these techniques can dramatically improve your company's internet marketing success!

Article Marketing has become a powerhouse way to spread helpful information and reel in traffic from across the web. When you write helpful articles and submit them to article banks, directories and ezine publishers, more people become aware you exist, and from there become impressed at your knowledge in your niche.

Blogging initially became popular in the late 1990's, when online journalism was all the rage. Now blogs have become an important marketing tool, allowing companies to reach out informally and draw in visitors who can later be converted to customers. You can use your bog to make yourself more accessible. Free blogging platforms like Google Blogger and WordPress make blogging easy and fun.

Ezines can be used for more focused publicity - these are generally aimed at a particular niche. You can even start your own to develop a closer relationship with your readers. Provide helpful information and resources, and they will come to trust you and rely on you for advice. Just limit advertising and hard sales copy!
Networking is another tool that can get you close to your target demographic as well as in touch with other professionals who can help you achieve your goals. Connect with others in your field to share information and encourage each other.

Online Email Groups exist for nearly every conceivable niche. You can find them on major search engine forums such as Yahoo or Google, or start your own and invite people you know to participate and brainstorm.

Forums are a terrific outlet for establishing yourself as an authority. The trick is to not overdo it - simply offer help when needed and don't try to push your agenda unasked - no-one likes a spammer. Follow the rules for posting and offer your help as much as possible.

Social Media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and even MySpace are all good places for connecting to people and establishing your brand. Creating multiple online profiles and updating them consistently will build your reputation and ensure you are visible.

Photo and video sharing or pod casting can increase your chances of 'going viral' and having your product or service garner national or international attention. You can hire an established agency to help you, or venture into the digital world yourself to create material, then publish it online.

Bookmarking sites also allow you to share things you want others to know - and if you learn how to tag effectively, you can increase traffic to your product or service. The best thing about bookmarking, sharing and social sites is that others carry on the work you begin!

Advertising cannot be left off the list. If you learn to craft effective, targeted ads, the return on investment will more that justify the cost. A solid ad campaign combined with the above organic online marketing techniques will boost your traffic and conversion to levels your company may not have believed possible!
The bonus tip of the day is to use SEO in all you do - every piece of content you create and share should contain your main keywords at least once or twice. This keeps your theme consistent across all marketing platforms!

For more information on online marketing techniques please visit online marketing 101.

How to Create a Niche Market for Your Business

Have you ever wondered how so many beauty salons, web design companies, attorneys or Mexican restaurants can exist in the same geographic area? Especially in small populated areas? Maybe the demand is high. Or, perhaps some of these businesses have set themselves apart by targeting a niche market.

A niche is a special area of demand for a product or service. Not all beauty salons, for example, are created equal in price, customer service, convenient location and hours, scheduling, stylist expertise and so on. The same is literally true for all businesses; web design, marketing consultants, hardware stores, attorneys. The list goes on.

Creating a niche and marketing to both your general and niche markets is a smart business and marketing strategy. You cannot expect to start a business with millions of world wide competitors (via the Internet), hundreds or thousands of regional competitors and a dozen or more local competitors, and instantly, or easily, gain a fair market share without creating a niche market.

Every business has a niche. The key is identifying what that niche is. An online retailer like Amazon.com has a different niche than competitors Barnes & Noble or Borders who rely more on developing a local presence and foot traffic. A few years ago DHL came out with a brilliant commercial pitting itself against the leading overnight delivery service. DHL did not claim to be number one or lower priced. Instead they capitalized on a niche market, being number two and a reliable back up service when you, the consumer, need it most. It was a brilliant campaign.

Identifying or creating a niche means digging deeper into what sets your business, product or service apart from the competition. The typical marketing question is "Why would I buy from you instead of Company X?" Your answer will likely just scratch the surface and match what many competitors could claim. This is where you dig deeper. Look at your location, hours of operation, years of experience, price point, friendly staff, response time to customer inquiries or processing orders, the quality of your product or delivery of your service, personalized attention, and so on.

For example, marketing easy access to your business from a major road or highway is a niche that should drive traffic and make sales soar. If you are the only video store in your area play it up. If your video store carries a large selection of hard to find movies in VHS format and stays open until midnight, those are two more niche markets. Being a new wholesale supplier in a regional area is big news to your local city as well as the region, creating multiple niches for your business overnight. Claims of being the first, the only one or the original are unique niche selling points that no one else can (legitimately) claim.

Do not wait for your industry or market to become saturated to identify and market your niche. Start now. Work both your general market as well as your niche market to develop a solid foundation for success so you can survive when competition does heat up. As your business grows or your industry changes so will your niche opportunities grow and change.

Gabrielle Melisende, founder of Destination Graphix, offers graphic design, web design and website solutions, advertising, marketing strategies and copywriting services. She writes and designs Eye On Leander (dist. 14,000+), a business publication promoting economic development in the city of Leander, Texas.

Affiliate Marketing - Profitable Niche Marketing

Experienced affiliate marketers know that the way to make money is to find a profitable niche market and then exploit it. If you cannot find such a market as an affiliate marketer then you are going to struggle to earn income, and income is the lifeblood of your business. Finding the right market will generate for you a steady stream of income and if you do not do your research and find a niche market then you will not become a successful affiliate marketer. Now you understand the importance of finding your market, the steps below will help you to identify niche markets that will generate incomes for you.

Identify a market that you have an interest in and if possible one in which you are knowledgeable. You are looking initially for a broad category such as self improvement, sports, health and fitness. Once you have identified your category you now need to drill down into this market to identify your niche.

Explore what smaller component markets are available within your market. By components i mean look for more focused areas of interest within the market. For example, for golf you may identify a specific niche within this market such as golf trolleys or golf clothing. You could even break the component down further into electric golf trolleys or golf waterproof clothing.

Once you have identified your specific niche you then need to find an affiliate product to promote. The easiest way to do this is to visit a company such as Clickbank, check out their marketplace for your niche, select a good fit product, sing up as an affiliate and get marketing.

Now that you have identified your niche and the product you are going to promote you now need to identify what your target buyers look like. Take golfers for example. If your focus is electric trolleys then the chances are that your target buyer will be over 45 and a member of a golf club. If your niche is golfing waterproofs then you you need to identify who your target is and when they are likely to buy. For waterproofs you are marketing to a global golf market however different parts of the world will be looking to buy different types of waterproofs at different times of the year. In winter golfers look for heavy duty waterproofs, in summer they look for lightweight waterproofs. You are now beginning to clearly identify your niche and your target buyers.
You now need to identify which of your niche markets is likely to be the most profitable and therefore the one you want to promote and invest your time in.

The easiest way to do this is to use the Google search engine. Come up with some keywords that you think your target buyers may use to find the products within the niche. Take the keywords and enter them into google, remember to enclose your keywords within quotations. Check the search results returned. What you are looking for are keywords which return 10,000 pages. You then need to check for paid ads in these pages. If you find these then you have identified your first niche market with hot buyers but little competing marketers.

Now that you have done this for one niche market and proven it to be successful you can use these same steps to identify other hot niche markets. The more profitable niche markets you can identify the more products you can promote and the more revenue you can generate.

Brian E McClelland
If you want to find out more about identifying and selling into Niche Markets then check out [http://www.emccbriannichebueprint.info]

A Niche Marketing Strategy - How to Dominate Niche Markets

To make money online fast and easily you will need to start off small with an effective niche marketing strategy. You do not want to go for the really competitive markets and keywords for two reasons.
For one thing it will take to much time and work to rank for broad keyword terms in the search engines making it really difficult to rank for and get enough traffic to make commissions from.

The other main reason is because the traffic is not that targeted. You want laser targeted traffic, meaning very interested people who will most likely buy whatever product you are promoting.

So to find these niche markets you will have to use a good keyword tool. There are plenty paid ones but if you do not want to invest in one then you can do it manually by using the keyword tool at Google.

It is very simple, just type in the first keyword that comes to mind when thinking of the product or market you want to promote. If you were promoting a diet program then you could type in "weight loss".
Make sure to set it up so you get the exact amount of searches. Use the drop down arrow to change from broad search to exact. You will see it on the right of the keyword box.

Now go down the list and try to find keywords that are getting at the very least a thousand exact searches. Then to get a feel for the competition copy and past that keyword into Google but make sure to put it in quotes.

Make sure there are no more than about 50,000 competing pages. To really dig deeper take it out of quotes and then see what sites are ranking for that term.

If there are authority sites ranking for that term like eHow.com or a wiki page then it will be too competitive. But if you see articles ranking for it or sites with the keyword in the domain name then that is a really good sign that you can rank for it.

Then once you have found some keywords simply start by typing articles to rank for or set up a niche blog site with your presell pages. I really get into detail on how to do this niche marketing strategy on my website.

If you want to get my free course on how to make instant affiliate commissions then visit my website at http://buildyouraffiliatebusiness.com.

Niche Product Marketing - Important Details For Success

Here is exactly what you need to know about niche product marketing. Most people make mistakes when setting up a niche product website, this article discusses three points which if done correctly will save you a lot of unnecessary hard work. We will be looking at niche product selection, choosing a suitable domain name and niche product website promotion. By reading this article you have the information to be able to set up a website properly for niche product marketing.

Niche product selection is very important if you are setting up a niche product website. The first decision you need to make is whether you are going to market a physical product or an electronic product such as an e-book or software program. You need to choose a product which matches the chosen keywords of your website niche. You may decide to dedicate your website to only one product if you are building a micro niche site. Make sure that the product you select pays a sufficient amount per sale and that it is an item which sells well.

Choosing a domain name for your website is very important. If possible, you should choose a domain name which contains your main keyword. For example if you were selling picture frames on your website and the domain name was not available you could try adding a word to the end of your keyword phrase in order to find an available domain name. Try to choose a keyword and domain name which gets a lot of monthly searches and which has as little competing pages as possible in the search engines.

Once you have selected the products in your niche to market and have bought a suitable keyword rich domain name you need to then set up your site. Once this is done you need to begin marketing your site. This is best done by submitting articles, submitting videos to the video sites, by social bookmarking and by submitting your RSS feeds to the RSS feed directories. You can also exchange links with other websites in your niche and add your site to relevant niche directories.

In conclusion, by selecting suitable products to sell, choosing a suitable domain name and marketing your site in the way suggested in this article, you will be able to confidently know that you have set up your website properly for niche product marketing. All you need to do now is to continue adding content to your site and continue to promote it in the manner suggested above. So put this information to use and you will soon be successful at niche product marketing.

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