Marketing A Home Based Internet Business With PPC, SEO , E-Mail Advertising and more….
Let’s start with a statement that may seem pretty obvious. Marketing a home based internet business is no different to marketing a big corporation on the internet. Obviously your marketing message and selling points may be different but the methods are the same.
That’s what makes the internet such a level playing field. It is one of the few industries where a person with no qualifications or recognisable talents, can compete against and beat Fortune 500 companies.
Millions have been made by internet businesses, started by people with nothing. Look at the stories of people like Frank Kern and Carlos and Lupe Garcia.
Multi-millionaires that used a home based internet business to realise their dreams.
Carlos and Lupe became so adept at marketing their internet business that they were getting more traffic than some of the biggest corporations and companies in the world.
Internet Marketing can seem a bit of a scary world if you are just getting started. You will come across a lot of technical sounding jargon like PPC, SEO, squeeze pages, autoresponders, MWR’s, CTR.
This is the same as with any industry, and are just the tools of the trade and you can pick it up pretty easily and quickly.
Although it may seem like murky waters, really there are only a few main methods that internet marketers use to get traffic to their websites and market their businesses.
So let’s briefly go over some of the main ones :
Marketing A Home Based Internet Business, Method No 1. SEO
Search Engine Optimisation. The holy grail of all internet marketers. Free traffic from the search engines.
Admittedly this can be a bit of a muddy water but I think the basics of it are pretty simple and easy to follow.
Although you will hear a lot about Search Engine Optimisation and the different methods people employ to “trick” the search engines, it is better to think about it from the standpoint of what search engines actually want.
Let’s take the mother of all search engines as an example, Google.
Google wants you to provide relevant, honest , quality content for the search terms that your website or web page is optimised for. Meaning you need to do your research before building the page and deciding on your main keywords. These will tghen be used in your tags and headlines and page title and in the descritpion of your page that you give to the search engine. All very tight and relevant.
Google wants you to provide their user with a quality experience. So if they are typing in “dog training courses”, Google will place sites that are obviously about dog training courses at the top of it’s rankings.
Sounds simple.
Google uses a lot of on page and off page factors to determine how relevant and quality a site is.But just by sticking to the basics you can put some good foundations in place.
Know what people are searching for and build your pages tightly around those keywords.Making sure they are the focus of your tags, headlines and descriptions.
Make sure your linking structure is tight within your site, meaning that if you are linking to a page built around the keyword ” dog obedience” make sure that the keyword is in the link anchor text. ( the words that actually show on the links )
Use links and text that Google can understand and read. It want’s to know what your site is about. make it clear and easy for it and your human visitors by being very clear and focused with your theme and the keywords your site is built around. the keywords should all be closely tied and relevant to one another.
Also don’t use images at the top of your pages that have no text in them that Google can read. this makes it harder for google to know what your site is about.
Use a service such as SBI, to take care of all the SEO stuff for you if you are not sure. You can then focus on just building the content.
Once all your on-page stuff is tight. It’s time to build links. Google does measure the quality of your site by it’s popularity. meaning how many relevant and quality sites point to it. Link excahnages with higer PR ( google page rank sites ) can get you climbing up the rankings.
This can be time consuming but you don’t get to the top of a search engine over night. Think more like 6 months.
Blogs, Forums, Directories, Sites in your market. Find relevant areas to post your links and remember you’ve got to give a little to get with links.
Admittedly there is a lot more to it than this brief introduction but this will give you a good basis. remember , be relevant. Give the search engines what they want.
They want you to provide their users with exactly what they are looking for. Not exactly what you want to sell to them. Understand that difference.
Remember that google makes it’s mney of advertisers that want to place on relevant and quality sites to what their market is searching for.
Work with the search engines not against them. It will go much smoother for you if you do !
Marketing A Home Based Internet Business, Method No 2. PPC
Pay Per Click Advertising. One of the quickest and easiest ways to get started sending traffic to your home based internet business.
Also one of the quickest ways to blow a big hole in your budget quickly If you don’t be careful.
Again using google as an example. Let’s say you want to get to the top of the search engines but don’t want to wait the months it can take for your site to get there.
You go and set up a Google Adwords account and you can be up there in minutes.
Google Adwords isn’t just an auction, so you can just bid the highest amount and get staright to the top of Adwords.Well you can but you will be paying much more than your competitors and will probably not be able to compete with them in the long run if hey are paying much less than you.
Google gives a lot of weight to it’s quality score. basically how relevant it thinks your site is to the keyword you want to advertise under. And this goes back to the SEO structure with headlines and tags and descriptions.
Google loves relevancy and will reward you for it. So only advertise under the most relevant keywords to begin with.Put the keyword in your ad that then leads to a page whose tags, headlines and meta data are all optimised for that keyword.
Make it a good experience for google’s search engine user. If you are tight and relevant to the keyword you advertise under you will get a hight CTR ( click thru rate ) meaning that people are ranking your ad well for the keyword they are looking for and are visiting your site.
The longer they stay on your site and the more they buy then the better. This all starts from being very relevant and highly targeted with your PPC advertising.
There are all kinds of done for you services that will do your adwords for you, you can also look at reports and products from people such as Perry Marshall and Glenn Livingston if you want some help with doing it yourself.
Marketing A Home Based Internet Business, Method No 3. Email drops
This comes in a few different forms, but basically involves paying to send an e-mail to somebodys opt-in list.
This is different from spamming people, and I wouldn’t go down that road if you want to build a business on solid foundations.
Quite simply, it is just a matter of finding people that have large opt-in lists of people in your marketplace and sending an e-mail to their list for a fee.Or it could be a percentage of sales.
You can find these people by looking at sites and publications in your marketplace. Some may not wish to offer a competitng product. Others will. Find those that will.
Marketing A Home Based Internet Business, Method No 4.E-zine Advertising
Similar to e-mail drops, this involves finding e-zines in your marketplace and paying to place an ad in those publications. The quality and readership will vary so do a bit of research into what are the quality publications in your marketplace, although expect to pay more for these.
This doesn’t mean to say you won’t find any bargains because you might. Just speak to the owners of the e-zine and see what deals you can get.
Marketing A Home Based Internet Business, Method No 5. JV’s and Partnerships.
( Joint Ventures )
Again similar to the two methods above. You research your marketplace and find that someone has a list of targeted prospective customers. You have a product that you think they would be interested in.
Will the owner of the list be interested in a split of the sales if he lets you sell to his list ?
Again some will, some won’t. just do the research and start talking to these people.
Marketing A Home Based Internet Business, Method No 6. Banner Ads
Banner ads can be placed on anything from the google content network to any commercial website that accepts them.
You must have seen banner ads displayed on nearly every site you have visited. They come in all types and all shapes and sizes.
Simply make a list of the main sites in your marketplace, then approach them about their advertising rates.
You can also use sites such as Alexa.com to see which are the top sites in your marketplace that will likely have your target market as viewers.
This is how Carlos and Lupe Garcia made their millions , and this method evolved into thir traffic tactics website.
You can alos approach the big boys like yahoo and msn and place ads in their e-mail section targeted at certain age groups, sexes etc…
( why do you think they ask you for all that information when you set up an e-mail account? )
These are just a few of the main methods that you can use to market your home based internet business.
There are many more. But just one of these can bring success to your business. Use any of them or a combination depending on what suits you and your business type best.
