Definition of Internet Marketing and How To Do It
I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything in the last several days. My daughter is
visiting from out of state and I haven’t been online much. But I promise to
answer all your questions from my recent survey within the next week or so,
right here on the blog, so bookmark it and check back often.
Here’s one reader’s #1 Internet marketing question:
"define internet marketing. how to succeedinit make it simple.
What are the exact steps I need to take to get started without any hype?"
Truthfully, online marketing isn’t much different than offline marketing. But a
lot of people think they’re very different and they don’t grasp how to do it.
For one thing, if you’re selling something offline, you wouldn’t typically call
it "marketing." You’d be more likely to say "I sell Avon" (or Tupperware or
whatever). But in reality, the biggest difference between offline marketing and
online marketing is the MEDIA with which you market your products. Internet
marketing simply means you’re selling your products VIA the Internet.
So if you think in terms of selling something offline and define your action
plan, the steps you’d take to sell products offline, you can make some simple
adaptations for online selling.
Let’s use selling Avon products offline as an example. If you’re just starting
to sell Avon, you wouldn’t have any customers or prospects. What would you do?
How would you find people who are interested in what you’re selling?
The first step would probably be to contact family and friends, right? You’d
tell everyone know that you have wonderful products if they’re interested in
buying. And you’d probably ask them to tell their family and friends, too, so
more people know.
After giving your family and friends the current Avon sales brochure, you’d
wait for them to call with their orders. But what would you do if no one calls?
I hope you’d make phone calls to see if they want to buy. Why? Because they
probably set your sale book aside and forgot about it. They got busy with other
things and your book got buried on the kitchen counter under 3 days of mail.
You need to REMIND them that you’re placing an order tomorrow for the current
sale items and ASK if they’d like to order something.
Let’s recap the steps, equating online selling to offline selling:
1. Find a good product to sell
2. Find people who are interested in your product (list-building)
3. Spread the word that you sell this product (promotion & viral marketing)
4. Follow-up with prospects to remind them of what you’re selling (offline this
is typically done with phone calls; online it’s done with emails)
5. Take orders/make money
I can’t tell you exactly where to promote your products or website because it
depends on what you’re selling. But you can visit any search engine to find
ezines to advertise in, websites to buy advertising on or to swap links with,
classified ad sites, etc.
The key is to promote to the right market - people who are interested in the
type of products you sell. You could advertise weight loss products in a
fishing ezine, but you probably won’t get any sales. You need to advertise your
weight loss products in health and diet related ezines.
And if you think list-building and follow-up aren’t important to selling
products online or offline, check out this article I recently wrote.
I’ll be back here within a couple of days with more answers to your questions,
so stay tuned.
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