While I am no newbie to the Marketing World, I am quickly realizing the IM World is almost a completely different Universe. I have done Guerrilla Marketing for over a handful of businesses, managed large corps marketing departments. Now, I am being introduced to the IM World and am at a loss as to where to dive in. I have some ideas - particularly focused around Organization -- Home, Office, Life, etc. I am contemplating trying to start by getting together some content, writing an E-book, putting together some Check Lists, Top Tips, and How-To's. OO maybe I could even set up a video series! I think my biggest barriers are setting up the website... and getting away from seeing this as an actual service where I go help people organize. I would love some insight as to what you think about my idea, what should be my next (or first, technically) steps, etc. Also, for anyone that has done the more traditional style of marketing - what were your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
I have been doing offline sales/marketing for about 30 years and launched my first website in 1999 or so. I was doing email selling and marketing before then (probably around 1997-8.) About six years ago, a partner and I came up with an idea for a software package that would help people do a better job at an important task in their lives. We priced it at $29.95 and ultimately, $14.95. Similar software for companies cost $300 - $300,000. As we were about to launch I went to visit a well-known marketing consultant and chairman of a business department at a big university and I told him the idea and he frowned and said, "It's going to fail." Shocked, I asked why and he said that he had learned many years ago (through his own ventures) that people simply do not invest money in themselves. Long story short: I marketed and pitched the heck out of the product to no avail. He was right. So, my first comment is to be wary of the industry you are looking at and if you do go after it, try to focus on providing free materials, education, etc., to your members/visitors and perhaps sell advertising or more advanced products as the fruit of the traffic you are driving to your site by the value you are giving away for free.
Why is it any different? It is still marketing. Honestly, I think you have more than enough knowledge and skills, but you are put off by the fact that the "medium" being used is different. I'd focus on what you already know and how it can be applied online. Have you mostly helped others promote their businesses or did you have a product/service to offer?
Hi, internet marketing is like any other marketing. Just go through the standard steps. Determine your target market. Determine their needs. Determine which needs they would pay for a solution to. Build your product to answer that need. Get your product in front of your target market, this is the only real difference aside from being able to create digital products that can be delivered over the internet. Here is where IM comes in to play. You need to find where your buyers hang out. Then you need to analyze that to decide on the approach you want to use for that visibility. Examples: Ebay buyers are looking for deals, they want to see marked down prices and free shipping. Ebay doesn't allow digital products. Amazon buyers are willing to pay for shipping and they are more interested in new products at a good price, they are willing to pay more for the same product than an ebay buyer would. Amazon allows digital products if it is their Kindle service (hard to make money there). A large proportion of internet users are looking for freebies, so a good trick is to give them something for free, then convince them of the increased value of your purchased product once they have seen the value of your free product. Social media is great for getting attention, but each one has to be handled differently. So again, know your market and see which media site they prefer. You get the idea. I could go on forever (I am actually writing a book on this right now), but this should get your mind working in the right direction.
This was the template I adopted when delved into internet marketing. Decide on a market Find a need and fill it. Go to forums in your desired market and find a need or problem in that market, It is better if the forums gets high traffic Design and build an easy-to-use website around the need. You can create a product to fill that need or sell someone else's product that is a solution Include an optin form on your site to capture emails. Have a strong funnel in place to direct your subscribers through when they optin into your list. You may decide to offer a free product as an email bait Use search engines to drive traffic to your site and if you may decide to use paid traffic. Depending on your choice. You dont get instant result with free traffic but with paid traffic, the result is instantly Follow up with your customers and subscribers with e-mail and treat your list well for it to be responsive Increase your income through back-end sales and upselling.. OR Better still, create a product around the identified problem Set up a squeeze page to collect leads Have strong sales funnel in place to sell your product and other related product as well in other in increase your income Have a good email sequence in place and occasionally promote to the list. Hope this helps