Internet marketing is a lot like offline, traditional marketing. For example, when using online marketing, you can reach your customers through online banner advertisements instead of the conventional offline marketing methods like door to door selling. You can also run your online business website without any physical, brick and mortar presence at all. If you sell digital goods then there is also no overhead costs.
You can use online advertisements to hyper target your potential customers based on their gender and browsing habits and many other traits. This type of advertising gives the best bang for your bucks because your advertisements will only be shown to your targeted audience. If you advertised in a traditional newspaper, it may have 500,000 subscribers. You are paying your share to reach all of them. But your target audience may only be 1,000 of those people. It is far better for you to use online, targeted advertising where you are only paying to reach your target audience.
Your website will also be available to your customers 24×7 throughout the year and can be accessed by anyone around the globe. The e-commerce transactions will be carried out with the help of online payment systems. These payment systems are reliable, secure and convenient for your customers.
Do Your Research – Find what products are in demand. You can look for the top-selling items in Amazon.com or eBay.com. You can also compare the price of your product across the e-commerce websites in order to fix your profit margins. If it’s a digital product then your investment will also be less.
It’s a good practice to actually buy and test any product you are selling so you can accurately analyze the pro’s and con’s of the product. If the product meets your requirements, then you can write an honest review about it. If you did not do your research, then your recommendations would be flawed.
If possible test and analyze to see the frequency of the sales and also the refund rates of the products you are planning to sell. You should be able to find some online forums and boards related to the items you are selling. In this forums, you see what others are saying about these products and evaluate the demand of the item. If you are re-shipping a product after purchasing it offline, you should start small and then scale up your business as you begin to reap the profits. This helps to minimize losses.
You also need to do keyword research for the product you are selling. This will aid you in your advertising efforts. In the case of physical products, you can get additional sales by focusing on mistyped keywords. You would be surprised by the number of hits you will receive because somebody mistyped the product name! Instead of being sent to your competitors site – they end up at yours!
Check your competition – You should check on the competitors in the market you are looking to enter. You should never enter a hyper saturated market where a lot of sellers are trying to sell the same product. In such a market you will probably not survive without a huge expenditure in advertising dollars. Instead, look for a market where there are fewer competitors but high demand for the products. But beware! Having no competitors is also a bad sign.
Create Content – You need to create the right type of content for your audience. You should write a review of the product you bought or you can create a video that shows how to set up the product as well as its pros and cons. Load these videos to YouTube and link them to your website.
By creating the right quality content that complements your research, you should be able to sell your products with ease. Your reviews should be honest and, if possible, try to provide coupon codes to your customers so they can save money on the purchase. Once your customers trust your products, trust your reviews and trust you, then your content will get more likes and shares – all of which will lead to more sales!
Create a professional website – If you are selling your own product then start by selling your items on e-commerce sites. Once you start making money, you should then create your own professional website. A professional website will help you to increase your profit margins. With your own, professional looking website, you will also be able to “brand” you name and your products so people will remember you.
Advertise Effectively – Use social media to advertise instead of search engine advertisements. If you are using your creativity to market your product then you can reach a lot of people online through social media. The cost of advertising through social media is also cheap. You will also need to build up an effective social media presence and answer your customer queries through these platforms. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are all good places to start.
I will have more articles that will discuss how to effectively use social media advertising, email marketing and list building. So keep an eye out for these informative articles!
On my website, http://www.bobthibodeau.com, I am helping those who are new to Internet Marketing not make the same mistakes I (and countless others) have made getting started. I also help those marketers who are struggling in an area of getting their business going. I offer no promises – just plain, straight forward training and assistance for those who are serious about making a serious, online income.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Robert_Thibodeau/2198393
The Right Way To Begin Internet Marketing
