Internet Marketing Tips, Tools and Strategies

In my mind, the first step to developing any business marketing strategy, or a business in general, is developing your target audience(s). Knowing who is going to be buying your service and/or product will allow you to develop the appropriate messaging, advertise in the areas they frequent, create a competitive pricing point (not only compared to your competitors, but also your clients wallet), and so forth.

Let’s look at some of the factors that could determine your target audience(s):

• Age group
• Gender
• Location
• Income
• Needs or pain points
• Decision making process

Now, not every single factor will come into play for everyone’s target audience, so remember it isn’t always necessary to limit yourself. For example, you wouldn’t want to exclude females if your product is not male specific.

An easy way to develop a better understanding of your ideal target audience is to run a survey. Ask the people around (previous customers, family, friends, community members, etc.) what they think – not only specifically about your product, but their needs and opinions in general. Focus on open-ended questions that will provide you information you need to promote in your industry.

Developing an outline for your target audience is not always the most glamorous part of any marketing campaign, but it is the cornerstone to any strategy foundation. If you need help understanding your audience you might want to consider working with a marketing expert; they can analyze your market and pinpoint the different factors that make up your target audience.

 

A recent study by Internet Marketing software provider Hubspot, determined that business blogs with more posts generate more leads. Business blogs with 0-11 posts, on average, generate 3 leads. A considerable jump occurs when a business blog has 12-23 posts, up to 10 leads on average. The biggest leap in lead action takes place when a blog reaches the 52 post mark and generates 23 leads.

Each blog post generates a new content page on your site.
FYI - You need to be blogging from your domain name and not from Wordpress or Blogger (or any of the other blogging sites available). This is really important to understand. You can integrate some of these blogging tools directly onto your server, or use an integrated solution like WSI eFusion with a built in blog module. If you are blogging from your domain name, you are building the overall size and depth of your site. The goal is to become a “resource” site for your domain name (Google designates sites as “Resource Sites” when they reach the 100 page mark).

Each new post is an opportunity to drive traffic and build site depth.
Blog posts can drive new organic traffic direct from the search engines, and fast. Blog posts can get indexed by search engines very quickly, often times quicker then your other content. Even if your post doesn’t generate a lot of search traffic you are still providing your users with relevant information which will position your company in a different light vs. your competitors who offer very little information about their industry. Blogging effectively really can be a great differentiator.

Search engines love content.
and each post will build upon each other. Before you know it, you could potentially have 30, 50, 100 blog posts filled with lots of good information for you and tons of spider able content with keywords for the search engines. Not to mention when using an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication), people can subscribe to your blog and get notified automatically when you update your blog, and easy share your content throughout the internet. Content syndication can help build back-links to your site and improve overall PR (PageRank).