Archive for July, 2009

Get started with internet marketing

Posted in General on July 31st, 2009 by imr – Be the first to comment

You most mainly need a website to get initiated with internet marketing and thus you would need a good and honest website designer to make a momentous website. The website designer should be skilled in giving all sorts of web alike facilities and should be well associated with the companies who aid to pioneer the website on the search engine optimization.

But in comparison to the straight method, the internet marketing proves to be a more high priced affair and hence you should have some extra fund for it. But once your efforts are clicked, you will not have any look back to express your business message within the shortest span of time to your objected regulars. The web advisor would collect all the necessary minutiae about your commercial activities like logo design, brands, products range, amenities offered etc and design an attractive website using hottest means of advertising. He would provide visual image to all the details with suitable content and pictures and design a worth watching website.

Furthermore, the advisor would converse with you about your internet marketing strategies and then elect about the placement of your website over the internet. Thus, the advisor would simply place the website in such a way that the website appears on the top of the results after a search over the internet. Thus, a customers seeking the detailed information of your business website would simply need to write your website in the slot before applying it for a search over the web. Thus the clients can simply go through your website and then get to know about your industry, its products and the commercial activities. They are the probable regulars and the positive appeal of your website may turn them to your real patrons. Just in case the online internet marketing strategy fails to deliver the desired results then the advisor would simply try to connect it with all the websites of related categories using a cost-effective software. When the web spectators search to attain any information similar to your industry, all the websites emerge into the result and that proffers a greater choice to the addressers. Bigger number of potential regulars are sure to get drawn to a well magnetized website.

Thus to attain the same, many a times the advisor lays banners on the website and that on the other websites to fascinate a bigger number of clienteles. When the web addressers opens your website and click on their advert banners, they have to pay you per click and when the web viewers open the other parallel websites and clicks on your advert banners, you have to pay them. This strategy of pay per click imparts you a great chance to make money online over the web. As a result, your website succeeds in straightforwardly fascinating a large number of probable regulars across the world which thus generates the chances of reaching the wanted aims of your industry with the facilitate of the potential clients.

A Website Survey Makes Sense

Posted in General on July 31st, 2009 by imr – Be the first to comment

It is fairly easy and even free for a webmaster to use tools to analyse their website traffic, monitor the number of visitors, report of the web pages that have been accessed and the length of time each visitor spends accessing the website.

However, despite the considerable data available what is missing is anything to tell the webmaster what the visitor was thinking. Did they like the website? Was the layout clear or confusing? Did they find it easy to navigate and maybe the most important thing, did they find the information they wanted?

A website may be generating sales but why are there some people that are visiting the website and not buying anything? Was it because they didn’t like what was being offered or they couldn’t find what they wanted?

Online surveys provide webmasters with an accurate method of answering these types of questions. Direct feedback from the website visitors cuts to the chase, there is no longer any need to guess, just ask the visitors directly how they arrived at the site and if they were able to find what they were looking for.

With an online survey webmasters can find out:-

  • How often do people visit the website?
  • How did they find the website?
  • Are they interested in the website for business or pleasure reasons?
  • Were they able to find the information they were looking for?
  • How easy did they find navigating the website?
  • Would they recommend the website?

A good website survey will be concise and will collate information that once analyzed will provide valuable information to help improve the website.

Another alternative to a traditional survey is to embed one or two survey questions within the website after specific procedures. One example would be to ask visitors at the end of the registration process if they found the procedure quick and easy; another example would be after ordering an item the customer could be asked if they found the ordering procedure and payment methods to their liking. To ensure that the questions don’t become repetitive to regular visitors the website can be programmed so that the questions are only asked once per registered user.

Website surveys take the mystery out of working out what visitors think of a website and using Online Survey Software they are quick and easy to design and once implemented will really become the webmaster’s assistant.

To see a sample website survey please follow the link: Sample Website Survey

Market Research – The Benefits

Posted in General on July 26th, 2009 by imr – Be the first to comment

If you conduct effective market research what are the things you can learn?

Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to target your marketing and fine tune your product or service.

Know your target market – Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? Does your service or product appeal to specific age groups? Who are your potential customers and where do they live?

Know your competitionMarket Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and are you improving in the right areas?

Products and services – Do you have the products or services that people want? Is what you offer value for money? How do your organization’s products and services match up to that of your competitors? If you have a product can you, do you, should you deliver directly to your customer?

Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there sufficient advice and assistance on hand? Do people find it easy to buy from you? Are all your staff properly trained, helpful, knowledgeable and available?

Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. Which marketing channels are effective and which ones are ineffective?

Is your marketing message understood? Does all your marketing correctly reflect your brand? Do you advertise and promote using the right channels? Are you reaching the right people?

With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.

How Come Online Promotion Must Be Applied To Every Business

Posted in General on July 26th, 2009 by imr – Be the first to comment

A Website must possess creativity to to be competitive in the Internet based business. With so many competition and rivalry going on, every method of website marketing must be employed.

While there are so a multitude of different online presences that require huge start up capital, there are still online services that may provide your website with targetted traffic.  Viral Marketing is such an online marketing tool|Viral marketing is such a website marketing service.  Viral marketing is not a computer virus.  It was named that way because the viral marketing can spread that fast.

In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pas on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and open it as well.  Whether you are looking to buy targeted pay per lead advertising or even if you are interested in finding out about pay per lead advertising, you should definately look into incorporating viral marketing in your online promotion strategies.

Most every site and companies are catching on to the effectivity of Viral Marketing and Advertising. Not using it could kill your business. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games.

All it takes is a great idea, a good addicting game, a funny story many ideas are still out there. Create a gossip or a buzz, many movies are promoted by using scandals and gossips to make them moiré popular. Many big companies have tried viral marketing and have had many success stories with it. A classic example is Microsoft’s Hotmail.

Now it’s your turn to use viral marketing to work wonders for you. Viral Marketing will provide for you and your sales figures.

Free Affiliate Marketing Programs

 

PPC WebSpy

Posted in General on July 26th, 2009 by imr – Be the first to comment

 

See any website’s Adwords keywords while browsing Google in real-time. Get it now CLICK Here Want to know what keywords your competition is bidding on via Google Adwords? New, free tool shows you!

 

Hello, I know your time is valuable so I will cut to the chase, but wanted to let you in on a brand new, free keyword research tool that’s just been released . Internet Marketing guru, Brad Callen, just told me about a free keyword tool that they recently created.

 

I just downloaded this cool tool that I can see my adversaries keywoods with, and come up with more keywords I can use for my campaigns.

 

And what’s even cooler about it is how it works. All you have to do is browse Google, and the software will automatically place a “view keywords” button below any Adwords advertiser’s listing.

 

This so slinky. It installs right into your web browser and you will not know it is even there, nor tell it’s running when the browser’s open, there is only a small icon in the system tray.

 

I can see what anyone’s Adwords keywords are with this addon, and what keywords they’re bidding on!Only Google and the advertisers had access to these Adwords Keywords before. All you need to do is a simple action and, up will popup a window that shows you the keywords they’re bidding on! This will revolutionise the way keywords will be selected in the future.

 

Anyway, I thought you’d be interested in downloading since it’s free. I highly suggest that you go and download the tool while it’s still free, because I am guessing it won’t be free for long.

 

I have only told you about part of the power in this program,you will be surprised at what else it offers, so you do really need to get your free copy and begin to find out what this software addon can do for you, but I’ll let you play with it yourself.

Simple But Effective Marketing

Posted in General on July 23rd, 2009 by imr – Be the first to comment

It is a sunny morning and you are sitting in your office. With a cup of hot coffee by your side and memories of your last holiday still fresh in your mind, even if you say so yourself, today at least, life is sweet.

You take a sip of your morning coffee and then feel a breeze of cool air and from the corner of your eye a movement. In the blink of an eye there is now an smartly dressed stranger sitting in the chair opposite. You are surprised; you didn’t hear anyone knock and just as you are about to ask who he is he begins to speak in what can only be described as a calm and reassuring voice.

‘Here’s the deal’

‘I will advertise your product on billboards at the busiest junctions of every city of the world.’

‘I will be able to tell you how many people see the advertisement, their age, nationality and gender.’

‘I will tell you what they think of your product and in many cases I will give you their contact details. While they are looking at the billboard I will allow them to view your website and even make a purchase if they feel the urge.’

‘I can have all this setup in two days and it will cost you less than a small advertisement displayed in your favourite trade journal.’

He stops talking for just a second. ‘Interested?’

Now you might think that such an offer was too good to be true, you might think that you are going to wake up soon or maybe that it really is time to get a lock on that office door.

But let’s just take a minute. If you are still reading this I am that man who has come from nowhere and offered you a deal.

The advertising site is on the Internet and the billboard I’m offering is the much underrated online survey.

Stop for a second and start to associate an online survey not with ‘market research’ but with ‘marketing’. Not any type of marketing but ‘Marketing’ with a capital ‘M’ and in flashing neon lights. Marketing that is effective, direct, low cost and quick.

You can advertise a published online survey on a website, or via email and like a billboard by the side of a major road junction, your message will appear in front of people. Unlike billboards where the number of people that see the advert has to be estimated and online survey accurately records the number of times a survey is started.

Online surveys can ask demographic questions such as age, gender and nationality and in doing so allows you to collate metrics about the effectiveness of your promotion and confirm that you are interacting with the target respondent on a one-on-one level.

Unlike a billboard where the message is often subliminal, or maybe just trying to achieve brand awareness, with an online survey you have the opportunity to connect with the public to find out what they really think about your product, how it relates to them, how it is perceived.

Using an online survey website it takes only minutes and hours to create a survey and using the power of the Internet an online survey can reach hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis.

Throw in a prize as an incentive for people to complete the survey, maybe some Pay Per Click advertising to capture an even wider, or more focused audience and you are still talking low cost effective marketing.

‘Okay then, tell me. Do we have a deal?’

Affilo Blueprint Review – The Ins And Outs

Posted in General on July 22nd, 2009 by imr – Be the first to comment

Are you also really tired with all the ‘guru’ product launches on the Internet that happen these days? It kind of feels like everyone has written a training course, an ebook or some other product which ‘guarantees’ making you money online. The fact is though, the majority of these video courses are a waste of time and money – but finding the golden nugget within all these products can be actually tough work; and every one of us have been taken in by a course that ended in dissatisfaction AT MINIMUM one time. Affilo Blueprint however, wasn’t a disappointment.

Affilo Blueprint Review: First off though, let’s talk about what AffiloBlueprint actually is. Created by Super- Affiliate Mark Ling and his Affilorama team, AffiloBlueprint claims to be a complete system for building profitable affiliate web sites. When the course was released the first time last year, Mark Ling really was using this blueprint to build a website in front of a live audience – a site which in turn ended up earning $500 per month in earnings! In this latest release, Mark Ling does use the exactly same technology, but with a better blueprint and more in- depth lessons.

What really is this ‘blueprint’? The whole concept of Affilo Blueprint is that you are able to build multiple websites, in any viable niche you like, by using the same process over and over again. This means you can build a whole bunch of small $50 per week websites, and then just build up your revenue by creating a lot of websites. Then, as Mark Ling describes, if you reinvest some of that cash back into the websites in the form of building content and SEO campaigns, you can very quickly accelerate your income into the thousands a week – just by starting with several $50 per week sites. This is truly one of the easiest, but yet most efficient ways I’ve seen for building this level of earnings with affiliate marketing.

So what is covered in the product? AffiloBlueprint is a 12 week course with more than 50 video lessons. Beginning with how to research a profitable niche and researching the market, you are taken through finding keywords, building content, setting up an affiliate site, search- engine-optimization, building newsletters, analysing statistics and troubleshooting (which is brilliant!), and pay per click. So as you can see, extremely comprehensive!

One of the sole disadvantages with this course is that, with so many information it has, you could be tempted to rush through parts. Don’t do it! All of the lessons in Affilo Blueprint are there for a reason, and if you follow it step-by-step, you will pretty much certainly be able to build a successful website.

You also receive a custom made Wordpress template when you buy the AffiloBlueprint, so if you never built a niche site before, you can just use a template built by affiliate marketing experts to create your niche site. To make this product as much newbie-proof as possible Mark Ling has gone through a lot of trouble, that’s for sure. Everything is actually clearly explained and there is no assumption of knowledge, so if you are in the beginning with your online experience, this product is for you. If you do have some experience with affiliate marketing however, you will still find the step-by-step structure of AffiloBlueprint helpful. This is going be what you need to push up your income or fix your under- performing niche sites.

At the end, I highly recommend Affilo Blueprint as one of the greatest affiliate training products I’ve seen.

The Key to Better Websites Navigation

Posted in General on July 20th, 2009 by imr – Be the first to comment

One of the primary implications of a well-organized / good website, is to keep your visitors in the website. A website is definitely created for a purpose, unless intended for personal use, which is the minority. For example, a portfolio website would want to be visited and it's content viewed. For companies and internet businesses, your website certainly aims to provide product information, to make sales, or somewhat similar. However, most individuals undoubtly prefer visually captivating designs, so on and so forth. It is undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put himself/herself in other people’s shoes, as to understand how a visitor to the website might think, do and react.

1 )  Navigation

As I said, a web designer has to learn how to think the way your visitors think.

Situation A : Website with good navigation ( 2-3 hyperlinks to target page ), well planned  in terms of placement, and SEO design.

Situation B : Website with poor navigation ( takes forever for the visitor to reach his/her target page ), hard-to-read navigation fonts and poor placement of the navigation buttons/bar.

In Situation A, a visitor will always want to be able to access his/her target page. For example, the individual comes across your website, and is interested in the product sold, but wants to find more information. He/she finds the navigation with no trouble, and enters the particular product information page.

As for Situation B, a visitor stumbles into the website, and would also like to find out more information about the product. Unfortunately, due to bad placement and fanciful font-types, the visitor takes forever, or even fails to find the navigation bar. Even when he/she does so, links to the product information are nowhere to be found, (example : home > about > products > product image > etc[a few more clicks] > product information ).

Analysis : In both situations, wouldn't a website with characteristics similar to the Situation A be more rewarding ergo better?

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Posted in General on July 19th, 2009 by imr – Be the first to comment

Affiliate Marketing Definition:  A person (affiliate) who promotes a person or companies products and receives a commission for sales made from the affiliates promotions.

Is affiliate marketing any good? Affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular, fastest and easiest ways to earn money online.  You can sign up to an affiliate for so many different companies or products, the possibilities are endless.  But one big question remains…

How can you get started and become successful in the world of internet marketing?  The first thing is you can take the long way and learn it through trial and error.  Unfortunately, this way can take months, and sometimes even years before a beginner affiliate marketer finally grasps the whole idea of online marketing and turns it into a replacement of income.  The nice thing of trial and error is you actually find what worked well for you through your every path.  The bad thing of this way is that it takes a LOT of poking around the web trying to get free advice or information that actually cites sound advice.

A great solution to this road block would be to buy a training program that teaches you how to earn money online with affiliate marketing|make money with online affiliate marketing. You have to be careful in finding a teaching course though, because not all are what they claim.  There are many training books you can buy on the internet to teach you the things you need to know, but be wise- most of them don’t tell you EVERYTHING.  You might learn important facts about certain aspects with every product you purchase.  The high amount of dough you spend on each course can really add up, and the amount of time it takes you to go through each course may not be well spent.

There are some great training courses you can buy that will teach you absolutely everything you need to know.  My best recommendation is Chris Cobb’s Clickbank Cash-System.  The course provides step by step tutorials (video and pdf) on how to start making money with affiliate marketing-starting with Clickbank.  The course is affordable and incredibly thorough.

Clickbank Cash System includes:

  • The blueprint for Clickbank Cash System
  • Training on how to set up affiliate accounts
  • Making sales
  • Video and PDF training
  • Step by step tutorials
  • The same exact technique Chris uses (and used to teach his brother and sister)

and so much more.  This is one of the most complete and thorough step by step learning courses on the web, and is meant to be the last product you will ever need to buy.  (It’s that complete.)

If you’ve ever had the desire to learn affliate marketing, or how affiliate marketing works, or if you’ve been trying to find the trick to make it work, I highly recommend you look into Chris’s Clickbank Cash System. If you would like to read a full review and get more information on this excellent training course, you can check it out here: Clickbank Cash-System review.  If you already know you want Clickbank Cash-System and you just want a little something extra, you can check out an exclusive bonus for Clickbank Cash-System here.

So in answer to the question: Affiliate marketing any good? With proper training, online marketing is not good-it has the potential to be great.

Writing Effective Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Posted in General on July 18th, 2009 by imr – Be the first to comment

Why should you bother?

The life blood of any business is good customer service. New customers are important but good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business will secure many more customers through word of mouth and you should always keep in mind that if you are not taking proper care of your customers there is always a competitor that will.

Online customer satisfaction surveys will demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

 

Where do you start?

Objective – As a first step decide what the main objectives of the survey are, in that way you will be able to retain focus and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis – Once the survey has been completed consider how you will analyze the answers.

Keep in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where the respondent is asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than ‘open’ questions (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

A lot will depend on the expected volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – Keep in mind that as well as obtaining valuable market research data customer surveys are also a good way to advertise aspects of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

After you have drafted your survey read through the survey from a market research view point and check that you are asking the right questions in the right way and that with the feedback information you will be able to properly analyze the data allowing you to make informed decisions.

Then, from a marketing view point read through the survey, confirm that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

  • Market research – provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
  • Marketing – promote aspects of your business
  • Information/Education – advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

In asking this question the store will hopefully not only receive useful feedback on the baby changing facility but they will also promote the store as being a child-friendly and caring store even to those the customers who do not actually require the facility.

Warts and all – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to avoid the temptation, in any way, of attempting to sugar coat the survey.

A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to highlight problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where your competitors initiatives may be losing you business.

 

What should you ask?

Although each business is likely to have specific and unique factors that are important in providing good customer services there are common areas that are relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online internet store or a service industry. The following are key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – Do you make it easy for the customer to contact you?

When a customer telephones is their call answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services handled properly? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, quickly, politely and fairly.

If a problem is not resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be knowledgeable, courteous and helpful.

Location – Are you doing everything you can to ensure that your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, does it have good access and is it conveniently located?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For an internet business it is important to ensure that your website is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.

Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely online web based store, is the store properly laid out and can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient detailed information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – You should not only measure the quality of the service that you provide but you should also monitor that the products and services that you market are what the customer wants and closely match their expectations.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is rarely a good measure, value for money is.

Do your current customers consider the products you sell or the services you provide as value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Customers want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything to prevent any delays?

A good business will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is one thing but only if it leads to a quick and satisfactory resolution to the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example their gender, age group and where they live?

The more you try to understand your customers the better you will be able to target your business.

Within the survey encourage customers to highlight their problems and provide contact details.

 

What next?

Once the survey has been completed analyse the results.

Trends – Identify common and specific areas where the customer service is failing.

Ask yourself if any criticism is valid, be honest to yourself, is there anything that can be done to properly resolve, or at the very least, minimise the problem?

Training – Are all employees properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where employee training programmes have been implemented have they had a positive impact on the business?

Follow-up – If a customer has raised a specific issue through completing a survey ensure that they are contacted and that their complaint is properly addressed.

Do not squander the opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.

Continuously Monitor – Make changes based on the survey results and then re-measure by issuing follow up surveys.

If you are interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.