| Internet marketing is not easy to carry out: you need to get a lot of things on your side, starting with money, outside support, your market, and all the facts related to your market. Why is all this important? Money, of course, drives the machinery that allows you to market your website, product, service, or brand. Outside support, where offline people make sure that you get online advantages, is advantageous if you want to move your activities offline soon. Market research is probably the most important aspect of your Internet marketing life. You will need to know your aims and goals first, even before you start marketing to anyone. The adage that no one loves you best except yourself applies fully here: you need to know who you are, what you aim for, what you want to do, and what and where you want to be, and long before you can expect people to respect you. When you know who you are, you need to identify your target market, and its size. Are you going after a large market, and marketing with a wide reach through a population of many different people, of many different ages, and in many different demographics? Or are you going for a narrow market, where you are going to market your products, services, brands, and website through a non-diverse population, perhaps of a single age, demographic, or interest? Whether you are casting a wide net or lassoing in your market, you need to identify its size and identity in order to market to it properly. So now that you know yourself, your products, services, brand, and website, along with your market, what else is there left to do? Why, apply your knowledge, of course! You need to do some Internet marketing that will play into your clients? whims and desires. You also need to engage in some viral marketing by getting your name out there. How can you do this? One way is through paid listings. A paid listing is where you pay people to put your URL on a certain list that is available online for people to search through. Another way to do paid listing is to offer paid listing on your site: you can offer, for a fee, a place in the paid listing to people who might be interested in advertising with you, or who might allow for reciprocal linking because you have listed them already. In other words, a paid listing will put your name out there on a list that people who need it will see. It pays to remember that in the web world, your URL is your identity. No one will remember what your website description is, what you call your different website sections, or what you say about certain issues. What they will remember however, is your URL, so if you can get it out there, especially on a paid listing, it will be easier for people to remember you. You can think about it the way you regard billboards: the more billboards you see, the easier it is for you to remember a certain product, service, or brand. Show too many billboards, and you can turn off your potential customers. Show too few, and you end up with a message that is forgotten even before it ripens. Put yourself on the right paid listing and avoid showing up too often. If you do not inundate your customers with images and URLs, you can also let go of the risk that they will ignore you. These are only a few aspects of Internet marketing through paid listings. For more information, talk to a paid listings provider, and work out your budget so that you can have paid listing added to your sources of profit. |