Final Steps Which Grow A Winner

Last article we learned about the foundation steps you must take before you pass go and before you collect hopefully more than $500. These steps were the initial mental and building block steps in this sample internet marketing plan.

But if you build it will they come? I think we all know by now the answer is no. A web property without promotional and monetization strategies planned out before execution will fail miserably. So then….now I would like to walk you through the part of this simple marketing plan which will make the difference between “Joe the Plumber” showing up to your site or not. Joe the plumber is just a name I chose which you may realize simply means prospect.

Never mind…something to do with these 2008 US elections.

The first thing we need to do once our site is primed and ready is promote it. This is the difference between top marketers and amateurs. I have seen many projects fail due to improper web site promotion and a poor use of business plans.

I have listed promotional methods from free methods towards paid rather than the opposite because most starting a business won’t have the capital to really go after paid advertising.
The old saying about content is one which I will not repeat again for you to shake your head at and instead I will say content is a “distant cousin of the king”. The king is coming…soon.

The point of my ramblings was simply that web content is the first method to use to gain prospects to your web site and if used properly is hugely beneficial. I am sure you have heard of search engine optimization and maybe latent semantic indexing. If not I will discuss it at length in future posts. Web content or the unique information you write about on your site is crucial to gaining oodles of free search engine traffic.

The next thing you can do to gain that free traffic is to optimize your site and the content you create for your site. This involves many smaller steps which lead to the larger marketing strategy known as SEO.

Now I know everyone has undoubtedly heard of social marketing or web 2.0. If not you will learn about it more than anything else on this site as it has suddenly become far more important than most marketers could have imagined three years ago. At that time it was seen by most as a waste of time or a tactic and not nearly as the important factor it is now.

You will learn how to get free social traffic by creating your own unique marketing plan template which I will present when we get to social marketing articles.

The last free method for gaining massive traffic and sales to your site products and services is affiliate marketing. Anyone serious about exploding their sales must lobby independent affiliates to promote their business. This blog will present all the coverage about the affiliate campaign as we draw closer to the promotions.

Once you have built a solid free base of votes from free site prospects and social voting methods we will attempt to go after the campaign dollars and actually be paying to get paid.
In other words, using methods like pay per click and media buying to drive prospects to your site. I have simply labeled these methods pay per visitor.

Paying for votes…I mean visitors, is a targeted and a very fast route to sales. Each of these methods of promotion will be discussed at length in future articles.

The end game of our internet business is above everything else to make a profit and ascend the to the throne of the King or was it President? At any rate, content is not king! Money is for crying out loud and how do you increase your monetization and sell more?

Repeat after me:

I Will Increase Conversions. I Will Increase Conversions.

So this means then that conversion is king is it not? Well all this nonsense of what is king, queen, checkers, and chess is grounds for revolt. Let’s just not talk politics anymore we are marketers not debaters. There are four major things we can track and improve to increase our financial well being:

• Ad Copy
• Web Analytics
• Email Promotion
• Market Surveys

Did you really think I was going to try and stuff the ballot box with these four at the last minute and run this page over? Na…join me on my next article as I go over why these are the end all and be all of the King as this simple marketing plan blueprint continues…

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

A Sample Marketing Plan Can Make Sense

Next Article: Finalizing Marketing Plan

“The Case of The Diamond Shreddies”

This is a Curios marketing video dealing with a product known as Shreddies (amoung others). The point of this video is comical truth and I want you to understand how a simple and really quite stupid and comical change to a products packaging and name can make all the difference in the world to the success of your product.

There are several elements going on here to take note of:

1) Comical Marketing which shows us the inside of what an actual market survey research company does. They do these exact horrific, boring and weirdly hilarious types of tests on their marketplaces. Why do this? Of course this is a satire video about something which they would definitely do in almost this stupid a way. The reason for doing this is to test how the human psyche and perception of something changes with various elements.

2) Elements of a product’s marketing presentation include Packaging, Positioning, Name and Presentation among others. Can you see as silly as this all is how it is actually quite a real phenomenon?

Think about it… Would you prefer “Diamond Shreddies” in the new box with the new name? Or would you just buy plain old Shreddies if you saw both and didn’t know the difference at a store?

I would personally buy Diamond Shreddies and these people seemed to agree. But as far as the commercials are concerned I would say “HUH????”

The Shreddies part of this video begins at: 11:57 into this video by Rory Sutherland at his TED Talk July 2009. This is a brilliant video and really uncovers the how marketing using intangible value by changing perception.

This Curios section is just an additional fun area to post some meaningless and hilarious marketing comedy as well as some truly insightful things which don’t quite fit anywhere else. Oh ya and some political videos about how some companies think it’s ok to sell you things which will hurt you.

Curios Marketing Strategies Can Make Sense
Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog