Online marketing » Target Market

Marketing Research Online Firms – 2 Secrets Online Firms Didn’t Tell You

admin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:27:58 +0000

Some Marketing Research Online Firms Just Gets Everything Right! Or Do They?

I know what you’re thinking, if there are marketing research online firms doing this right now then in reality they are ripping you off, right? Not really, its in their DNA that some things are better not to be told.

In my humble opinion, if you knew these secrets you would be reaping as much profits as you want online but you have to have the heart to put these things to work for yourself.

Secret 1: Check The Market Trends And Match Them

We’re not going to dive into a whole topic about what the market wants and needs. Rather what is your target market thinking about now? Well, for instance there is a recession and most people are panicking left and right.

So, what are you going to do about it? Ride the wave! It’s really simple because each business person is looking for a guide so I’m here to help them out in that perspective.

What about you? How can you turn the tides to your favor in terms of market trends? You don’t have to answer this just yet but do keep it in mind when you make your next marketing strategy.

Secret 2: Leverage The Search Engines

I’m hearing some new products about how to advertise online with pay per click and so forth more often than ever. Back a few years ago most Internet marketing experts actually shy away from it and even tells people that it was too costly to market.

Its actually an opportunity to market now due to the insolvent markets especially now in the USA that most people are trying to avoid spending too much. If you’re someone who wants to ‘tighten your belts’ then take this direction instead.

Go to the search engines which are mainly your favorite and then observe how people are ranking online. Then, take the top 5 websites (we want to do this quickly) and see how they are structuring their sites in detail to find out how they rank. You do the same to rank there.

Simple But Not Easy

Sure, you can become almost as powerful as any marketing online research firms when you do these 2 secrets but you can’t do massive marketing campaigns without a specific plan. Use the power of planning your marketing strategy carefully before rolling out your master plan with a proven system.

By: Vern How Chan

What Niche? Getting Started in Online Marketing

admin — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 05:22:07 +0000

Whether you are just starting out for the first time, or adding to an existing internet marketing empire you need to start with a simple marketing plan to find a new niche online that you can develop.

The advantage of the internet is the ability for people to find specific information on narrow topics of interest to them. With hundreds of millions of people searching for everything under the sun, it becomes possible to do target market marketing by narrowly focusing on a lucrative market where there is already demand for products. The trick as a marketer is to identify what niche you can effectively exploit most profitably.

So what is a niche?

A niche market is a subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. Ultimately that means that every product has its own niche, but to start by focusing on the product is generally a mistake.

For niche marketing internet style, it’s best to first identify the niche, and their needs before you get to the product or solution.

So this implies that a niche is a group of people with a common interest. As an example, millions of people will identify themselves as fishermen or women. But within the overall category of fishing, you will find people who when asked are more specific. They will say they are into Deep Sea Fishing, or Trout Fishing, or Bass Fishing, or even Ice Fishing.

Within any of these narrower categories there may be additional categories or sub niches, such as Bass Fishing Boats, Bass Fishing Vacations, or Bass Fishing Tips, etc.

As a marketer, our simple niche marketing strategy calls for us to:

*Seek out a small segment of larger markets

*Identify the needs of the people in that small niche

*Provide specific solutions to those needs

*Selling them solutions to fulfill their demand

Easy enough to say, but how do we identify profitable niches, where people are hungry for solutions?

Market research is the foundation and key to all successful niche marketing programs. It is important to identify and research an appropriate niche before you decide which product or products to sell.

The first step is finding your niche. You want a target audience that is hungry for a solution to a problem they have. And that are willing to pay for a proper solution.

This second point is important. There are hungry niches that are not willing to pay for a solution, particularly where the solution is information. Now there are many niches markets where people will be willing to pay for quality information but not all. You want to avoid a niche market that doesn’t already have competitors selling to them because the odds are they aren’t buyers.

Once you have found a new niche market, you want to understand their problems, trends and behaviors. This means you will need to spend some time learning about the niche, listening and discussing issues that affect them, and research the existing products and vendors that are active in the niche.

The result of your market research and analysis should be a thorough understanding of the niche market, so that you are an actual expert in the niche. This doesn’t mean you need be the most informed person, but clearly the better you understand your new niche market the better.

As part of this new market research you will examine the existing products and services offered and determine their strengths and weaknesses. As you gain familiarity with the niche market you will want to do trend research to see where the niche is going. To the extent there is a trend you clearly want to get in front of it and become its leader.

Where there is no trend you will need to focus on what’s missing? What subset of the niche market is still having a problem that’s not being met.
If such a subset exists, you have found a new niche market.

Perhaps an existing affiliate product is the best product on the market but is not being marketed well. You should be able to market it better than it is now, now that you have a clearer understanding of the niche.

Each journey into finding a niche and creating niche profits is different.
But each successful niche marketing research project seeks to:

* Identify Specific Market Needs

* Identify Price Range of Existing Products in the Market

* Evaluate the Quality and Effectiveness of the Existing Products

* Focus on Understanding the Demographic Base of the Niche

When you are done with your research, you should be able to identify your specific audience, and know exactly what they are looking for. You should be clear on how you can help them meet those needs and have a specific solution to their problems. And finally you should be able to establish a solid case for why they should listen to you, when you offer them your solution.

By: Earl Netwal

Online Network Marketing Success? Okay, I’ll Give You 5 Steps to the Heart of the Matter

admin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:22:56 +0000

Online Network Marketing’s heart of success is continuous list building for an ongoing funnel of qualified leads. Most people are horrible at it. Some completely over analyze everything. Ironically, major “tryers” in the internet world of marketing, assume they know “marketing” and proceed to spam or use hyped up desperation tactics which completely repel others…

Then there are others who actually do a little bit of strategic thinking and create list building strategies and systems that work… easily and simply. I just talked with one of my teammates yesterday, who recruited 39 people into his primary business last month just from article marketing. Another friend uses mainly Facebook in a strategic way and earns an easy six figures annually.

The examples go on and on, just by applying simple daily disciplines that most people dismiss, allowing a consistent flow of qualified, good people coming through a lead capture page using free and proven methods with quality follow-up…

List building doesn’t have to be hard… or hard work, or complicated. List building is one of the easiest and simplest things to do once you learn a couple basic principles of marketing that have been around for MORE decades than I care to remember… it just takes a bit of patience from both the experienced as well as the new marketer. Patience for both the learning curve for each separate strategy you add to your arsenal, and patience to allow the funnel process to grow on it’s own as you do your due diligence.

Here are 5 fundamentals of List Building in our niche that when understood and appreciated, will turn into a seamless, consistent, and fun adventure:

1) Do You Know Your Target Market?

Online Network Marketing “market” is someone who is already in or has been in this industry. The masses are ALWAYS searching for information on how to make money from home and how to do it better. There are gazillions of them. A full 97 of every 100 “network marketers” or “affiliate marketers” are spending more money than they are taking in. They are always looking for information, systems, and training on how to get better at generating traffic, building a list, and making sales.

They are always looking for the “better mousetrap” and because of the internet, they are considering or already in, more than one or two programs and will be quitting and replacing those with a new set each and every two to three months. ATTRACT THEM. They are everywhere.

2.) Your target prospects are NEVER looking for you to “pitch” them on your wonderful “program” or product…NEVER EVER!! So stop leading with your primary business. It hasn’t worked yet and it will not ever work.

Lead with what they are truly looking for… “How To” Information on getting better at marketing and making money…How to generate traffic…How to convert to Qualified leads…How to build a large list…How to access internet marketing training…How to plug into a duplicable system with step by step tutorials…etc.

3) You MUST follow-up with informative and converting emails as well as phone calls. Yup! I did say “Phone Calls”! Many people think because they’re in Online Network Marketing that it will ALL happen on the internet… NOT!!!

High Tech, Yes, but “High Touch” as well… Extremely Important. Return your calls. Return your emails. Be authentic and real and genuine. They are normal people and so are you. The internet is full of hype, fakeness, lies and pretenders. People have uncanny perception… and they sniff out a fake a mile away…

4) Make sure you have a system where even “newbies” can come in and earn and learn. Step by step training, with funded proposals to allow them to make money even before they recruit into their primary business.

A program teaching all forms of online marketing including blogs, articles, emails, social media, video, as well as payed strategies. Helping them learn to deliver valuable content which builds credibility, trust and rapport. Allowing them to learn what they want, when they want, able to master one technique at a time.

5) Use Automated Systems to do heavy lifting of the sales presentation and continuous follow-up for you. Your BUYERS list will grow. Plug those people into the system and training. Leaders will rise and some people will upgrade.

All you focus on is advertising with the skills you develop, building relationships with the people on your list, and guiding them to decision. With each and every step above, have integrity, be an example, be of service, and provide value. As always, Build and Become Servant Leaders.

By: Sherri LeBeuf

Online Video Marketing – How To Do It Effectively

admin — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 04:38:42 +0000

Today, as so many companies and entrepreneurs are looking towards online video websites as places to publish content to attract their audience, it’s very important to understand the basic principles of using online video marketing sites.

Most people are already familiar with YouTube, but there are several other very high traffic, online video sites such as metacafe, dailymotion, revver and blip.

Here are some essential items you should understand before you start to publish videos on online video sites

Always try to use videos that give valuable content to their viewers – Some business people mistakenly think you can just put any advertisement on a video site, but nothing could be further from the truth. Each video should give some valuable information to the target market, or start a new topic of discussion

Conduct some market research on the video sites before posting your first video – It’s a good idea to spend some time typing your market’s main keyword into the search engine on the site, to find out what other videos are already there. Then write down the profile names of the most successful users in your niche. Maybe later on you can make a joint venture or have some kind of collaboration with these people.

Understand that each video site has a community built into it – You should respect the other members and it’s recommended that you post positive comments to your competitors’ videos. First and foremost you need to be a member of the community, offering feedback, ideas etc. and only then should you consider being a marketer and begin to promote your own videos and business.

Have a strong ‘call to action’ at the end of the video – It’s a waste of time making an excellent video if you don’t include a strong call to action at the end of it. A powerful call to action will give viewers information about the next step after watching the video, and where they can find more information.

Commit yourself to creating several videos – You should have a clear strategy for creating and posting several videos. Your profile page on the video sites will look empty if it only has one video on it. Therefore, spend time planning the creation of a series of short videos, rather than only one long video.

Online Video Marketing is one of the most effective and fastest growing methods of marketing right now. Hopefully these tips and ideas will help you with your online video marketing.

Copyright (c) 2008 Lasse Rouhiainen

By: Lasse Rouhiainen

Why No Online Marketing is a Failure (It’s Only a Test!)

admin — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:55:34 +0000

Just yesterday a colleague of mine, whom I’ll call “Sandy,” asked my advice about marketing her new information product online. She saw some of my banner ads on a particular Web site, and wanted to know if she should put her own up there.

I said they didn’t work that well for me, but I suggested she try it, because it was a site often visited by her target market.

“But how do I know it will work for me?” she said.

“You don’t,” I answered.

“What?” she said.

“Test it!” I said. “Try it and see how it works for you.”

Test, Test, and Test Again

I then shared with her one of the most important concepts I’ve learned over the past five years of studying Internet marketing millionaires.

Here are people who have each made millions from selling information online.

But they didn’t just become millionaires out of the blue with their first idea and their first marketing strategy. They had failures. In fact, after talking with them, I learned they had MANY failures.

I looked at these people, and tried to imagine them “failing.” It was hard. After all, there they were, teaching us what works.

But they’d failed many times. They tried something, it didn’t work, and then they moved on to another strategy. They TESTED things, and they still always do test things.

If I tried something online and it didn’t work, I saw it as a failure. But they just see it as a test.

It’s Time to Reprogram Your Mind

In school, if we didn’t have the right answer, we “failed.” But in marketing, that’s complete bull.

In marketing, if we don’t get the right answer, we LEARN. We learn what does not work and where not to spend our marketing money anymore. That’s damn valuable information!

Now, I know this concept may seem like a “duh” to you, because it did to me too. I heard stories over and over about testing, but every time I did, my mind answered back, “Of course … I know that.”

Isn’t it funny how our minds assume we know things? But we don’t really know something unless we’re DOING it, day after day.

I thought I knew what was working and what wasn’t working, but how could I when I wasn’t tracking anything?

And also, how could I take others’ marketing advice without seeing if their advice was really working for ME?

Tracking Is Your Key to Riches

So I started tracking and testing.

Five years ago, I couldn’t even tell you how many visitors I was getting to my site every month. Now I can tell you not only how many unique visitors I get, but how many of them on an average buy my product, how many of them sign up for my e-zines, the maximum I should spend to get a visitor to my site, and more. Knowing this information has helped me TRIPLE my income over the last two years.

Tracking and testing is not as hard as you think. The beauty of any type of direct marketing, especially online marketing, is your ability to track results.

Now, in Sandy’s example above, she needs some type of ad tracker program that assigns a special link to her ad. Even better, this program should be linked to her shopping cart, so she can see how many clicks directly turned into sales. (For this purpose, I highly recommend AutoWebBusiness (autowebbusiness.com)

For her Web site, she should track how many visitors she has each month compared with how many sales she has each month. Her reporting program should tell her how many unique visitors she has on her site (not just “hits,” which is useless). And if it doesn’t tell her that, she should use WebStat (webstat.com) — an inexpensive program that makes it very easy to read these reports.

Sandy should extend this tracking mentality to every type of marketing she does — even her free teleclasses. For every teleclass she teaches, she should track how many of those folks sign up for her e-zine and how many buy her product right away.

See where I’m going with this? The numbers don’t lie, and once you start seeing the light, marketing will become much more painless. Just stop doing what doesn’t work, and put more energy into what does.

THEN, you won’t look back and see any failures. You’ll only see “tests.”

By: Ali Brown

Online Marketing – Sell More When Buyers Are Truly Desperate

admin — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:19:11 +0000

To create information products, online marketers have to identify buyers who really, really want a solution to their problems. They are the folks who will pay because their need is great.

By way of analogy, think of what happens when you get a headache at a busy airport. You know that a simple headache pain reliever costs a few pennies for each capsule at your home drugstore. When you are waiting to get on a plane, you might be willing to pay several dollars for a small bottle of that same pain reliever.

Alternatively think of what happens when you get a flat tire. You’re tired, cold, hungry and scared. How much will you pay someone to change your tire…especially if your spare has gone flat?

Service professionals often don’t recognize desperation among their own clients. For instance, my neighbor wants to promote her new business as a private shopper to executive women. At first, she was afraid her service would be considered a luxury in a tough economy.

But when she did some research, she realized some buyers were truly desperate. One potential client had held a high-powered job for ten years. Now downsized, she needed a new wardrobe for interviews. She had no idea where to shop, let alone how to save money. Another potential client needed a special outfit for a talk she was asked to give at the last minute. Still another needed to look great for the wedding of a son who was marrying into a wealthy family.

Desperate buyers don’t always need money. They are rarely physically ill. They have problems that seem mundane till you face them yourself.

You can test a target market to see if the buyers are truly desperate. Are they experiencing anger or frustration? Do they feel helpless, scared and alone? Do they experience intense pain, physical or mental? Do they need to find a solution fast? For instance, if you can’t get a checking account, every day will bring more inconveniences and hassles.

By: Cathy Goodwin

How Online Marketing is a Lot Like Working Out

admin — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:29:28 +0000

I like running. It’s my quiet, me-time for thinking. And believe it or not, I actually enjoy doing squats (that might be more because I know how good they are for my butt!). But even though I enjoy it and know I should be working out most days, I get busy and it doesn’t always happen. And my tendency is to try to make up for a whole week’s worth of exercise in one or two sessions.

Unfortunately, that’s just not the way it works. Weight loss comes from a consistent calorie deficit. If I try to lose weight by working out for 2 hours once a week, my results will never be as good as they could be if I worked out even just 20 minutes a day 5 times a week. That consistency sets up a system in my body to burn more calories all the time.

The same thing goes for online marketing. Posting a couple posts on your blog one day while you’re thinking about it, or tweeting a bunch one morning and then disappearing for a week will not get you regular traffic to your site. Nor will it help you make connections with other bloggers, possible JVs, or potential clients.

Online marketing, done regularly, can do wonders for your web traffic and filling your client funnel. And it doesn’t have to be hugely time consuming. Here are a few ways you can fit it into your schedule

Take one day per month to write several longer articles (think: 500-700 words). If you’re keeping a list of ideas, this probably won’t take you much more than an hour or two. But don’t do anything with them just yet. Once a week, take one of those articles, and break it into 2 or 3 blog posts. Preschedule these into your blog. Should only take about 15 minutes. Once every week or two, take the previous week’s (full) article, and post it to 2 or 3 articles sites. Should only take about 20-30 minutes. Set up an RSS reader with the blog feeds from industry leaders, people you’d like to partner with in the future, or blogs that have a similar target market to yours. Once a day, find one post that you can comment on. Now, you can’t just say “Great post!” You have to add something to the conversation. But this shouldn’t get too overwhelming if you know you’re only looking for one to comment on. Time? Probably no more than 10 minutes. Use a service like SocialOomph.com or Hootsuite.com to schedule in some tips, links, articles etc. to go out throughout the week on Twitter. Time? Maybe 30 minute to schedule the whole week. Then you’re maintaining visibility, even if you haven’t stopped by yet that day. When you do stop by, you can focus more on conversation and relationship building, knowing that you’ve already shared some great content. If you are very clear on your purpose for social networking, you should be able to come up with ideas pretty easily. And since you’ll be looking at your RSS Feeds daily, you’ll be able to grab good articles to share quickly too.

So while it’s tempting to tell yourself that you’re on top of your online marketing because you took 3 hours one day last month to do some, you’ll be a lot more happy with yourself and your results if you make it happen regularly. You’ll get that web traffic sleek and sexy in no time! Now I gotta get going. I need to work out!

By: Rebecca Zwar

Online Product Marketing – Real Ways to Market

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:54:23 +0000

Online product marketing is the most essential skill sets needed in order for you business to succeed online. You can have the best business model and product ever, but it will not matter unless you can get it in front of your target market’s eyes. In this article I will explain some different types of online product marketing.

Article marketing can make your website jump to the front page of search engine results just because of the back links it can provide. This online product marketing method also has the added benefit of attracting targeted visitors to your website. You receive visitors when people read your articles, and then click the link in the resource box in the bottom. This form of online marketing takes time to build up, but it can provide large streams of sustainable traffic (potential customers) over time.

Pay per click (PPC) marketing is probably the most popular form of online advertising these days. This is both a good and bad thing. The advantage of PPC marketing is that you can generate massive amounts of extremely targeted visitors to your website in almost no time at all. The disadvantage of this form of marketing is that there is potential to have large losses with it. You must know the right techniques to use with this form of marketing. Often, there will be new online marketers who jump into this form of marketing because of its fast results. They end up losing a lot of money.

Another form of online product marketing is buying bulk traffic. This is the easiest way to get enormous amounts of visitors to your website. However, they will not be targeted towards your specific product or business opportunity. Using this method of online marketing results in extremely low conversion rates because of the lack of relevance your visitors have with your website.

By: Shawn J.

Handmade Jewelry Business – Online Marketing

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:54:56 +0000

Online marketing is the business of choice for many people who want to work for themselves. They want to do what they want, when they want to do it. And the best part is you can do it wherever you want. You can be in your garage or your basement or living by the sea; it absolutely doesn’t matter! What does matter is to make money your website has to be found by the right people.

Whether you are blogging and collecting money from affiliate marketing or actually have a product to sell makes no difference, your website must attract the right target market. Online marketing is not any different than marketing 101, just more complicated! Instead of marketing a product you are now marketing your website. Is doesn’t matter if you make the best product in the world if no one can find it!

When we made our first website a few years ago, we sat down with a website designer and he made the website just how we wanted it. We were busy with our wholesale handmade jewelry business and didn’t focus on the website, it was just there. We had invested money not time to understand how to make the website work for us. It was like printing business cards before you know what you are going to sell, pointless!

In the last six months we have devoted a great deal of time to learn about internet marketing and to develop our website. It takes a lot of time, but research is the key to success. Knowing your target market and creating a marketing strategy are very important. This is not an overnight process; it takes time to find out what works and doesn’t work. It is a work in progress; every day we learn something new and try to apply it to our situation.

Six months ago you couldn’t find our website unless you typed in our URL. Now we are in the top ten for several of our keyword phrases and seeing improvement every day for the more competitive phrases. Every day we get inquiries about our handmade jewelry and unique gifts. The world is slowly opening up to our website and the future is looking fabulous!

By: Jennifer Hisir

Online Marketing For Professional Services to Serve Multiple Markets Effectively

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:59:38 +0000

Many of my copywriting clients are smart, even gifted. And like most gifted people, their talents spill over into many areas. When we meet to discuss their copy, they want to know if they need multiple websites. They don’t want to confuse their own clients because they’ve heard that old saying, “When you confuse, you lose.” (OK, I think I made that up, but it’s still pretty good.)

So what do you do if you have several different products or markets? It’s a question of strategy – not design. My comments here are very general. Your situation may be different.

(1) You have several products, courses and coaching options. All are targeted to the same market.

This one’s pretty straightforward. Typically you would have one website. Your home page and/or menu would give visitors an understanding of the range of what you offer. Your challenge is to motivate each visitor to find the most appropriate offering: class, home study course, ebook, or mentoring program.

“Same market” means they have similar needs, similar responses to marketing and similar motivations to buy. Let’s say you’re a psychotherapist with offices in Chicago and Miami. You probably don’t need two sites, unless (for example) you see weight loss clients in Chicago and fear of water clients in Miami.

(2) You have a complex offering, involving motivation, overwhelm, value systems and organization.

Most likely you need to brainstorm an umbrella concept to integrate these ideas. For instance, you might position yourself as the solution to challenges faced by entrepreneurs who grew too fast. Chances are you don’t have to discuss every single part of your offering. Your target market wants to answer this question, “What kind of results can I realistically expect?”

(3) You have two totally different offerings, appealing to totally different markets.

A networking event participant introduced herself as a real estate agent who also makes jewelry. This one’s too much of a stretch. I want a real estate agent who lives, breathes and dreams about finding homes for her clients!

Exception: This agent might integrate her businesses by positioning herself as a real estate agent who relates to artists. When I lived in New Mexico, I remember a newcomer saying, “I loved working with my agent because he understands what artists need.”

By: Cathy Goodwin, Ph.D.