To change the marketing world variety of tools and strategies are being used by Internet marketers so to lead their niche. Facebook is one amongst these tools which provides a universal platform to people to connect with their friends, paste and share their unlimited numbers of photographs.

In broader-sense, Facebook has become a business networking podium for advertising and promoting products and services. You can create your profile here but after signing up. Sign-up procedure is very simple you just need to enter some important personal information as: first and last name, e-mail address, password and security check numbers. This multi folded platform can offer you finding friends, profile information and profile pictures options.

Besides this Facebook marketing strategies from business promotion point of view can add value to your advertisement and delight customers online. Internet marketing tactics using Facebook can provide you certain options for your business promotion as following:

1. Facebook advertisement option will allow you to easily target your niche market and customers. Because of the demographics features Facebook offers to its marketers, you can target your advertisements to your specific customer based on age, gender, location, education level and many other specifications.

2. You can create your business Facebook ad or can advertise business via social ads here. For attracting other you can add both text and graphics in your ads. This great source is also offered you a platform to advertise your entire web page.

3. You can optimize your business ads on Facebook therefore to maximize advertisement results here. Such medium will give you an opportunity to approaching your target customer and you will have the ability to track visitors growth with this Facebook’s option help.

4. Marketing initiatives can be moved forward to life on Facebook. Facebook will allow you to estimate your advertisement budget. Moreover, for the ideal ad development and integrated business solutions you can contact the Facebook team. These all relevant advertising options are available to hold your targeted audience.

5. For self service solutions see the Facebook ad page. But advertisement can be made by reading sponsored groups, Facebook ads and promoting causes on Facebook using different practical steps.

6. You can get advantage from free marketing here like: networks, groups, profile page and so on.
If you are out to attract prospective customers and develop your online presence and exposure, you owe it to yourself and the financial future of your business to learn everything you can about Internet marketing.

Want to learn more Internet marketing techniques on how to build a successful businesses online? If so, read about and download my brand new free ebook 27 Habits of Internet Marketing Super Stars.

Ask some businesses about radio advertising and they’ll tell you it’s the greatest investment they ever made while others will tell you it was a complete waste of time and money. So why does radio work for some and not for others? What’s the secret to successful radio advertising?

Know this: Radio can be a major player in your advertising mix if you know how to
do it and I’m about to give you the secrets to successful radio advertising so read
on.

First, write down a detailed description of who your core customers are. You can do
this by looking at prior sales or just by knowing your products and services. Are
they women in their 30′s and 40′s who have a good disposable income? Are they
men in their early 20′s who are into sports and cars? Figure out who your target
customer base is and then you’ll be one step closer to figuring out how to reach
them.

Second, give a listen to the radio stations in your market besides the ones you
usually listen to. Remember, just because you listen to a certain station every
morning doesn’t mean your potential customers do. Most stations have a pretty
definitive type of music or format they follow which gives them their listening base.
You don’t have to be a media buyer to know that certain stations will be right for
your targeted consumer while others will be way off the chart. For example, if your
customer base is women in their 30′s and 40′s, then you can rule out formats such
as rap and sports, right? If you live in a major market like Atlanta or Chicago there
may be as many as 30 to 40 stations on the radio dial so you’ll have plenty to
choose from. If you live in a smaller market you’ll have less stations to choose from
but you’ll still have a good selection.

Third, figure out your budget. How can you do this if you know nothing about radio
costs? One way is to contact an advertising agency who places radio on a regular
basis. Most likely they’ll have the pulse on the market you’re in and if not, can
gather enough information to help you decide how much you’ll need to spend to
make radio effective. If you’re hesitant to call an ad agency right away, the next best
thing to do is call two or three of the stations you’ve chosen yourself. Ask to speak
to the sales manager and let them know you’re trying to gather information for a
radio buy. Most likely they will assign you an account executive to work up a plan.
Keep in mind that a good advertising agency may be able to negotiate for better
rates and added incentives due to their relationship with the stations and their
experience but at the very least, this will give you a good starting point . Don’t be
overly concerned if you discover that you cannot afford the top stations in the
market. There are usually several stations in each market that share listeners and
formats and their costs will vary greatly. The rates you receive will be based on
many factors including the time of day you want to advertise, how soon you want to
be on the air, and the “avails” or inventory the stations have at the time you want to
advertise. “Drive time” is the term used by radio to mean just that: the times
listeners spend driving in their cars listening. Typically this is 6am to 10am and
4pm to 7pm. These are the coveted listener day parts for most stations and they can
be very expensive. But do you need to buy these times? Again, by defining your
target customer, you can determine the best times to reach them. There are also
spots known as “broad rotators” that can be equally as effective and less expensive
because you allow the station to place them over a longer period of the day for
example, 6am to midnight.

Fourth, and I feel this is equally if not the most important aspect of radio
advertising: the message. While some stations brag about playing thirty minutes to
an hour of uninterrupted music, this can be bad for you as an advertiser because it
also means that your radio commercial or spot will be slammed with six or more
other spots at one time in order to get all their advertisers on the air. I don’t know
about you, but if I endure three or four spots in a row and the fifth one doesn’t
catch my ear, I’m punching the button. Therefore your spot has to be clever. It has
to make the listener want to hear your message. Remember that the spot they hear
may be the first time they learn about your business so it needs to catch them right
away. I have found that humor, when done well, can be very effective. It’s always
amazed me how some companies will devote so much time and money into making
sure their radio buy is right but devote so little time to the message itself. Sure,
they’re on the airwaves alot, but are the listeners paying attention? Without an
effective ear-grabbing ad, it’s money down the drain. That’s why it would be wise to
let a professional write and produce your spot. The radio stations may even
volunteer to do this for you for free but remember, you get what you pay for.

The final piece of advice I will give you is this: repetition, repetition, repetition. It
doesn’t matter how clever your ad is or how well you placed the buy if you do not
have the budget to stay on the air consistently so make sure when putting together
your budget you think long term.
Consumers are bombarded with so many messages every day including television,
the internet, billboards, mailers, matchbook covers, even some grocery store floors
and elevators now carry advertising, unless you stay in their ears on a regular basis,
they will forget about you.

Utilize these basic rules and soon when someone asks you if your radio is effective
you can reply, “Yes it’s been wonderful!” because you’ve learned the secret to
making radio advertising work.

Welcome to part 1 of a 3 part mini-series. In today’s article, we are going to discuss every single reason top producing real estate agents are not giving you business. We are set to cover some ground breaking and career changing topics, so grab onto to something and hold on tight.

Ok, so I kid a bit with that last statement, but getting back to business, let’s pull out our microscopes a bit and take a look at the current state of affairs. How is business? Are you, like so many other loan officers across the U.S. feeling the sting?

Are you finding appraisals to be more unpredictable than ever due to falling house values? How about your approval ratios? Are you tired of hearing “no” on files that just 10 – 12 months ago would have been approved without a hitch?

Many loan officers have attempted to build a more stable and reliable source of leads for themselves in light of these trends. Unfortunately, many have been subject to quite the rude awakening! As a Marketing coach and trainer for loan officers, I speak to 175 – 200+ loan officers all across the U.S. each and every week.

While I’ve heard nearly every complaint in the book, here is a quick look at the most common:

- Realtors are not interested in what I have to say

- They are all working with someone already
- They all seem to have ‘in house’ lenders already

- My realtor partners never have any leads

- It’s too much work
- They expect too much of me
- I get hung up on more often than not

Ok, I have to ask… Did you see even a little of yourself in those complaints? Have you ever felt any of that frustration that comes with working hard for little or no results? If so, pay close attention to what is coming next!

Reason #1

There’s a reason you’re not closing more loans with real estate agents. Contrary to popular belief, it is not because “marketing to realtors doesn’t work.” Wipe that thought out of your mind, because that type of thinking is dangerous. In fact, there are plenty of loans officers I recently trained, closing an extra 4, 5 even 6 or more loans per month just from real estate agent referrals. Would an extra 48 – 72 closings per year be nice?

Just last week I spoke to a loan officer who tried unsuccessfully for 4 months to get more than 1 loan from a group of agents he was targeting. In just 45 days of changing his focus, and making small changes to his approach, he is now at 5 referrals and counting.

See, the key lies in these 3 truths:

1 – You are not selling loans, so stop trying

Let’s transport ourselves inside of the brains of our target market: real estate agents… Ready? Here we go:

“Ring ring! Ring ring! Oh geez… I have 8 minutes to finish responding to these 2 emails before I have to do a walk through. Oh well, could be an ad call, better answer it. Hello?”

Now let’s listen to the conversation, and what the agent is thinking. LO stands for loan officer and REA for Real Estate Agent:

LO: Hello, my name is ______ and I’m a loan officer with ______….

REA: NOT ANOTHER ONE!

LO: Anyway, I’m calling you today because I wanted to tell you about our latest loan programs that allow us to…

REA: 6 minutes and 30 seconds before I have to go. I still have to reply to the 2 email requests, oh, and I need to sign off on the Henderson file, and I hope I don’t forget to bring that copy of the contract I promised to drop off at the title company…

LO: I also wanted to talk to you about some ways I can help you build some business. If you have any customers who need my services, I’d like a chance to show you how great my service really is…

REA: Pfff!!! Yea, like I haven’t heard that one before. Does this guy really think I’m just going to hand him a customer? I don’t know this guy from Adam!

Ok, let’s stop here for a moment. Unless this agent were truly desperate for a loan officer, was there a single good reason why he/she should give this caller a referral? Really, give this some thought. I’ve worked with thousands of loan officers all across the U.S. , and I would guesstimate that at best, less than 2% of them had anything that even resembled a differentiator when we first met.

Why is that? Making phone calls such as this one will all but guarantee your failure, or at the very most, assure that only the most desperate of real estate agents respond in a favorable fashion. (You know the kind… Those without any referrals to give anyway! Not what you are looking for I’d assume)

The most important point to take away from this article is this: “You must give proper respect to what it is you’re selling. In order to do this, you must first know what it is you are selling!” In other words, something small such as a candy bar, or a magazine subscription can be sold door to door, in a grocery store line etc.

However, how would you respond if a random stranger knocked on your door and asked you come on out and buy his car. It would seem kind of odd would it not? Why? Because most of us understand that larger sales that impact our wallet, our lifestyle or our career require a sales process. The keyword here is “process.”

Most loan officers seem to be so desperate for loans these days that they have decided to just skip the whole “process” thinking they can just call up a bunch of realtors, throw a few canned lines at the agents (That they have heard hundreds if not thousands of times already), and then get angry and rant that “marketing to realtors doesn’t work” when it all blows up in their faces.

Remember, you must respect the sales process! You are insulting your target agents without it. Assuming that someone’s business is so mundane that he/she can just throw their hard earned clients at a random voice on the other end of the phone is certainly not the best way to gain confidence and credibility.

(Which is another side tip for you. Stop trying to sell everything over the phone! It will rarely succeed. Use the phone to dangle your bait a bit, get the nibble, and then get out… I’ve seen to many lo’s talk themselves into an appointment, and then right back out of it)

Rather, they will immediately peg you as just another inexperienced loan officer suffering from commission breath. (I didn’t make that line up, I promise! This came directly from the mouth of a top producing agent I interviewed years ago)

Keep in mind you have interrupted this persons day, they are most likely quite busy, and chances are good that you are at least the 3rd loan officer to call and ask for business today. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m an easy going guy, and even I would not be at my friendliest in those circumstances.

Going into such a situation knowing the odds, and the likely scenario, wouldn’t you want to be prepared with an excellent high conversion strategy that is packed full of value added statements and true benefits/ differentiators? My vote has always been an extra loud “YES!”

To wrap up item #1 on our list, let’s consider 1 more thing. When you take the loan officer out of the picture, 99% of the loans are the same! Money is money… We all pull money from more or less the same lenders, with similar if not the same terms. The 1 primary factor that is different though, is you!

New lenders can be signed up; new terms can be negotiated… Sales letters and flyers and lead programs can all be purchased by your competitors. The 1 and only thing that cannot be duplicated is you.

You and your skill-sets are what make you unique. By using an approach such as the one detailed above, you are shortchanging yourself and pretending to say: “I’m no different than anyone else! But pick me anyway!”

Not the message any of us want to give off right? Now that you know what factors need to be addressed, are you prepared to take action today, and to do something about it? Do you take your career serious enough to take decisive action right now, and not a second later? – Continued in Part 2

A good marketing strategy is not to follow the norm. Rather than doing what everyone else is doing be creative and come up with your own style of advertising. Markets shift constantly thus you should keep updating your advertising tactics. As a marketer, you need to keep abreast with what is happening as regard to market trends.

This mostly applies when it comes to radio and television commercial advertisements. These are the adverts where the music you play will matter a lot and if your target audience will be impressed and keep re-watching the advertisements. Something to avoid is following fashion or forcing the target audience to listen to your music preferences in the adverts.

As a business owner advise your marketing agents to include new songs in your advertisements. They can even be more creative and reinvent the songs to sound appealing to customers. By doing this, you will ensure that your business brand brings freshness in the market thus edging out your competitors.

When choosing the music to play, marketers should make sure that the words underline the message that is being passed on by the commercial advertisement. The music beats should rhyme with the mood of the advert in order to keep your target market glued and also get the message.

All marketing strategies need to more than anything fulfill the business brand promise that is if they are to have a long lasting effect and thus business promotion. All said and done, adverting is a craft that needs to be constantly worked upon so as to develop. Business owners should provide a platform that encourages innovation especially in the marketing department.

If you have ever built a website for your business you know how important free web advertising is. Web advertising is the best way to effectively increase website traffic.

It is common knowledge that on the Internet free website advertising techniques such as press releases and article writing are some of the best ways to get targeted web traffic to your business’s website. The reason for this is that unless you’re a large company that has a large advertising budget, promoting a website with advertising campaigns on the Internet such as banner advertisements or pay per click (PPC) isn’t a sound strategy. As soon as you quit paying, the traffic stops.

In addition to getting some additional traffic to your website, using free web advertising provides you with an advantage over many paid methods such as PPC because it will build back links which provides value in the long term. Search engines such as Bing and Yahoo frequently will only index your pages after your website has some links that are incoming. Obviously, if you website isn’t indexed there won’t be any website traffic recurring from the search engines. The search engines will usually account for more that 80 percent of you’re the traffic on your website. A back link will run on autopilot and will drive traffic to your website.

Serving a dual role, article writing will provide free content to publishers and free website promotion for the owners of the website. This needs to be your first selection to advertise for free on the Internet. Usually, at the end of each article there is place for you to include a link back to your website and a short profile of you and your business. If you submit an article that is well written to their distribution services your article may get selected by other publishers and then republished which will increase your back links and your presence on the Internet.

However, it can be difficult to get free website traffic by submitting and article. You have to get the reader to actively look for your website for more information. In order to do that you should only invest your time in creating relevant, high quality articles. You have to persuade the reader tactfully to find your website. Article writing is a free web advertising technique that is very popular with marketers on the Internet and has worked well for numerous people.

Writing a good press release often gets overlooked. The reasons for this is usually that the owners of the websites often believe that a press release is only for big business and are inappropriate for their small business. Other people believe that it takes professional writing skills to write a press release. However, while it is true that a press release needs to be professionally written, you can always have a professional writer write it for you without you having to learn any additional writing skills.

Basically, a press release is simply an article that is designed to attract the attention of the media. A press release is also designed to announce a service or website release, product launches, or other newsworthy events. You can use it to promote major updates to your website or contests. There are free press release services from various websites. Although free web advertising can help your business to become profitable, but if you want much better results promoting your business’s website, it will cost a little money.

Direct response radio advertising, at its core, works in the same way regardless of what type of business you are in. Whether you own a direct-to-consumer model business, a retail business, a web business, or some combination thereof, direct response radio advertising can help you grow. And grow profitably. The fundamentals of direct response radio, then, must start with a discussion of how radio advertising works within the context of a basic business model. The purpose of this article is to convey the fundamentals of direct response radio advertising that apply across businesses.

First, Two Important Concepts

Throw out all you think you know about advertising, radio advertising, and especially direct response advertising. It’s best to begin with a clean slate, a blank whiteboard so-to-speak. There are two important concepts I want to introduce before moving forward.

Concept One: Radio as A Highway From Your Business to Your Potential Customers

Think of radio advertising as a 5,000 lane highway from your business to groups (station audiences) of your potential customers. The many lanes on this highway are the many different radio stations and radio networks that are available for you air your radio advertisement. It is on these “lanes” that you send your message to your customers.

The lanes are clustered in such a way that they reach groups collections of customers who have similar tastes and demographic profiles. Therefore, some of these lanes lead to groups that have a high concentration of people who match your target customer profile. As a result, advertising on those lanes (stations) is more profitable than others with a lower concentration of your target customer profile. These groupings are the radio formats, which are used in radio advertising to enhance the efficiency of, or return on, advertising efforts. For more about radio formats, see our summary at http://www.strategicmediainc.com/radio-advertising.php.

Concept Two: Radio Advertising is a Profit-Driver, Not a Cost Center

At this juncture, the one thing many business people can’t seem to put out of their mind is the one of “how much does it cost” to advertise on radio. We’ve written extensively about this question because it is one of the most common that we get. The problem is that embedded in this question is the presupposition that radio advertising is a cost. The concept that one needs to fully grasp is that radio advertising is not a cost center. That is, it does not stand alone without any relation to revenue or profit. It is detrimental to think of direct response radio advertising as a cost because that leads to managing as though it’s a cost, which means minimizing or eliminating it. Contrast this with managing it like it’s an investment, and maximizing the return you realize on it.

Direct response radio advertising – by its very definition – is a profit-driver. If it’s not driving a profit, it would not exist – or at the very least it would not be called direct response radio advertising but instead “brand” or “awareness” advertising. Profitability is a fundamental aspect of direct response radio advertising.

On To the Fundamentals

Now that we’ve cleared our minds and allowed for two basic concepts about how to think about radio advertising, let’s move on to the meat of the fundamentals of direct response radio advertising.

The Basic Formula

We’ll begin with the basic formula involved in all direct response advertising:

You buy placement in radio media to air your radio ad, which gets your message broadcast to a certain number of people. This results in a cost per person reached with your message. In advertising this is known as CPM, or cost per thousand impressions of your ad.

Some percentage of those people will respond (call, visit your web site, visit your store), giving you a response rate.

Of those who respond (otherwise known as leads), a percentage will be converted into customers (orders), and by that conversion rate generate profit and revenue.

From this formula, you will derive your media “CPO”, or “cost per order”, which is found by dividing media spend by the number of orders achieved with that spend (media spend in the numerator/number of orders in the denominator). This is the amount it costs you in radio advertising to acquire one new customer, which is why it is also called “cost per acquisition” (“CPA”).

The important question at this point is this: Is the lifetime value (“LTV”) of each of your customers, on average, greater than this CPO? This fundamental question applies whether your business is a direct response advertising business (which includes radio advertising, print advertising, DRTV, catalog, or internet) or a traditional retailer. Every business pays to acquire a customer, and every business has a certain propensity to retain that customer over a period of time in a relationship consisting of subsequent purchases and therefore profit streams. Regardless of whether your business uses direct response radio to acquire new customers, or it uses one of the other approaches to customer acquisition, your success will be fundamentally based on whether your business model facilitates a strongly positive lifetime value. If it does not, there is little that radio advertising, or any other form of advertising, can do to change this.

If your LTV is not greater that your CPO, your business isn’t profitable and you’ll want to stop advertising so you can make the changes to both the advertising and the business model that will result in profitability. Even if LTV is greater than CPO, you will want to increase that amount to maximize your profitability. To do this, you’ll need to increase LTV and/or decrease CPO. This process is called business (or campaign) profitability optimization, and it is absolutely essential to the long term success of any direct responses radio advertising effort.

Improving Lifetime Value

There are a number of ways to increase the LTV of each customer. Let’s look at three of the main ways:

1. Increase price without increasing cost. One way to do this is by increasing the percentage of orders that include high-margin upsells. Retailers do this all the time. They put super high margin items right at the checkout. Direct response advertisers can learn a lot from this. Identify widely appealing, complementary items and ensure they are offered as part of the sales process.

2. Increase repeat purchase. You have paid to acquire that customer, now develop a relationship and continue to meet their needs to drive repeat purchase. If they only buy once from you, you don’t have a very viable business unless that first purchase is incredibly high margin.

3. Reduce your cost structure. Take advantage of your increased volume to negotiate better product costs, shipping costs, etc.

Improving Cost Per Order

Just as there are a number of ways to increase LTV, there are also many ways to decrease the CPO.

1. Reduce the media cost per person reached. Also known as CPM, this is a standard metric used in advertising. It reflects the cost to reach 1000 people. (remember that CPM stands for “cost per thousand” impressions of your message). This is a constant focus of any good direct response radio agency, and the element in direct response radio advertising that has received the most attention. This is why every dollar of media in direct response radio is remnant advertising. But that’s not all that should be considered when looking to reduce CPM. Leveraging database technology and using scientific testing methodology, it is possible to identify the optimum schedule to use in placing the media. Thus optimizing the media schedule can meaningfully reduce CPM.

2. Increase response rate. Again, media scheduling will play a role here. In addition, use of radio formats to effectively target the right customers is vital to optimizing response rate. But perhaps the greatest impact on response rate in direct response radio advertising is the messaging in the radio ad itself. Great direct response radio ads significantly enhance the responsiveness of the media dollars spent. Your radio agency’s ability to create radio ads that elicit response from your potential customers is a crucial element in direct response radio advertising success.

3. Increase conversion rates. Increasing the percentage of inquiries that become customers can have an enormous impact on campaign profitability. The factors that will most impact conversion rate are your sales scripting, web copy, product offers, pricing, and your guarantee or return policy. As much as any other variable, these factors need to be tested and continuously refined.

Implications and Conclusions

Now that you understand the fundamentals of direct response radio advertising, let’s look at the implications and conclusions that these fundamentals illuminate:

1. The role of database technology and analysis

By now it is clear that optimizing both lifetime value and cost per order maximizes your business profitability. But doing these things also requires capturing and analyzing an enormous quantity of data. To do this in a way that allows for distilling insights requires a robust database specifically tuned for direct response radio, along with well-refined analysis approaches. Fortunately, database technology and robust analysis are a part of the services your radio agency will provide for you.

2. The importance of ongoing testing

Any discussion of the fundamentals of direct response radio advertising (or any type of direct response advertising) would be incomplete without addressing the topic of testing. When you look at the above approaches to maximizing campaign profitability, you see the key metrics that must be impacted. But how do you actually impact them? How do you know whether offer A is better than offer B? or C? How do you know whether copy D drives a better response rate than the control? How do you know whether the sales scripting or the pricing structure could be improved by certain changes? The only way to know these things is to test. As a result, testing is a never-ending element in direct response radio advertising efforts. If you are not testing, you are slowly going out of business.

3. Success in direct response radio advertising is about more than costs

As we’ve mentioned, one of the biggest questions we get is “how much does it cost to advertise on the radio?”. Done correctly, direct response radio advertising is not a cost center, it’s a profit center. It’s a very efficient way to acquire new customers at a low CPO. To learn more on the topic of radio advertising costs and how to budget for radio advertising, see our article at http://www.strategicmediainc.com/radio-advertising-articles/.

4. Nearly any business can grow profitably with direct response radio advertising

It is difficult for me to think of businesses that cannot benefit from the kind of radio advertising that we are involved in. Direct response radio advertising is different from other forms of advertising because it is accountable for results, and the only way it can be accountable is to leverage a set of technological and human systems and processes to accurately capture, analyze and interpret results of the advertising. Once you have that in place, you have established a continuous improvement loop. Therefore, provided you have a profitable business model and a good product that delivers on a unique and relevant promise, your business can profitably acquire new customers with direct response radio advertising. That’s the ultimate promise of direct response radio: the ability to grow your business profitably at the rate you want to grow it. Once you establish profitability, you need only increase your media spend to drive higher revenues and profits.

The Fundamentals in Perspective

Direct response radio advertising does not stand alone in creating a business. It works in combination with your business model to acquire new customers at a low, and therefore profitable, CPO. What makes direct response radio advertising so attractive is its efficiency and flexibility, which results in comparatively low CPO’s relative to other mediums.

This article explains the fundamental elements involved in how nearly any business can use direct response radio advertising to acquire new customers and grow both profitably and rapidly. Once you understand the fundamentals of radio advertising, you’re ready to embark on the process of building a direct response radio advertising campaign. That process involves developing a radio advertising strategy, creating radio ads that drive response, and implementing a radio media plan that delivers your message to the right people for the right cost.

Web 2.0 and Web marketing is a match made in heaven. There are many ways to create traffic to your website using the power of Web 2.0. Below I am going to examine what I consider to be the top five.

Jack Humphrey, a well-known Web 2.0 expert, defines it this way in his Authority Black Book:

Generally speaking, if people can submit links to content, submit content, make comments and vote good/bad content up/down thus affecting the amount of traffic that content can generate, it’s Web 2.0.

Blogs, wikis, file sharing sites, content rating systems, book-marking sites, and social networking sites are all examples of Web 2.0. Some of the more well-known Web 2.0 sites are YouTube (file sharing), Facebook and MySpace (social networking), Wikipedia (wiki), BlinkList (book-marking) and Digg (content rating system). The list is almost endless, and the traffic that these websites generate is absolutely staggering.

So how can you harness some of this traffic?

1) Create original, quality and compelling content and submit them to Web 2.0 websites

For example, if you write an original and compelling article, you can submit it to content sharing and content rating system websites such as Digg, Propeller, Newsvine MarkTD or Reddit. Sometimes there content sharing and content rating system websites that specializes in a particular industry. MarkTD specializes in marketing, for example.

When you submit your article to these sites, people will give it a vote, and each vote moves the article up where it can be seen by more and more people. This has the potential of creating a lot of traffic for your website since each reader will need to click on the link to go to your site to read the full article. And you’re building a permanent link pointing to your website that can be followed for months and years to come. (And don’t forget, a link from a quality site to your website helps in your search engine rankings too.)

Or you can create an original video and submit it to YouTube. Here it will get rated and possibly seen by many people. If the video contains your website or a plug for your business, then all the better. YouTube is not the only video sharing website however. There are many, and one video can be submitted to them all. This same concept applies to your original images, photographs, digital art and audio files.

2) Web 2.0-ize other people’s sites that contain a link back to your website

I’ll assume you already know how your bookmarks (or Favorites) work in your browser. There are websites that exist that act in the same way, but the bookmarks you set are public. BlinkList and Simpy are two examples of this. People’s public bookmarks are browsed by others and lead to clicks to the sites you’ve bookmarked. So be sure to bookmark your business website and inner pages that are important.

Also, these bookmarks can appear in search results in engines like Google and Yahoo. And some even think that search engines use book-marking sites in their algorithms, although this has not been conclusively proven. Simpy and BlinkList are two more examples of these kinds of Web 2.0 book-marking sites.

Let’s say you write an original, quality article and post it to your business website. Then let’s say you submit the article to a handful of content rating websites like some of the ones explained above. To further market this article, you can then use social book-marking sites to bookmark the page on the content rating websites that list your new article and that contain a link back to your article.

This can be very powerful.

Or let’s say you notice that an authority in your industry has a link on its website that points back to your website. Go ahead and bookmark the page on the authority site, thus marketing it, which in turn markets your site as well. One particular Web 2.0 website that is very popular and can generate tons of traffic is StumbleUpon. This site allows people to give any page you deem worthy a “thumbs-up”. And if you get enough “thumbs-up”, people browsing StumbleUpon will see it and click over to that page. So I always make it a point to “Stumble” my business websites’ homepages and sites that contain links to my business websites as well.

If you become an active member in a handful of Web 2.0 websites and utilize these first two suggestions alone, you will be amazed at the kind of traffic you can generate.

3) Engage in the conversations and activities

When I suggest above to become an active member I mean that you need to visit a few of your favorite Web 2.0 sites on a regular basis and actually contribute to the site with your opinions, votes, comments and submissions. For instance, if you like Digg or Newsvine, visit them often and submit quality articles, content and sites to them. And they don’t all have to be your sites.

In fact, the more impartial you are, the more people will trust you when you submit one of your articles. And you ought to vote for other people’s Digg submissions as well. You may enjoy Facebook, LinkedIn ro MySpace. First, create a profile on the site, then go out and make connections within the community. The more you do this, the more you can harness the power of the people you meet to help market your website or yourself.

Visit and comment on blogs in your industry. This is another tried and true way to engage in the online conversation. Blogs are Web 2.0 and have been around for a while now. Unfortunately, leaving blog comments has been abused by so many people that you absolutely must only leave blog comments that contribute to the overall blog post.

Only add your website’s link if you’re asked to. These links won’t help your search engine rankings but can drive traffic to your site.

4) Encourage visitors to bookmark and tag your content

If you have a blog, add a feature that shows up at the end of every post that allows users to bookmark or submit your post to other Web 2.0 websites. ‘Share This’ is just such a blog add-on (or plug-in) that can do this for you. If you have a WordPress blog you’ll be able to find a plug-in that allows you to integrate this type of feature (including Share This) into your blog very easily and without the need for any technical knowledge. If you write a memorable or compelling post, people can use this to make bookmarks to the post, Stumble it, Digg it and so forth. All of this can lead to more traffic.

5) Add a Web 2.0 feature to your website

First of all, your business website needs a blog. If you don’t have one, then stop reading this and go to it. A blog enables you and your employees an easy way to post new information that is relevant to your business and helpful to your customers. And it allows your customers to easily communicate with you by leaving comments.

But beyond a blog, what other Web 2.0 features can you add to your website? If you’re selling products, consider adding in a feature that allows customers to rate each product. It can be something as simple as one to five stars or more elaborate where they leave reviews. Amazon does this and it one of the major driving forces in their sales. When potential customers see that your products are rated by existing customers, they’ll be more likely to trust you and buy.

You could add a wiki to your website. A wiki is software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content. By encouraging your website visitors to create content for you, you’re allowing your site to grow, become more informative and thus creating more chances to be found in search engines. These features can be found as third-party software packages and integrated into your existing website surprisingly easily.

The power of Web 2.0 is substantial. It’s time you begin to harness its potential and by following these five suggestions, you’ll be well on your way.

Have you ever wondered why some businesses go from strength to strength, when similar businesses vying for the same customers struggle to survive? The difference can usually be put down to better marketing. You may or may not be aware that the term ‘marketing’ relates to every activity that affects a customers including: pricing, distribution, presentation, sales, advertising…even down to handling complaints.

Contrary to what many think, marketing is more than just advertising or sales. It is the total package! Good marketing revolves around clearly thought-out goals, strategies and tactics. To achieve success, you will need to know exactly what you want to achieve and how to go about it. This will help you keep your eye on the ball and focused on strategies and outcomes.

In business it is easy to get distracted by what might be happening on the sidelines. For example, it is easy to be put off by a new competitor entering the market. Naturally you will need to be aware of what they are doing and understand their strategies and tactics (if they have any). Know their strengths and their weaknesses. Know your strengths and your weaknesses. Do not be put off your game – just run your own race. Set goals, strategies, tactics, and have a plan to achieve them. This is your road map to help you get were you want to go.
However, there are some things you should not do.

Stick to your game plan and do not run ‘last minute rush’ advertisements in newspapers, magazines, the radio, cinema or whatever else the advertising sales rep is trying to sell you. Even if these are worthwhile places to advertise, do not let the advertising sales representative (or someone in the office) decide your advertising strategy for you. Stay focused, because if these people knew how to get your business flooded with profitable customers, they would not be out there selling advertising? They would be in their own business doing it for themselves. The job of the advertising sales rep is to sell you the most advertising they can, not to make you rich! It does not matter how big or how successful your business is; do not waste money or have your marketing strategy altered by others!

Be careful too, about spending money on non-essential items. For example, you may want a mobile phone – but do you really need one to operate your business efficiently? You may want a late model car – but does your business really need the latest model? Have a firm grasp of what things cost and their value to your business. That is not to say you should not spend money, you just need to prioritize spending based on your marketing strategies.

It is vitally important to have several marketing strategies when building your business – instead of relying on just one. That way, if one of your strategies fails to work for whatever reason, you will have the others to keep you afloat. If you have just one marketing strategy, and it fails, it could dramatically affect the performance of your business. You could think of this in terms of table legs. The more legs the table has, the more stable it will be… even if one or two of the legs get broken. If your table has only one leg, it will not take much imagination to work out how unstable it will be.

For example, there is no point in concentrating your entire efforts on just trying to get more customers. What about having strategies in place to encourage existing and new customers to spend more money, or to use your services more often? Here are just some of the areas you could look at:

• By improving your lead generation techniques you might be able to get a 20%, 50% or even 100% increase in leads.
• By improving your selling techniques you might be able to get a 20%, 50% or even 100% increase in your conversion rate.
• By getting your customers to spend more money each time they buy, you may be able to get a 20%, 50% or even 100% increase in the average $$$ sale.
• By encouraging your customers to buy more often you may be able to get a 20%, 50% or even 100% increase in the average number of transactions.
• By increasing some, or all prices, you may be able to get a 20%, 50% or even 100% increase in the average $$$ margin.

Can you see the compounding effect of all this? Suddenly a 50%, 100% or 200% increase in profit seems easily achievable – and it can be! But, if you had just focused on one strategy for getting new customers, the picture might be totally different.

How can you use digital marketing tools to help your Australian business in the early days? A clear methodical pathway is key. Before you do anything, such as: build your website, start a paid advertising campaign, or begin developing your brand, you should strategise and develop your digital marketing strategy.

Why do you need a Digital Marketing Strategy? There are many different elements to marketing your business online. A careful strategy will help you maximise potential and minimise spend.

Here are some of the elements you’ll want to consider as part of your strategy:

• Website Design & Functionality
• PPC & Facebook Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing
• SEO
• Video Marketing
• Social Media Management
• Email Marketing

Website Design & Functionality Following a strategy with how your site is designed is important. Research should go into creating an effective site that does more than look pretty. Design and functionality should be tied closely together so that your site builds the brand you want and functions as a lead generation and lead capture tool.

PPC & Facebook Advertising Pay per click advertising can be very lucrative. It can also be a significant drain on your resources. Done right, PPC and Facebook advertising will help you laser target your audience for sales and lead capture. This is a vital part of your strategy.

Affiliate Marketing An affiliate marketing campaign could be a very smart aspect of your digital marketing strategy. You could, in effect, get salespeople selling your product for you and only pay for results.

SEO Instead of putting all your eggs into a pay-per-click basket, organic SEO could help you naturally attract people who want to buy from you. SEO requires skill and knowledge to get real results but can make a dramatic difference to your sales numbers and minimise your marketing budget.

Video Marketing If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. Integrating video marketing into your marketing efforts could make a dramatic difference to how fast your business becomes profitable.

Social Media Management Branding, reputation, relationships, link building, and other aspects tie into effective social media management. If you’re not using this as part of your digital marketing strategy, you’re leaving money on the table – for your competition.

Email Marketing Email marketing done right can be a goldmine. Done wrong can hurt your business. Get sound advice and use great tools to manage this process. Tie it into your website functionality and your site can insert leads into a sales funnel that could generate amazing results on autopilot.

What’s your digital media strategy? Strategies shouldn’t be etched in blood. They can be living and breathing tools that can shift based on the outcome of various aspects of that strategy.

There are various strategies that apply in the business of free web advertising. But one thing’s for sure: every one of them is directly concentrated to their target markets. With numerous competition within the online marketing field, every website host must combine all his resources in order to hit big time. One important tool in free web advertising business is behavioral advertising that enables to target users in relation to past web navigation’s. Then there is also the application of commercial activities online allowing the website owner to develop his own line of attack against his rivals in business. This is where the he can make use of online resources through a reverse search engine.

With the search engine on hand, web owners are able to express their ideas, techniques and strategies in the arena of marketing. He is able to estimate the clients’ demands on his products providing for certain keywords that would assist the customer in looking for a specific item or service. These keywords are so convenient to the browsers and placing it on the website’s content is a wise move for the website owner.

To optimize profits in free web advertising, web owners should not fail to identify their target consumers. Search for links that will identify location of your probable clients. Identification of your market is truly one of the major factors that affect the turn-out of your free web advertising business.

Be serious on your website design. A boring website model is never going to make it. Searchers are easily attracted to sites that are attractive and interesting so a lay-out that looks pleasing and inviting is definitely a plus factor. When all the design is done, right away place free classified ads on the website as much as you can. But be cautious on the placements of ads. Here’s the golden rule: Place as much but not very much by totally overdoing it. To wrap it all up, a business link is essential, so don’t forget to tag it on every advertisement placed on your site.

If you are into free website advertising, it is imperative that you join various online groups that also share the same business interest as you are or better yet, expand your horizons by joining other groups not in any way related to your business and spread your existence there. There is indeed a higher chance for you to get clients from those sites. With your participation in these kinds of online gatherings, you attract a good number of investors, leading an interest to your products or services.

Finally, making a blog about your business would be very helpful. In order to invite readers to come in, view and read your blogs, you fill it with complete and interesting information about your company, the nature of your business including of course the benefits that your products or services can give to your possible clients. It cannot be denied that those free website advertising sites with the best blogs are usually the ones who prosper in this kind of business.