What exactly is Digital Marketing

What Exactly is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the use of digital channels, devices, and platforms to connect with customers where they spend much of their time: online. From your website itself to your online branding assets — digital advertising, email marketing, online brochures, and beyond — there’s a huge spectrum of tactics and assets that fall under the umbrella of digital marketing. And the best digital marketers have a clear picture of how each asset or tactic supports their overarching goals. Digital marketing is an umbrella term for all of your online marketing efforts. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and their websites to connect with current and prospective customers. At its core, digital marketing is the use of digital channels to promote or market products and services to consumers. Digital channels, such as search engines, websites, email, and social media platforms, allow marketers to connect directly with their customers and prospects. Using digital marketing, businesses can create competitive advantages by providing unique customer experiences, building customer loyalty, and creating new revenue streams. Through digital marketing, companies can create more personal relationships with customers and can interact with them in real time. Digital marketing can also be used to build brand awareness and increase product sales.

Getting noticed on the Internet – Digital Marketing for Small Business

The Internet has grown from a small network of academics needing a way to trade research into a world-spanning, ubiquitous marketplace and repository for nearly every possible kind of information and knowledge. How does a small business avoid being washed away in the constant tide of buying, selling and marketers hawking every conceivable item (and some difficult to conceive…)?

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The Internet provides advantages for both customer and proprietor in that one can search for exactly what is desired, without the bother of endless phone calls, driving to malls, or poring over mail-order catalogs. A quick keyword or 3, and hundreds of results vie for attention on the screen. Making sure your company is one of those results near the top is a combination of factors: specificity in product offerings, Search Engine Optimization of web content and linking to and from related topics and sites.

The only way to get noticed on the Internet is to have a listing or presence, whether a dedicated website, ads on relevant sites, or by word-of-mouth. Oftentimes ads on online journals, informative sites, or e-zines (online magazines) are cheaper than space in a print publication, as well as being available to a wider audience than a dedicated website may be. Rates are often available for daily, weekly, or monthly terms, increasing flexibility and allowing a tight budget more leeway. Word-of-mouth advertising can be very cheap, but the returns may be difficult to quantify. Sponsoring web shows such as podcasts or webcasts can be a great and cheap way to gain word-of-mouth exposure. Many times, a podcaster will be so thrilled to gain sponsorship that rates can be negotiated for very little, but make sure to approach a podcaster that has a show related somehow to your business. Don’t overlook resources like Google’s Adwords either, as they can be slightly pricier than similar options like banner ads, but they are shown to be far more effective than pop-ups, banners, or pay-per-click ads due to their specific targeting.

When a potential customer decides to look up a product that you sell, is he or she going to find your site or listing? Being specific in the terms used on your site or listing is key, as keywords are what drive the search engines like Google and Yahoo. If your company sells shoes, it’s not enough to put the word “shoes” on your site–it has to be anticipatory to the searches that potential customers are doing. Most customers have an idea of what they are looking for when doing a search, so instead of “shoes,” a customer will search for “imported Italian leather shoes.” Specific focusing of terminology and product listings are involved in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as SEO is driven by specific keywords and their repetition or location on a page. If the term “Italian Leather Shoes” is used 15 times on a website, it will pop up higher on the rating listings than one with the same words, but only as a page heading or title. It would be easy to go overboard on this if it were the only criteria, but it is only one of many different methods search engines use to list websites by relevance. Our article on Search Engine Optimization, located here, is a great reference to optimizing your site for maximum Search Engine Performance.

With a clear idea of where you want to go with Internet marketing, it can be a valuable tool to expand your business into the digital realm, but be careful not to go overboard, as all marketing eventually crosses into the zone of limited return. Customers are looking for what they want–it’s up to you to make sure they run into you, and the only way they will is for you to make sure your business is at the places they are going to go.

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Check Out These Ideas For A Better Understanding Of Affiliate Marketing

Check Out These Ideas For A Better Understanding Of Affiliate Marketing

If you want a career in affiliate marketing, you can find some suggestions here. Continue reading for some great tips to help get you on your way with your new affiliate marketing plan.

When deciding which affiliate marketing program to work with, be sure to look into how the company keeps track of orders made via means other than their website. Lost orders can lead to losing profit from commissions.

Affiliates that are a good fit for your products and your company will be the most useful. Joining different programs will provide you with multiple streams of income. Make sure you are as informed as you can be about the products and background of an affiliate before deciding to do business with them.

Trying to market extremely popular products isn’t always the best strategy. Popular products aren’t always quality products. Getting involved with a really popular product means that the competition is going to be fierce. Profit may not be possible.

There are many affiliate marketers that make the mistake of trying to do too much at once. They try to take and promote too many items and they spread themselves far too thin to succeed in this competitive field. There is no limit on results. Just work slowly and carefully and identify the best fit for you.

Different affiliate programs have different benefits. Some differences include the products offered and the flexibility afforded you.

Affiliate sites are not all alike. You will run into some difficulties when sites are not well written or easy to navigate. The website owners will wrangle in customers with tips and advice. This can help build trust and encourage more sales.

Use affiliate marketing programs to more effectively promote your online business. In general, affiliate programs generate more traffic than other advertising methods, including banners and contextual networks. Here are three things to think about when you are looking for a good affiliate marketing program: 1/ Ease of navigation. 2/ Popularity of the program. 3/ The amount of money you will receive for each referral.

There is a lot of money to be made in affiliate marketing, but you must have a great strategy and be innovative to really bring in the bucks. You should have the goal in mind that your website or blog rank highest when Internet audiences perform a search for content via search engines. You will get more cash and better affiliate links this way.

One easy way to assess affiliate programs is to compare their conversion rates. Try and get one out of every 100 customers to buy something.

Lifetime commissions are getting more and more rare among affiliate marketing programs. You should nevertheless keep a keen eye out for these infrequent but extremely advantageous deals. Vendors give webmasters a monetary amount for each product bought by a customers that the webmaster referred to the vendor. This commission is usually only paid if a customer purchases a product within a certain, predetermined, amount of time. It is worth your time and effort to seek out these programs.

Consider implementing handwritten ads on your website. Personal touches like this can help boost your sales and make it look like there is an actual person behind these products. If you have poor penmanship, you may want to consider hiring someone to write your ads for you.

Don’t limit yourself to just two or three affiliates for your whole campaign. Market a variety of products or services for a variety of vendors. A spread out group of affiliates will prevent you from experiencing big losses when you cut out one that is unprofitable. If you are able to handle all of your current products, consider adding a few more.

Never promote a product that you cannot stand behind 100 percent. When you suggest a product, it gives an impression of your business and you personally. Be certain that it is a positive one. Your customers will build trust and confidence in your business based on the types of products you promote. A good way to keep your customers is to continue promoting good products that have good prices.

Be honest with your readers about the money you earn from affiliate links. If you do not inform your customers of your affiliates it will make them doubt you. Through this act of integrity your business is surely to grow.

Don’t get too satisfied once you start making money. Your job at that point is to figure out how to keep making more. Don’t rest on your laurels, but aim for something newer and better. Establish another website to contribute further to your profits, or launch endeavors to improve your existing efforts, like new blogs. Most importantly, never give up on your online business venture.

Something every affiliate marketer should understand is that signing up for a pay-per-sale affiliate marketing plan is risky. It can be quite lucrative if done correctly, though. Before getting involved in something like a pay-per-sale affiliate plan, do some due diligence on the affiliate to see how well it will work before making a commitment.

California’s affiliate marketers whose accounts were terminated in 2011 can now republish the affiliate links on their websites. The legal conflicts faced by Amazon in the state have been resolved, opening up participation once again. If you had a problem with this, you should sign up.

Consider taking on a popular product instead of scrounging for an untested novelty. It is not uncommon for people to avoid pursuing certain groups in affiliate marketing simply because they fear their competitors. Popular niches have a proven track record, however. They have demonstrated that people are interested in them, and that interest can into profits. The attractive thing about popular niches is that they already have a solid customer base. It is still possible to make a connection with your potential customers even when you are faced with strong competition. The key is to determine your optimal marketing approach, which can help to differentiate your business from close rivals.

By now you will have realized just how profitable affiliate marketing will be. By using these tips, you can turn yourself from an affiliate marketing novice into an expert.

Affiliate Marketing, 6 tips for online marketing

Affiliate Marketing, 6 tips for online marketing

So, you are thinking about marketing on line, good idea.  The easiest and most profitable way to start is Affiliate Programs.
If you are willing to put a good bit of easy work into affiliate programs you can make a comfortable living. You will not need a
college degree or anything like that. All you need is a willing mind. The main road to success are focused dedication and a lot of enthusiasm.
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1. Affiliate programs may be the easiest online business to start running. although it doesn’t’t hurt to do some study so that you can learn from other people’s mistakes rather than go through them yourself. In addition, you are likely to pick up ideas that you wouldn’t have come up with yourself. There are numerous training products with great strategies to adopt. One of the best ways to do this is look at what people who have used the courses are saying in some of the popular Internet marketing forums.

2. These programs are a great way to get started in an online business. There are some ‘Super Affiliates’ who are making fabulous incomes from these programs. Affiliate programs allow you to sell another company’s service or product and make a commission on every sale or lead. You don’t even need to build a web site or handle the transaction. Your job is to drive traffic to your affiliate link.

3. An affiliate link is a special URL code that will identify customers coming to the company’s site from your advertising. It will
be the web site address with a code attached to the end. Some programs also have tiers. That means if someone who is interested in selling the product comes through your link and signs up you will also get a small percentage of their earnings.

4. To choose a program You should research the popularity of some of your interests. Try to determine if people are buying that product or service online. There are many sources for finding that information including free ones, such as the Overture keyword tool. When you have found an area that is popular then type the subject along with ‘affiliate program’ into your search engine and see which programs have services or products for that area. You can also use an affiliate program directory.

5. After founding a program that looks good you should check the terms of the program. Make sure that pay outs are not based on a high commission earning or you may never see your money. Also try to choose programs with high commission rates. Often you will find ebooks and downloadable software has the highest rates as there is no physical product to make or ship. If you are satisfied with the terms then you need to sign up.

6. The reason affiliate programs are so great for beginners is that you only need to focus on marketing. Many affiliate  programs have information on how to market and give you tools such as banners, product feeds and more. You can also look for other information on marketing including writing articles, creating pay-per-click campaigns, commenting in online forums etc. As you gain experience marketing you will make adjustments to your selling and start creating a wonderful income!

Why a large number of would-be online marketers are either unsuccessful or only partially successful is because they lack  focus. They jump from one strategy to the next without mastering any. In affiliate marketing, the key to success is planning and focus. Take one strategy and concentrate on it for a set period of time, maybe a month. If it isn’t’t returning enough then look for an alternative and spend time developing it. If it is working, then look at ways of making it even better. Most people want to ‘get rich quick’ on the Internet and fail. To make real riches you need to have a strategy, look to the longer terms and stay focused.

Creating An Art Affiliate Website

Creating An Art Affiliate Website

There is a huge market for art. Almost all people from any age or background will buy art and posters from time to time. By purchasing this art online consumers can save a lot of money over retail stores. Knowing all of this puts you in a great position to make a profit by directing consumer to this art without having to make a significant investment or carrying any overhead.

The key to making this possible is to take advantage of art affiliate programs offered by several websites. It doesn’t matter which program you decide to use the concept and steps to success are the same. In this guide I’ll walk you through every step of the process and demonstrate each step using our sample website, Tropical Art.

For those of you already familiar with how affiliate websites work, you can skip ahead to step one. For the rest of you I’ll briefly explain. By becoming an affiliate of an art website you agree to send customers to them, in exchange for earning a commission off the sale. There are several ways to do this, but the most common is by setting up your own website for your virtual art store. You allow visitors to browse the art selection you offer and when they wish to make a purchase you send them to the website you have affiliated with to check out. When you send the visitor to the affiliate manager’s website, the url includes a tracking id so that you get credit for the sale. You can visit the tropical art website above for an example of how this works. The percentage of commission you collect for this varies based on the program and how many sales you make, but it typically ranges from 10%-25% of the amount purchased. With art purchases it’s not unusual for a single visitor to purchase $100 or more in art so you can see how the sales can add up quickly.

Step 1 – Select an Affiliate Program

The first thing you need to do is select an affiliate program. The reason it is important to do this first is because it can take days or even weeks to receive approval of your acceptance back from these programs. By doing this step first it will not hold you up later on. Some of the affiliate programs require you to list your website before signing up, while with others it’s optional. If it’s required you can skip this step and come back to it.

There are several factors to look when choosing an affiliate program. Some questions you need to ask are: What percentage of commission will you be paid? How wide is the product selection? Will consumers feel safe providing their credit card information to this site?

I highly recommend sticking with the big three art affiliate programs, Art.com, Art International and All Posters. While there are plenty of others to choose from and many are legit, there are always a few scams out there and I simply can not personally vouch for the others. By working with the big players in the industry you also are typically able to offer your visitors a wider selection. For my sample site I will be using the art.com affiliate program

Step 2 – Selecting a Topic

It’s important for you to know that setting up an art website and making money off of it is going to take some work and you’re not going to profit over night. Most websites get the majority of traffic from search engines, but as with any industry you have competition. This guide will show you how to put up a good fight to get your site ranked in the search engines and get traffic to your site. It’s important to begin with the end in mind so the first step is finding what topic you wish to target.

Usually beginners want to set up a massive art store that sells every product available. While this sounds good at first, it’s not practical for a novice or anyone without serious financial backing to compete in this field. You have to find a niche to target and focus all of your energies on that niche. The most important step in doing this is to find the primary keyword you want to target. I recommend the keyword suggestion tool from Digital Point for doing this.

This tool is simple to use. Just enter a keyword that describes the type of site you want to set up such as “art” and click the suggest button. You’ll get a list of related keywords and the number of daily searches each receives. I recommend using the Overture numbers which show the number of searches performed on Yahoo because I feel these are a more accurate example. At the time of writing this the term “art” receives over 29,000 searches a day! As I said before this is way too competetive of a term for most people to target. My suggestion is to scroll down towards the bottom of the list and look at terms for easier targets. The words in each phrase are listed in alphabetical order, not necessirly in the order searched. For example the term I targeted in this example “tropical art” is listed as “art tropical” on this site. It receives about 400 searches a day on Yahoo alone which will be more than enough to earn a decent amount on this site. Once you found one you think you’d be interested in, go to the search engine you use and perform a search for it. Look at the top few sites and ask yourself the question of if you feel you can build a site that is of this quality or higher or hire someone else to. If the answer is no I’d recommend you try other terms until you find the right one.

Step 3 – Make Sure You Have Products to Sell

So far you haven’t spent any money and have invested a minimal amount of time. Before you do either you need to make sure you have a fair number of products to sell related to the topic you have chosen. Doing this is simple. Just browse the site you have chosen to become an affiliate for and make sure they sell products related to your topic.

For the Tropical Art website I’m using as an example I can see Art.com offers a beach and ocean gallery that will be perfect. If you can’t find any products for your topic or a very limited selection I would suggest finding another topic or a different affiliate program.