Pre-Wordpress’ birth and the critical mass of blogs, Internet Marketing Professionals used many other tactics, one of which was writing value-based informational articles and submitting them to several article directories for online publishers and website owners to repost. This type of article marketing was done for years before blogging.

What is Article Marketing?

Wikipedia defines Article Marketing as:

“A type of advertising in which businesses write short articles related to their respective industry. These articles are made available for distribution and publication in the marketplace. Each article contains a bio box and byline that include references and contact information for the author’s business. Well-written content articles released for free distribution have the potential of increasing the authoring business’ credibility within its market as well as attracting new clients.”

Over the last few years it has become harder and harder for those starting fresh in the Internet Marketing arena to separate the wheat from the chaff, the noise from the signal. Of all the 100s of techniques and gurus touting the latest trends, it’s hard to know what works and what’s a waste of time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Out of the many different business models on the web the community based model is one that has grown to epic proportions over the last few years. From social networking sites to free software offers this model is virtually every place you look on the web. This model, according to Michael Rappa, in its pure form allows people/companies to offer up useful products, services or sites to the masses for free in the hopes that their “good will” gesture will come back to them.

The business model stems from the very attributes that have made the Internet so great, providing and receiving information for Free. You may be thinking, “How is this a business model if the provider doesn’t charge anything?” What do people/companies really stand to get from these seemingly self-less gestures? Read the rest of this entry »

I have mentioned this site in a previous blog post, but I think it is such an amazingly helpful tool that it deserves its own post. HTML Playground, is the best site I have found for those who don’t have a programming background and need to know basic HTML. For Internet Marketers like myself, this site is extremely helpful for the times we need to create an extra content page for a website or when we need to move an image to a different page location.

The Playground is extremely user friendly. Simply select any of the HTML tags listed, and the Playground provides a description of how the tag is used, the attributes associated with the tag, an example of the code, and an example of the result. Users can also play with the sample code to customize the end result to their liking. Playing with the HTML code in this area is of course easier than repeatedly tweaking the HTML code and uploading the page through the FTP.

So if you are new to HTML, play around on this site to gain a better understanding.

Marketers are always trying to find that power demographic; the group that holds the spending power. For so long that key demographic has been the 18-49 age range, the poeple with more descretionary income to spend. However, the age demographic is changing to the Baby Boomer generation. Consisting of individuals born between 1946-1964, this demographic is now 76 million people strong, that’s 28% of the US adult population, and it is quickly becoming attractive to marketers everywhere, according to a recent Online Media Daily article by Peter Koeppel.

Traditionally, the best way to reach this niche market was through television, since they were the first generation to grow up with a television in their home. However, Baby Boomers are more tech saavy than we give them credit, and internet marketing in now one of the best ways to reach them. Read the rest of this entry »

The Sales Cycle has changed considerably over the years.The Fuller Brush Company started out in 1906, and salesman walked miles each day going Door-to-Door to meet and great the lady of the house and share with them beauty, household and day to day products that would revolutionize the way they look, feel and manage their households and by using Alfred C. Fullers famous words, “…the best products of their kind in the world.” Fuller’s philosophy was simple:

From the beginning Fuller established three basic rules:

• Make it work
• Make it last
• Guarantee it no matter what.

As the years went by Mr. Fuller became a model to many sales organizations by upholding quality and customer service. How the years have changed though, now you can get arrested for knocking on someone’s door and offering them a service, and if you happen to be in the wrong neighborhood or wrong state in some cases and someone perceives you to be attempting to steal or harm them, they even have the right to shoot to kill. So you might be able to see why many Door-to Door sales organizations are having problems with sales, who wants to get shot at because it got dark early? Trust me, I did Door to Door sales for over a year and having a gun pulled on you is not my idea of a productive environment for selling!
And then there are all those lovely Do Not Call and Spam laws! Read the rest of this entry »

A recently popular sales training book called No More Cold Calling™, by Joanne Black, has reopened the idea of sales without cold calling. As eluded by the title, the book offers tips and alternatives to avoid being that no name person calling and asking for someone’s business without some type of connection.

I imagine blog owners feel the same way about receiving new comments with links from strangers as business owners on the receiving end of a cold call. I call them cold comments. Below are some similarities between cold calling & cold commenting.

Similarities

o The call recipient needs to be targeted, on subject, or relevant to your business or link.

o Value demonstration is needed before asking for the business or link.

o A common connection or rapport must exist before doing business with or a linked comment is accepted.

These are challenging tasks to do quickly, but the fact remains that receiving relevant links with optimized anchor text is a very important part of SEO for Internet Marketers, as is calling on new prospects to develop business for Account Executives.

So what is the solution?

Read the rest of this entry »

Tom McCracken, President and CEO of LevelTen, gave his first lecture series on Synergy Online Marketing (SOM) on September 18^th. The first portion of the three-part series at Vino100 was held in Uptown Dallas, and it was a great success. Titled “Vitality through Synergy,” this seminar exposed the ways to breathe new life into your business by maximizing your online web presence through marketing. With 30 attendees ranging from clients, prospective clients, employees, and networking contacts, we enjoyed delicious wines, did some networking, and were educated on the principles of SOM.

Read the rest of this entry »

Until recently, search engine optimization consisted of concentrating on how a website ranks in all the big search engines. Now the game has changed and “traditional” SEO is a thing of the past, according to a recent article in SitePro News by Jim Hedger. It claims the old ways of SEO are being pushed aside as the popularity of searching on social media sites is becoming the new means of search.

People are no longer using the main search engines to locate the information they seek. They are turning to social media, social bookmarking sites, RSS feed-readers, specific vertical search tools, and multimedia. Both large and small corporations have created profiles on MySpace, groups on Facebook and lenses on Squidoo. Of course, traditional SEO techniques are used in these socials media sites to insure that people can find the information you want them to find about your company.

Read the rest of this entry »

So what do you do when you are the largest soft drink company and have the most recognizable brand worldwide? You must come up with creative advertising and marketing tactics in order to get consumers involved with your brand. Recently, Coca-Cola has done with its new viral campaign in which the company tries to sue itself.

That’s right, Coke Zero, the new no calorie soft drink from Coke, is suing the original Coke for “taste confusion.” In the new campaign, a fake law firm Covet & Yourminy, solicits potential plaintiffs who could be victims of the taste confusion with the usual cheesy-style lawyer ads. The campaign used cheap media buys, similar to what most local law firms would purchase, such as radio, bus shelter, and truck advertisements.

Bus Shelter Ad

Truck Ad

All ads seek to drive consumers to the microsite, designed in the same fashion. Here, people can request a Covet & Yourminy taste kit that includes coupons for a Coke and a Coke Zero. How clever. There is also a toll-free hotline that has reportedly received more than 17,000 real phone calls. Clearly, this “taste confusion” campaign was a successful and interactive way to engage more consumers with the Coke brand, while putting more Cokes and Coke Zeros into the consumer’s hands through the use of coupons.

A good friend of mine from college is now working as a sales rep over at Kimberly-Clark, you know the folks who make they make Huggies, Kleenex and Scott Towels; so when I see their name mentioned along with a viral campaign I have to take notice. Ad Age had a great write up about how K-C used a viral video site to promote their Duckbill brand, but as I read the article I couldn’t help but feel as though they could have done so much more.
Read the rest of this entry »