Internet marketing encourages the mind to transition into a new ballpark of thinking. With the infinite possibility of mass marketing products and services globally across the web reducing the need for traditional TV advertising or middlemen to increase sales, doing business on the web as an internet marketing manager or affiliate program manager requires sharp thinking.
#Competition
The first approach to overcoming competition is having respect for competitors. Additionally to respecting competitors, amateur and intermediate online marketers may want to consider quietly analyzing how they "competitors" successfully mass-market to the World Wide Web without completely duplicating their mass marketing style. After a careful competitor analysis has been performed, take time to practice some or all of the techniques observed so you can gain independent web marketing experience. This observation may be anything from analyzing PPC ad targeting and ad writing techniques, how frequent competitors create content for their blogs or websites, and how well they connect with their audience on social networks. Most importantly, whatever you do in terms of internet marketing, you'll definitely need a blog or website with lots and lots of content so you can leverage organic traffic from search engines year round. According to ProBlogger by Darren Rowse, search engines give quiet preference to blogs and websites that have "Evergreen content," as sites with Evergreen content increased organic search engine traffic leverage potential over competitors in a shorter time span, resulting in boosted sales, natural SEO backlinks, and increased online credibility as an expert in their niche. ProBlogger's Rowse says Evergreen posts are ones that don't lose their relevancy over time. You write them today and they will be as helpful to readers in a few months (or even years) time.
Evergreen content automagically gives immediate advantage over competition not just in the moment, but years to come. Evergreen content pages are indexed in Bing, Google, and YaHoO! for decades. Evergreen content serves as a relationship building portal with readers, an avenue of priceless information, and a subliminal sales squeeze page when ads are placed in the sidebar, indentation of a blog post, or header of a site without asking anyone to buy anything, giving the content marketer an upper hand quietly on competition. Lastly, keyword analysis software proves to be handy for severing out competitors (though its important NOT to infringe on trademarked keywords). Be careful with keyword software as you don't want to use keywords or search term phrases too much in the meat and potatoes of your blog post or web page for fear of search engines crawlers possibly judging your site as "spammy," or suspected of trying to outrank competitors in your niche for trying to rank for keywords and phrases in your content without providing reading value to your niche audience.
Cookies
These are important to have on a blog or website to analyze reader in consumer behavior. Cookies. Nielsen makes a strong and factual statement about the importance of knowing your audience and catering to them when they said Understanding how your brand is doing online is about more than clicks and page views. Its about the audience. As competition continues to increase across the World Wide Web to mass market and move products and services as quickly as possible, site owners understand the importance of placing cookies on site viewers computers as a means of analyzing things such as:
- Better understanding consumer behavior across the web in which sites they visit often.
- Internal analysis heat maps and which pages site viewers are viewing the most.
- Possibly using cookies in e-mail newsletters with sophisticated technology enabled whereas the site owner can know if the e-mail subscriber not only opened the email, but possibly shared the e-mail newsletter with family and friends on social networks.
- Using cookies as a means of understanding which pages on a blog or website site viewers like reading most: pages with short form content or long form content.
Cultural Factors
This is one of the most sensitive things about content and internet marketing. People have their established beliefs, cultural laws (sometimes unwritten rules), and religion. Beginner and intermediate marketers who own niche based blogs and websites can earn and retain a target audience by creating content in a way that is appealing to the site visitor based on certain beliefs. Some people may at times find some website content or blog posts offensive when certain things are mentioned in regards to cultural beliefs. But most people who find the content offensive may turn around after performing their internet research and respect the fact that the site owner brought certain cultural things to light, which may in turn help to increase business to that site.
An example would be publishing a blog post or web page on divorce and remarriage. Most people have a cultural belief that one can divorce and remarry. truth is, once you get married and your first husband or wife is still alive, you can't marry another person. There are people who go against this truth and do as they please. Truth is, divorce and remarriage is "null and void," as long as your first husband or wife is still in the land of the living. If you go against this truth and do as your flesh pleases, you are in fact committing
"Adultery!"
Content on a blog or website discussing this topic can affect site viewers cultural beliefs and decision-making process in the moment whether they should purchase a product or service from a site discussing such a sensitive topic like this. It's better to publish the truth then to coat something down just to be pleasing in people's ears.
Do you want to know another truth? When it comes to water baptism, you can't be sprinkled with water out of the hand or bottle of a preacher or priest. Your body, feet, and head must be completely submerged under water. And, your baptism must be in the name of The Lord Jesus, not father, son, and holy ghost, or gods or goddesses, nor trinity. If you've been [sprinkled] with water by a Catholic priest or you haven't been been completely submerged under water in baptism in the name of The LORD Jesus, you must do everything over from scratch. That's the iron hard truth. Sad part is, many people do not believe this truth and will refuse to start over. This sensitive topic makes good content for meaningful discussion on a niche-based blog or website. Are you seeing the big picture now?
'Economic Factors'
Savvy online entrepreneurs and Internet marketing managers understand the importance of keeping a close eye on the economy. Inflation and unemployment can be used in a creative way by Internet marketing managers-affiliate managers whereas they can successfully increase sales. It's all in how one effectively appeals to their target audience regardless of current financial status.
If an affiliate manager-Internet marketing manager values their target audience enough to retain them in longevity, they automatically know running spontaneous fun 4 to 12 hour sales heavily discounted and or using the BOGO [buy one get one] approach helps online businesses stay one step ahead of an uncertain economy. This would be one of many approaches beginner or intermediate webpreneurs can take to keep sales production quotas abnormally high and achieve aggressive demand for products and services from the target audience.
'Global Factors'
This topic is sensitive concerning global factors. Internet marketing managers and other online companies have to take certain things into consideration when marketing products and services to people in other countries.
These grandfathered in factors include:
- Ability of the blog or website global consumers purchase from to have auto magic language translation enabled, so the consumer who doesn't speak English will be able to select from a drop-down box their native tongue and automatically watch the content of the blog or website be translated in their language.
- Having a well thought out business plan for long-term marketing and distribution to the global audience without interruption.
- Political - Being mindful not to ship a product to a country that the government deems politically offensive. Doing so will possibly have the package seized by the foreign government and undeliverable to the global consumer, resulting in a negative word-of-mouth experience and possible backlash to the site the Internet marketing manager manages.
- Shipping costs
- Tariff
- Legal Factors
- Being clear and concise in the site privacy policy about what to expect as a site viewer such as having cookies automatically placed on your computer and so on.
- Clear and concise explanation in large and bold print about shipping fees tariffs, taxes, and any additional fees which may possibly incur.
- Never create a blog or website similar to competitors.
- Never slander a competitor.
- Never scrape blog posts or website content from a competitor and paste it on my website claiming to be the original author without proper attribution to the original source.
- Never infringing mentioned in the beginning of this report on competitor's trademarked keywords.
- Never using video or image from a competitor without giving proper attribution. (cont'd)
- Spam - Never send an e-mail newsletter or any content concerning a site to a person who never subscribed. This is one of the most sensitive legal issues on the World Wide Web today and can possibly result in a company being sued for unsolicited messages.
'Political Factors'
Website content, domestic and global product shipping, and political campaign contributions from a site owner can be viewed as political factors that affect Internet business. As an Internet marketing professional striving for excellence, shun away from creating content indirectly or directly sounding in favor of any political candidate for fear of offending new and current site customers.
As an Internet marketing professional-webpreneur, be mindful of products shipped to other countries as mentioned, because not only will the customer possibly not receive it if the package is searched by foreign authorities, but can possibly affect the political relationship two countries have. Staying one step ahead of competition through research of doing business on the Internet is affected by politics and coming up with creative solutions to move forward in uncertain political times while staying on good terms with politicians on both sides of the fence "Democrat-Republican."
#SocialFactors
Social media continues to prove itself the king of all advertising mediums. Social networks provide a unique avenue for businesses of all sizes effectively reach their target audience through the use of promoting content with hashtags, creating Facebook fan pages for the purpose of collecting email addresses, increasing sales, and giving social networking visitors the ability to share content with their family and friends when a business runs a heavily discounted sale, promote coupons, conveying political messages.
Social media continues to drive a business revolution, says Forbes magazine online. Author Drew Hendricks of the Forbes article makes him interesting mention when he says "Rather than shelling out millions of dollars for a Super Bowl ad, these companies learn to generate buzz by creating viral content and encouraging shares and likes. Once a product or service becomes the one everyone is talking about, customers gravitate toward it, eager to learn more. The best part about social media marketing is that it can be deployed without spending millions. If businesses handle it on their own, it costs nothing but the time of the person doing the updates." A majority of companies today are not doing enough today in reference to hiring dedicated social media professional to man social networks, spending unbelievable amounts of ad dollars on pay per click online advertising to move products and services.
Use of social networks greatly reduces ad spend. All it takes is determination, effort, and retaining the target audience through creating lots and lots of quality content, additionally to personally responding to social media users. You may not get a sale in the moment, but that social media user will remember that you responded to them and may consider purchasing from you in the future. Show people you care and are concerned and they will reward you. It can't be emphasized enough to hire a dedicated team of social media professionals for the purpose of engaging in meaningful and deep discussions with people on social networks as a creative ploy to increase sales. They can be college students, part-time working professionals, and volunteers working for free to build their employment resume.
'Technological Factors'
This is one of the most important components in doing business online Internet marketing managers need to pay close attention to. Most Internet marketing and affiliate managers are only concerned with the relationships and increasing sales. Technological factors marketers need to pay most important attention to is making sure the company's Web servers have enough bandwidth and disk space to handle large sums of traffic coming in from search engines and social networks. Internet marketing professionals-webpreneurs should also double check their domain DNS settings are protected from people who seek to possibly steal your domain name away.
Other technological factors to take into consideration is keeping a watchful eye on anyone scraping your website content and using it as theirs without proper author attribution. This can be achieved by copying and pasting some of your content and entering it in Bing.com, Google.com, or YaHoO.com to see who referenced your content without proper author attribution. if you catch someone, you can call them out on your site as an "online plagiarist," and ask search engines to possibly disavow their site from search engine results pages.
Lastly, a technological factor that should be taken seriously on a daily basis is running random source code and database MYSQL.com queries in efforts of keeping any and all website vulnerabilities immune from attackers. By running random source code to check for website vulnerabilities, webpreneurs keep themselves protected from hackers and protect their online reputations. Make it a priority to run this check weekly and keep close communication with the Web server team if anything suspicious is detected.
References:
Hendricks, D. (2014, February 25). 3 Ways Social Media Is Driving A Business Revolution., from Forbes
Solutions . (n.d.). , from Nielsen.
Rowse, D. (2015, June 18). How to Build Your Blog's Audience with Long Form Evergreen Content - @ProBlogger.