The Niche Marketing Blog

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Editor’s note: Today’s guest article focuses in on “qualified traffic”, and how it is differentiated from general visitor counts to your web site.  Learn how to spot traffic and watch your conversions increase. ~Scott]

Every website has different things that will separate those who count as qualified traffic, and those who are merely visitors that are inflating and skewing their analytics numbers. A good marketing idea for small business is to define clearly who their qualified traffic is, and where it is coming from. Then, you can start to focus more on those sources of traffic and draw in more qualified visitors to your site. Ultimately, the quality of your visitors can matter far more than your total site views.

To begin, we must first define what is meant as a qualified visitor. In essence, a qualified visitor is one that we feel is actually potentially a customer. When you’re using raw data, such as Google Analytics, you never know how many visitors are actually coming to your site and looking for the data that you want them to be looking for. Some may be bot hits, some may be miss-clicks and some may be people just wasting time on the internet. So, you need to define your qualified visitors are.

A good way to look at it is that you need for a customer to have three things to be qualified. First, they need to actually have the money required to make a purchase from your site. Second, they must fill any prerequisites involved in purchasing your product. For example, a course in French as a second language wouldn’t make much sense for a native French speaker.

Alternatively, a site that sold car floor mats wouldn’t have much use for visitors without cars (with the rare obvious gift-giving exception). And finally, they must be the kind of person that actually buys products online. There are many who do not.

The reason this information is useful is that it can help you target some of your advertising efforts. Truth be told, targeting the first and third qualifying factors can actually be quite difficult. However, there are often many opportunities for targeting the second. One way to do this is with any PPC campaigns. If you pay to put ads on the Google content network, carefully selecting which sites you want to pay to have your ads on can be a good way to make sure that you’re only targeting those with an actual interest in your products.

Another way to do this is to buy ad space, or to work with people who run related websites to yours. For instance, if your product required people to own a car in order to be qualified, you could target websites that are built for car owners. You could buy ad space, but you could also post on car owner forums, you could comment on car owner blogs, join social networking groups targeted at car owners, and create off-site content that should draw the attention of those who own a car. Getting back links from related niche sites is also something that you should find extremely valuable, and which can definitely help increase the flow of qualified traffic to your own site.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Rich Reese is a consultant for a marketing idea for small business company and has expert knowledge of selling online marketing.

Related articles

• Increasing Qualified Site Traffic To Your New Website (ronmedlin.com)
• Making More From the Traffic That Your Website Has (roezer.com)
• Are You After Traffic or Visitors? (seo2.0.onreact.com)

Technorati Tags: Google Analytics, niche marketing, niche marketing tools, qualified traffic, target marketing

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[Editor's note: Today's guest article focuses on Foursquare.com and its application for location-based marketing strategies. If you have a brick and mortar business, and are focused on a particular local niche, you should consider employing Foursquare, or similar applications. ~Scott]

I’m not a game person but FourSquare caught my attention since the beginning. Some call it a game but I see it as a location-based application that works with most smart phones.

Most social media gurus focus on tactics and telling people how to use the tool, but they seldom talk about business strategy.

Let me show you how businesses can benefit from Foursquare. Have in mind that the application is addicting because users will compete for mayorships and badges which is something that ends up benefiting businesses. The app promotes exploring the town and trying new things which is great in itself. It will tell you if a place is trendy by the number of check-ins, and if you accomplish some requirements that vary from business to business you may win a badge.

Why is all this important to businesses: visibility, popularity, more customer loyalty, more business.

Why do people do it? They like to compete, they have [an] ego, it is fun and they can promote your business even though you might not be aware of it happening.

Have in mind that people want to become mayor of locations and oust previous mayors. When this happens they get posted publicly to twitter and Facebook with your business name and a link to your business’s profile page on foursquare.com. The same may happen when they arrive at your business.

Well, there are already savvy businesses using Foursquare to promote their business. A bar in San Francisco gives free drinks to the mayor of their location, and gives $2 off any performance night for those that show the phone and prove they checked in. This obviously motivates people to come back to the business and to use even more the application. In Las Vegas if you become the Mayor of the Miracle Mile Shops you’ll get your face and name on the 126-foot LED video screen. Big companies like Brave network, Pepsi and the New York Times are also using Foursquare. AJBombers a restaurant, did a Foursquare party and increased business in 110%.

Foursquare is already working on showing banners with the promotions.

The other day we were checking in at the movies and a message popped up telling us to try a restaurant around the corner with a coupon for us to use. What a proactive way to promote businesses in nearby locations!

The application allows people to recommend the place and suggest favorite dishes. It allows businesses and people to connect, bring foot traffic to the place and recommend to others. What more can a business wish for?

Badges for your business and badges to sponsor events is another possibility. For the users the more badges they have the more fun it is.

So, to put it into perspective, here are a few things you can use Foursquare in your business for:

• Coupons
• Special rewards for mayors or check-ins
• Encourage customers to come back
• Special promotions on slow days.
• Be a sponsor of Foursquare leaderboard.
• Brand awareness
• Deeper connection between customer and patron
• Instant feedback
• Promote events

I always say that the gold rush today is for being found, and getting attention.

About the being found part: Google and Bing maps are showing Foursquare venues when people search locally. Foursquare pages rank on search engines which means your business name, phone number and link come up.

Foursqare has the potential to revolutionize social media and turn it into a form of currency.

Out of the over 1.4 Million venues, only about 1200 venues have special offers. Less than 1% of businesses are going after this amazing opportunity. It is free.

Remind me how much you’ve spent with advertising that didn’t work? So what are you waiting for?

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Shahar-Nash is a mother-daughter team who focus on new media marketing for small businesses. To find out how to turn a dull, boring, life-sucking business into a multi-faceted money-making empire, visit http://www.BuzzInnerCircle.com

Related articles

• Location-Based Services: Checking in With Foursquare (social-media.blognotions.com)
• Why should I care about Foursquare? (e1evation.com)
• Know What FourSquare Is? 6 Million Users Do (searchenginewatch.com)

Technorati Tags: Foursquare, location-based marketing, niche marketing, niche marketing strategy, niche marketing tools

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[Editor's note: Today's guest article focused on building your site's visibility (and ranking) by building quality back links. Incidentally, I added the "no paid links" graphic because we don't want to rely on paid links to increase our page rank (and we don't want to be penalized by Google for doing so either). ~Scott]

Quantity of backlinks has always been a major factor in the search engine ranking algorithms. In the recent days, Google has been giving more priority to the quality of links as well. If you can add quality on the top of quantity, you just rule your niche and crush your competition.

Directory submission has powerful benefits to boost your internet business. It is considered as one of the most affordable tool in web site promotion. It has been chosen by many internet businesses because of its wide spectrum of opportunity it offers.

Link building is a very critical step in search engine marketing (SEM). Since sites are ranked in major search engines based on number of backlinks and the link quality, a site owner should spend a lot of time developing a solid link building plan with effective link building methods.

Search engine optimization is purely based on relevancy that comes from content with right concepts and proper usage of keywords. The best way to add content to a website is through blogging, making communities, comments and forums. And all these concepts are part of SMM.

What you need to do from a search engine optimization angle, is to start writing the press release content first. Submit that content to all the submission areas like your blogs, forums, press releases and article submission companies. However, before you submit your original press release content.

Submit it to your chosen press release company. Take the same content and add a little more content, say a sentence or two or an extra paragraph and submit it to a blog. Then add more content to your blog post and submit it to a forum and finally add more content to that forum post and submit it to an article submission company.

Article Submission is one way and to me it appears the only cost effective way to increase your business potential online. It needs no money, and with zillions of links provided out there. You can use the one of your choice to simple take the task to completion. Naturally submitting those crafted words is a task, which needs a foresight.

The owner of every business concern in the world knows exactly how important SEO services are for their trade. Through these services, a company can optimize and streamline its business websites and techniques to promote them in the most effective manner. Owing to this effective internet promotion service, several organizations have been able to multiply their online business and generate huge profits.

It is the most effective than other mode of URL submission. In fact web directories and article directories have anti-spam devices in their pages to check spam submissions. So, if you want better and effective result for the submission of you website URL and even article, this service is the answer.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Read about link building service also read about search engine optimization and directory submission service

Related articles

• New Methods Of Building Links (marketersdaily.com)
• Link Building Using Advanced Methods (marketersdaily.com)
• How Best to Use Links for SEO? (seo-theory.com)
• Link Building Using Advanced Strategies (ronmedlin.com)
• Link Building Tips To Improve Your Search Engine Rank (ronmedlin.com)

Technorati Tags: back linking strategy, Backlink, niche marketing, niche marketing strategy

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By Scott Spooner

The other day I was having a conversation with my mother when the conversation wound around to “social media“; what it is, and why anybody would want to use it.

As  I was trying to explain the various types of social media sites, I could see her eyes starting to glaze over. It was then that I realized that not everyone “gets” social media and, further, not everyone is even aware of the more common social media sites.

Knowing that it is always wise to try and frame a new concept within the framework of an existing concept. I decided to work out a set of reference points for some of the more common social media sites. The following short list is what I settled upon:

• When you hear Google, search engine, or Wikipedia, think encyclopedias
• When you hear Blogs, think newspapers
• When you hear YouTube, think television
• When you hear LinkedIn, think Rolodex
• When you hear Facebook, think high school yearbook
• When you hear Twitter, think telegram

(I especially like that last one)

A-ha! I could see the proverbial light go on! Once I was able to relate these different types of social media sites to something that my mother was already familiar with, suddenly she could not only relate to the concept, but also to the function and utility.

And now, she has a Facebook account. Go figure.

What other types of social media can we relate to preexisting concepts? What are your thoughts?

Related articles

• Learn More About Social Media (blogs.constantcontact.com)
• Working Social Media For Your Business (downtheavenue.com)

Technorati Tags: niche marketing, social media

[Editor's note: Today's guest article takes us back to the fundamentals of niche marketing. Mastering the fundamentals is the pathway to success. Whether your niche market is on-line, or off-line, it is always a good idea to review the basics from time to time. ~Scott]

By Marketing Knowledge Hub

The world of Internet Marketing is constantly changing. We all have to find out what is working for us to attract visitors to our websites (drive traffic) and keep them coming back for more. What worked for you last year may not necessarily be the best strategy for you to use this year.

Before passing on the secrets, let me just say that it is imperative that you have a good understanding of online and Internet terminology before proceeding. With that said, here are four fundamentals of Internet Marketing.

1. Content: We all need to understand that the best tool in our arsenals is our content. If you are providing your visitors with high quality, original content, you will start to create a buzz. People start talking about you and tell other people about your site, other websites start linking to your site and you will start to see higher search engine rankings. So your content is KEY when you are marketing online and this is especially true if you do not have the resources to engage in massive advertising to build a branding campaign.
2. Stay Consistent In Your Actions: There is no magic bullet. Internet Marketing is something that we have to do on a consistent basis using different methods to see what is working better for us. There are more and more people starting to market online so the competition gets stronger and stronger every day so it’s going to depend on the effort that YOU put in whether or not you are going to see the results that you are looking for.
3. Don’t Be A One Trick Pony: Use different strategies, techniques and split testing to see what is working best for you and how you are generating traffic more effectively than other methods. Even if you are brand new to Internet Marketing, you should still pick 2-3 marketing techniques and stick with them until you start to see some nice results. Track and measure your results and prioritize your Internet Marketing activities. Plus, the more places that people see you on the internet, the more real you become to them.
4. Become A Student: We have all grown up hearing the phrase “Knowledge Is Power” and it’s the truth. Internet Marketing is continually evolving and rapidly changing so we have to continually educate ourselves. What may have worked a couple years ago may no longer work or could be frowned upon now. Google and YouTube are shutting people down every day and their content disappears in the blink of an eye. So read up and pay attention to what techniques others are using to successfully market online and implement them into your business. A true professionals education never stops.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Marketing Knowledge Hub is a network for marketing professionals and decision makers. Check out our library of free marketing research to learn more about online marketing and social media. You can also review additional research and information at the free white papers database.

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• Internet Network Marketing – Do You Really Get It? (profitonknowledge.com)
• Productive Internet Marketing Methods That Provide Results (marketersdaily.com)
• The Right Approach to Find A Niche (marketersdaily.com)

Technorati Tags: Marketing strategy, niche marketing

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[Editor's note: Many niche marketers write and maintain blogs as a way to augment their income from within their niches. Today's guest article focuses on Google's AdSense program; what it is, and how to monetize your blog with it. Here's to a prosperous 2011! ~Scott]

Today I look at a number of reasons why the Google Adsense program is frowned upon by many online blog owners, and why this is a monumental mistake.

Google Adsense is the advertising program whereby Google places contextual ads on your site or blog and for which you get paid per click by each visitor to your site.

Many website owners do not exploit its potential to its fullest citing the low payout per click as a reason and the understandable lure to the fatter, juicier commissions that can be earned by affiliate marketing, either of physical products or electronic products.

Here are 3 great reasons to reconsider your approach to making money online:

1. Whatever income you manage to generate is paid directly into your bank account by one of the most successful and largest companies in the world. No need to deal with shady affiliate vendors, some of whom get up to all sorts of practices such as siphoning off the traffic that you drive to them to their own email list.
2. No matter what niche or market your blog caters for, there are almost certainly going to be advertisers for it. And the power of a highly targeted advertisement on your blog showing say a great price for the product or service that your reader has just read an article on is incredibly effective.
3. Passive income-Adsense income is truly passive income. There is no list building, no preselling for affiliate products and no refunds or queries from customers. They click, you get paid.

The key to building a good Adsense income is to create multiple blogs across a wide range of niches. These blogs may only contain a few pages but the opportunity to create blogs in obscure, uncompetitive markets means that you can obtain good search engine rankings easily and visitors.

Put simply, visitors mean clicks mean income for you. There are many smart entrepreneurs who are making great income online setting up small sites or blogs which cater for the most obscure, unsexy products who derive a nice income from each site.

But the key to a great income is to build a lot of sites and let each one be a silent money maker which individually wont amount to a hill of beans..but collectively will see you making a great passive income in a matter of months.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Check out budget wedding planning and wedding ideas on a budget at http://DiscountWeddingInvitationsHq.com

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• Learn Blogging For Profit (webmanmarketing.com)
• A few Moneymaking Options to Adsense (marketersdaily.com)
• Google AdSense Optimization That Will Change Your Entire Approach (marketersdaily.com)
• 3 Oft Made Mistakes that Violate Google Adsense TOS (marketersdaily.com)

Technorati Tags: AdSense, Google, niche market, niche marketing