You can spend hours studying, spend lots of money on training, or even hire someone to do it for you. But you’re in business to make money, not spend it. You must invest in your business but starting out; you may be on a tight budget. So the next question is, how do you know what is the best way to spend your dollars and minimize out of pocket expenses?
I was in this same situation. I wanted to get my business marketed online but I wanted to spend my time growing my business, not studying. We all know that you make money in your network company when you are recruiting. I wanted to spend my time talking to people, not looking at a machine.
But I needed the internet to help me get prospective recruits and customers. I have to admit, when I started learning internet marketing, it was like everything was written in another language and I didn’t have a dictionary. I had no idea what I was doing or where to start.
I eventually started a website with a sales pitch and a form to capture customer information but I had absolutely no idea how to drive traffic to my site. I finally gave up. But the sign of a true entrepreneur is persistence. There had to be a way and I was going to find it. Well, I found it by learning from others that had spent the hours and hours I did not have to spend.
I learned the different categories of internet marketing: Pay Per Click which can be expensive but you can control your costs, Article marketing, Blogging, and the emerging social marketing. Each one has it’s advantages. It is important is to pick the one you feel the most comfortable with. Then you have to learn everything about it and master it. Once you master it and it is working for you, then you can move to another one.
The key to advertising is consistent exposure to your brand, product, or service. Branding is super important. I went to a corporate training where they had different products such as water, MP3 players, etc. One product was the name brand and the other was a generic. Some products were blind tested so we had to choose the best without knowing the name. This really challenged us to ask if the branded product is really better.
A brand is best to many people because it is familiar and most likely has provided and consistent quality over time. You must ask yourself, how will you brand your business? What familiar image and associations do you want to create in the marketplace? In today’s technological marketplace, these questions take on a new role. How will you effectively communicate your brand online?
Just as there have always been advertising agencies to help promote a company, there are numerous online companies offering to help you as well. As with using any consulting service or product, the more you know the less vulnerable you are to being taken advantage of. It is important to educate your self on the basics of online marketing so you can effectively evaluate what products or services you are being presented.
Since many people are novices when it comes to technological prowess, it helps to have a training system that will lead you step-by-step. I have found it is better to do something right the first time then trying to figure out how to fix it.
In conclusion, it can be frustrating when you are getting started marketing your business online. It becomes much more manageable when you break it into parts (Pay per click, article marketing, social marketing), then learn each one separately. It also helps to enlist the expertise of the many training programs and systems that will guide you through the whole process. Just know enough to determine which ones offer you the most information and value. It’s actually pretty simple once you figure it out.
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