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Archive for January, 2010

Targeting A Niche Market

Targeting a niche provides focus for your website and has great appeal to search engines as it gives them a better idea of the sort of traffic they should send you. Try to determine where your market is. Are they parents? Retirees? Home owners? Pet lovers? If you are selling art supplies you may find hobby sites will cater to your audience. If you sell information for doityourself projects you could show up in home decorating as well as financial sites ‘Save Money on Home Building Projects!’ for example.

Targeting a niche also means that your visitors will be aware that you are able to provide the sort of information they are looking for hence they will bookmark your site for future reference and think of your site when looking for products that are related. As well if the content of your site impresses visitors not only are they likely to return but they may well recommend your address to their friends.

With a targeted niche you can have more confidence when contacting your customers about new products industry news or specials and this is without postage costs or time consuming envelope stuffing.

There are a number of tools that will help you to find a niche that is likely to be profitable. WordTracker is a top grade tool that requires a subscription but there are a number of keyword analyzers for sale that will assist. A useful free one is Good Keywords. These tools are especially useful for identifying keywords that are attracting traffic. In other words they indicate the level of interest from the public. Some of the commercially available tools will also give an idea of the level of competition that will be facing you. Search in Google under “keyword tools” for details of programs currently available.

Invite your subscribers to recommend the site to friends who are interested in the topic. Even better have a place on your website to ‘tell a friend’. Your visitor will enter their own name and email address as the sender of the message to avoid spam complaints. However a warning do not start emailing the invitee unless they sign up personally for your newsletter.

Niche sites will really benefit from a newsletter. Create an appealing free gift such as a special report or howto manual that they will receive with their subscription. By providing valuable information related to your topic you will gain the trust of subscribers. By contacting them at least several times a year up to once a week if possible they will be reminded of your website when looking for information or products in your niche.

Be sure to create a website that has informative content. Incorporate the keywords words or phrases visitors type into their search engines into the content to improve your place in the search engines.

Also if you write articles about your particular niche that will help to set you up as an ‘industry expert’. If you don’t feel capable of writing them yourself you can hire a ghostwriter. End the article with your name a comment about your business and a link to your website. Submit your article to relevant article directories or ask if website owners would like to use your contribution. Be sure they agree to keep your name and website link intact.

You may find discussion groups that cater to your market. Involve yourself in their conversations and attach a signature with your website address if the policies permit. Be careful not to advertise on these forums; however you may be able to offer your free items when the situation allows.

If you are expanding an existing offline business by setting up a webpage you may find your most valuable contacts right in your store. Make some brochures or cards that announce your online presence or ask customers if they’d like to sign up for your online newsletter.

Whether you are following the advice of top Internet Marketers or if you just happened to have a business that caters to a very specific target audience you must be able to find them and they must be able to find YOU. If your website has focus this at least makes it easier for your audience to “hear your call”. Then you can consider the nooks and crannies where THEY abide!

One of the joys of niche marketing is the luxury of tapping into a favorite hobby occupation or expertise and building a business around it. Focusing on a niche also makes it EASIER to channel your energies and appeal to an enthusiastic audience. And possibly make a profit.

About the writer:  Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing a Reno SEO firm providing search engine optimization and marketing services since 1998. Stoney is also a parttime instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College as well as a moderator in the Small Business Ideas Forum. He also contributes daily to the EMP EMarketing Performance search engine marketing blog.

Become IT Consultant Savvy By Building A Great Contacts Database

If you really want to build a profitable stable IT consulting business and become IT consultant savvy about the way you handle your clients you need to figure out how to be memorable and stand out from the crowd.

Many trying to become IT consultants neglect one of the most important elements of marketing to clients creating a targeted marketing plan that attracts the best steady longterm clients.

A really important part of this marketing plan is building a great contacts database and nurturing your inhouse mailing list. When you build an inhouse mailing list made up of really highquality prospective clients you are investing in the future growth of your business and building a tremendously valuable asset.

The following 4 tips can help you become IT consultant savvy so you can build a really strong stable profitable and sustainable business.

1. Use Your Mailing List for Better Direct Mail. Direct mail is definitely an important part of building an effective diversified IT marketing plan. And you can use direct mail to keep your name in front of qualified prospects. For example lets say you decide you want to promote your technology assessment program next month so you name the next month Technology Assessment Month and make all technology assessments halfprice during the month. Now which type of mailing list would be most responsive to a postcard offering halfpriced technology assessments? Certainly not a rented mailing list of 2500 small business owners that have never heard of your company. Your inhouse mailing list of 250 small business owners that already have a relationship with you as prospects networking contacts seminar attendees trade show booth visitors etc. is always a much better option for special offers for services and represents a great chance for you to continue to become IT consultant savvy.
2. Know Why Those that Know You Will Be More Receptive to Your Services and Why This is Efficient Marketing. When you have a mailing list made up of those that already know of your company and are not strangers they will be much more receptive and responsive to any special offers you make. Also it will cost about 1/10 as much money to reach this group as it does to reach those that are strangers and just come from a rented mailing list. Or to make things more concrete if 1 stranger out of the 2500 signs on for your 250 technology assessment each name in that mailing was worth… 0.10. Good luck breaking even on that. However if 10 prospects out of the 250 that already know and like your company sign on for your 250 technology assessment 2500 in service revenue each name from that mailing was worth 10 much better math!
3. An InHouse Mailing List is Typically UnderUtilized by Your Competitors. The asset of an inhouse mailing list isnt often used by the average person that is trying to become IT consultant savvy. Why? Most competing IT professionals wont realize how powerful it is. If you use this knowledge to your advantage you can really stand out from your competition. Your inhouse mailing list is almost like a moneyprinting machine. Any time you want to make more money you just send out a compelling offer and you will almost always find at least some takers. What’s the key? The offer must be targeted appropriately and COMPELLING.
4. An InHouse Mailing List is Typically UnderUtilized by Your Competitors. The asset of an inhouse mailing list isnt often used by the average person that is trying to become IT consultant savvy. Why? Most competing IT professionals wont realize how powerful it is. If you use this knowledge to your advantage you can really stand out from your competition. Your inhouse mailing list is almost like a moneyprinting machine. Any time you want to make more money you just send out a compelling offer and you will almost always find at least some takers. What’s the key? The offer must be targeted appropriately and COMPELLING.

In this short article we outlined 4 tips to help you build a great contacts database asset and inhouse mailing list. Learn more about how to become IT consultant savvy and attract great steady highpaying clients now at http://www.BecomeAnITConsultant.com

Copyright C BecomeAnITConsultant.com All Rights Reserved

About the writer:  Joshua Feinberg is the author and editorial director of the Computer Consulting Kit Home Study Course which helps computer consultants VARs integrators solution providers and managed services providers get more of the best steady highpaying small business SMB clients.

TV Is Not Going Anywhere So We Might As Well Fix It

The effectiveness of television ads are declining but as long as television keeps expanding the ads themselves are going nowhere. Changing how TV ads are delivered can transform them from the waste of media they often seem to be into a relevant brand invitation.

Targeted advertising and interactivity can accomplish this by harnessing viewer input to trigger ad selection and subsequent communications. Herein lies the opportunity to finally break away from simple demographics and context and move towards marketing to complex individuals based on their multifaceted tastes and individual needs.

There are ways to know or guess who is watching a television and their preferences. While there are currently some privacy concerns for the purpose of this column it is only important to know that targeting is possible with existing technology.

I define “Targeted TV Advertising” as: Using gathered data artificial intelligence and feedback from viewers to display messages viewers indicate to be relevant and predict the relevance of other messages.

Targeted Ad Selection

In addition to automatic profiling based on viewing habits with a little interaction viewers themselves can actively affect ad selection. For instance while watching a TV spot a viewer can give it a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” by pressing a button on his remote. Like StumbleUpon for TV over time the system will learn his likes and dislikes and adjust its ad service accordingly. This differs from current optin “press to play” ad systems because the ads are displayed inline and appear with or without user prompting. For the less privacyconscious this can be augmented by filling out a preference questionnaire thus ensuring the best possible matches for the viewer and the advertiser.

Some tangible benefits of filling out the questionnaire:

• No tampon ads in a household of men.
• Mortgage ads for those in the market for a new house.
• Pet foods ads to people with pets not for those without.
• No nonkosher food ads for kosher families.

Targeted advertising largely solves the issue of relevance but how do we extend our message and make it easier for the viewer to become a customer?

Interactivity and Message Extension

Acting upon information in a TV spot is hard. Not only is the ad itself competing for attention so is the act of processing it remembering it and acting on it at the appropriate time.

Responding to an ad can be made easier using the same remote control technology as above additionally gathering data and increasing brand touch points for the advertiser. If a viewer sees a spot he wants more information about he can click a button on his remote and the brand will send him an email to peruse at his leisure. Or to get more sophisticated pressing a different button will send a brochure in the mail or a text message with a coupon to use at the local store. To those familiar with “direct response television” DRTV this extends those principles but lowers the barrier to interact pressing a button versus making a phone call and increases the breadth of actions that can be performed automatically.

If an advertiser hooks these leads into their customer relationship management system CRM they have a selfengineered gold mine because not only do they know how many people saw their spot they know who the people are and where they live allowing all other marketing efforts to be more focused. When advertisers have better information they can put out fewer better communications with greater effect nurturing more meaningful relationships with customers. Who would send out 100000 cheap direct mail pieces with a low return rate when they could send out really impressive sexy packages to people who watched their spot and liked their product?

In conclusion targeted television advertising has two main strengths. The first is that it requires guesswork for an advertiser to pick an audience for a product but the audience is rarely wrong when it chooses the product itself. Secondly and more importantly viewers will be treated as real people whose opinions matter and their time and attention will be respected. As viewers and advertisers lets all hope that targeting comes to television soon.

About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Dylan is a freelance art director based out of San Francisco and about to finish Miami Ad School. He reads everything he can and seems to spend more time in airports than anywhere else. This explains his unhealthy obsession with luggage but his fetish for notebooks is another matter.

Dylan was recently a finalist on the advertising reality show “Ad Fight” pitching a national campaign for OfficeMax. You may also find articles by Dylan at the TalentZoo.com