Max Palma
The Next Big Thing
About Technology, Making Money Online, Internet Marketing and being an Internet Entrepreneur
Copyright © 1997-2006 by ECnow.com, Inc., All rights reserved
Internet Marketing Activities
The Internet is not only a great way to spread the word about your product or service, in today's world, it's an essential part of the marketing mix. Below is a list of activities that you could be using. Like any set of resources, use at your own risk.
| Find your URL through Internic, Bulkregister, Dotster, NameBargain, or your (.cc) URL through ENIC.cc, other country domains through Norid. URLs for sale at 1DomainNamesSales, 4urls, DomainCollection or monitor a domain you want at EyeOnDomain. ICANN.org is the technical coordination body for the Internet (what to do about domain name disputes). Create small urls with: Snipurl, & Tinyurl. Find words in URLs with netcraft. Easily create a Web site at Webspawner, Spinsite, Yahoo!. Host your domain at LowestHosting or DreamHost and pick a template from 4templates.com or review/pick up hosting locations at WebHostingRankings or Web Hosting Bluebook. |
| Is your site easy to use and navigate? Does it satisfy its intended purpose? Check out these usability sites: uie or useit. Use techniques that are friendly to your customers and prospects (webmonkey). View compatibility with various browsers: AnyBrowser, check your graphics efficiency: Optiview's Quickscan, keep track of your site's performance: atwatch, dotcom-monitor, Keynote, InternetSeer. You can also just ask a bunch of friends/family to critique your site. Make sure your links work: SevenbyTwentyFour, W3C Link Checker |
| Give back to the community. Give something of value to your audience. Update this information periodically to keep your audience coming back. The resources page from ECnow.com, the books page from the Silicon Valley Executive Business Progarm, and white papers page from Happy About are examples of this technique. |
| Let your audience quickly find what they need. Valuable content, good navigation and easily accessible contact/feedback mechanisms. Add value to your site, by using some of the "free" tools on the Internet . For example, if you're a U.S. public company, point to the Edgar database (e.g. Intel). If you want people to visit you, use Mapblast to give directions (e.g. ECnow.com). If you can make maps.google.com to work for you, that would be great. Add a calendar supercalendar. In the language of your user world.Altavista.com, Freetranslation, Globalsight, Ilanguage, Uniscape |
| All pieces of corporate literature should contain your URL: business cards, ads, letterhead, e-mail, company vehicles, packaging, promotional items, employees outgoing messages, signage around and within buildings, thank you cards, etc. Check out psprint, PrintingForLess or printing.researcheasy for printing, GotLogos to create a logo or Alt Terrain to put your url in a number of offline locations. |
| A short description of your product or service should be automatically attached to the bottom of every e-mail. All employees should be encouraged to use it. Target your tag to the group receiving your e-mail. Here's an example from ECnow.com. |
| Make sure people can find your site in Yahoo! and the top 7 search engines. Also try some of the vertical engines. Submit to other locations potentially using a service like Submit-in-an-Instant or Add-URL-Free. Check out: Search for other places to submit to. Look at Yahoo's list and Tucows list of search engine submission tools (also look at exploit). Don't forget to submit to DMOZ.
Check your listings manually with Market Leap tools (by keyword verification, search engine saturation, or link popularity), or Bruce Clay's tools, or learn the tricks of checking the major engines from searchenginewatch. Learn everything you wanted to know about search engines from searchengines.net. |
| NOTE: Establish & Communicate your Voice! | Web 2.0 is the next evolution of implementing Web technology into business and society. At ECnow.com, we believe it's about increased communication. The tools and capabilities to let your prospects and customers know what you stand for and how you interact with your customers have never been easier. In short, it's important for you to establish and share your voice. Whether you are a large corporation or a small company, you need to let your audience get to know the real company. You need to share your thought leadership and demonstrate your customer adoption. This can be quickly and efficiently completed with the tools below. When reviewing these techniques, keep in mind how your company can share your voice in a consistent and straight-forward manner in a format your customers and prospects want to receive. Check out a Wharton article on the topic. |
| Pay-per-click is currently the hotest Internet Marketing technique and it's only going to heat up from here. Although, Overture (now Yahoo!) started the trend, Google brought it to market. There are other locations to buy from including Looksmart. Look toward Microsoft to create a service that is proported to leapfrog both Google and Yahoo! later this year. Create and manage the program yourself or use a firm such as Creative Consultants Group or SearchRev to do it for you. Check out the conversion rates of the engines did-it search marketing. There's a myriad of paid-for Internet advertising opportunities. Clickz.com's Media Buying or Internet.com's Ad Resources for good starting points of on-line advertising resources. Also check out On Ad Solutions. |
| Read 20 definitions of blogging at MarketingProfs and a good article in iMediaConnection by Rick Bruner and info on CorporateBlogging.info or Creative-Weblogging. Search for Blogs at BlogSearchEngine or Technorati. You can blog yourself by sharing your thoughts on your site or you can blog on other sites. Create your own blogs with: Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal, BlogHarbor, Blogger, Blogit, Weblogs, Wordpress, and Userland. Check out: eLearnSpace.org's Blogging Tutorial, Technorati's Top Blogs, Radio Userland, or get your free Blog at JoeUser. Check out the small busines blog center from allbusiness. Corporate examples (List of European Corporate Blogs, Ford, GM, Maytag Skybox, Jupiter Research), also some unofficial examples (Aston-Martin, Google, xBox, Dreamhost, and even John Kerry). Place ads on blogs with BlogAds, CripsAds or read the bloggers blog about it RSS is a way to easily share your blog content with the world. Read about RSS at XML. Look at Syndic8 and Newsgator to support your feed. |
| Package content that is of value and distribute it on a periodic basis. You can build trust and spread the word. Also a good way to gather e-mail addresses that you can market to. Announce everywhere you can, don't miss using these sets of resources: Australian Electronic Journals, EMailUniverse, EzineZ, eZine-List, eZine Search, ListCity, The Etext Archive, PromoteFree. Opt-in newsletter vendors: HTML-Email-marketing, groups.Yahoo.com, MeMail, Topica, Yourmailinglistprovider You can also use MarketersChoice which bundles in a great newsletter feature with their shopping cart service. You can pick up free content here: Certificate.net, ezinearticles.com, & ideamarketers.com Put dynamic headlines on your site: NewsIsFree.com, YellowBrix.com, Syndic8.com Dr. Ralph Wilson's Guide to Online Newsletters. |
| If your potential customer types in the key word or key phrase that describes your services, you want to make sure that your site is within the first two pages that show up. Click on examples (includes the methodology used) that ECnow.com has helped optimize ([Digitivity], [CGDC]), or (Crisislink). Learn more about search engines through searchenginewatch, searchengines.com, search engine showdown and TrafficSuccess. Check out: Websiteresults.com, Yahoo's list, MarketingSherpa.com or the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization. Look at Google's hot requests by country. Use tools like SEOElite & WebPosition |
| Podcasting is the fastest growing Internet marketing trend and will most likely jump into one of the top 3 positions in the next year. Read about podcasting at Wikipedia. Check out these directories: iPodder.org, Podcast.net, Podcastingnews, including the father of podding, itunes. Check out how various businesses are using podcasting (Deloitte, IBM On Demand Business, Fidelity, Project Management Podcast, Internet Business Mastery) Also check out some resources including: Yahoo!'s podding service, Podcasting-Tools, Podcasting, web20show.com, Career Builders Monkey Mail (my example), Odeo, Byoaudio, Gcast |
| Whether it's an internal employee or an excited partner, empower your evangelists with the tools they can use to help market you in the on-line world. Essentially, find the best way to get word of mouth excitement about your product or service. Alladvantage.com (no longer around), for example, grow to over 250,000 members in it's first 21 days at 2,000,000 members in 120 days by getting evangelists to push their concept of paying users to surf the net. Get some ideas at: WilsonWeb Create a tell-a-friend program with tell-a-friend-wizard or build your own. Combining PPC and viral marketing, many younger entrepreneurs are making money with Google arbitrage. Flash course on making this happen. |
| Allow other sites to sell your products or distribute your value-added content. Lists containing affiliate programs: Adbility, refer-it.com, associateprograms.com, affiliateshowcase.com, sitecash.com, commission-junction.com, www.clickquick.com, linkshare, 2-tier, affiliatematch, SponsorDirectory. You can also use MarketersChoice which bundles in a powerful affiliate with their shopping cart service. Reference Guide: associateprograms, 10 Do's and Dont's, and Information Outlet Running your own program: commission-junction, linkshare. |
| You should be collecting e-mail addresses at every opportunity. E-mail people with info they've asked for. Annuncio, Microsoft Small Business Center, Bluemartini, Constant Contact, HTML-Email-marketing, YesMAIL, & Vertical Response are interesting services that might be used. Potentially tie in with incentives from companies like: ECentives, ERewards. Build traffic with WebHitsDirect. You can also use MarketersChoice which bundles in e-mail marketing with their shopping cart service. |
| Write and publish white papers and collect contact info (e.g. e-mail) from those that pick them up. Can host on your site or use a white paper lead generation site: Tradepub, Bitpipe, or KnowledgeStorm |
| Use article distribution sites like Article Dashboard, Article Marketer, Article Sender, Phantom Writers, or Submit Your Article or article submission software like Artemis Pro. Write and publish a tradebook, eBook or Podbook with the book publisher Happy About or have them write and publish one for you. Easily publish eBooks with Fastebooks or use eBookBroadcast. Visit Dan Poynter's Book Promotion Tips. Speak at conferences and learn more on speaking from speaker net news. Write and publish articles of value. Include your URL in your bio. Contact news people who write about your area of expertise. Check out: MediaMap, Bacons, LexisNexis or News Voyager, Biz Journals, Radio and Records Directory, Web Radio Directory, and the National Association of Broadcasters. |
| Use tools like Centra, Interwise, Raindance, Polycom, PresentationPro, and Webex. Avoid these 3 mistakes. |
| Write and distribute press releases pointing back to your site. Check out PRnewswire, BusinessWire, MarketWire, Internet Newsbureau, PRweb, 24-7PressRelease, PressReleaseWriting, PressReleaseNetworking, ExtraPR, GlobalPRMedia, Eworldwire, ProfNet.org/press.html, Pressbox.co.uk, PrudentPressAgency, Pressreleasenetwork, Urlwire, Webwire, XpressPress. Press release writing tips at Pressreleasewriting. |
| Have employees in your company participate in the various social business networks such as: LinkedIn, OpenBC, Ecademy, Spoke, EveryonesConnected, Ryze, Tribe, Visible Path, theFacebook. |
| Use these services to find: user groups Google Groups (deja), mailing lists liszt, and discussion groups forumone of interest. Check out Intersync's forum list and reference. |
| If you can find the time, leading an on-line forum or running an on-line community is a great way to establish an affinity group and build credibility. Try myfamily, Yahoo Groups for a host of on-line community services. |
| Wiki's allows your site visitors to update the Web content themselves. The most extensive Wiki experiment is Wikipedia. This is certainly a technology worth experimenting with. Use tools from: Wordpress, WikiWikiWeb, JotSpot, Social Text, or Confluence or look at Protopage |
| Approach appropriate sites in your industry and closely aligned industries to link to your site. Create a link2us page to make it easy. Check out ecnow.com/link2us.htm. Use Link-Builder, LinkLeads, InfoPack's Alink, LinkAutomatic or SEOlinkExchange. Check your link popularity at Linkpopularity, LinkPopularityCheck, or MarketLeap. Join or start a Webring might work for your site. |
| If you have key information that you want to share, consider using an autoresponder. This is a good way to gather e-mail addresses for future marketing. Can be used for: Promotional Material, Product/Service Information, Training/Hiring Help, Article/White Paper Distribution. Check out: Apexmail, Awebber, or Databack Systems |
| Check out Yahoo's or try Addaform, Survey, SuperSurvey, SurveyMonkey, Create Survey, or Zoomerang. Writeup your results and distribute them with the tools above in articles, books, blog postings and press releases! |
| Either manually or via on-line services, actively monitor and participate in user groups, mailing lists and discussion groups. Here are some services that can do this for you moreover, cyveillance, ewatch, and CyberAlet. Monitor TV news with NewsIQ. |
| Partner with a software company to run an auction at your site ebay, moai, Andale, amazon. Check out Tucows for Auction Tools or auction portal sites Auctionbeagle, ChannelAdvisor, Internetauctionlist. |
| Contests and give-aways are great ways to generate traffic. Just look at iWon. Check out these sites to help you advertise: Contestguide, Contestworld. |
| Here are coupon companies that could help: Coolsavings, Coupons, HotCoupons, RebatePlace, QuickToClick. |
| As an example, go to the Hunger Site at the UN, click a button and somewhere in the world a hungry person gets a meal to eat, at no cost to you TheHungerSite (paid by the sponsors). Cisco did a phenomenal tie-in with NetAid.org. Also try: igive, schoolpop. |
| Posting links in high-traffic malls / portals is a trend some are trying. Use your best judgment, some are great, some are a waste of money. Absolutely put a link in Yahoo (#7). |
| The best sites for paid-for banner advertising are those with traffic. Try any of the search engine companies that offer targeted advertising. For free banner exchange programs, check out: 123banners, bannerswap or cyberlinkexchange.usww. Paid for service Microsoft Small Business Center, Doubleclick, iNet-Traffic. Have your banner created at Banner4u.net, Flicker. |
| Place classified ads: Yahoo!, BestMall, 5StarAds. Post automatically with the ClassifiedClub. |
| Host classified ads at your site Excite Classifieds. |
| If you have a site worth talking about, apply for, win, and post your awards. Check out: market-tek.com/awardsite.html. |
| Sites to submit to free-for-all pages: FFAnet, Linkomatic, Submitad. Locations to download software for your own free-for-all page: Linkomatic. Services that will host free-for-all pages for you: FFAnet. |
