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MarkeTips™ Tip
#003 - The Truth About Electronic Marketing
Most people who are prospering from this form of marketing are
selling the sizzle and have forgotten the steak. This article
will provide the facts behind the hype. You will get the straight
truth from someone who uses online marketing personally and who
isn't trying to get rich by selling direct response techniques
as realistic Internet marketing concepts.
Marketing Electronically is a hot topic especially in these days
of instant gratification. There are advantages and disadvantages to any form of marketing, but lately all I hear are the
advantages.
Let me first mention the benefits as expressed by others and then
I will provide the negatives that have been unvoiced.
(1) You can reach millions of people.
(2) Lower lead costs.
(3) Quickness of response.
(4) Lower inquiry fulfillment costs.
All of this sounds great huh?
The disadvantages include:
(1) You must consistently market, more than with direct response
advertising or direct mail.
(2) Trying to keep your material on the Internet boards.
(3) Your material can t be sales related.
(4) Finding out if there is an audience for your product or
service involves searching the online networks to determine if
it's large enough to even bother uploading your material to.
One major disadvantage to online marketing as I mentioned in item
three is:
You can t blatantly promote your material, your product, or
your service. With conventional advertising you can go right
after your potential customer with a sales letter, but, with
Internet
marketing you have to provide up front information in the
form of a how to article and at the closing of your article you
can include a resource box which invites the reader to respond to
an offer that you make within it.
There are two advantages to utilizing a how to article. (1) You
are considered an expert on the subject that you have written
about. (2) Your material if information rich could remain on the
Internet boards for years.
You cannot provide information that points the reader to your
product or service. In effect it must be generic. Give plenty of
information up front. This is what the system operators want on
their board and this will be what determines whether your
material stays on the board. You can of course provide a short
bio-link to your main website.
The online services are like magazines, readers call back again
and again if there is valuable information. If you re not
providing valuable information that they can read and download,
then your material won't remain up on the boards. Packaging Is
Everything
One of the best ways I know of keeping your material on the
boards is in a newsletter format.
If you create an online newsletter in HTML or software driven
format, also create an issue that is in a straight ascii format.
This can be accomplished with a simple text editor or word
processor. This will cover all the bases and allow additional
computer platforms such as Macintosh, Amiga or Unix to read it.
Direct Response Techniques Don t Work!
I must keep emphasizing that you must provide solid information. This form of marketing can not be approached using direct
response marketing techniques. It won t work! I warn you to be
careful if your following the advice of those who have a
direct response marketing mind set. You need to listen to those
who use the computer bulletin boards personally and know how to
operate a computer. Such as myself.
Listening to those who don t market electronically or know how to
use a computer is like trying to take advice on how to run a
successful business from someone who has never started one. It simply foolish!
Direct response marketing involves hype in print, you don t tell
a lot, instead you sell a lot, offering the reader plenty of
benefits that spell out wants in it for them." With online
marketing you need to tell a lot and I don t mean tell them what
they re going to get if they buy your product or service. What
do they need to do to accomplish specific objectives. If you re
writing a report on 25 ways to make money staying at home, you
can t write order my book and I will reveal these 25 ways. No!
You need to write an article that details the 25 specific
(workable) ways to make money at home and within the resource box
at the close of this article you can mention that there are
also an additional 75 other ways to make money at home and if
they would like to receive this valuable report simply contract
you.
An Effective Method
Focus on building a list by lead generating. Offer something for
free. Generate the name and address. Then follow-up with direct
mail. This approach allows you to present the salesmanship, the
professionalism (straight ascii text is not very nice looking)
the potential customer is getting your sales message.
You cannot do this on the boards, without gathering the names and
addresses and mailing to them. This is the method that I prefer
to use, and one method I see working.
If you don t have a computer then you need to get into the
computer age. You can't utilize this new marketing method without
one. Actually, this form of marketing is not new it s been around
for quite some time. It s just been brought to the general
publics attention most recently. However, it s been presented in
a false and misleading way. All the hype and misinformation that
has been given as fact has confused a lot of people.
Through a great deal of online research I have found that some
things are down right false, yet they are still being presented
by some individuals as fact. For your own benefit I highly
recommend that you research this technology. I will tell you,
from my own research that you re not going to make thousands of
dollars just uploading your sales material on the boards.
There are realistic methods that can make you one, two, three,
or four thousand dollars or more a month. But, it s not going to
be instantaneous. You re not going to put your material up on
these bulletin boards one time and then overnight get flooded
with orders. I have discovered that online marketing is a method that must be consistent and met with strict regulations.
Each board has it s own rules and you must adhere to them.
Otherwise spending time uploading your material onto these boards
isn't going to do much good. Your material will get kicked right
off. Ignore the hype associated with this marketing method and
do some research to determine what is true and what isn't.
One truth that will ring loud is that there are plenty of inconsistencies being promoted. If you do your homework you'll
have an advantage over those who are still being taken for a
money stealing ride.
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