Internet Marketing Monthly

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If you asked many people for the definition of marketing, you?d get many wrong answers. At the very least, some would be right or be on the right track, but still give an answer that?s incomplete. Many people would answer that marketing was advertising or promotion when actually that?s only part of the answer. Marketing is everything you do to get your product or service noticed by the customer, and that include advertising and promotion.

If you learn the definition of marketing from a textbook, it?s even more involved and detailed. Marketing is broken down into what?s known as the 4 P?s. These make up the ?marketing mix? as it was defined by Harvard business professor in the 1960s. Product, price, placement and promotion. Product simply means the product you?re offering an all that it entails like its warrantee, guarantees, etc. Pricing is simply the act of choosing an appropriate price for the product. This can include things besides money, like time and energy.

Placement is the distribution of the product?how it gets into the customers? hands. Point-of-sale, retail, online, which area the product is sold in, the demographic and exact selling environment all make up this part of the definition of marketing. And finally, the last P, promotion include advertising, publicity, selling philosophies and branding rounds out what marketing is and what a good marketing strategy must take into consideration.

This 4 P model works best when applied to consumer goods of fairly low to moderate cost. High-end items require adjustments to the definition of marketing to make them successful. And the terminology used when it comes to marketing a service is different and a bit more complicated, warranting 3 more Ps on top of the original 4.

People become one of the crucial factors in the definition of marketing a service. Each person a customer comes into contact is even more important than usual when service marketing. This P can also refer to the customers. Process refers to the process of providing the service. Physical evidence is a part of the definition of marketing services that no one would consider purchasing a service without. This makes up all of the testimonials and case studies that demonstrate how other people liked or were helped by the product. Since a service is something that can?t be seen or felt until it?s delivered, this evidence that others benefited from the same thing is very important.

Web marketing has its own set of 4 Ps, as well. Personalization is an important part of marketing online because it allows customers to create their own products. Participation in a company?s website and activities attracts customers. Predictive modeling is a term that refers to the mathematical formula for sales models that most of us never need know about it. And peer-to-peer is an important and relatively new term. Social networking and social bookmarking are two prime examples of this. Peer-to-peer or word of mouth is a crucial part of the definition of marketing successfully online.

Do you want to do a Google rank check? Google?s page rank is a patented algorithm. Google considers more than half a billion variables when determining your rank on the search results.

No one person knows what all of these variables are ? not even the person who oversees the code. So, anyone claiming to be a Google rank check authority should be viewed with caution.

Still, there are some things we do know about how page rank works.

Google flat out says that pages they believe are important get a higher page rank than others. Pages with higher rank tend to appear higher in the search results, though you will see page rank 5 pages occasionally ranking higher than page rank 7 pages for a specific search.

Google also sees the links on a page acting as a ?vote? for other pages. So, if a highly ranked page links to your site, you get more ?juice? out of it than when a friend with no page rank links to your site.

Most experts agree that backlinks from .gov and .edu sites to have higher link juice than other top level domains because they are restricted to not for profit sites.

One way to get .edu links is to take out online ads on college newspaper sites.

But, any links from PR 2 or higher sites can help your page rank. One way to get links is to post comments on with decent page rank. But make sure that Google ?follows? the links on the page first. Some webmasters set their sites up so that you don?t get any link juice from your posts. You can do this by downloading free software on the internet.

Other ideas for increasing page rank include:

? Join forums and post a link back to your website in your signature. Every time you make a post, you?ll get link juice.

? Submit your site to directories. Each directory which lists you will give you more of a chance of being listed higher in Google?s search results.

? Add an ezine to your site. Not only will this allow you to keep up with the people who visit your site, but you can also post information about your ezine to ezine directories.

? Publish articles on the article sites. You can drive traffic to your sites this way. But, high PR article sites also give you link juice.

? Create a sitemap on your website. This lets Google know how to index your page.

? Link to other pages within your web site. Putting links to the internal pages within the web site allows you to increase your link juice.

? Continue building pages within your site. Every page you create and link back to your home page increases the strength of your home page?s PR.

To do a Google rank check, you can install the Google toolbar to your Firefox browser. The tool is at http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT3/intl/en/index.html -This will give you the page rank of every page you visit.

A Google rank check will allow you to know how your site is faring compared to similar sites.

You might think that the best ecommerce marketing strategy is advertising. Banner ads, one line text links and larger graphic ads on websites and in newsletters are one way to advertise. It?s usually a fairly expensive way, though. Especially if you have the graphics made to be eye-catching, like animations that are sure to get people to notice them. But just because someone notices the person doing cartwheels on your graphic ad, that doesn?t mean they?re going to click it. And many people are so annoyed by ads, particularly moving, flashy ones, that they run software that automatically blocks them from ever having to see such things. How are you going to reach them?

And even of those who see your ad, what percentage of them is likely interested in whatever you?re selling? Like a billboard on a highway with everyone passing, not many are actually going to be looking for what?s in the advertisement. So if you base your ecommerce marketing strategy on those kinds of ads, it?s kind of like throwing rocks into a crowd and hoping you accidentally hit someone.

There are techniques you can implement in your ecommerce marketing strategy, though, that are very focused and take much of the randomness and guesswork out of your plan. Search engine optimization is an important part of your strategy. This will help you design your content and web pages to get noticed by the search engines. You?ll focus each page on certain keywords surrounding your business, and when someone?s searching on that phrase, your company comes up high in the search engine results.

At least that?s it in theory. In reality, it?s not nearly so simple. Just optimizing the content you already have will definitely help. But the key to this type of ecommerce marketing strategy is to show new content on a regular basis. This shows the search engines that the website is active and updated regularly with keyword rich content. As far as the search engines are concerned this makes one site more valuable and vital than another site with similar content that?s not updated as often. So an important part of your ecommerce marketing strategy should always be new content that?s also search engine optimized.

Four- to five-hundred words on each keyword is a good plan, at least to start with. And care must be taken to make sure this content isn?t just attractive to search engines, but important to people, too. Gone are the days when site could list keywords or be filled with gibberish full of keywords just to get good rankings. Now it?s important that the content is there for more than just your ranking. So your ecommerce marketing strategy has to address the quality of the content not just how many times a keyword might appear within it.

Where at one time a simply repetition of the keyword many times in a row might have attracted a good ranking, you should avoid this in your ecommerce marketing strategy because search engines recognize most of these tricks.

One of the built-in benefits of running a business that involves helping other businesses promotional effort is the built-in testimonial of an advertising business internet marketing plan. When you take part in a business where advertising is a key service you provide, then the ability for your customers to find you and be swayed to employ you is a testament that you understand internet marketing and advertising. If this is the kind of business you?re looking to go into because you want to consult or handle promotions for other businesses, then don?t miss the opportunity to point out to potential customers that you grow your own business with the very techniques you want to provide for them.

While it?s inherent that an advertising business internet marketing plan must be successful if they do find clients, you must also bring this to the potential client?s attention. Of course you?ll want to have concrete results from other companies that you?ve helped promote products and services. But don?t neglect to use your own promotional techniques and results as tools to market your own business. While your knowledge of advertising business internet marketing techniques maybe be clear since you?re earning their business, it might consciously occur to them so be sure and point it out.

Advertising business internet marketing has the benefit that many other online businesses don?t have–built-in testimonial information from within their very own business! Take screen shots of your search engine rankings on various searches and use those. Describe your own company?s efforts towards promotion and the results. Reiterate the ways in which customers find you?when you mention the manner in which that particular client found your advertising business internet marketing campaign, they?ll be impressed?and stress that you can do for them what you?ve done for your own company.

An advertising business internet marketing strategy of this sort is especially key for a new business with no other clients to give testimonials and no other sites on which to show real results. In a case like this, it?s not going to be easy to convince a potential client to sign on, since there?s no real evidence that you can do what you claim as far as their promotional efforts go. But if you show your marketing efforts and the good results, you do have evidence for them to see.

While it might not be as compelling evidence as another site with concrete results, it will still show potential clients that you do know how to market a business online, and you do know how to implement a promotional plan. For someone starting out in an advertising business that focuses on internet marketing, in order to get some evidence beyond your own website, create one or two websites based on varied interests.

They don?t have to be businesses, just general information. Use all your promotional skills in tweaking the site and the methods of marketing you use for it. Then your advertising business internet marketing skills will have more good results to show potential clients.