Ok, so once you’ve got your website sorted and mastered the basic internet marketing techniques you’ll want to try something a little more tricky. This is where the advanced internet marketing techniques come in. Most of these advanced techniques are based on the basic techniques so there’s no use skipping straight to here either. If you’re still looking for the get quick rich answer, I’ve told you over and over that you’re not going to find it here.

Brand Building
What do all big successful companies do? That’s right, build a massive brand. Before you dismiss this as out of your budget, let’s think about it briefly. First, what is a brand? I would say the public perception of your business or product. So what forms your brand? All the interactions you have with the public. And what are a lot of the intermediate techniques? Bingo, interacting with the public by helping solve their problems and creating a positive public image of your company. So have a think how you can continue to develop your brand.

Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is creating something that spreads through the internet like wildfire. Created half through skill and half through luck it is definitely worth some attention. Think of some of the email forwards you’ve seen over the years. Think of Youtube videos that people have spread around. Imagine having your business’ name attached to the Star Wars Kid. Now that’s powerful.

Alliance Partners
Taking direct marketing to the next level involves partnership. Think about your nice big mailing list. Now think about all the companies in your industry that have those same sized mailing lists. You make one alliance and you just doubled your potential customer list. Just remember that you need to still be offering your customers something great from the other company that adds value to your customer relationship. And never sell your mailing list or let it get into the hands of spammers. Market your partners’ products to your customers yourself.

Backend Systems
Want even more bang from your mailing list. Welcome to the backend sales process. So once you’ve got a customer, how do you keep them a customer? Have them buy something else from you of course. If your customer bought product A, chances are they may be interested in product B. Especially if product A was incredible and exceeded their expectations. Again, remember the golden rule, always be offering your customers more value. Not just trying to add value to your bottom line.

Competitor Analysis
I’ve put this in advanced because if it’s done properly, it really is an advanced technique. I hope you have some form of competitor analysis now. At least going to their website and see what they’re up to. But if you really want to be the head of your niche you need to take this a lot more seriously. Examine in depth your competitors. Work out what they’re selling, how they’re selling it, what their unique selling proposition seems to be. Why are customers buying from them? By knowing exactly what your competitors are doing, you can outmanoeuvre them at every point.

So there you have it, enough internet marketing techniques to keep you going for a long time. As time goes by I will have been writing longer articles on each technique so you can fully implement them in your business. However, remember that new techniques are not the most important thing in your business.

It all stems from your mindset, you as the entrepreneur. If you haven’t got this area handled, all the techniques in the world will not save your business. So train your mind, and everything else will follow behind.

Ok, you’ve got your basics sorted and your website is a lean, mean conversion machine. Now you’re looking for some ways to market your website.

I’ve prepared a list of incredibly obvious ways of marketing a website. All effective but definitely thinking from well inside the box. These are the ones everyone does after skipping the fundamentals and then they wonder why they don’t get the results they want. At least you’ll have the advantage of a decent website and these techniques are your starting point when marketing a website.

Content
You’re involved in a specific industry or niche. You work in it everyday. What does that mean? Yes, you are an expert in that field. So why not use that expertise of yours to help others. This means writing articles and putting them on your website. A guide, an ebook, anything your visitors will find useful and leads to them forming a relationship with you. You build trust, you get people spending time on your website, and you improve your search engine rankings. Win, win, win!

Advertising (Banner Ads)
This is a complete waste of money if you ask me. Traditional advertising just doesn’t perform on the internet, despite having your flash moving, eye catching designs. These are more likely to have me leave a website than actually click on an ad. But if you test it and it works for you, more power to you. You’re better off to put your money towards advertorials or creative advertising solutions.

Pay per Click (PPC)
Since traditional advertising wasn’t working, some bright spark came up with Pay per Click advertising. A much better model that is actually worth investing your money in if you do it right. Just remember to target your niches and try to find qualified customers rather than just any random visitor and you can have a lot of success with PPC.

Newsletters
The newsletter subscriber list can be a goldmine for your website. Most people don’t use it correctly and we’ll discuss that more a little later under Direct Marketing. You need to have a way to collect emails and a newsletter, usually offering a free gift for your email, is the standard way to go. They’re becoming a bit overused now and you need to make sure you really give people a reason to join your subscription list.

Link Building
Having your website link on other websites is obviously a good way to get visitors and it helps your search engine rankings immensely as well. Just be aware that gone are the days when you just exchanged links with anyone. You need links from websites related to yours and preferably ones where you don’t have to link back. How do you achieve this? Create a website with excellent content that others want to link to of course.

Blogs and Forums
Remember, you’re an expert in your field. So go out and share that expertise with the community. Go and visit the blogs and forums that talk about your area and help other people. Free advice can get them visiting your website and builds trust again. It means you’re not some faceless website on the internet; instead you’re a friend who helped them out with a problem once.

Article Submission
You’ve been writing articles for your website so why not share your expertise with even more people. With loads of free article submission directories, these articles can get picked up and used in websites and email newsletters all over the world. Be aware that this is a little swamped with submissions now too so you’ll need high quality articles and some luck for people to notice.

Press Releases
New products? New website design? New staff? Something going on with your company? Write a press release about it. Again there are submission directories that will publish your press release and put it in front of journalists for your industry or niche. Not as tapped as article submission and if you learn to write good press releases you can get a lot of exposure through this.

Direct Marketing
Now you should have a nice list of newsletter subscribers and past customers. So what are you doing with this list? Are you sending them targeted offers that have them drooling over their keyboards? Learn how to write sales copy and create offers that add value to your customers and money to your bottom line.

So there you have the bread and butter techniques for marketing your website. You might have some more you’d like me to add as well but I think I’ve covered the main ones. When you’ve got these under control you can climb out of the box a little and move on to some advanced internet marketing techniques.

Your website needs four basic components to be built correctly before you start even thinking about getting fancy with Internet Marketing. I call them DUFF for short:

• Design
• Usability
• Findable
• Functionality

Design
If your website doesn’t look professional and trustworthy you can kiss customers money goodbye right from the start. If you can’t get this right, I’m never going to trust you to get a credit card processing system right! Fortunately there are a lot of web designers out there and this is where they excel. Don’t skimp on your web designer, I know you have a friend who can do it, but you need a professional.

Usability
This is the hidden component of design that often gets overlooked. Your website must be ordered in a nice, easy to follow and logical way. Menu systems should be abundant on your pages and easy to use. Every page has an objective, whether it’s to get you to the next page or complete a sale, make sure it’s fulfilling its objective. And make it fast to load, especially if you may have customers on dial-up, you’d be surprised how many that could be. Lots of text but graphics in moderation is the way to a healthy website.

Findable
To use the ancient Chinese proverb: “If you build a business in the forest but no-one is around to visit it, does it make a sale?” This is even truer of the internet and a critical factor. How will you get people to visit your website? Marketing! And one of your critical marketing actions should be making your website rank well in the search engines with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Once it’s there, it costs you very little to maintain and the traffic comes from people wanting to learn about and buy what you are selling. Traffic can also come from other marketing like Pay per Click (PPC) ads and Viral marketing, but SEO should be in every beginner’s bag.

Functionality
Does the website do its job, normally, sell your product? Whether you accept credit card payments online or have contact details on the website, are people buying your products? This is one of the most overlooked aspects of a website and a personal pet peeve of mine. As I said before, every page has an objective, and most of them should be leading the customer closer to the sale. Make sure you write a good website that people are compelled to buy from and you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.

Once you get all these components sorted you can move on to actually marketing your website. We’ll talk tomorrow about some basic techniques to use. But remember, you should be starting with these four aspects or the visitors you attract will just as quickly leave your website.

Please! I was reading a forum last night and of course I’m in the internet marketing section. What is most people’s advice for marketing a website? Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising and sometimes Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). That’s it. I mean let’s not get fancy or anything, let’s not actually put some thought into marketing our businesses.

When you started your bricks and mortar business did your marketing plan consist of “put ad in yellow pages.” If it did, consider yourself virtually slapped. So why do the same thing for a website? I agree that these things are important but they’re exactly what everybody else is doing as well. So you’re competing with the same army, with the same weapons, and the only way to win is to have more troops. Anyone will tell you this isn’t the war to win a battle, or succeed in business.

So think outside of the box when it comes to internet marketing. Find something unique that will draw people to your website. Think of a free service that is linked to your product. Just start thinking full stop. And I’m breathing, and I’m calm.

Rant over, time to go help my forum friends some more. Have a pleasant day.

Ok, so this week has been a lot about mindset and how it impacts on building a successful and long term business. We’re going to finish off with what the professionals are doing in the latest internet marketing techniques. This is the level you want to get to, but don’t forget the steps in between. So here’s ‘The Final Chapter’ from Rich.

As for the steps in between, check out my article series on ‘how to be successful on the internet’ and make sure you’re starting from a solid base.