The world of online marketing is alluring but at times it can also be too time-consuming and confusing. Many marketers just don’t have the time to keep up with everything they need to in order to market their businesses, products and services online. That is why internet advertising software appeals to a great deal of people. It isn’t just the easiest and safest way for a new business owners to get their feet wet online, but it works for experienced marketers as well because it saves so much time.

Internet advertising software varies from one provider to the next but the general idea is that it should work so that even a new person can create their own advertising campaign (with the help of the software) and follow it through. It should offer clear instruction or even video tutorials that walk you through step by step. One of the fundamental steps in all online ad campaigns is the keywords. A software program should definitely help you with that either by showing you how to find the right keywords or actually generating the words itself. Some software programs show you how to optimize your website both graphically and content-wise. The best software should be extremely simple so that you can just plug it into a template or click a few buttons to get it up and running.

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The Quickest and Easiest way to Start Advertising on the Internet
Safelist Advertising
Ezine Advertising
eMail Advertising–Aweber
Banner Advertising
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Another key benefit of online advertising software is that it can measure the progress of your ads. New marketers don’t actually place too much importance on this because they haven’t yet seen the difference that just one or two words can make in an ad. without tracking capabilities, you won’t be able to understand which ads are working well and which need to be changed or deleted.

There are many different programs available when it comes to software that aids internet marketers and most of them are compatible with a wide range of operating systems. However, as with any other type of software, be sure that your operating system will accept the software that you choose and that the installation of the software will not be a headache as it so often turns out to be.

There are just as many companies that sell internet advertising software as there are the actual probrams themselves. Some of the biggest names boast their own software and training programs. Just remember that you definitely want to be doing the research before you actually buy your software. Your research should include pricing and all features that are offered in the program. one special feature that you should really make sure is included is training on the product. Even if you buy a miracle software and you have no idea how to use it, you will not go very far. Training might also include internet marketing issues that are unrelated to the software itself. This is an extra perk that some companies do offer.

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Solo ezine advertising refers to ads that are sent alone (with no other ads or content) to an online magazine’s (ezine’s) subscriber base. There are really two types of solo ads: those that are sent to the ezine subscriber base as described earlier or those that are sent out to safelist members.

Safelists are comprised of people who sign up in order to advertise their own products/services and, in turn, agree to read other advertisements that are sent by other members. With safelists, you agree to receive all of these promotional ads in your inbox and, when you click on these ads, you earn credits to be able to send your own ads.

An advantage to advertising in ezines is that you will be sending out your ad to people who have subscribed to the ezine in order to get information, resources and updates on that particulare subject. If your product is very well suited to a particular ezine niche, you can get tremendous results. With safelists, it’s different. People do not subscribe in order to learn about a particular topic. They subscribe in order to be able to advertise. A completely different mindset.

The average ezine readers subscribes to more than one ezine. However, they are not bombarded with hundreds of emails every day because of their subscription. If someone is subscribed to several safelists, they will get hundreds of emails per day in their inbox. Again, the only incentive to read these emails is to gain credits. They are not seeking information or news. So, here again, solo ezine advertising is probably preferable to solo safelist advertising.

Ezine solo ads can vary greatly in price from one publisher to the next. Of course, the price depends on the size of the ezine’s subscriber base, the perceived quality of content, the frequency and perhaps days and times that the newsletter is sent out, etc. In any case, solo ads are not free. With some safelists, members can actually send out “free” solo ads. This is a little bit tricky because they aren’t actually free. You still have to earn clicks in order to be able to send out these ads. So, whether you pay in time or in money (because you have upgraded to buy your clicks), you are paying.

In the end, some marketers swear by safelist solo advertising. It often has a lot to do with the products you offer. If you are offering a product that will generate traffic or an e-book that will help with safelists, for example, safelist members will be more apt to click on that because those are the reasons that they are using safelists in the first place. However, if your product is in a different industry (health, beauty, etc), you’ll generally be better off by doing solo ezine advertising instead. This also works the other way around. Advertising your health or beauty product in a safelist will most likely not get much response.

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Some guy was talking about seo, keywords and using a wordpress blog for setting up an offline marketing business by putting up websites for brick and mortar stores. He wanted to use static pages in a wordpress blog setup and thought that he wouldn’t need the part of a wordpress blog that does the dynamic posting….. I suggested if he was just setting up static sites, he might as well use Xsitepro because it would give him the most bang for the bust!  He must have been a newbie because he had some very basic questions. Nothing wrong with being a newbie, so I thought I’d post part of his question along with my comments below….maybe you might be able to glean something from it.

I really need to contact this fellow and show him my Xsitepro Offline Marketing Template. Using an Xsitepro Template for setting up brick and mortar businesses makes a lot of sense since these sites get indexed so quickly. In case you haven’t seen my directory yet, I’ve been experimenting with The Mchenry Business Directory …an online directory listing Mchenry businesses.

His Question

Basically, I’m going to try and create a stable offline business by providing a certain offline service, to customers which I plan to partially get through organic Google traffic. These customers would only be based locally. I have researched quite a few really nice local keywords, some with 4K+ monthly searches and I’m not really sure how to go about this.

I’ve decided to use WordPress for the website because of the ease of use and because it’s SEO friendly. The website contains a welcome home page as well as faq, contact, terms of service, privacy policy and services page which describes the services that are being offered. The reason for not knowing how to go about this is because the whole website is static nothing really changes on it since it’s meant to be a business website. The local keywords I have researched seem to have a fairly low competition although some seem hard to dominate.

My Answer and Comments

You’ve got a lot going on and some big questions. I’ll give you my 2 cents for one small part of it. You’re talking about using a wordpress blog for a buisness blog which will be composed mostly of static pages.

First based on my experience, if you’re planning on creating a static site I would use Xsitepro. I use Dreamweaver or just plain ole notepad for developing sites and Xsitepro produces results that often times out do Wordpress. So, if you’re serious about setting up multiple offline sites, composed of 3 or 4 pages….get a copy of Xsitepro and use it… Your pages will be indexed in some cases overnight and usually stay there with little to no updating. That’s my personal experience. Just make sure you use the rss function and create a xml page, ping it and submit it to the directories

However!

Wordpress offers so much and to limit yourself to a couple of pages per site is a big mistake. Many big corporations switch to a wordpress blog…using it as a CMS. There is tremendous potential in using wordpress for your offline sites that you’re really missing.

If you want to create a static front page that’s fine. But don’t dismiss using the blog as part of your site and its entire promotion.

I find a blog is the perfect offline business platform for developing websites and I incorporate both static and regular posts.

You mentioned you have a couple of keywords…I image it wouldn’t be too difficult to come up with 50 or more keywords for your niche….especially if it’s localized.

This is how a the blog portion of the site would work.

Use the blog to create or build a story about the business. You can expound on any aspect of the business, create a category and post weekly or daily blog posts using your keywords. Your story could virtually be a diary of daily business happenings. People love to read about the more personal side of a business. You could profile the employees….you could follow one employee through the entire week.

I can’t think of any business that you couldn’t develop some sort of story around. Heck, you could even have a cagegory that focuses on the office life of the business….isn’t there a hit TV show called “The Office”!

I like to chronicle various projects, jobs, cases or patients within a business or service.

Let’s say your site is for a local chiropractor. You can set up the front end of the site to make it look professional….but don’t dismiss developing the blog because this is where you can effectively use your keywords or keyword phrases and start getting organic traffic.

Keeping with the chiropractor example. Find a patient to blog on. Let’s say he has arm pain from a ruptured disc. Have the Chiropractor or you blog weekly on the patients treatment and progress. You’ll be able to use keywords for the treatment…such as “decompression therapy in Mchenry” or “muscle stimulation therapy in Mchenry Chiropractor“…..you’ll have enough material for a full year. Use your imagination.

Consider a hardwood flooring company.

Do the same thing, set up your static front page as an introduction to the company…make sure you have an optin form. Then you could set up some blog categories such as “materials” where you would talk about the various hardwoods, finishes etc. Or how about a “projects” category. Pick a couple of good projects to blog about in a diary form. Once again, when you’re talking about oak flooring, you would use the keyword “oak flooring in Mchenry” or “hardwood floor sanding in Mchenry“…..man, you have more material for an offline blog than any blog on internet marketing or some adsense blog.

You can literally blog about any aspect of any business, talking about information that those familiar with the business would probably think is uninteresting. As the website developer you’re presented with an opportunity to use this information to stick important keywords or keyword phrases.

Although you mainly blogging to get your site indexed for certain keywords, by no means, dismiss the fact that people really enjoy knowing the inner workings of a company. People are nosey…they want to know the gossip and whether people are happy with a business……you can provide that information by blogging.

I’ve purchased and read many offline marketing guru’s and nobody talks about what I just did….use this information to beat any and all competitors!

Concerning backlinks.

This forum is full of ideas and methods to get backlinks….some as white as the driven snow and others dark like midnight on a new moon look around and do some searching there are plenty of experts here on keywords.

I can tell you that a handfull of decent backlinks for most keyword phrases for offline marketing will almost always get you on page one and at the top. That being said, why don’t you set up a network of blogs for your own links. Set up some blogger and wordpress.com blogs. Then there is always the old fashion method of asking for a link to your site.

You can find a some guys here offing backlink packages…..so getting backlinks should be the least of your problems….just make sure you build it into your pricing structure.

Oh well….I wasn’t going to say anything about linking or backlinks…wanted to leave that to someone else.

Hope you get the idea about how you can use a wordpress blog more effectively for your offline sites!

Scott

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Any business owner knows the importance of advertising. Whether it be word-of-mouth, newspaper, television, radio, or any of the various online methods. You can have the greatest product or service in the world. If no one knows about it, that doesn’t really matter. The Internet and advertising are a perfect match for many reasons.

First of all, everyone is on the Internet. That is where we go to search for solutions for our problems, products for our home and family, presents for birthdays and holidays, etc. If you want to make sure you are reaching a large audience, make sure that you are on the Internet. Secondly, there are many methods that you can use in your online efforts that will give you very specific data about your advertisements and how well they are performing. It’s harder to see this with print, television and radio ads. When you place ads on the Internet, you can often measure how many times they are being displayed in addition to how often people are clicking on them and then, of course, how often you are getting a sale out of that click.

The Internet and advertising are a perfect match when it comes to classified ads. The Internet has quite easily surpassed costly newspaper advertising. Newspaper ads can cost more than $200.00 just for one 4- or 5-line ad which is quite a lot in comparison to a 3 line PPC ad which could cost as little as 5 cents per click. And online classified ads can be free.

There are many Internet classified sites where you can place your free classified ads. Some of the best ones are Craigslist, Kijiji (owned by eBay), BackPage, and Hoobly but you can see plenty more if you do a search on any search engine. Sites vary in what the free membership includes and you can always upgrade to a nominal monthly charge if you feel that it is necessary to get the features you want.

In any case, post as many classified ads as the site allows. You should change the headlines up to use different keywords and market areas areas that your business caters to. If you can go in every day and just change one letter or make a tiny adjustment to your ad, it will remain close to the top because the site will view it as something new. You’ll probably need to go through a little bit of trial and error with many different ads before you start to see what it really working and what isn’t.

Another reason that the Internet and advertising are so compatible is because your ad will feature a hyperlink to your website. So your audience just clicks on the link and they are immediately at whatever it is that you want to offer. Obviously, offline advertising does not offer this easy transition. Even if you capture your audience’s interest, they may easily forget about your website when it comes time for them to go online.

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Confirmed opt-in as defined by SpamHaus, who is one of the most respected anti spam organizations in the world:

Known as “COI” in the legitimate bulk email industry, also known as “Confirmed Opt-in”, “Verified Opt-in” or sometimes “Double Opt-in”.

With Closed-Loop Opt-in the Recipient has verifiably confirmed permission for the address to be included on the specific mailing list, by confirming (responding to) the list subscription request verification. This is the standard practice for all responsible Internet mailing lists, it ensures users are properly subscribed, from a working address, and with the address owner’s consent.

In the event of “spam” accusation:

The Bulk Email Sender is fully and legally protected because the reply to the Subscription Confirmation Request received back from the recipient proves that the recipient did in fact opt-in and grant verifiable consent for the mailings.

Source:Spamhaus Website

Numerous myths have circulated regarding confirmed opt-in and its effects. There are many misconceptions out there, and we’d like to help clear those up.

Myth 1: My List Size Will Decrease Because Of Confirmed Opt-In.

Some addresses entered into your form will not confirm — that much is true. The percentage of addresses that don’t confirm depends on many factors, including the quality of your traffic and how effective your thank-you page, confirmation message and incentive for confirming are.

Percentages aside, there are compelling reasons that having fewer addresses on your list is a good thing.

Sometimes Less is Better

I know. You may be asking, “How can a decreased list size be a good thing?” Well, let’s consider:

5-20% of all web form submissions are undeliverable right off the bat.

This means that of your total list size you can cut that by 5-20% because these email addresses are simply dead. Remember these are not temporary undeliverable but permanent dead addresses.

Now, add on the bogus and malicious sign ups that undoubtedly will happen. For example, someone comes to your website and decides to put in bob@aol.com. Well, bob@aol.com was once a real email address and because you were not using confirmed opt-in you are now classified as an unintentional spammer.

A recent study by MarketingSherpa and KnowledgeStorm found that only 68% of users always enter a valid email address.So, nearly a third of respondents knowingly enter bogus email addresses.

- Source

ISPs do not differentiate between unintentional spammers or actual spammers. The potential for you to be blocked or even worse, blacklisted, remains the same.

Myth 2: My Mailing List Is Different! I Don’t Need Confirmed Opt-In.

Let’s be clear, confirmed opt-in is for all businesses, plain and simple. Anyone collecting subscribers and in turn sending email needs to confirm that those people intended to sign up to your mailing list and want to receive your email.

In this age of email regulations and massive volumes of spam email, deliverability can be an issue. Why increase your chances of not getting delivered by putting yourself at risk.

Myth 3: No One Else Uses Confirmed Opt-In. Why Should I?

This is simply not accurate. Our own campaigns here at AWeber use confirmed opt-in for all email marketing activities. When someone signs up for a Test Drive of AWeber, they must confirm.

After setting up an account, if they want to receive our customer training email course, they must confirm. The same goes for our affiliates and their email training. Even when someone subscribes to our blog, they must confirm.

Ok, but AWeber must practice what they preach, who else?

If you want to sign up for the mailing lists of these organizations you will need to first confirm:

CNN	Microsoft
Oprah, CNet	bellagio.com
IRS.gov	weather.com
ign.com	maxim.com
tgifridays.com	olivegarden.com
pbs.org	visitpa.com
Whitehouse.gov

The list goes on and on…

Myth 4: Subscribers In My Market Don’t Know How To Confirm.

The simple solution is to tell them. The first page after someone fills in an opt-in form, commonly called a “thank you page” should tell the visitor exactly what to do next. Often this is done most effectively with a picture showing visitors what the confirmation email will look like.

An excellent example is our test drive sign up video on the thank you page showing visitors what to do.

Honestly, if they can’t click a link then you probably should be marketing your business offline. If someone can find your website online I guarantee they can click a link.

Myth 5: My Sales Will Decrease Because Of Confirmed Opt-In.

Have you tested this assumption? The answer is always, “No, but I just assume” or “No, my colleague told me it would hurt sales”.

It’s best not to assume anything, but rather to seek out your own answers by testing and observing your own campaigns. We have found from our own testing that while the raw number of email addresses on our list declined when we switched to confirmed opt-in, sales did not.

This means that the people who did confirm were the ones that truly wanted the information that they had to offer and the ones that didn’t were not left to bloat the mailing list.

Grow Your Business Without Risk

Will your results be exactly the same as AWeber or even anyone else? This can only be determined by proper testing and measuring.

Use confirmed opt-in as an opportunity to make sure that your lists are 100% clean and that you know without a doubt that 100% of the people receiving your mail have specifically requested it themselves.

Spend your time and energy building your business with subscribers who want to hear from you rather than dealing with issues created by people who don’t want to hear from you.

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Marketing online can get you business from all over the world. But many business owners aren’t aware of one of the most recent internet advertising trends which involves using the web to target local markets as well as national and international markets. And many new marketers are wary of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising in local markets because they haven’t been taught how to do it correctly. Pay per click doesn’t have to be expensive or only for the big players. Anyone can get started with a small budget and gradually work their way up as they learn more and bring in more customers and profits.

Pay per click revolves around keywords. So, the most important factor in your PPC advertising campaign is your keywords. But the keywords themselves aren’t important. It is what they represent that you need to focus on. For the purposes of PPC, keywords are the terms that consumers type into a search engine (like Google, Yahoo, MSN or any of the others out there) when they are looking for information.

These words represent what the person is seeking out, what they need or solutions to their problems. Finding out what people are typing in is easy and free. One of the free keyword research tools is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. You just type in a term that is relevant to your business and Google will show you the exact related terms that people are typing in and how often they are searching for it. If you are doing a national or global PPC campaign you can stop at these keywords. If you are doing a local campaign, you want to add in geo-targeted words.

Another way to take advantage of the local internet advertising trends is to establish a presence in the social networks and/or forums that are related to your industry. Set up your free accounts at places like Facebook and Twitter and include the website that you want to promote in your profile. Then you can start searching for other network users who are in your area and communicating with them.

This is a great way to network online without having to actually go to a networking type of meeting. But this is also a great way to make that first connection which can then lead to an offline type of get-together. Although you can set up a Facebook page which actually promotes your business, you will not be doing any kind of hypey advertising on your Facebook profile. However, you can also do PPC advertisement in Facebook and these can be more promotional.

Remember as you are going about in your wider-scope advertising campaigns, that one of the biggest internet advertising trends right now is the shift back to the local offline marketing. This type of marketing builds your brand, allows you reach more customers and to get a jump on your competitors who haven’t yet joined the trend.

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