If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Getting, and using, information on internet marketing advertising is usually one of the weakest areas of an online business. So, where can you get this information and how can you use it?

First, you need basic information about what visitors are doing when they’re at your site, how they get there, from where where and when do they leave. You’re looking here at a tool like Google Analytics(TM) tracking your visitor’s activities.

Second, valuable information is how visitors feel about your website and your products. What’s their perception of it (and you!) and, also, what’s their attitude towards your business. You can get this information through surveys on your website or blog, comments on your blog, the kinds of questions asked, and simply by asking your subscribers and customers what they think.

Third, there’s information about payments for products and subscriptions to newsletters, ecourses and so on. For example, you can note any differences between sales on your main sales site and those through affiliates or resellers. Also, you can see if there’s any difference between your sales site and blog or other types of site. You can draw conclusions about different methods you’re using to get sales, linked with customers’ attitudes to your business.

Fourth, find out the effect of different ways of driving traffic to your website or blog through internet marketing advertising. Different methods of advertising may be producing different perceptions of your site and product. You can use cross-over marketing methods. For example, if the ways of email marketing are producing a significant better result, you could find out what the motivator points are and use them in other advertising if they seem approriate.

Fifth, information about your competition is important. You can track what changes they are making and possible effects of those changes. You don’t want to copy them completely but they are indicators of general marketing conditions.

Sixth, use Web 2.0 sites to see what is happening in your markets, using Google Alerts(TM) for example. Word of mouth on such sites can be powerful whether positive or negative. It’s best not to be caught unawares and try to keep on top of any possible negativity, while using the sites yourself for positive  advertising.

You need information about internet marketing advertising, otherwise you’re flying blind and are at the whim of any changes you’ve not noticed.

Join GoldVaultZine for your free ecourse and the ezine that’s (almost) a continuous ecourse itself! You’ll think I should be charging for this! Click the link or sign-up on the right! Thanks!

Actually, this branding name need not be a domain name as such.

What you’re researching and choosing is a name or term which will fit the kind of image you want for your products and business. For example, you may want to suggest superiority, quality, power, or whatever. You could choose a term or word such as “super” to suggest these qulities. However, I’m sure you could find a better one, especially for your needs. We’ll use it as an example.

What’s the best way to use such a term?

1 Actually use it in a domain name for a website, for example, where you display the array of your products. This could be something like: TheSuperProductsWebsite.com” or just “SuperProducts.com”.

You can see it’s differentiating your products from others by using the name “super”, as well as associating those qualities we mentioned with those products and this website.

2 Put the term “super” in front of every product you create. There could be “Superautoresponder” ,
“SuperEditor”, “SuperPDFMaker”, and so on. This is branding your products with a recognizable prefix.

3 You can be branding your name and business as a whole through your products. When you create a sales page for a product, you put your name on it, and also the name of your business and/or your central domain name.

4 Now, when you are repeating this term, in relation to your products and so on, across the internet through links of various kinds, you’re not simply creating an image of organization but also a unique identity.

Join GoldVaultZine for your free ecourse and the ezine that’s (almost) a continuous ecourse itself! You’ll think I should be charging for this! Click the link or sign-up on the right! Thanks!

I don’t mean “manic” in any technical sense!  But I bet you know what I mean.

If you’re on several IM mailing lists, for example, as I am, you must get a lot of emails.

You know, list after list of subject lines like:

Thanks For Your Order – Here’s Your Free Download!  (You’re thinking: I never ordered anything!)

Here’s Your Free Gift! (This is the most common type. You’re thinking: Well, what sort of gift is it? Do I really need it?)

Here’s Your Gift Worth $97 (You’re thinking: Is it really worth that amount of money? Why would someone give it away? What’s the One Time Offer going to be?)

Get Your List Built In 3 Days! (You’re thinking: Impossible! If someone could guarantee that they’d make a fortune!)

And yet, page after page of seemingly urgent (desperate?) offers come streaming through.

Often they’re the exact same offer from 2, 3 or more different people. With the exact same subject line!

Then, the same offer can be sent repeatedly by the same person over several days.

Unless you really are totally new to all this, aren’t most people simply deleting these now?  Of course, one or two might look useful and you click through.

But the saddest thing of all is that in this manic urgent rush, the jostling of quite similar subject lines to grab attention, there will be, at some point, a genuinely valuable offer or product.

By “genuinely” I mean actually useful and valuable to particular people in particular circumstances in their business lives. It gets lost in the crowd.

The solution? Do your own research, and even see the emails as on-going research rather than in-the-face offers to be accepted or rejected.

Thanks for reading!

People will spend an age (or totally the opposite and just jump in) getting  domain names for their websites, without thinking about their internet marketing promotion needs.

And without considering their own name to brand their business.

When’s the best time to use your own name?

If you have a central site for your business – a central reference point – you could use your own name there. So, you’re using your name as a branding name for everything that comes under that site, including all your other sites.

But your business and product domain names are probably not the best places to use your own name.

In these, you want to suggest the qualities of your business and products. For example, use the word “super”, perhaps, to suggest their superiority. That is you want a term or word that brands your products, suggesting their uniqueness or clear difference to other products.

So, probably the best domain name to use your own name in is your blog.

Why?

Firstly,  a blog is more personal than static websites.

It’s also more responsive to visitors and customers, through comments and replies.

Really, the whole purpose of the blog format is to be much more flexible in its organization, and to be closer to its visitors.

Therefore, if the whole domain name is your name, it increases these qualities – as if visitors are dealing with a more private situation, which it really could be, of course, if you lock some pages for members only.

Secondly, you’re associating your name with your products – visitors don’t always see a tie-in, especially at first. After all, your products are on other websites – and you’re here talking quite personally to them.

Thirdly, you then have a double effect, with links from product or other pages to your blog, while the blog refers back to products in the context of an article. And in addition, your name is linked via the blog.

This all makes your internet marketing promotion more powerful, just by using your own name.

So, why isn’t my blog named after me?  Well, I wanted this blog have a clear angle on IM, as I said in my first post and as with the example, so far, on report writing.

However, the points I give earlier I think are still valid if you’re just starting up.

Please Share This and Tweet. Thanks!