In this article I will contrast the differences between the mediums of Internet Marketing, Conventional Marketing and their future together. What I refer to as “Conventional Marketing” are all those things that have been established forms of advertising for the last 50+ years such as; Television, Newspapers, Mailers, Billboards and Radio. What I refer to as “Internet Marketing” are all the new forms of advertising only recently established in the business world such as; Search Engines, Social Networks, Banner Advertisements and Mobile Media. The integration of these two mediums is one of the focuses of this article as well and how they will be interacting over the next few years according to market projections and corporate planning. It is a new and interesting time we are entering that will feature many new services, advertising mediums and great possibilities for your business to see personal return on investment. It is my goal to bring light to a misunderstood change in market shares and effectiveness, as well as to show how both markets are slowly becoming one big conglomerate.

First it was Mail, which was first enacted as an official system all the way back to 2200 BC and perhaps further, the government and major merchants of the times would send mailers to wealthy individuals hoping to obtain donations or customers. Second came Newsprint in the mid 17th century, this was the medium of the day and its inception was much accepted and heralded as no other forms of publication were available other than authoring a book, which was expensive at the time. Next came Billboards as lithography became widespread and again boomed after the creation of the motor vehicle when more and more citizens would use the highways, giving them more exposure. Then you had Radio come triumphantly into the scene, revolutionizing the way people communicated and entertained themselves on a daily basis. Last of the Conventional Marketing types was Television and oh how did television explode the advertising market, entire industries were built around it until now when the average person has 3-4 T.V.s in their home.

Then in the 80′s there came the Internet, it was not anything near the behemoth we know today but it was innovative and highly useful to government and science. The first advertising was Banner Ads and was pioneered by a company that was sub-corp. of Sears and IBM. Today these types of advertising are still effective and widely used by many of the top websites. Then came Search Engines, creating a way to find websites without needing to know a Directory or the direct URL, this opened the door for PPC and SEO creating a multi-billion dollar industry. Social Networks began popping up online and then when Myspace attained millions of users massive ad campaigns were launched targeting those potential clients and created another multi-billion dollar industry. Last with the invention of the Mobile Web and Cell Phone Internet, Mobile Media flourished and now Smart Phones make it more profitable than ever.

Now that I have defined the major markets that each category refers to I would like to discuss the current state of affairs of each of these mediums. Conventional Marketing has seen a HUGE decrease in investment and return on investment with the advent of the Internet, Television is the only one of this demographic that is still growing. The success of Newspapers and Mailers have fallen to drastic all time lows, billboards have become effective only for local products and Radio has nearly gone extinct in some areas of the country. When this decline began each of these industries realized it was get with the times or get off the train, so they began to integrate their services into the Internet, forcing a share of the pie that had been taken away. Radio got Pandora and the other various Internet Radio services, Newspapers began creating digital copies of the daily paper and Mail has been nearly eaten up by the Internets quick and cost effective E-Mail systems. Even Television realized the need to create mediums of its services available online and sites such as Hulu were created. According to the Gallup Polls as of 2011 84% of the American populace had Internet Access in some form within their household. eFrontiers Market Analysis and Projections show that by 2015 Internet Marketing will account for 25% of America’s overall ad spend each year. The various forms of Internet Marketing have proven extremely successful, Banner Ads and Social Networks are moving along strong and many niches have been created allowing marketers to directly reach clients that have shown an intrinsic interest in their products or services. PPC and SEO consist of the majority of marketing dollars online making Search Engine the most invested in and Mobile Media is exploding at the moment as Smart Phones become more prevalent.

It is inevitable, in theory, that over the next two decades they will slowly merge into one multi-media delivery system, most likely in a mode we cannot foresee, as we do not have the technological advancements yet. But what we can foresee is that they will, in majority, become one large Internet based medium. With the merging, it allows for new forms of marketing to develop such as T.V. Banner Ads, Radio PPC Campaigns and Internet Based Digital Billboards. It is a new marketing frontier and if you have not already gotten on-board this is the time. If you are a business that plans on operating in the next decades you need to create websites and advertising campaigns online, you need to follow the changes in the market that are projected and lastly you need to stay open to new technological developments and not turn a blind eye to huge investment possibilities that appear in the next few years.

Internet Marketing gives businesses of any size access to the mass market at an affordable price. Also Internet Marketing focuses on advertising to refined groups of people who are looking for your services whereas conventional focuses on pushing goods or services to as many viewers at once as possible. In this Digital Age we cannot try to cling with the marketing tactics of the past, the world is ever changing and so must we. At the moment Internet Marketing is the frontier, fifty years from now it will be something we can’t comprehend at the moment. Conventional methods should still be a large part of your budget but as the years pass and the markets merge, where will you be if you have no website?

When you want to get involved with a direct sales company, you are joining a process that does take some work for you to make money. In order to do this, you need to properly get started with the direct sales. Here is an introduction to successful direct sales and how to make money.

The first part of successful direct sales involves knowing exactly how the system works. This is where a company manufactures products and sells them through external, individual salespeople. These people get a discount on anything that they buy and make a commission from the sales that they do achieve. The company doesn’t have to have a store, so their costs are lower, and they can keep a lot of the profits. As a salesperson, you will work through the company selling their products.

To get involved with a direct sales company, you need to first go shopping. Successful direct sales starts with a successful company choice. You need to pick a company that other people will want to buy from on a regular basis to make the most money possible. There are a lot of choices out there, so take your time finding the right company.

When you choose the right company, all you have to do is contact them through a phone number or email to express your interest. You usually don’t have to do a lot to get involved with it, and you will be started. You will get a starter kit with books, samples, order forms and sometimes a few other things as well. This is what you will need to get started.

When you are ready to start selling, then it involves successful marketing and advertising of your business. You need to take advantage of every advertising opportunity that you possibly can to gain as many customers as you can. Place an ad if you can afford it. Of course, this may cost you a little bit. Use your social network to advertise. And of course, you can always tell everyone that you know that you are selling a product. Word of mouth is one of the oldest and most successful ways of advertising, after all.

After you get your advertising taken care of, another great tip is to throw a party to get some orders and some customers as well. Parties are always a great tool of successful direct sales. You can throw a fun party with samples, games and even a demonstration of how some of the products will work. Of course, you will have to buy some of the products to get a demonstration going, but you get a discount on the products, so whatever you buy will be a lower price.

Successful direct sales is not a hard thing to do if you know your way through the process. This article will tell you how to start your direct sales successfully so that you can create a great income from your sales. And successful direct sales is the goal if you get involved with such a company.

As a small business owner it’s our natural tendency to approach everything with a hint of skepticism. There are so many ‘next big things’ that it’s oftentimes difficult to distinguish between a passing trend and a legitimate evergreen marketing strategy for a small business.

Skepticism or no, I’m willing to bet that by now you’ve started seriously eyeing Internet marketing for small business as a viable addition to your advertising repertoire; you’re starting to realize that this is something worth jumping on.

Let’s face it – Your competitors are doing it, so you should do it too lest you unknowingly give up a foothold in your niche.

Wait Just a Minute – What is Internet Marketing, Exactly?

Before we go any further I think it’s worth taking some time to clarify exactly what we’re referring to when we say ‘Internet Marketing’. If you’ve done any research at all on the topic of small business online marketing, you’ve probably seen a wide array of terms thrown about. It can be very confusing to learn anything at all about Internet marketing with a seemingly endless amount of ideas out there… How are you supposed to know what’s what? Well, below I’d like to briefly go over a few of the most common terms and methods that you should concern yourself with:

#1. Small Business Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Small business search engine optimization refers to getting your business’ virtual property listed on the first page of search engine results (most commonly in Google) for a select group of keyword phrases. Whether it’s a Google Places page, a YouTube video, a Facebook page or even your own website, the goal is to position yourself so that local searchers see YOU before your competition.It sounds complicated, but that’s why we’re here. The results of a successful SEO campaign can be enormous.

#2. Small Business Email Marketing / List Building

Small business email marketing is without a doubt one of the most powerful forms of lead generation out there. Imagine having the power to reach your loyal customers any time day or night with your newest and greatest promotions? Imagine being able to send your customers coupons, newsletters and other interesting content so that you’re constantly in contact with them, remotely building your brand in their mind’s eye? I’m sure with a little imagination you can start to see the possibilities… Email marketing is one of the most viable long-term marketing strategies for small business owners to consider. Your customers aren’t going to stop using email anytime soon, and the ability to stay in frequent contact with a customer even if they’re not visiting your actual place of business is too good to pass up. If you take nothing else away from this article, at least learn more about small business email marketing.

#3. Social Media Marketing for Local Businesses

This is the newest and greatest trend in the world of Internet Marketing for small businesses. Facebook alone has over 800 Million users worldwide, and most users spend a minimum of 6 hours per month on this website. As Facebook grows it’s an increasing amount of time YOU could be using to further your business. Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites are going to be some of the greatest marketing mediums of 2012 because they give you the ability to keep up with interested customers on a daily basis through websites that they’re spending lots of time on anyways. Why not take advantage of this opportunity?

#4. Pay-Per-Click Advertising for Direct Marketing

The next time you’re searching for something in Google I want you to pay attention to the right side of the screen. You should notice a few small ads that are separate from the search results. These are actually paid advertisements from Google’s AdWords program, and they’re a crucial aspect of small business online marketing.

The pay per click advertising (PPC) works is a simple 3 step process:
• Write a small ad for your business
• Pick keywords or locales to target
• Pay per click for traffic directly to your business’ website

Pretty easy, right?

This is a great way to start off your Internet marketing campaign because with Pay Per Click you get exactly the results you pay for. Want to give 100 new customers the chance to fall in love with your business? Pay for 100 clicks to your website… Done. I’m sure you can see the value in this kind of cost-per-lead advertising. Through proper lead generation and analytics you can have yourself quite a profitable campaign that runs virtually on autopilot.

And hey, want to really explode your customer base? Why not use PPC advertising to drive targeted traffic to your email newsletter so you can stay in contact with your new potential customers?

Why Internet Marketing for Small Businesses is a Good Investment

What holds back most small business online marketing campaigns that the business owners fail at marketing automation.

We’ve all learned this lesson: When you try to do everything yourself you inevitably fall behind in the areas you’re best at, and don’t get far enough in the areas you’re good at. The result is that your business slows down, and you don’t see as much revenue as you should / could. If time is money, then you can’t afford to spend an increasing amount of time on something that someone else could be doing faster.

That’s why when approaching Internet marketing for small business I recommend enlisting the assistance of a trained professional.

Time and time again we’ve seen a much greater ROI when the business owner focuses on running an outstanding business, while the Internet marketers do what they do best – Capture the interest of potential customers. Whether you decide to pursue small business search engine optimization to bolster the rankings of your website or social media marketing to get the word out through Facebook / Twitter, you can rest assured that you’ll see better results from someone who’s done it before.

Internet marketing for small business doesn’t have to be time consuming, and it’s certainly doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, an Internet Marketing campaign can be relatively cheap when compared with other marketing strategies for small businesses! As a small business owner you’d be giving up a lot if you limited yourself to offline marketing only, so I urge you to consider the techniques and methods outlined in this article. I’m sure you can find an Internet Marketing company or service provider who would be more than willing to help you with these internet marketing services so you can start finding new potential customers on autopilot. What are you waiting for?

I woke up this morning catching up on LinkedIn’s ‘Top Headlines in Design, Marketing, and Advertising’ and ran into a post from Mashable that caught my interest. If you haven’t read it yet, you can follow the direct link below this article.

It talks about the new age of marketing—how ‘inbound marketing’ is whopping the nation vs the old era of ‘outbound marketing’. Of course, Mashable made it much more exciting with their excellent, cute little easy-to-understand infographics (kudos to them), but it sure sparked a big debate on their comment feed.

To get you up-to-speed, Mashable’s definitions are:

NEW Marketing is “any marketing tactic that relies on earning people’s interest instead of buying it.” aka Search Engines, Referrals, Social Media.

OLD Marketing is “any marketing that pushes products or services on customers.” aka Print, TV, Radio Advertisements, Billboards, Cold Calls.

The following statistics were also listed:

44% of direct mail is never opened. That’s a waste of time, postage and paper.

86% of people skip through television commercials.

84% of 25 to 34 year olds have clicked out of a website because of an “irrelevant or intrusive ad.”

The cost per lead in outbound marketing is more than for inbound marketing.

200 million Americans have registered their phone numbers on the FTC “Do Not Call” list.

91% of email users have unsubscribed from a company email that they previously opted into.

So what’s the big hype and mumbo jumbo debate in Mashable’s post? Some marketers are seeing it as ‘harsh’ and that it’s bashing the print industry, as well as providing misleading infographic material to business owners that inbound marketing is the only way to go and outbound marketing is squash.

Well my friends…take the post with a grain of salt. I think there were excellent key factors within it, and that it CAN help new, start-up business owners but you still need outbound marketing. The thing is, businesses need to know information like Mashable’s posts too to weigh out their OWN options, not just relying on those who have a career in marketing. I don’t know how many times I’ve run into businesses that were clueless to social media marketing, wondering how a blog, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn can benefit your business. Having those four things really can make a huge difference in building traffic toward your business, but I, personally, think it’s best to have a ‘happy medium’. Why? Well let’s start from when it started long ago…

In the beginning…

Before man had cars, people used to walk to businesses. Advertising was whatever you found at the front of the window of a store. Remember the song “How much is that doggy in the window?” You walked up to the counter and paid for your gumball that you found in a jar sitting beside the register. And then the age of cars happened where people’s attention spans became just a tad more ADD because bigger signs came to happen, billboards, neon lights, a giant juicy burger on a poster (hungry much?). Nowadays, it’s on TV, it’s in your email, it’s in your mailbox. So why is this bad? It isn’t, not in retrospect.

Branding

As Mashable puts it, this is ‘old marketing’ aka ‘outbound marketing’, shoving products in your face where you don’t have the option to ‘opt-out’ of them. Let’s face it, the media is everywhere and in everything! You can’t get away with it! Drinking a glass cup of water? Well guess what, I’m sure the name brand or logo of it is at the bottom of the cup.

So again — why use old, outdated, outbound marketing? You’ll gain “physical” exposure. You know what the McDonald’s arch looks like, right? Only because there are a bijilion out there, it’s on TV, it’s on the radio, on billboards, and numerous other places. While most of the world has their own computer (families that have kids with an iPad each), you still need to create a physical presence of your whereabouts in your city or town. People use their cars to get to and from work, and buy groceries and clothing at the store (have you checked the back of your receipt and ever found an ad?). No matter how much we all become zombies to the infamous world wide web, you still have to go outside of your home to catch up on the necessities. As a friend once told me, “Exposure, exposure, exposure!” Your brand is your identity. People are still visual, touchy-feely people. Put a face to your brand. I’m sure you’ve said numerous times, “Oh yeah…I’ve seen or heard that somewhere…” Or, you’ve printed out coupons or a discount from the LivingSocial email newsletter you subscribe to.

So what about Inbound Marketing?

SEO: Intro

SEO, or search engine optimization, is what connects your website to search engines. SEO takes time and it requires a lot of work, patience, and trials and errors, which is why it costs so much to hire a professional to do it for you. How does it work? Well think about how you use search engines like Google or Bing, how do you find information on the internet? You type in “keywords” like ‘Photographers in Charlotte, NC’ and you get a list of photographers or topics about photography. There are different methods of using keywords for your website, and can mostly be found in the written content of your site, in your non-flash images, or within the HTML code itself. Keywords are found by search engines who have spiders or bots to crawl through your website.

If you did the search on Google, that’s a lot of photographer’s eh? Well how do you be #1? Being #1 on a search engine is not so easy as you think, and there are no real guarantees (at least not organically or the ‘non-paid’ way). Search engines are always evolving and always changing their mathematical ‘algorithms’ in how their search engines work. Google, for one, has been evolving algorithms for quite awhile now because some website developers were using tactics to ‘cheat’ the system, which can land your website in a permanent banned situation.

SEO: Backlinks

Ever heard the term backlinking? Probably not. If you use any type of analytics program with your website, you should be pretty familiar with this. Backlinking, also known as incoming links or inbound links, are links to your website from other websites or pages. Basically, the more you give the link of your website away to various other places, the better ranked your website will be. Think of it like a popularity contest. Of course, there are proper techniques and etiquette for posting a link to your website, so before you run off and post a link to your site on every website you see, make sure you do your research first or ask permission first. And this is where Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs come in because you can use any of those four items to backlink to your website.

Social Media

Mashable stated in their post, ‘Inbound Marketing’ is much more ‘polite and friendly’ compared to Outbound Marketing. Well…you pretty much have to. Using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a blog helps to boost not only traffic to your business, but your reputation. Remember, all four of these items listed are “face” of your company when you can’t be there physically. This is why I highly suggest my clients to try to be a little more personal with their audience.

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn wouldn’t be called ‘Social Media’ if they weren’t “personal”. People love it when others can relate to themselves and stoop down to their level. Why do you think Reality TV shows are still being made? Mind you, when I say ‘personal’ I don’t mean ‘drama’. It’s best to talk about positive, uplifting topics…unless that’s what your business or brand is known for. Instead, post about the latest fashion trends (if you’re in the fashion industry) or talk about what’s going in your own city. You can even get people talking by getting a poll going. Creating a social media weekly calendar can also help as well, such as providing tips and calling it ‘Makeover Mondays’.

Blogs

I had a meeting last week with a woman who runs a well-known bridal blog, and she stated to me when she first started writing she only talked about bridal stuff. However, she received a suggestion to talk about other personal topics that people can relate to. Needless to say, that person gave her some sound advice! You can find her at The Thirty Something Bride.

So to all my current clients and future clients, please take the same advice. If anything, stick to about 70% on topic, and 40% about personal matters. Wouldn’t you get tired of eating the same ole omelet everyday?