If your article is about skin care, it will make business sense to have a website that deals in skin care products. Your website should have more skin care and other related articles for the information of the visitor. The visitor, who visits your website through the resource box link on another site, is a potential customer. 

The customer read your description on the resource box and decided to visit your website based on the information provided. So, the description should be attractive like your article, and it should contain keywords that the visitor may have used to search for the information he or she found in your article. You can only write a limited description, so make sure that the space is properly utilized to drive traffic to your website.

The resource box is a powerful tool, that when utilized properly can drive good traffic to your website. Boring description can be a turnoff and a great opportunity lost.

Internet Marketing: Behavioral Targeting

The internet marketing world is going through a quick-change phase with the phasing out of the marketing techniques belonging to the 1990s. Internet marketing has been based basically on keywords, where keywords and keyword phrases are targeted. With changes in technology, advertisers are now targeting customers based on demography, behavior and dayparting (time of the day or day of the week).

Behavioral targeting is a relatively new concept and is what advertisers are more interested in. Targeted ads reach consumers who are interested in a particular product, and eliminate the trial and error method. With the internet making it easy to record consumer behavior, behavioral targeting is on its way up. Savvy marketers are employing search engine optimizing and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising in combination with demographic and behavioral targeting.

Behavioral targeting is not without its disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage is its limited reach. It is helpful in case the targeted consumer is highly motivated. However, since consumer preferences change quickly, even a marginal delay in targeting the consumer may misfire. And, ignoring certain potential customers by not reaching out to them harms the interest of the marketer. Many people need to be influenced and motivated through advertising. Behavioral targeting closes the doors on such consumers.

Internet marketing experts are expecting US advertisers to spend $1.2 billion in 2007 on behavioral targeting, increasing the budget to $2.1 billion in 2008. Supporters are of the view that behavioral targeting is a win-win situation for everyone. The advertiser hits the mark more often, the publisher conversion ratio shoots up, and the consumer receives more relevant messages related to his or her preferences.

However, consumers and advocate groups are getting increasingly vocal against the lack of disclosure and loss of privacy. Consumers are exposed to increased  risk of identity theft and misuse of personal information. So, these issues do need tackling, and consumers need reassurances that behavioral marketing will be in their ultimate interest.

What, you may ask, is this amazing tool that allows you to work on other compelling business issues, while it works for you? An autoresponder sends automated responses to people who send email messages to you. Personalized autoresponders respond back with the sender’s name and other information unique to the sender. They are perfect assistants for small businesses that cannot afford to have an employee.

Using an Autoresponder for Your Internet Marketing Business
The autoresponder acts as a tool that effectively maintains customer follow-up. The moment a customer makes an online purchase at your website, it sends an automatic message thanking them. Apart from that you can also place a series of messages to be sent to your customers at timely intervals, informing them of other products or services, or any special offers you may like to make them. To make the whole process natural, the autoresponder can be programmed to follow-up a “thank you” message with a confirmation message informing that the product had been shipped. This can be followed-up with a message enquiring whether the shipped product was received, and also a subtle message about other products available. Most autoresponders send personalized messages with the name of that person, the product bought, and other unique personal information.

If yours is a skincare products website, you can use the autoresponder to send emails at certain intervals providing them information on skin related issues. For example, you may write about skincare problems and solutions, facial make-up related matters, guarding and protecting the skin, and new products that may have entered the market and available on your website. Your customers would love to receive such useful information free-of-cost. And, you in turn will have them interested in your website and products on offer.

You do not have to re-write information many times over. When someone signs up for a free newsletter, the autoresponder sends the first newsletter in the series, followed by the rest at pre-determined intervals.

Many website owners usually seek free automatic responders, although you can purchase online automatic responder software at reasonable price. You may ask your webmaster for an autoresponder that suits your purpose.

Upside of Internet Marketing
• Your online store is open 24 x 7 and has access to a global potential customer base. Your customers are free to shop any time of the day and from any part of the world.

• Correspondence with your existing customers and prospects is both convenient and inexpensive through the email. You can keep them posted of new products, discount or gift offers, which they can immediately avail of by clicking on the hyperlink to your website provided in the email message.

• If your business is information-based such as newspaper, ezine, or a consultancy, you can directly deliver your products without using postal or courier services.

Downside of Internet Marketing
• Your internet marketing business will cost you money. While calculating the cost of products or services, take into account software, hardware, website designing and maintenance costs. All these should form a part of your product or service costing.

• Though an ever-increasing number of people worldwide are shopping online, yet you may still not get a fair share of customers owing to global online business competition. You may have to avail of professional internet marketing services to improve traffic to your website.

• Old habits die hard. People may still not feel comfortable purchasing online because of security concerns. Visitors may visit your online store for information, but do the actual shopping offline.

• Information on your website may get outdated. So, it is important to keep your website updated with the latest information and products.

• The website design may be outdated and not be visitor-friendly. The navigation strategy may not be convenient making it difficult for the visitors to find what they need. It so happens in case of older websites built with a view to marketing and not customer convenience.

• Your website may not have appropriate security measures such as “verisign” installed, discouraging customers from using their credit card for purchase.

The disadvantages of internet marketing business should in no way discourage you from having an online store. You can approach an internet marketing consultant and get the necessary amendments made to your existing website.

Having an eBay store costs you only $9.95 per month plus $0.02 per listing, and a nominal amount for every uploaded picture. If you are in for regular eBay auction listings, each insertion starts at $0.30. Putting in a number of items on eBay auction every month, you stand to save a substantial amount of money.

Doing eBay auctions is a profitable way to save money and still have potential customers guided to your store. Participate in regular auctions of items you have well-stocked. Place the same items as a store listing too. Add a description somewhere on your auctions stating that customers, who cannot wait until the auction ends, may purchase the same item from the store. Place a “Buy It Now” hyperlink at the auction spot that leads them straight to your eBay store.

This way you save $0.03 cents, because the eBay store listing is only $0.02 cents as against the Buy It Now charge of $0.05 cents. You stand to save more money as the store listing is available for 30 days, while the maximum listing for an auction without paying $0.20 for a 10-day listing is 7 days.

The advantage of having an eBay store is the category system that they adhere to. Say, you like a particular item at an online store, and want to look for more items at the same store with a view to save on shipping charges. The need to look through a plethora of items, page after page, can be a nightmarish experience. But, the eBay selling experience is different. They provide categories for different items so that the buyers can easily access an item that interests them.

Until recently, sellers had to promote their own business and get traffic to their eBay store. The marketing aspect would consume a lot of their time. Not anymore, as eBay has made some exciting changes storing items that appear in their searches and other search engines. But, you still need to work on promoting your eBay store. The process, however, is simple. Just add a hyperlink on your auctions so that buyers can click on it to enter your store to look for similar items.

The way to lead buyers to your eBay store is through the clickable Buy It Now link. Since you get the intended price at the store listing, stack most of your items at the store and place some ‘in demand’ items on auction. Using this strategy, you not only can save a substantial amount of money, but also drive buyers to your store.

Inventory control on eBay is quite easy. Moreover, listing each item you have on inventory can be inexpensive at eBay. You can enjoy its advantage when eBay offers free or reduced listing days. Just refer to your store listings and sell similar item by changing the format to auction listing. When the auction is over, you can change the format to store listing again.

The above few points will certainly help you achieve a higher earning from your eBay store.

Demand Analysis: Determining the quantity of your products required in the future based on the current and potential demand of existing customers. Demand analysis will also take into consideration the likely demand raised by potential customers.

Destination Site: A website that a visitor is directed to after clicking through a banner advertisement or clicking a hyperlink.

Differential Pricing: Different pricing strategies adopted for identical products depending on the types of customers and markets catered.

Digital Marketing: It involves marketing strategies that use electronic media such as the internet, email, wireless media, and interactive television after analyzing digital data on customer preferences.

Digital Signatures: These are electronic signatures used to identify the user mostly for online transactions. Digital signatures are used by companies using public-key encryption.

Direct Marketing: A marketing technique that forms direct contact with the customer using word of mouth advertising or advertising on media.

Domain Name: It is a web address that identifies the web server.

Dynamic Pricing: A method by which prices are updated real time depending on the type of customer or existing market conditions.

Access Provider: A firm that provides services to help people access the internet. There are two kinds: (a) Internet service providers (ISP); (b) Online service providers (OSP).

Active Server Page (ASP): A kind of HTML page that carries small programs called scripts. These are processed on a web server before the web page is served on the client’s web browser. ASP pages are recognizable by the .asp file name. A Microsoft technology that runs on Windows NT, it is used mainly to process information obtained from an online form.

Active X: A Microsoft developed programming language, Active X allows the writing and accessing of complex graphical customer applications from web browsers. Its components are standard controls that are incorporated in websites so that they can automatically be downloaded to help users. They are used as calculators to calculate interest on loan and others.

Advertisement: Advertisements on a webpage usually in banner form placed as masthead on the page.

Advertising Network: A group of independent websites and media networks having an arrangement with a single advertising broker or media broker to place banner advertisements of their sites.

Affiliate Networks: A shared relationship between a website and third-party sites from where traffic is diverted to the website through banner advertisements and links. The third-party sites receive a commission for every sale made by way of directing traffic.

Alt Tags: These are tags that follow an HTML image tag and carry a phrase pertaining to that image. These tags are used for accessibility.

Animated Banner Advertisements: Animated banner advertisements are different from the earlier banner advertisements where only a single ad was displayed. The present day format shows a single banner displaying multiple images in a sequence. The ads are displayed as an animated gif file with a number of frames. Rich media advertisements use the animated banner advertisement method.

Attrition Rate: It is linked with the number of visitors to a website that are lost at every stage of the purchase process.

Auto Responders: Software used on web servers that automatically transmit a standard reply to the sender of the email. This normally is used to deal with standard information. Anyone joining a subscription mail may be sent a standard letter of thanks.

Callback Service: A direct response capability made available on the website to assist the company contact a customer over the phone at a time mentioned by the customer.

Campaign-based E-communications: A communication process put in place to assist and support a particular marketing campaign, say, related to a product launch, or a website launch.

Catalog: A listing of websites in varying categories comparable to Yellow Pages, but in electronic form. Catalogs are also known as directories.

Clicks-only: A company that only has an online presence.

Click Stream: A record of the path a visitor takes while visiting a website. With the help of click stream, a web designer or owner can ascertain how the website is being used, and what areas are being neglected.

Click-through: A click-through is a click of the mouse on a banner advertisement that directs the visitor to the website of the advertiser.

Click-through Rate: A percentage of click-throughs and the ad-impression.

Cold List: Data on individual users that is rented or sold by a third party.

Co-branding: An arrangement between companies where content is jointly displayed as an effort to promote business jointly using brand logos or banner advertisement.

Common Gateway Interface (CGI): CGI scripts, serving as alternative to ASP (Active Server Pages), are a means of processing information on a web server in response to a client’s request.

Consumer to Business (C2B): Consumers approaching a business with an offer is known as C2B.

Consumer to Consumer (C2C): Transactions between consumers, both financial and pertaining to information, normally conducted through a business website.

Content: The content of a website consists of its text, graphics, and design. The content is key to getting customers and ensuring repeat custom. Search engine optimized content helps getting websites indexed on search engine results pages (SERP).

Content Management: Management of content by way of making amendments and additions to the content of a website.

Convergence: A collective group of hardware devices like computers, televisions, and telephones that has similar functions.

Conversion Marketing: The use of marketing devices and communications to maximize conversion of visitors to customers.

Conversion Rate: The ratio of number of visitors to a website that gets converted to customers.

Cookies: Small text files stored on the surfer’s or user’s computer to help websites identify the user when he/she visits again. This way websites are able to build a profile of a customer’s or visitor’s preferences.

Core Product: The basic features of a product that fulfills the needs of a user.

Cost Models for Internet Advertising: The break-up of internet advertising cost into per exposure, per response, and per action costs.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): It represents the cost of acquiring a new customer including communications cost, cost per sale for new customer, and cost per quote or enquiry.

Cost Per Click (CPC): The total cost incurred on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising divided by the conversions into sales.

Cost Per Mille (CPM): Refers to cost for every 1000 ad impressions.

Cost Per Targeted Mille (CPTM): Refers to cost per targeted thousand for every advertisement.

Countermediation: Formation of a new intermediary by an existing website company.

Cross-selling: Pursuing existing customers to purchase products other than they normally purchase. It is an attempt to widen customer preferences.

Customer Acquisition: Strategies adopted to find new customers.

Customer-centric Marketing: Marketing tact based on thorough knowledge of customer preferences and behavior within the target audience and meeting the individual needs.

A good marketing strategy may fail to produce the desired results in absence of a compact sales strategy. You would lose out on customers if your website fails to close the sales despite a reliable marketing strategy. What good is one without the other? To ensure good results, create a right mix between your sales and marketing strategy.

There exists a strong relationship between a marketing plan and sales plan or strategy. A strong marketing strategy will ensure casual visitors taking keen interest in your product or services, while a simple sales strategy actually leads to the customer clicking on the “buy now” button. So, the main goal of your online business is to support your marketing strategy that brings visitors to your website with an effective sales strategy that convinces the visitor to make the final purchase.

Strengthening Your Business Sales Strategy
• Convenience is greatest service you can provide your visitor. Supplement it with a good quality product, inviting price, and availability, and you have won the battle. Website navigation is an important aspect of customer convenience. Ensure conveniently placed order buttons. Unless you have a unique product, you will be facing stiff competition, which you can beat by providing better service for customer convenience.
• Good, convincing web-content should be part of your sales strategy. Ascertain your target audience, determine their needs, and then write a copy convincing them why they should buy your product or service. They will click on the “buy” button only when they are sure about your product.
• Clinch the deal by offering more than what the competition is doing. Offer your customers a free gift, a discount, or an incentive that may lead them to saying the final “yes”.
• Customers are keen to know what after-sales service you offer. So, provide shipping policies, return policies, and contact information in clear terms.  Customers will be back for more if you can ensure quality products and prompt delivery backed by excellent customer service.
• Make sure that you have a good grievances procedure to satisfy your customer, should a problem arise. That is the only way to retain custom.

A sign of a good sales strategy is having repeat sales with a narrow customer base. In that case you may need to strengthen your marketing strategy to bring in more visitors. But, if you have many visitors with low sales to boot, you need to seriously improve your sales strategy.

Most business websites are created and constructed without using any marketing tool for internet business. Even before you start designing your website, think on the internet marketing aspect of your business. Based on that, take the next step and design your website.

Your website should contain text that is built around keywords and keyword phrases. Keywords and keyword phrases are words or group of words that your potential customers are using on search engines to look for your products or services over the internet. How do you determine what keywords and keyword phrases are being used to search for your products or services?  The answer is -the Keyword Selector Tool provided by Google search engine. Open this internet marketing tool and enter your product name in the space provided. A list of related keywords will be displayed with the number of times each keyword was used during a particular month. The count gives you a fair idea which particular keywords are used the most number of times to search for your products or services.

Keywords, based on Google’s internet marketing tool, are one great way to use in your web page text. Before you begin a new online business, using Google’s Keyword Selector Tool will give you a fair idea how popular your product or service is over the internet. It will save you a lot of money and effort, if there are no buyers for your online product or service. Most businesses incur losses because they invested a lot of money on online products that had no market.

Internet marketing tools greatly help in search engine optimization of web pages. The reason why we use search engine optimization is to get loads of free traffic to our website. Link trading is another effective way of online marketing. Although building links is not an easy exercise, but using article directories will help in this matter. A useful internet marketing tool, articles directories are websites where you post your articles with links to your website. People, who republish your article, publish your link as well. This way you can have hundreds of incoming links to your website, and loads of traffic.