Planning Is Key: If you want to make sure you know what you are doing at all times you need to have goals, because without them article marketing will never be able to help you grow your business. Having a clear action plan you can follow, as the result of planning effectively, will mean that you can get the best results from your article marketing campaigns. You need to develop your plan continuously so you can take more action since planning isn’t a one-time thing.

Your overall focus should be on planning and executing, because without the right level of execution, even the best of your plans won’t work.

Be Reliable: The only way that you can make article marketing work in the long run is by writing articles on a constant basis. In other words, article marketing is a game about volume. Not all of your articles are going to be good. This is why you have to place a lot of emphasis on writing articles on a constant basis if you want article marketing to be effective. After doing it for a while, you will discover that writing plenty of articles will give you the chance to get traffic from many different places. The reason that a lot of internet marketers do not succeed with building their companies is because they do not run the article marketing campaigns long enough or they do not produce enough articles.

Establish Yourself as an Expert: The internet loves and rewards experts. If you become an expert in your niche, you will find that your article marketing efforts will generate a better outcome.

You need to work towards getting people to trust your business and see you as being reliable, which can be done by writing highly informative articles. The content that you use for article that you use for article marketing purposes should always help you on your way to become an authority. By concentrating on this single factor, you will be able to generate some excellent results with your article marketing campaigns because people love to listen to an authority.

And there you have it! You can easily expand your business and maximize your results from your article marketing efforts with this easy to apply advice. Just keep in mind that in order to make your article marketing efforts fruitful, it’s important that you focus on quality, rather than quantity.

By this I mean that I provide SEO to local business, but I do not call it SEO. Rather I call it Lead generation as local business want leads desperately. Getting their website to page one of Google is really just another way that a business cam get leads.

By positioning your self as a lead generation provider you can separate your self from the SEO pack which puts you at considerable advantage.

Rather than place the whole post here I have created a short downloadable report that tells you exactly how it can be done. It’s yours free.

Click on link to view in browser or right click and save to your computer, then open with Adobe pdf or similar programme.

Download the pdf HERE

The internet is a powerful marketing tool. We’re going to cover some of the most important aspects of marketing your business online in this report – but you must keep in mind that there is no guarantee of your success in these pages. While this report will give you invaluable information regarding how you should be marketing your business, there are far too many factors at play to make any such guarantee.

Deadly Mistake #1

Your Call To Action Stinks…

Most business owners just forget this piece completely, so if you even have a call to action on your website, you’re a step ahead of the competition.

But what is a call to action exactly?

Simple…

A call to action is simply a statement somewhere on your website telling the visitor what to do.

First you’re going to need to decide exactly what action you want a visitor to take. Do you want them to purchase from you right then, or should they contact you for a quote first?

Put this on your website somewhere. Here are some examples for getting visitors to fill out a quote form.

“Just fill out your information below to receive a comprehensive, no-strings-attached, completely free quote from one of our representatives.”

“Fill out the form to receive a free quote from our sales team. Your request will be processed within 24 hours and you will receive a call between the hours you specified in the form.”

Tell your visitor exactly what you want them to do. The more detail, the better.

Bonus Tip: Focus on the benefits your visitor will have if they purchase your product or service. What will change in the way they live their life? Will their coffee be better in the morning? Will they save more money on taxes? How will their life be better because you showed up?

Deadly Mistake #2

Not Gathering Email Addresses

I recently had a conversation with a business owner who we’ll call John. John wasn’t anything special… he had an average business with an average income. He worked about 60 hours a week and spent the weekend at home with his family.

His company was a service business and he provided a good service that helped his clients. He was good at what he did.

There was a problem though… he wasn’t getting enough clients. This is something most business owners can relate to. At times it’s hard to bring customers or clients through the door.

Much of John’s business came from his website. He did well getting his website into the search engines, but wasn’t doing so well with converting visitors into clients.

It wasn’t until he started collecting email addresses through a simple form on his website that he really saw an increase in clientele. Nowadays John’s practice is packed. His schedule is full and he’s been able to double the price he was charging. He was also able to cut back to about 30 hours a week, instead of 60.

By running a simple newsletter sharing valuable information with your customers, you’re going to keep buyers coming back and bringing new buyers through your doors.

Deadly Mistake #3

Failing To Optimize For Search Engines

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing are the closest things to friends your website will ever have. So you have to make sure they play extra nicely together.

By following a few simple rules, you can have your website ranking well in the search results for popular terms in your local area.

Let’s say you wanted to rank well for the search term, “Orlando plumber”. You’d want to make sure that you have that term on your main web page at least three times.

The best places to put search terms are…

• The title tag
• The headline
• The first and last line of content
• The sidebar
• And in image ALT tags

Some of these may sound like Greek to you, so talk with your web developer about them and make sure that your website is up to date with terms you’d like to rank for.

Deadly Mistake #4

Failure To Track Statistics

Yet another factor that is critical to any businesses online (or offline for that matter) success is tracking. You really need to keep track of where your leads and traffic come from so you can replicate and scale any success you have.

Google Analytics is a free tracking suite that will give you each and every statistic you could possibly need for tracking visitors on your website.

By watching closely what people do on your website, you’ll be able to craft an experience that gets visitors to act in exactly the manner you’d like them to.

Going back to Mistake #1, if you want somebody to fill out a contact form, you need to find a way to get them to your contact page. Watch how people interact with your website, then use that as a cue for where to add links to the pages you want visitors to visit the most.

Another stat you need to watch is where people are coming from. Do most of your visitors come from a link the newspaper printed about your business in their online edition? If so, keep trying to get published. If most of your traffic comes from searches, do some optimization and get higher rankings for more terms.

Deadly Mistake #5

Not Using Longtail Keywords

Longtail keywords are a god-send to anybody who uses search engines for traffic. This goes for both paid traffic (See: PPC) and organic traffic.

A longtail keyword is a key term that’s more than three words long.

Examples would be…

• Orlando plumbing specialists
• Family doctor in Chicago
• Remodeling companies near Houston

Since you’re probably a localized business, focus on keywords that use your city name. This way you’re guaranteed to find people who are in your area looking for your services.

Use this tool to search for keywords that have a good number of searches every month.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

If you spot anything with more than 400 searches per month, you’d better be bidding on that keyword.

The reason to use these keywords is simple – most businesses aren’t. They still get a lot of traffic, but people just don’t know any better. They are extremely easy to optimize for, and they are much cheaper than the shorter terms if you’re using PPC.

Deadly Mistake #6

Not Focusing On Benefits

If you’re a software company, you know that features are important to buyers. That arena is the only one where that’s important though.

People generally don’t want to know the features of your product. New widgets don’t matter to a buyer unless it has a dramatic impact on the product’s performance.

If your product is 50% stronger than the leading option, focus on how much longer your product will last instead of the space age material it’s made of.

Tell readers just how your product will help their life and you’ll see an instant increase in sales.

Let’s take some features and turn them into benefits.

• Feature: Your software uses SQL databases to store a users information.
  Benefit: All information is encrypted and stored securely where hackers can never touch it – keeping your identity safe.
• Feature: The latest video uses new Blu-Ray technology.
  Benefit: By using Blu-Ray, we’ve increased quality by 200%, making the instructions easier to see than ever. Now you’ll be able to see each cut in exquisite detail just like it was right in front of you.
• Feature: Now included with a one-touch speed dial marker.
  Benefit: Never enter another number into speed dial again – simply hit the * key after a phone call, and the number will automatically be entered into your speed dial.

You can see just how powerful this will be for selling people on your products.

Deadly Mistake #7

Not Marketing Using Emotions

People buy on emotion and justify using logic. No matter the product or group you’re selling to this is true.

Even if you’re marketing to businesses you need to use emotion to sell. If, for example, you were selling to the accounting portion of fortune 500 companies, you should focus on what goes through the buyer’s mind.

Most of those buyers have bosses they must go through before the sale is made. He’d likely need to be reassured that this decision would be a good one for his career in order to buy.

You’re going to need to talk with potential buyers in order to find out what sort of emotions they go through when making a purchase. Most of the time they won’t give you an answer straight-away, so you’ll have to infer from his statements just what’s going on in his mind.

Once you get this right though, you may never have to write another ad again…

Using emotional selling is by-far the most important thing you can do for your advertising. This goes for both online and offline sales.

Thank you for taking the time to read through this short report. I’d love to have a chance to talk with you for even just 10 minutes about your current marketing strategy to see if there is any way we can improve it by using the power of the internet.