Entries Tagged 'Article Marketing' ↓

Generate Free Leads with Article Marketing

What is article marketing?  It is the practice of providing well-written content for distribution to websites and epublishers in exchange for a blurb about the author’s business and contact information.  These “bios” usually include a link to the business owner’s website. 

*Providing content to publishers in related fields can be a highly cost-effective means of increasing website traffic, generating qualified leads, and improving both brand awareness and ultimately, sales.

***Big Benefits of Article Marketing:

When a business owner offers content for publication, it is equivalent to getting free ad space on countless websites worldwide.  The opportunity for exposure to the right market is significant, while the cost is virtually nil, making it a highly efficient means of business communication.

Unlike using email campaigns for lead generation, which net about a one percent response rate, article marketing targets a willing audience.  Readers either voluntarily visited the website on which the article is published, or have opted in to receive the newsletter or ezine.  This audience is inherently more open to the information contained in the article, and therefore more likely to follow the link to the author’s website to learn more.

Publishers who pick up the articles already have an audience of potential buyers in place.  Readers are interested in the content of the articles, suggesting they may be in the market to purchase products or services related to that content.  By comparison, the cost to purchase a list of such well-qualified leads would be formidable.  Providing an article costs no more than the investment of the time required to write it.

Business owners can further increase the conversion rate by including a link to a particular piece of information in the author’s bio.  Rather than linking to the home page, authors can include a link to an article on their own site that elaborates on the article topic.  Readers will be more likely to seek out additional specific information.

Conversion rates can be improved further by publishing an email address that readers can use to subscribe to the author’s newsletter or website.  Making the desired action as easy as possible increases the reader’s likelihood of doing so.  An auto-response can then be sent to new signa links to specific features of the author’s website. 

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Click here:  Free Article Marketing Resources, Classes, E-Books and Audio.

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 Five Reasons Why Deep Linking Can Help Your Online Business

 First, what exactly is “Deep Linking”?  Deep linking is the process of linking to a specific page on a website, rather than just the homepage.  For instance, a regular link would point to mysite.com, but a deep link would point to a specific page on that site, such as mysite.com/page1.

Some corporations try to discourage deep linking, as it allows users to visit a specific page, while bypassing advertising on the front page of the site.  For most people deep linking is very helpful and actually sought after. 

Here’s a five reasons why deep linking can help your online business:

1.  Deep linking greatly increases a user’s ability to find exactly what they are looking for on the web.  If you were searching for chicken recipes and saw a link for chicken pot pie, when you clicked on it, you would expect to be on a page that had a recipe for chicken pot pie. 

You would be disappointed if you ended up at a main page of another recipe website and had to search through all their recipes in order to find the recipe you thought you were linked to. When a website owner deep links to specific web pages that contain the specific content their readers are looking for then the reader is much more satisfied.

2.  Deep linking also helps the website owner keep tabs on their website visits.  They are able to see exactly which pages of their website are getting the most links.  This can help them decide what the most popular content on their site is and what their visitors are looking for.

3.  Deep linking also helps in the search engine rankings.  If there was a site about tropical birds that had links coming in to various pages on different types of birds, when someone searched for “parrot” then the parrot page would come up.  The person would be able to visit the page that allowed them to learn exactly what they wanted.

4.  Deep linking will help your conversion rates in pay-per-click advertising by linking to exactly what your ad is talking about.  For example, if you have a site about gardening and place an ad for shovels, using deep linking in the ad to point directly to the shovel page rather than pointing to the home page. 

If the ad pointed to the home page, there may be some visitors who would navigate towards the shovels they were originally looking for, but some would leave the site altogether. If the ad points directly to the shovel page more people would buy the shovels and that would increase the conversion rates.

5.  Over all, deep linking should help you increase your web site traffic.  Start creating deep links in a blog and link to specific content on the site.  Include deep links in articles submitted to reprint directories.   Experiment with this idea and see if your traffic increases.

There was a question recently at our Wahm Forum which I answered, and I thought it would also make a great blog post, so I decided to share it here:

Question: What do you do with reports that you have written other than just marketing them on your site?  Are there directories that you can submit them to just like you would submit articles? How do you make them avaiable to bloggers?

 Reply:

I haven’t done a thorough research on “report directories” to submit to. I did indeed find one, but it seemed sort of spammy to me since I was encountered with a few popups, so I will not list it here. Funny thing is I did start a squidoo lens for free reports, but haven’t worked on it yet. (smile)

Usually you offer your free report as an incentive for signing up for your mailing list. So, I usually have my report ready in PDF format and load it to my hosting server. When they sign up for mailing list and confirm their signup my autoresponder automatically sends out the next message with the link to my free report. I instruct them to save it to their computer.

You could use article marketing to advertise your report as well. Submit several articles on topics targeting your target market and include your bio at the end by putting in a plug about getting your free report when they visit your site.

Getting a few online partners to offer your report in exchange for your offering their report (not competitors in the same exact field, of course) or some similar exchange might be a good possibility.

So for the question of distributing your report, an autoresponder works good for mailing signups.

I have also used to use Tradebit.com which offers file storage that you can share or sell for as low as $0.59 per month for 40 mb of storage. Click on “Sell here now” at the very top of their web page to view their different levels of service. *You can also start a group there where you allow certain people access to your file. One other thing that I like is that they make it easy to link to your files and you have your own webpage. So if you sign up be sure to make your username a good “keyword” because it will be used for your url link. (In fact, I guess I could write a whole article on the subject on how to market online using tradebit, but I’ll pass for now…I blog more on this later.)

As far as the purpose of reports, you brand it with your business information…sort of like handing out your business cards in hope that they’ll keep it on hand and later when they need your services…they’ll hopefully contact you. It also helps to establish yourself as an expert in your field as you share your knowledge within your report.

For affiliate marketers, placing their affiliate links in their reports and distributing the free report will hopefully increase sales as well.

Others have used reports to create viral marketing. They sell their reports for a small sum and include an affiliate program to encourage others to sell their report and distribute it as well, and all the while they are spreading the news about their business because their reports are branded.

For more information on profiting from reports check out  ”Write that Report.”