Online Marketing: Do it in an Elegantly Influential Manner, Not Aggressively

You own an online business, promoting products and services, and you want to see those profits on the rise. If marketing is done properly, you are going to see indeed profits hitting the ceiling; but if you implement poor marketing tactics, your sales agenda will stay poor as well.

One of the most important things that you must keep in mind is that aggressive marketing will take you nowhere. For instance, sms marketing, where you send people 3 annoying messages per hour that X product is “only for the next ten minutes 50% off” is a sort of aggressive marketing.

You have to be tactful and inviting, and let people decide for themselves, but of course by taking care of a few tips and tricks that you will implement.

Pictures speak for themselves

Instead of cramping your website/blog with poorly written walls of text articles stuffed with random keywords, you should better focus on uploading some very good quality photos.

These can be pictures of your products if that is what you are marketing, or some very suggestive pictures for the services you are trying to sell. Try to stay original- just browse crowdsource portals such as Poptent for example, where you will find a lot of young and talented artists selling unique photography materials. Make your blog/website unique.

Make your clients feel exclusivity

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You should dedicate a corner “for members only”. Those clients that became members after subscription will have access to special deals. Word of mouth as you may already know is the best marketing strategy from ancient times; so if you treat your special members well, you will soon have more.

Implement the referral program

For a start, you could offer $10 shopping credit for those clients that can bring you new customers. If you don’t want to offer shopping credit, you can offer instead say 5% off for the next purchase for any item.

Of course these are only suggestive prices/percentages, and it highly depends on what kind of products/services you sell and how much you can actually afford to pay out.

Top notch customer service

If you don’t have the necessary time for it, you should hire one virtual assistant. He/she should be online at least 8 hours per day, and the main task is to help people in their decision making process.

Shopping online many times is a too “empty” experience. You just browse, put your desired products in the e-basket, check out, pay with your card, package arrives on your doorstep.

But wouldn’t you like much better a nice little online store that has an assistant you can talk to, just like in real world shopping.

You might have questions regarding the products/services, or the accepted payment methods. Try to make your online store more real lifelike. It will definitely bring you more customers.

Remember the specials

Make sure that every week you do a change, you bring a new product, or you offer a special discount. Freebies are men’s best friend online, so you can offer with a product a free e-book, a free ringtone, a T-shirt, anything that will make customers tell their friends about your business.

Make your existent customers get used with the fact that you are a very interactive business, and not just a stagnating one that sells the same things for the last 6 months.

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18 comments

Chris @ Netpaths December 10, 2010 - 2:32 pm
We love using quality images and photos, and google image search represents nearly 50% of all the traffic of some of our sites.
ZK@Web Marketing December 11, 2010 - 12:18 am
@ Chris I am with you on using quality images for blog posts. I spend a lot of time selecting images that are clutter breaking and relate to the post...it add great value to the post and also helps being searchable on Google images...
Aluminum Cases December 10, 2010 - 2:40 pm
A lot of good points, but the post title is a little misleading. This post is more to do with optimizing a website for visitors. It's not so much about online marketing. In the online world, I consider the marketing side to be more about getting people to your site. Then again, I guess all online efforts can be generalized as marketing.
Donny Gamble December 10, 2010 - 2:43 pm
Hey, I created this post to generate some ideas to better service and understand the needs of your online customers. Also, to provide some ways that you can use to incentivize your previous customers and your new previous customers
Richmond Internet Marketing December 11, 2010 - 6:06 am
Developing a successful internet marketing strategy is an essential part of your online success. In order to succeed, you must develop and implement a strategic plan that includes all of the following: • A great product • A web site specifically designed to sell • A killer marketing strategy
MicroSourcing December 12, 2010 - 9:10 pm
Very flattering photos can help a web site, and better yet, great videos. It's all about keeping it interactive.
Software Development Company December 13, 2010 - 6:43 am
Nice tips about online marketing. Good explanation about the proper way of online marketing. It's true, pictures speak for themselves.
Printable Coupons December 13, 2010 - 6:48 am
"Exclusivity." Reminds me of Zuckerberg and the Harvard project from The Social Network. Yes, I believe you should satisfy the customer first and foremost. Make them feel they are important.
Evan Schulte December 13, 2010 - 12:34 pm
The customer come first, I still dont understand why people still question this.
Property Marbella December 14, 2010 - 5:17 am
Hi Donny, You have only three seconds to grab the buyer’s attention and interest when you send a sms or a mail. So a nice photo and 2-3 perfect words is what you must found for a success.
TechNina December 14, 2010 - 8:22 am
Good article..again nice set of tips..
eCommerce Development December 14, 2010 - 11:07 pm
The best way of doing online marketing is to use the blogging and social media options effectively so that it direct to the consumers and build the relationship that create more consumers based on references.
Tyra Lee-Ann December 17, 2010 - 4:53 am
Good customer support - the main thing here! Cause if you have not excellent support - you can sell something only once, and after that if your customer is not getting answers for all his questions - he'll share it with all his friends and then you understand me! Great article. Thank you.
Felicia @ No Deposit Poker December 17, 2010 - 8:23 pm
Having good photos can definitely make a website or post look more attractive. I for one do not like reading posts that are purely text and are very long. Having a good related picture will alleviate you from having to explain what you mean.
Andrew December 23, 2010 - 10:54 pm
Attractive blog designs and images is essential to catch more readers and more prospect buyers to your site. Thus increasing your chances to sell. Great product and great website content is key to online success
kirsty January 8, 2011 - 6:29 pm
Making your client feel special and well entertain is very important. At least they will know that they are well treated. If they are satisfied with your services then then I am sure that they will recommend with other friends.
John Papers January 14, 2011 - 1:42 am
The post was definitely good, but i liked the point # 1 the most, truly said pictures speak for themselves.
online sales October 8, 2011 - 6:57 am
Off page optimization is 70%, when on page optimization is 30%. You can see that off page optimization is more important. You need both in order to have a good
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