Are You Paying Attention? 

Ironic isn’t it? While offline businesses in cities, towns and villages around the world are desperately trying to cut back expenses, pool resources and find a reliable crystal ball during this jaw dropping downturn, demand for website internet marketing services is exploding. Online marketing activities are stronger than ever. The offline and online worlds act as if they exist in two different universes.

Why? Because consumer online spending is still increasing. This is a red flag in this current market.  

An economic downturn is a great time for everyone from individual traders, small companies and even corporations to rethink and refocus their branding identity, costs, positioning, market share and competitors. No one likes to talk about the positive side of any economic downturn because while everything is morphing into something better, people’s lives are affected; often adversely.

Blood will be spilt and not everyone will make it through this ‘character building’ time but when the high voltage spin slows everyone, everywhere will take a collective sigh to work out their place in the world. And do it all over again.

Sure, everyone will get out there and sing about their next generation of products or services as if that’s what they had been planning all along. But this time the landscape will look different. Web 2.0 different.

Internet marketing has a number of powerful advantages over print and other media;

1.      It’s extremely affordable especially when every dollar counts.

2.      It provides a range of tools such as video, audio, twitter, facebook etc to connect with customers and prospective customers.

3.      It gives higher conversion rates.

4.      It gives good return on investment for dollars spent.

5.      It’s relatively quick to build, implement and distribute.

6.      Platforms are scalable and sustainable.

7.      Customers provide an additional resource for information, product development, growth and strategy.

8.      Results are measurable.

No-one has all the answers. But smart individual and companies are improvising. They can’t afford not to, especially in this market, because while others are nursing their wounds and picking up the pieces, they’re running with Web 2.0 tools to build relationships with potential customers and grab market share. This is not the time to rest.

When everything settles in a few months, a year or two years, they will have achieved more growth with cheaper tools and more focus than previously possible. Web 2.0 social media marketing provides it all and more.

Thousands all over the world are hearing the call. They’re using low cost, fast building website, blogging, article writing, marketing by video and email services, pay per click and search engine optimization (SEO) services to stimulate and secure links back to their sites for solid search engine rankings. Costs are low, turnaround fast and outsourcing reliable.

Traditional marketing services are still in demand, and of course they work, but until delivery costs can be significantly reduced they can’t compete and must wait patiently until budgets expand.   

Web 2.0 social media marketing has several unfair advantages:

1.      It costs only a fraction of other marketing and advertising channels to create.

2.      It has greater audience reach with lower costs.

3.      It has high value, long term engineering elements that build interest and trust in companies, products, people and culture by stimulating virtual conversations unlike the usual one-way company shake and rattle delivered with other mediums.

4.      It’s highly measurable. Trial runs, tests and experiments are all easy to measure allowing you to see what works, what doesn’t, who makes up your demographics and where they live. Most of these results are free allowing you to improve your campaigns with laser–like focus until you get it right.  

What this means to anyone paying attention is that no matter how big or small your venture, enterprise, product range or idea Web 2.0 marketing tools can help you grow exponentially. You just have to make the leap, put objectives in place, followed by a set of realistic strategies and focus.    

Stay in touch for tools, strategies and web2.0 patterns.

Christine 

Technorati Tags: branding corporate identity, business marketing strategy, internet marketing, internet marketing for small business, small business marketing solutions, social media, social networking, web 20, web20

Online video marketing is one of the hottest forms of internet viral marketing. Anyone serious about internet marketing should pay attention. It provides an unprecedented opportunity to provide great content and get ranked on the first page of Google with incredible speed.

The best part is you don’t need -

• a website,

• blog site,

• memberships at Facebook, MySpace or Twitter.

And the cost is so low television, newspaper and other print media execs are hoping it will go away. And if it doesn’t should they embrace it or condemn it? In the virtual world of virtually anything this web 2.0 business tool is virtually F.R.E.E!

You could compare video marketing to a television commercial but that would be a fatal mistake.

Firstly, online video marketing is far more effective because of the low costs to produce, transmit  and potentially greater audience reach.

Delivery costs are negligible since you’re not paying television stations for air time or print media for space. You can take as long as you like as often as you like to show the world your products, services and ideas and give out all your contact details or just the bare essentials which is great for offline businesses and better for ideas with nowhere to live.

Suddenly, everyone can reach a social network audience but can get them to listen?

Many argue that television commercials capture audiences even if it’s only as they stroll past into the kitchen to make coffee, put on the dryer or change channels. The same people staunchly believe in the subliminal ’something must stick’ syndrome. But even this theory is losing ground as next generation technologies skip or take out television ads making the impossible possible; no boring ads and strangling advertising revenues.

Truthfully, video marketing has an equally challenging hit and miss risk factor. Because people are constantly hunting for good quality content, delivered in interesting ways. They will happily leave your video without hesistantion unless you can convince them to stay.

Master and deliver to your audience and before you know it you’ll have an uncontrollable marketing virus on your hands and an audience that will look, listen and salivate for more.

Marketing by video  has been around for a while. In terms of positioning marketing it is one of the most effective web 2.0 marketing tools available for return on investment, audience reach and an efficient way to establish a public online body of work; whether you are a small business, an artist, a corporate, television producer, musuem or interrior designer. Internet video is a highly effective business internet marketing solution.

Once you learn how to apply internet marketing by video you can create videos to support any marketing strategies already in play, make announcements, educate or entertain your audience. You can convert audiences from prospects to customers or keep in touch with your existing customers on a regular basis.

Some internet marketers scoff at video marketing effectiveness believing search engine optimization or article writing as a better use of resources. Wrong! No one’s suggesting that marketers throw out all their tools and only use internet video for all their branding or marketing. Everything contributes to a total marketing solution. But as far as marketing tools go, videos connect to peope like television or film; movement and emotion. And it’s hard to compete with that.

And compared to creating thirty second television commercials, videos are just simpler and less expensive to construct. You can make a video in just a few minutes or a few hours. Look at the video below to see the kind of audience numbers you can expect from using directories apart from Youtube to send your video to. It not only lists companies providing these services but also other services they provide such as converting your video into a pod cast for listeners. Of course, these numbers can be leveraged according to the size of your audience, customer base and resouces. But its the concept that’s important. Get that and leverage away.

But the greatest opporunty for anyone interested in positioning their opinion, product or business is that there’s a warmed up global audience on the ready to speed through content and sink their teeth into the next big thing; the quirkier the better and it’s all so convenient because it comes out of the same box as a lot of other content.

Online video marketing gives you a world wide opportunity to bore your prospects or excite them into laughter, shock or action. The choice is yours; social media video marketing is here to stay.

High level visibility of video marketing should not be ignored. It can change your bottom line in an instant and it’s legal.  You can show your videos in one place like your blog or website or upload them to as many video sharing sites or get them bookmarked on social sites for backlinks to your site with more free traffic. Either way, don’t miss it.

Come back for more traffic tips by submitting your name and email details and get on the emailing list. For a total overview of Web 2.0 marketing strategies, including video, go to Web 2.o Traffic Demolisher to dominate your market.

See you soon

Christine McVeigh 

Technorati Tags: business mark, internet marketing, internet marketing for small business, marketing by video, small business internet marketing, small business web marketing, web 2.0 business tool, web 2.0 strategies