The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

Some Internet marketing tactics are timeless – they will always work. You may do them poorly and in that case they may not work. But if you do them well, then they will work.

Here are 6 Internet marketing tactics that worked when they were first used, work today, and will work until the technology on which they are based dies.

1. E-mail marketing – Whether you send newsletters, e-brochures, or product giveaway postcards, e-mail marketing is a marketing tactic that simply works. Anyone can do it.
2. Blogging – Blogging not only is a great marketing tactic, it’s good for SEO. That may be why it will always work.
3. Social networking – Social networking can take many forms. In the past it was known as forum marketing or bulletin boards. Today, it’s just simply social networking. But no matter the form, if it involves socializing (even online), then it will work. Networking is networking.
4. Word of mouth – Word of mouth always works. Online and off line. Online, word of mouth takes shape in the share icons you put on your pages. You do put them on your web pages, don’t you?
5. Visual imagery – TV advertising is still alive and well. Online, it’s called video marketing. Yes, it works just as well as TV advertising.
6. Paid advertising – Free advertising is great, but it may or may not work depending on the venue. Paid advertising works. Off line, print newspapers and magazines offer display ads for your dollars and boy do they work. Online, PPC is the best paid advertising you can get. It’s the equivalent of your hometown newspaper ad.

There’s no question about it. These online marketing tactics work. They always have and they always will.

Chances are, if you’ve got a website, then you have some kind of analytics installed. If not, you should. How are you going to tell where your traffic is coming from and how much of it you are getting?

You’ve also likely heard by now that Google Analytics is free. Indeed it is. Totally. And you can use it to gather all sorts of useful information about your site visitors. But is it enough? Can you survive on Google Analytics alone?

I think for new websites Google Analytics is enough. You really want to see how your site grows over time. But as your website grows and you take on more search traffic from a variety of sources, you probably want to use an alternate analytics services to compare your metrics.

I’m not saying you should replace Google Analytics. You can keep it installed. There’s nothing wrong with it as a service. But there’s no perfect metrics package.

The point really is that you want to corroborate your data, especially the actionable data. By comparing the numbers you get from two or more analytics sources, you ensure that you are getting accurate data. It’s actually more actionable when you can get reports and actionable data from more than one source. Wild fluctuations between the two can be analyzed and judged according to reality and your expectations.

Google Analytics is good, but I wouldn’t rely on it completely forever. Your SEO is more important than that.

Internet marketing is for authors too. In fact, many successful authors use the Internet every day to promote their books and other merchandise. You can too.

One successful author recently increased his readership by several thousand fans just by following a very simple strategy for online promotion. Here it is in a nutshell:

1. The first thing Kevin W. McCarthy did was turn an existing book into a Kindle e-book.
2. Then he set the price of the e-book at free
3. Next, he sent out e-mail blasts promoting the book.
4. And he set up radio interviews and online webcasts to help promote the book
5. Finally, he promoted the book through social media

As a result of his efforts, Kevin W. McCarthy’s Kindle book became the No. 1 non-fiction book at Amazon. And all he did was promote his book in ways that successful authors everywhere do.

You can do it. And you don’t even need a previously published book. You can write your book right now and publish it yourself through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program.

By authoring your own book and promoting it through your e-mail list, website properties, and all over the web using the tools at your disposal – most of them free – you can maneuver yourself onto the best selling list at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Apple iBook store, and other online book merchants.

The key to success as an author is to have an idea, follow through with that idea, and then promote your book once it is published. It’s never been easier to be a successful author.

“Content marketing” is the new catchphrase. In the old days, people used “article marketing” to denote what today is often referred to as “content marketing,” but the two are really different.

Article marketing was the process of writing articles and then publishing those articles in directories for e-zine editors and publishers and webmasters to use as content on their own web properties. While this process in included in the overall concept of content marketing, there is a fine nuance that differentiates the two.

Content marketing is a broader category. Anything you do online that promotes your business or your content – whether it be on your own web properties or elsewhere – can be considered content marketing.

So is there a viable strategy to ensure that your content marketing is effective?

Yes, but it’s different for every business.

The first step to an effective content marketing strategy is to define your business goals. All of your content publishing and marketing should go toward helping you reach those goals. Anything that doesn’t contribute to the advancement of your business goals is superfluous and should be cut out. Anything that pushes you forward toward your goals is good marketing.

But is everything content? Content is anything you create, produce, or publish. It can include guest articles for your blog, articles you publish around the web, images and videos you load to your website or third-party sites like Flickr and YouTube, and anything else that takes up virtual space on a server and is public. That includes forum postings and blog comments on other blogs.

Your strategy should be to present your company in the best possible light in all situations. That requires forethought. Don’t market emotionally. Market responsibly.

Last year Yahoo! killed its Site Explorer product, which was a link building tool that every SEO and Internet marketer used to measure their inbound links. Now, the only such products available are paid tools. But a new service offered by Yahoo! may very well put the company back in the small business marketing services game.

Yahoo! has always tried to come up with ways to appeal to small businesses. In the early days of its life they gave small businesses a directory listing. Then paid services became available as well as display advertising.

Once PPC came into the fore, many businesses dropped their display advertising campaigns. It took a while, but pay-pay-click advertising won that war. That is one of the reasons Yahoo! fell to second place behind Google.

Among the features offered is a reputation management tracker. You can also see which search engines have your business listed. And you can track sales and report revenues as well.

It remains to be seen how useful the service is. Right now, it’s free, though premium upgrade plans are available for a fee.

Whether or not Yahoo! turns its Small Business Marketing Dashboard into a competitive product depends on how well they can deliver on the features and the benefits they promise. This may be Yahoo!’s last ditch effort to stay alive. If Small Business Marketing Dashboard doesn’t win hearts and minds, we may continue to see a steady decline in the influence of Yahoo!

If you write, promote, post, or market a blog or website content in any fashion, then I’d chance to say that you are a publisher. But what does that mean, exactly?

The definition of “publisher” has changed. In the old days, it meant you contracted with writers and agents to produce written manuscripts. You were often the risk taker in the business process of producing written works. You put up the money for the content being produced and saw the project through from beginning to end. You were seldom the creator of the content itself.

All of that has changed in the Internet age. Today you can be a publisher without as much risk. If you have a blog on your website, you’re a publisher. If you write and post articles online – even if those articles are not on your website – then you might be a publisher.

Why does that matter? It matters because if you are a publisher, then you should act like a publisher.

A publisher is concerned as much with the cost of producing content as much as he is with the actual process of producing the content. That means you must concern yourself with the cost of acquiring content if you don’t produce it yourself, the time cost of producing your own content, and the return on your investment in terms of the money your content makes. That’s what publishers do.

Content marketing is about producing quality content for your readers, but publishing content is about measuring the return on that content. If you want to run a business online, you have to think like a publisher.

Is it getting more difficult to market a business online? I can see how a business owner would think so. There is so much to think about. You have to build a website, then you have to promote your website. You have to come up with a search engine marketing strategy, perhaps a pay-per-click advertising strategy, and put together a social media marketing plan. You may need a video marketing plan, an e-mail marketing plan, and even a display advertising plan in some niches. There really is a lot to think about.

While there is a lot to think about when you embark upon an Internet marketing venture, it isn’t as difficult as it seems. There are some things that are actually easier online than off line. For instance, there is a lot that you can measure online that measuring off line is unheard of.

Still, it helps to have a plan.

A good Internet marketing plan starts with research. In your research you should include some time to study your competition. Learn what the movers in your niche are up to. Not that you’ll follow them, but it helps to know what others have done and are doing in your industry. You may find some things that you like that you want to emulate while tossing out other strategies that don’t fit in with your goals and mission.

When you start with research you will eliminate a lot of your options. Taking items off the table that don’t belong there is a good way to narrow your focus and research can help you do that. Build your online marketing plan on solid research and it gets easier. A lot easier in most cases.

Wordstream has a colorful, and very helpful, infographic that shows the best of the best Internet marketing tools in 10 different categories. Specifically, the categories addressed are:

• Web analytics
• Social media management
• Content marketing and blogging
• Search engine optimization
• Pay-per-click marketing
• Marketing automation
• Video hosting management
• Conversion rate optimization
• Crowdsourcing
• E-mail marketing

You’d think a company putting together that kind of list would include only paid services in hopes they might earn some affiliate money, but that’s not the case. Some of the marketing tools are actually free. Many of them, in fact.

Among the free Internet marketing tools that made the list are Google Analytics, HootSuite, WordPress, Joomla, Google Webmaster Tools, Vimeo, WordWatch, Google Website Optimizer, evly, NetProspex, and several others. There is at least one free service under each of the above 10 product categories.

So, what’s it mean?

If you’re savvy with your investment dollars you can run your online business using all free tools.

While I wouldn’t necessarily agree with every service on the list as I’d probably add some tools that aren’t on the list, but I will say that the infographic gives a good visual representation of some tools that are available for startups. But if you really want to shine and get your service the recognition it deserves, you’ll still have to spend some money on content creation.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to run your business online. You can find awesome Internet marketing tools for free, and most of these have value added services that you can pay for as your business grows.

Does your website need a sitemap? And if so, where do you get one?

First, let’s talk about what a sitemap is.

A sitemap is a list of web pages on your website that you submit to the search engines to make your site easier to crawl and index. I’ve seen some smaller websites get by without a website, but if you have more than 10 pages on your site, then I’d say a sitemap is definitely necessary. Even if you have fewer than 10 pages on your website, a sitemap could benefit you.

Don’t rely on the search engines to crawl every page on your site. Get a sitemap.

One of the most important benefits to a sitemap is that you can assign priority to your pages. Your home page should have the highest priority. But if you have second and third tier pages on your site, then you can assign a priority to them accordingly. The search engines will crawl those sites based on that priority.

A sitemap is an XML file that you upload to your website and submit to the search engines. You should also include a TXT sitemap, and HTML sitemap, and an ROR sitemap on your site. These are for your human visitors.

There are several sitemap generator websites online. One that I recommend is XML-Sitemaps.com. You generate your sitemap and upload the files to your server.

A sitemap will increase your chances of getting your pages crawled and indexed. You can have a separate sitemap for each section of your website and if you have a large website, then that might be in order. You can also have a video sitemap for your site’s video section. Anything you can do to help the search engines index your website should be done.

Do you have your contact information clearly visible on your small business’s website? If not, why not?

I’d say this is one of the most important pieces of information to include on any website, especially if your business is a local small business that serves a geographically-based targeted audience. Your contact information is essential.

The days are long gone when the average person pulled out a Yellow Pages and thumbed through it to find a local business to customize. Today, more than half of the people in any given geographical market will go online and conduct a search for a business and they’ll most likely use Google. Ninety percent of them will use either Google or Bing. Therefore, your contact information is essential.

There are places other than your own website where it might be prudent to include your contact information. For a local business, you should claim your Google Places and Bing Local listings. A listing at several of various local business directories like Yelp and SuperPages might also be in order. But your website is the most important place for your local contact information. It is there where people are likely to engage with you and to seek out your services. If your website is optimized for the right keywords and geographical audience, then contact information will be even more essential.

People search for phone numbers online. All they have to do is type in your business name. If you have a website, what do you think they will find? If they are looking for your phone number, address, or e-mail contact information and it isn’t on your website, they will go to your competitor. It’s really that simple.

A lot has been said of marketing toward particular segments of the population and that includes the differences between the generational segments. For instance, if you are marketing products and services toward Baby Boomers, then you would position your brand differently than if you were marketing toward Millennials (younger people between 18 and 34).

But is there any validity to this marketing argument?

I think it depends on the product and service. Obviously, some products appeal to older populations that younger people aren’t going to be interested in. An AARP membership, for instance.

But what about generic products or products that cross generational lines in terms of interest and usability?

I think the key is to outline the benefits of your product for the consumer. Maybe older people are looking for a different benefit than younger people when it comes to your product. Maybe not. The key to any marketing – even online marketing – is to sell the benefits of the product or service. The question is, How?

If you have different market segments that seek different benefits for the same product, then it might be prudent to target them separately the same way that marketers in the TV and print advertising age have done. In that case, you might build two separate websites and focus optimizing them for the right keywords for each market. Then use the right social media sites to drive traffic and make connections based on the market.

Market segmentation is nothing new. Online, however, it might take on a different flavor. Think about it in terms of benefit for each segment and you can’t go wrong.

Content marketing is the best way to reach your market today. In fact, it’s really the only way. You’re either effective at it or you’re not. But where do you publish your content?

Here is a list of 12 essential content marketing channels for your online content. Use as many as you have time to manage.

1. Pinterest – Pinterest is the new kid on the block, but if you have graphics on any of your Web properties, then it’s a great channel to incorporate into your marketing plan.
2. Tumblr – Tumblr, too, is highly graphic in nature, but unlike Pinterest it is also very textual. You can incorporate your best graphics with textual content and build a community around your content pretty doggone fast.
3. Blogger – Blogger is the original blogging platform. While it hasn’t changed much over the years, it has gotten better.
4. WordPress – This competitor to Blogger is another platform you should incorporate into your content marketing strategy.
5. Your own domain – Your blog and website at your own domain name is the best content marketing channel you have. Don’t abandon it or, for goodness sake, forget about it.
6. YouTube – If you have video content or you’ve been thinking about producing video content, then you should have a YouTube channel.
7. Twitter – You can actually say a lot in 140 characters, and drive tons of traffic.
8. Facebook – Connect with old friends and make new ones. Build a page for your brand. But don’t stop there. It’s the most trafficked website in the world.
9. HubPages – Build your own hubs and monetize, plus drive traffic to your own web pages with solid, original content.
10. Squidoo – Create lenses on any topic in which you are an expert, and point your links back to your website. It’s the perfect marketing channel.
11. LinkedIn – Meet other business people, ask questions about your topics of interest, answer some, and make connections for life.
12. Quora – If you are an expert on any subject in the world, Quora is the place to prove it.

Now that you know the 12 essential content marketing channels, what are you going to do about them?

What will Internet marketing look like in 2032, twenty years from now? Care to take a guess?

If you look at the history of Internet marketing from the beginning of the World Wide Web until now, it’s very interesting how we have progressed to the point that we have.

• 1990 – Birth of the World Wide Web including browsers and hypertext, online bulletin boards are very popular communication channels
• 1993 – Excite, the world’s first search engine, was created
• 1994 – AltaVista was created and later would become the world’s first major search engine; Yahoo! became the first powerhouse Web directory
• 1995 – GeoCities launched, becomes the first successful online community; webrings begin to rise in popularity
• 1997 – SixDegrees is the first official social network
• 1998 – Google was born, the first search engine to analyze back links
• 1999 – Overture became the first company to offer pay per click advertising; Blogger.com launches
• 2000 – Google enters PPC market with Google AdWords
• 2003 – Google AdSense program starts, increasing Google’s hold on the PPC market; LinkedIn and MySpace both launch
• 2004 – Facebook is created
• 2005 – YouTube launches; Google introduces personalized search
• 2006 – MicroSoft LiveSearc started; Twitter launches
• 2007 – Mobile marketing starts to pick up
• 2008 – Facebook becomes most popular social network
• 2009 – LiveSearch rebrands, becomes Bing; Google rolls out personalized search for logged out users
• 2010 – Local search becomes more important
• 2011 – Google+ launches, Google proclaims it is the future of the search engine’s search and social product

This is a very sketchy history of Internet marketing, but it can shed some light on the direction that online marketing is going. More personal, more local, more social, more mobile, and incorporating more video and visual results. So what will all of that look like in 2032?

Truthfully, it’s anybody’s guess, but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that all of these components of search will be more integrated and more sophisticated. Are you preparing your company to make the most of your opportunities in each of these online marketing channels?

Google now has a new service called Google Play. Go ahead, I encourage you to check it out.

The service has been available for a couple of weeks now, but just yesterday they added a link to Google Play on the Google black bar (for those of you logged into Google Plus). The big question: What does that mean?

It means that Google is serious about marketing Google Play. But should they be?

First, I’d like to say that the Google Play subdomain is quite colorful. Click the link and you’ll see. It’s got that Google simplicity the company has become famous for, but it’s quite colorful, which is a departure from most Google products.

Here’s where we get down to the gist of the service, however. And this is the simple part. There are really only 4 offerings:

• Music
• Books
• Movies
• Android Apps

This appears to be Google’s answer to the Apple iTunes store. But I hardly think it will compete. Apple fanboys are a loyal bunch and iTunes is quite popular. Those who are not Apple fanboys can go to Amazon – and most of them do. So what does Google Play have to offer that Amazon doesn’t? Nothing. Except Google Wallet.

And who uses Google Wallet?

I do like the fact that Google puts books on the same plane as movies and music. And of course Android Apps are pretty popular as well. If anything, this is what makes Google Play stand out more than anything. Android App lovers have one place to go for their favorite downloads. But there’s no PayPal option? Seriously? Come on Google.

If this is Google’s way of luring people into starting an account with Google Wallet, it’s a pretty feeble attempt. I’ll just go to Amazon. At least there I can use my own bank account or a credit card.

Nevertheless, as a producer of books, music, movies, or Android Apps, Google Play does offer another avenue for marketing your products. After all, someone will use it. And if someone uses it, then you should have your products in the store and market them.

Inbound marketing is a phrase that refers to the process that online marketers use to find prospects for their businesses. It utilizes informational content that is published in various media including blogs, social media, articles, and web pages. The idea is to attract prospects through a variety of channels that appeal to their interests rather than focusing on begging or buying their attention through direct advertising or interrupting them to make a sales pitch.

As more and more people go online to play on Facebook or search for information – even build a website for their business – they are coming into contact with this term “inbound marketing.”

The whole point is to provide information that people are searching for. That information should help them in some way. When it does, the searcher makes a point to return to the source of information for more great content on their topic of interest. As they come to recognize you as an expert in that area, they learn to trust you. Then they are more willing to do business with you.

Two questions: 1) Does it work; and 2) is it on the rise?

To answer the first question, Yes. It does work. In fact, it’s worked for the past 20 years. Inbound marketing is the wave of the future.

Now, for the second question. Is inbound marketing on the rise? I believe it is. More and more, small businesses and other online marketers are discovering that producing quality content that attracts searchers and prospective customers is leading to conversions. In fact, those conversions end up being more profitable and lead to longer relationships with customers. It’s one more reason to start your own inbound marketing strategy.

In the early days of Internet marketing, website and blog owners wrote articles and distributed them through article directories. This was a common and acceptable practice. It was actually encouraged by the search engines and rewarded if done correctly. Everyone was a winner.

The website owner who used the article from the article directory was a winner because he got to use fresh and original content that was high quality without having to pay for it. The article writer benefited because every time his article was published he received an inbound link to his website, plus whatever traffic the article generated. The article directory benefited because the owner of the directory could slap AdSense ads on the articles and scrape off a few pennies each day. Some of them actually made a pretty good living.

But then Google Panda arrived early last year and slapped the whole process into the ground.

Many article directories were penalized. Many website owners were penalized when Google no longer recognized their hard earned inbound links. But did it kill article syndication? No, not even close.

Article syndication is still a good way to build links, but it has to be done correctly. Here are 5 principles to be guided by as you write articles and submit them for syndication around the web.

1. Write high quality articles that benefit the publisher
2. Don’t promote yourself or use overly sale-sy language
3. For each article, write a short bio with a link to your website in it (that should be sufficient for your self-promotional efforts
4. Whenever possible, instead of mass submitting to article directories, hand pick the publishers you syndicate your articles to
5. Don’t use a pen name; use your real name, or a name that is recognizable in your circle so that you can reap the reputation management benefits of article syndication

One question that any small business owner must ask him or herself when embarking upon an Internet marketing strategy is this, Should I stick only with Internet marketing or use it as an adjunct to my other marketing efforts?

I think the answer depends on your own circumstances and goals.

If your business is an Internet-only business, then Internet marketing as a standalone strategy might be the way to go. However, if your business is a local retail shop, then you definitely want to do some off line marketing within your community.

Marketing is not a zero-sum game. It’s also not an exact science. You have to do some experimenting and see what works for you.

But when you start experimenting with online marketing techniques, it helps if you spend some time studying what others have done before you. Not that you have to copy everything that’s been done before, but if you are going to try something different, then you need to know why you are veering from the acceptable norms. That’s true in any profession.

For most businesses, Internet marketing strategies make for good adjuncts to whatever else you are already doing. I’d say it’s a rare situation where you would completely replace your traditional marketing with Internet marketing.

The challenge for most businesses to decide is what mix of Internet marketing you want to accomplish and what mix of the traditional you will incorporate.

Once you decide on your total marketing plan, then you implement it. Get aggressive with whatever strategies you decide to employ.

Recent news shows that Twitter – chirp chirp – has acquired Posterous. So now for the obvious question, so what?

The move has many speculators suggesting that Twitter will eventually shut down Posterous. After all, Twitter’s own message hints that the reason they made the purchase was to gain access to the engineers working on the Posterous platform:

Posterous engineers, product managers and others will join our teams working on several key initiatives that will make Twitter even better.

If that’s the case, then don’t be surprised if you do see your Posterous account suddenly in jeopardy. But Twitter is trying to be sensitive to your needs:

Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption. We’ll give users ample notice if we make any changes to the service. For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we’ll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks.

It think it would be wise to take them up on their offer and back up your content. There’s the possibility that Twitter will allow Posterous to continue, but I doubt it. These types of acquisitions generally lead to closures, and it’s understandable why. They are a drain on resources and an expense, not to mention a distraction from the purchasing company’s primary mission. So, the business philosophy is to cut the fat.

Should you ditch Posterous right now? No, I wouldn’t say that. You should adopt a “wait and see” approach. Keep posting as before, but be prepared to take your content elsewhere should Twitter decide to close the service.

In social media and Web marketing, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

What is the most popular social media website for business-to-business marketing? If you guessed Twitter, then you’d be right. But which social media site actually delivers more leads? According to Mediabistro, that would be LinkedIn.

Big surprise?

The sad part is most small businesses aren’t using any kind of social media measurement tool, so how would they know where the majority of their leads are coming from? Twitter might be more popular, and easier to use. But it isn’t more lucrative. The ROI is actually coming from the social media site that specializes in B2B networking.

But LinkedIn doesn’t just beat Twitter for lead generation. It beats ALL social media websites. Even blogging.

While most small businesses are using social media and have a strategy for it, most of them also don’t use any kind of social media metrics. That brings to mind an age-old question: If you aren’t measuring it, how can you change it?

Businesses who do business with other businesses need to figure out how to measure their social media marketing campaigns. And it helps if you use the social networks that your target audience is using. If you are targeting consumers, that might be Facebook or Twitter. If you are targeting other businesses, it is more than likely LinkedIn.

One thing is for sure – we live in a social media age. But don’t just do it because your competition is doing it. Doing it because it is right for your business.

Now that blog marketing is more than a decade old it is apropos to ask if it is still effective. To answer that question, let’s look at what the benefits to blogging have been for the past ten years.

• Fresh content published on your website
• Solid inbound or internal links with great anchor text
• More web pages with the potential to rank for your key search terms
• The more you publish the more your site gets crawled
• Branding
• Reputation management
• Traffic increases to your website
• Relationship building with your audience
• Social media interaction
• Expertise positioning
• The ability to share your knowledge and experience while presenting yourself as an authority within your niche

These are just some of the benefits that blog marketing has offered businesses over the past decade. But does blogging still provide these benefits or has it run its course? The answer is a resounding “Yes! Blogging still provides the same benefits.”

Of course, there is a lot more competition today than there has been. There are more blogs and more bloggers vying for attention – in your niche and in every niche under the sun. This makes it more difficult to achieve the same results that you could achieve ten, or even five, years ago. But it can be done. The key is to have a strategy and to be diligent in pursuing it.

Blog marketing is still as effective as it ever was. Focus on delivering great content that is optimized well for the search engines and that is pushed out through social media. Position yourself as an expert and you’ll be perceived as one.